Buried in Clay (12 page)

I wondered if he was more perceptive than I had realised, that he knew how I yearned for a son and that he was preparing me for my future, warning me that any son he and I had would not live here.

I didn’t give voice to these thoughts but kept silent. Most people would think it fanciful that I could possibly know that the cells of my child were already multiplying inside me. What if that child should be a son?

I said nothing of these things but reassured him with a smile. ‘Of course. I’ve always understood that.’ I put my hand on his arm. ‘I know, Richard.’

He looked more normal then, nodding, as though he had always known this would be my response and as though he was relieved he had got it off his chest.

‘Come now, darling,’ he said. ‘Let’s go back to bed.’

He made love to me for a second time that night.

To make sure, I told myself, that I would have my son. But there was a desperation, a ferocity, almost a cruelty in his love making that I had never known before. His climax was urgent, felt like unfinished business, and when he had finished he lay back, spent, with his arm around me and my head on his chest. He slept quickly and deeply but I did not. I stared at the canopy of our bed and knew that Rebekah Grindall had lain after just such love making and made her decision to commit suicide. Finally I did sleep until the sun woke us in the
morning and we heard Maria clattering about in the kitchen.

All these were portents of a future I had no knowledge of. If I had I would have screamed for the rest of that night.

Perhaps, in some terrible way, I still scream.

I’m not exactly sure how I met Julius Isaacs, whether he came first into the shop or whether he knew Richard before me. I only know that at some point in the autumn of 1970 he was there, in our lives and part of our lives. He was an odd man with a whispering, soft voice, oversized features – a huge nose and ears and large, bony hands. His eyes were very black, topped by thick, long eyebrows which badly needed a trim. Whatever the weather he always dressed like an undertaker, in loose-fitting, black, shiny suits with white shirts and a dark tie. I never saw him wear anything else. He had been a customer of mine for a few months, always buying strange pieces, the very items I worried over because they were not quite what they seemed: a bureau which was commonplace or had more than an acceptable percentage of restoration, a piece of pottery which was later than I had first thought, a painting which had been clumsily relined. It is odd but I was always glad to see the
pieces he bought leave the shop. He never bought my prize items, never haggled for the trade price, always paying the full price and sending a van around to collect the pieces. He was, in a way, my rescuer, the ideal customer. He bought a wide variety of items, right across the board. I could never predict what piece would catch his eyes. And yet – to always buy the ‘wrong’ thing was, in its way, a skill. He became a part of my business which I grew to depend on.

Somehow, I was never quite sure how, he knew Richard too. I assumed it was through Richard’s financial dealings but I had no confirmation of this. Richard never told me and I never asked. In those days I didn’t ask enough questions.

He came to Hall o’th’Wood, to dinner, late in the September and somehow the conversation drifted towards the political situation in China which Mr Isaacs seemed to know something about. He asked me my opinion of the Mao communist regime and I muttered something superficial about the ‘Little Red Book’. The truth was that I knew very little about China or what it was like to live under Chairman Mao.

Isaacs then mentioned a collection of Chinese porcelain which had been smuggled out of the People’s Republic into Hong Kong and subsequently bought by a British collector. I listened, interested and intrigued by stories which came from a land which kept itself so hidden and separate from the outside world. The collection, he claimed, needed cataloguing and valuing
and finally shipping back to the UK. He asked me if I would consider flying out to Hong Kong and organising the project myself.

I remember I demurred, saying there were plenty of dealers who would undertake the trip who were far better qualified than I: that I was a dealer in English pottery – not Chinese porcelain – but Julius Isaacs told me that the collector, who always, always, remained nameless, had insisted that I do the work. I didn’t work out why until later – until it was too late. What clinched it for me was Richard saying that he would love to take a trip out to the Far East as he and Michael were considering expanding their dealings out there. I remember staring at him across the table, knowing this was the first I had heard of it, but Richard’s face was firm. Impassive. I studied him across the dinner table and read nothing there – no duplicity, nothing except his gaze on me, waiting for me to answer. I remained quiet. But as Julius Isaac was a dinner guest I could not discuss the subject then. He was clever, witty, amusing and I couldn’t work out why he gave me such a feeling of disquiet. Even so, before Maria brought in the port and cheeseboard, I found myself agreeing to fly to Hong Kong in the November to undertake the work and Richard was to come with me.

Hong Kong was not a place I would have chosen to visit but I was promised a very generous fee for my trouble and all business people learn to seize the
opportunity to make money. One never knew when one would hit lean years; the antiques business was notoriously fickle. The trip was finally settled for the second week in November.

10
^th
October 1970 was our third wedding anniversary and Richard and I had decided to celebrate with an evening at a local hotel with our families – my sister Sara and her husband John, Aunt Eleanor who had become a frequent visitor to Hall o’th’Wood (she had struck up a friendship with Richard and besides she insisted that the house aided her creative painting instinct) and Michael, Richard’s son. I was excited because after we had invited him to the anniversary dinner Michael had asked if he could bring someone along, a physiotherapist called Linda. As we were dressing that night Richard and I discussed it. I was of the opinion that this was a serious relationship and was trying to persuade him to my point of view. But men are slow at recognising blossoming relationships. I was cleaning my teeth and pressed my point, wandering into the bedroom. ‘I think Michael’s serious about her. He’s never brought anyone here before. And,’ I added meaningfully, ‘to such an important occasion too.’

Richard was having trouble tying his bow tie. ‘No, I don’t agree, Susie. Michael won’t settle down for years yet. He’s a rover.’ He turned around to give me a grin. ‘Just like his dad.’

I finished my teeth and emerged from the bathroom.
‘Not as much of a rover as you think,’ I said darkly. ‘I tell you. He wouldn’t have invited her unless she meant something to him.’

Richard made a face and vanished into the dressing room to use the mirror.

I said nothing back. I had missed a period and wondered how Richard would respond if he was to be a father again after so long. I dropped my dressing gown and struggled into my underwear then held my dress up. It was new and had been very expensive. Long, black, stiff taffeta, off the shoulder with a floor-length, full skirt. Tight over my breasts and waist. I can remember sliding it down over my body and wondering how long it would fit me so snugly. My breasts were already two sizes larger and scarcely fitted in the tight bodice. Richard wandered back into the bedroom, the bow tie hanging still, and simply stared. ‘You look…’ he began. He moved close to me, ran his hands over my breasts and pressed his mouth to them, each in turn. I felt both maternal and aroused.

‘Words fail me,’ he said huskily. ‘Susie – you are so beautiful. So beautiful I want to stare at you all evening.’

They say that when a woman is pregnant she assumes a mantle of beauty.

I felt pleased and happy and not a little smug. I had everything, didn’t I? A charming husband who adored me, I lived in a beautiful house, I had a successful business and a loving family. My fingers slipped down over my stomach. And now I had my son, growing
inside me and I would have him beside me forever. I never doubted that this child was a tiny boy and already I had a name for him. A superstition was growing inside me with the child. Richard’s son was called Michael – not Richard. I, then, could call my son by the family name.

I tied Richard’s bow tie and together we descended the staircase.

Richard had arranged for a photographer to take some pictures of us and though I hated the posing I realised this was important to him. I felt I was getting off lightly. For months now he’d been persuading me to sit for a portrait and I’d been evasive.

When I was painted I wanted to have my son in my arms. I saw him in my mind’s eye, with Richard’s clear, grey eyes and direct gaze, with his smooth hands and long fingers, my husband’s face and body, sitting erect on a horse; his portrait would hang beside the others. He would be the next generation. Proud, erect and strong, with the clear, grey eyes that marked the family. I would play my part in this family’s history. When Richard was old, I told myself, I would have his son beside me.

So neither of us had had our portraits painted. Perhaps a photograph is the medium of the twentieth century anyway.

I sat in the library chair, Richard behind me, his hand draped across my shoulder while we posed this way and that, joined by various members of the family. I might have smiled. I know now that for some of them I did
smile because I have the photographs with me today. I see them now. For others I simply stared, as had the subjects of the portraits of the upper gallery, and looked haughty, as though I wished the session was over, which was partly the truth.

I have all the photographs now. Later I demanded the prints from the entire film – not simply the selected poses. This is the talent of inanimate objects. I can pick the photographs up today, look at them and read all that was to come. All that I did not know then. I see my ignorance, all my misunderstandings, Richard’s pride, my soft expression, the secret I was nursing in my breast. We were a family very sure of ourselves, proud and certain. Michael, Richard, Aunt Eleanor and even Sara.

That was the life mapped out for me. I was certain of it.

Only it wasn’t.

My aunt wandered across to me, speaking very softly in my ear so no one else could hear. ‘And does he know you’re pregnant, Susie?’

I met her eyes and shook my head. ‘No. I don’t want him to know. I don’t want him to worry. Not until we return from Hong Kong.’

She gave me a knowing, sharing look. ‘As you wish,’ she said, still very softly. ‘Though how he can miss that maternal glow you’re wrapping yourself up in I don’t know, Susie. But then men are blind, aren’t they?’ She brushed my cheek with her lips. I felt my love for her
well up inside me and spill into my heart.

I wondered then what had been her life? When Sara and I had been children, growing up. What chances had she missed because of us? What love had she eschewed? I watched her and realised how little I knew about her past. When she spoke to us it was more often about our father and their bohemian childhood. Richard wandered over and made some comment about my appearance. Then he bent and nuzzled the back of my neck and told me that I had changed my perfume.

I hadn’t but I have heard that perfumes can smell different on the body of a pregnant woman. Perhaps it is something to do with the hormones. I don’t know except that I felt intimate, as though I wanted the room to empty and for us to be alone. My aunt was watching us, her eyes misty and difficult to read. I realised then that she was an ageing spinster and that bringing up my sister and me had cost her dear. The thought stopped me. Then she produced a flat parcel, about two feet square, wrapped in brown paper. ‘Sorry,’ she said, ‘I forgot to get wrapping paper. I have a gift for you.

‘Here…’ She handed it to Richard. Not to me, I noticed. ‘Happy anniversary, both.’

He was as excited as a young boy at Christmas. In fact, I thought, watching him tearing the paper, ever since he had returned from his London business trip he had been on a permanent high. Had I not known better I would have accused him of being on a cocaine high. It was too bright, too sparkly. Not really him at all.

And yet…

He drew the paper away from the gift and held it up.

It was a painting, recognisably of Hall o’th’Wood but executed in surrealist style. The house swirled and spun and the walls were even more crooked than in real life. It was distorted Chagall. Spinning around the house were myself and Richard, both helplessly in its power, I in a long, white nightdress, eyes staring, mouth open, he in his sober grey suit, figure stiff, grey tie, grey hair but with fiery red eyes which burnt towards us. I opened my mouth to speak and stared at the canvas. Never in my entire life have I ever seen a painting so powerful as the one my aunt, Eleanor Paris, painted of Hall o’th’Wood. Because she had captured not only its crooked walls and crooked roof but also the way the house sucked in all who came within its vortex. In some ways the painting did not reassure me but frightened me because it was the truth.

I looked at the artist and caught some infinite wisdom in her face. She looked like a sage, a wise woman, someone who foresaw the future.

What did she see?

I glanced across at Richard and saw that he was as overwhelmed by the painting as I was. His hands were gripping the frame. I wondered then whether he understood its meaning as well as I did.

I kissed my aunt’s cheek. ‘So that’s what you were doing on the top floor, was it?’

She nodded and looked pleased with our response.

I linked my arm in Richard’s. ‘Well it’s saved us from having to sit for a portrait.’

He laughed. We drank champagne and toasted each other and our future years together.

Michael arrived then with a small, dark-haired girl he introduced as Linda. Richard and I exchanged glances at his proprietary pride. She was neat and pretty with a beautiful smile. ‘I’ve heard so much about you all,’ she gushed. ‘I feel I already know you. And this house,’ she added, looking around. ‘It’s so lovely. I can’t believe it’s for real.’

I remember thinking then, don’t you realise, Linda? It isn’t for real. My eyes moved across to the painting.

Michael gave me a huge hug and complimented me on my dress. I teased him about turning up in a dinner suit when we were more used to seeing him in jeans and sweaters. I reflected on our friendship in the three years we had known each other. He felt like the brother I had never had. From the first he had been open and friendly, quickly affectionate towards his stepmother. He was generous and boisterous, honest and kind. He was like his father yet in some ways so very different. He was far more circumspect about the house and more of a realist. He might have become my brother but I was equally aware that I had become, in some ways, a sister to him. He had more than once told me how much more content his father was since our marriage and how glad he was that I had come into their lives, and for that reassurance
I was eternally grateful. Michael had some of the warmth Richard could occasionally seem to lack and he had a talent for putting people at their ease, something else his father could be short on. I had noticed frequently people stiffening in Richard’s presence. Perhaps these differences between father and son were Michael’s mother’s gifts. I also believed that Michael would not have excluded me from either business or family secrets.

Father and son were very close. They not only worked together but were the best of friends. Michael always greeted his father with an almost continental bear hug while Richard’s face lit up when his eyes alighted on his son.