The Secret Intensity of Everyday Life (6 page)

She chose mid-evening for her call. Earlier and he might be out at supper; later was too suggestive. His room was at the top of a poorly-lit staircase. The outer door was open.

How to knock? Laura wished to present herself as casual, informal, friendly, confident. Her knock must not be too insistent, nor yet too timid. Her hand hovered, raised before the door panel, and she felt her whole body shaking.

This is stupid.

She took a slow deep breath, and knocked twice.

‘Yes?’

The room was in darkness but for a pool of light thrown onto a long desk by an Anglepoise lamp. Nick was sitting at the desk under the window by the far wall, not rising from his studies, turning to look over his shoulder at the door. His face rim-lit by the lamplight.

‘Oh. It’s you.’

For a fraction of a second she saw that he was surprised: he had not expected her to come. At once she was overwhelmed by the conviction that she should not have come. But now he was up out of his work chair, turning on more lights, acting the gracious host.

‘That’s wonderful. You found me. Come on in.’

‘You look as if you’re hard at work.’

‘No, it’s fine. Glad of the break. What can I get you? Glass of wine?’

‘If you have some.’

‘I don’t have much of anything, but I always have wine.’

He went into the little pantry and she heard the noise of water running into a basin. Cleaning the wine glasses, presumably. She looked round the long room. It wasn’t at all like other student rooms. No posters, no discarded beer cans. The pictures on the walls were framed and looked real; engravings, mostly. She recognized one of them from the postcard he had used as a bookmark on the train. It was a monochrome version of the same scene.

At the far end of the room a half-open door led into a small bedroom. A glimpse of crumpled duvet. Nick was in his third year, and enjoyed the luxury of a set of rooms.

She felt her stomach shivering.

Nick rejoined her, holding out a heavy French café glass well-filled with red wine. He smiled as he gave her the glass. She found she couldn’t hold his look and turned away, moved over to the deep old sofa, fooled about finding somewhere to stand her glass. She didn’t want to do the talking, didn’t know what to say, felt the need of clues as to what he expected of her.

‘What day is it today?’ he said.

‘Thursday, I think.’

‘Then here’s to Thursday.’ He raised his glass. ‘Happy Thursday.’

She smiled and raised her glass. They both drank.

‘I wonder why we haven’t met before,’ he said. Then, ‘No, I don’t. I’m such a hermit.’

‘Are you a hermit?’

‘What with finals looming, and my dissertation to finish.’

A nod towards the papers and books laid out on the desk.

‘What’s it on?’ said Laura.

‘Oh, no. Don’t ask.’

‘Why not?’

He settled down on the only other upholstered chair and stretched out his legs and smiled at her over the top of his wine glass. For a moment he didn’t answer. Then in slow deliberate tones he explained himself.

‘The fact is, I really do care about the work I’m doing. Quite a lot, actually. But I don’t see why anyone else should care. So rather than bore people or embarrass them I’ve learned not to talk about it.’

Laura felt a small but distinct shock. It was strange to her that these precious first moments could have any other content than their perceptions of each other. Close on the shock came shame. She had assumed that any conversation that took place between them was a cover for another sort of dialogue. Do you like me? Do I like you? Might you love me? Might I love you? And here he was wanting to talk about his dissertation.

‘I’d like to know. Really.’

Anything to avoid having to talk herself. When she was nervous she chattered like a fool. And right now she was extremely nervous. He was so calm and still, his few movements so deliberate, and all she wanted to do was wriggle and scratch. It was like being a child in church.

‘I’m writing about landscape art. I’m writing about Arcadia.’

He paused to see how she took this. She nodded as if she understood, which she didn’t.

‘About Arcadia in art, and Arcadia as a concept. People think of Arcadia as part of the classical furniture, as if it’s a myth that we’ve long outgrown. I don’t think so. I think it’s as powerful as it’s ever been. Partly because it’s pre-Christian. It’s the anti-Garden of Eden. There’s no serpent in Arcadia, there’s no forbidden fruit, no original sin. It’s the pastoral idyll, the world before towns and cities and, oh, you know, the dark satanic mills and so forth. For centuries artists painted imaginary scenes of Arcadia, using bits and pieces of real countryside, a shady grove of trees, a murmuring spring, a group of contented peasants watching over sheep. Then they started painting real countryside, but it was still really Arcadia. All those Constables everyone loves so much, they’re real places, but they’re not the only reality of rural England in the early nineteenth century. There was poverty, and disease, and premature death. He could have horrified us. But who wants to be horrified? So he painted England as Arcadia.’

He stopped, afraid that he had talked too much.

‘More wine.’

Her glass was empty. She had no recollection of having drunk it. He refilled both their glasses.

‘You did ask.’

Apologizing for the lecture.

‘No. I’m really interested.’

She was, too. Not in Arcadia, but in his passionate engagement with his subject. All the time listening to him she had been tracking her response, amazed that he could talk to her like this, now, when all that was vivid and immediate to her was his response to her and hers to him. Did he not feel this too? And if not, was it arrogance? Indifference? Surely she hadn’t misread the signals so totally. The unsigned note left in her pigeon-hole most of all. But perhaps he had lost interest in her as soon as he had been sure of her response. There were men like that. Or close up she had proved to be a disappointment.

Laura’s fear was that she was pretty but not sexy.

She drank her wine too fast.

‘So you see,’ he said, ‘I’m lost in Arcadia these days, which makes me very poor company. When you spend all day contemplating the earthly paradise you do get a bit spacey.’

He took a cigarette out of a shiny blue packet.

‘Smoke?’

She accepted, glad to have something to do with her hands. He struck a match for her. They leant towards each other for him to light her cigarette, the shared action so intimate, so sensual. His flame, her breath.

The harsh smoke hurt her throat. She was unused to French cigarettes. She inhaled and felt light-headed.

‘I should stay in your earthly paradise if I were you,’ she said. ‘I’m surprised you ever come out. It sounds perfect.’

‘Almost perfect. But not quite.’

‘What’s the snag?’

‘It’s a very famous snag.’

He got up and took one of the framed pictures off the wall. It was the engraving of the group of classical figures round a tomb.

‘Et in Arcadia ego.’ He handed her the picture. ‘It’s an engraving of a well-known Poussin painting. You see, the words are carved on the tomb.
Et in Arcadia ego
. “Even in Arcadia am I.” The “I”, the “ego”, is death. Death is the snag.’

Laura gazed at the picture. The tomb was immense, it dominated the scene.

‘This is the picture you have as your bookmark.’

He was silent, surprised. Laura realized he was unaware that she had studied him on the train, which could only mean he did not study her. She had blundered. Now he knew she was more interested in him than he was in her.

She lowered her head as if to study the picture in more detail, but really to hide her sudden blush.

‘Oh, yes,’ he said. ‘The train. You’re very observant.’

‘That’s me. Snoopy.’

She looked up and met his eyes through the curls of cigarette smoke. She spoke about the picture to remove attention from herself.

‘There seems to be a lot more death than paradise.’

‘Yes. All we get is some token trees. It’s one of those paintings that presumes knowledge of the whole tradition that comes before it.’

‘Is that why it’s special for you?’

‘Is it special for me?’

‘Well, you have it as your bookmark.’

‘Yes, I suppose you’re right.’ He frowned. It seemed not to have struck him before. ‘I wonder why. I suppose I must have a morbid streak in me. That doesn’t sound like much fun, does it? Unless you take the view that meditation on death makes one all the more inclined to live life to the full.
Carpe diem
and so forth.’

Laura was drunk on red wine and dizzy on French cigarettes. Everything Nick said impressed her. He was so utterly unlike any boy she’d known before. Not a boy, a grown-up. She herself still a girl. She felt her inferiority, but she didn’t mind it. She wanted to sit at his feet. She wanted to learn from him.

‘Seize the day,’ she murmured.

‘And the night.’

That was when she knew he desired her. At once a new confidence flowed through her and she was able to meet his smiling gaze. He was older, wiser, more sophisticated in every way, but now she had something he wanted, something she could give him in return. Her gift had very little merit in her eyes, but if he wanted it, there was a deal to be done. He would give her his maturity and his prestige. She would give him herself.

‘I’ve drunk too much. I should go.’

There followed a long silence, in which their eyes remained locked. The silence told as much as the single word that ended it, but it was the word she remembered ever after.

‘Stay,’ he said.

She stayed. He was in control. She surrendered. Before he had even touched her the surrender was total, and in the act of surrender itself she found an intoxicating freedom. That and the wine.

Ask anything of me. Do what you want. I want to please you more than I want to live. Through you I live. My only beloved lover.

All this without words and before the first true touch. Her whole body shivered with an anxiety that was both delicious and painful.

Will I be good enough for him?

He kissed her. She put her arms round him as she had been longing to do since she had watched him in the train window. She held him and felt his arms hold her, tasted his lips smoky on her lips, and slowly the shivering of her body fell still.

Taking off her clothes in the little bedroom she caught her jeans on her feet and stumbled. The bed was so narrow they had to hold each other close. Light from the main room fell through the open door, but there was no light here. Her naked body a secret except to his touch. No words. She spoke to him with her hands, her mouth, her body, saying: I am yours for ever.

She gave herself to him without reserve, asking nothing in return but his undying love.

This is my room now. This is my bed. This is my lover. Let my real life begin.

Heart of my heart, my meaning and completion.

Laura lay in Nick’s arms all that long night, and did not sleep.

8

Barry Eagles joins the production meeting late, clutching a Starbucks cappuccino and a pack of Krispy Kreme donuts, smiling his apologies.

‘Caught on the bloody phone as usual. Sorry, people. Look, phone off.’

He sets down his coffee and turns off his phone, a symbolic gesture of commitment that he believes fully compensates for his late arrival.

‘Love the final script.’

‘Not quite final,’ says Henry. ‘We’re still waiting for Aidan’s notes.’

‘Oh, Aidan won’t give you any grief. He’s a real pro.’

Henry frowns. Christina meets his eyes with a quick look of sympathy. Sweet Christina, twenty-three years old and looks sixteen. The quiet clever one who keeps her head down, the hunched stoop of the young not yet proud of their bodies.

‘So where is Aidan?’ says Barry. ‘Isn’t he supposed to be here?’

‘He’s on his way,’ says Jo, the production manager. ‘He’s coming straight from Heathrow.’

‘The thing is,’ says Henry.

‘And your first shooting day is Friday?’

Jo nods confirmation. ‘Westminster Abbey.’

‘Okay, I’m going to jump right in. We’re at least one day over budget, maybe two. I know it’s late to be telling you this, but we have to find cuts.’

‘Two days!’ Henry is shocked. ‘I can’t do it.’

‘Then give me one. Cut the Keats intro, for a start.’

‘Cut the Keats intro!’

Henry’s best visual idea. The presenter holds up a replica Grecian urn and intones Keats’s famous lines: ‘Beauty is truth and truth beauty, that is all you know on earth and all you need to know.’ Then he drops the urn. It smashes in slo-mo close-up. Massey confides to camera: ‘Sheer nonsense, isn’t it? Truth is sometimes ugly. Beauty is often false.’