Treasures of Time (31 page)

‘I wonder myself,’ said James Hamilton, ‘why you didn’t see fit to include a legal figure among your set of influential chaps. One of the great judges. You’ve a bias towards cultural thought, if I may say so – surely moral and social viewpoints can’t be left out, I mean if as I gather you embrace religion, at least with de Chardin and Archbishop Temple. Just a notion. Not of course that one isn’t going to watch the series with enormous interest in any case. But speaking as – well, as the not-quite average viewer, I suppose one must concede – I would have thought…’

Would you, now? thought Tony, with his concerned and attentive look, his young-man-to-older-and-more important-one worried inclination of the head. I daresay. But since I didn’t devise the damn series, merely some of it, since in the last resort I’m a nuts-and-bolts man, no more nor less, that’s hardly the point. And since I’m too knackered just now to explain that, and I’ve got too much to think about anyway, if we’re going to pull anything like a respectable amount of film out of this hellish weekend, then the best thing to do is to sit tight and let you go on enjoying a flight of fancy as man of creativity and insight. Christ, what a gathering! No wonder the poor old sister looks a bit baffled over there in the wheel-chair.

Better today. Quite a bit better. Less of that buzzing in the ears; limbs more in contact with oneself. Oneself – ah, whatever that may be – oneself more inclined to look around and sniff the air. And goodness knows there is enough to look around at today. Such a spread has not been seen at Danehurst for quite a while now – no wonder Laura has been so tetchy these last few days. Though today she has been in a better frame of mind, if a bit over-excited. Like the cat that’s eaten the cream, when she brought breakfast this morning. One wondered what was up.

And there is something amiss with Kate. But as ever she will go to the stake rather than say.

It would have been interesting to have witnessed this curious little drama up at the Tump; like some mythic revenge of the gods, or an outbreak of Shakespearean symbolic weather. So the lintel stone is broken, the entrance destroyed… Well, Hugh would no doubt say the place has served its purpose now, anyway – he was never a one for sentiment. False sentiment.

What is done is done, and we live with our mistakes. He said that once. About a bad decision over a trench, actually. I can see him now, scowling down into a bit of – a bit of Norfolk, I think – with that fan of white lines around his eyes, from screwing up his face in the sun, and his chin peppered with black stubble. We live with our mistakes.

Laura is beginning to look a bit distracted, now. We shall pay for this, when all the commotion has died down. It’ll all end in tears, as mother used to say. Silly expression: a denial of life.

The lunch disposed of, Tony set briskly to the redirection of his team. The visitors, relegated to a position now of onlookers, subsidiary to the real business of the day, drifted through to the drawing room. Coffee was served. The BBC party went into conclave; Mrs Lucas and her sister-in-law picked their way past them, ostentatiously unimpressed.

Tom met Kate outside the study door, coming from the kitchen. ‘Oh, hello.’

‘Hello.’

‘I don’t seem to have seen much of you.’

‘No.’

‘A funny kind of day.’

‘Yes. You’ve found someone to talk to, anyway. The fair girl.’

There was a silence. Tom said, ‘Shall we go in here? It seems to be the only room not crawling with people.’

The room was lined with glass-fronted book-cases, which reflected the garden – the lawn and the flower-beds and the yew hedge brightly overlaying the sombre ranks of
Antiquity
, Proceedings of the Prehistorical Society, the Victoria County History. From time to time figures walked across: Tony, Sue. Kate picked up a piece of pottery from the desk and stood running her finger round its rim. She said, ‘Perhaps it’s better if I go back to the flat alone.’

‘Is that what you think?’

She said, ‘I suppose so.’

‘Is it what you want?’

She turned away and stared out of the window. ‘No. But I think it’s what you want.’

There was an insidiously ticking grandfather clock in one corner of the room; on one wall, a collection of eighteenth and nineteenth century prints of Avebury; perched on a filing-cabinet, a Roman amphora. Kate said, ‘Isn’t it what you want?’

He wanted to put out a hand, touch her arm. But it would be the wrong kind of touch; she would know that well enough. ‘It may be the best thing.’ Lame; appallingly inadequate.

There was a silence. Kate said, ‘I imagine it’s not so much anything I’ve done as what I am?’

‘Kate, look I…’

‘Don’t, just
don’t
say you’re sorry.’

‘I wasn’t going to.’ That’s right, he wanted to say, get angry, it’ll be therapeutic, a purgative. And I deserve it.

But she didn’t. She stared across the desk at him; there was hurt in her eyes, and something else as well. Something disconcerting; a detachment, a look of assessment.

‘I’m too much to take on,’ she said. ‘Aren’t I? You did love me – that was true, I know that – but I’m difficult and cross and awkward and when it comes to the crunch it’s more than you reckoned with. And there’s Ma.’

‘Kate, it’s you who’s obsessed with your mother, not me.’

‘Quite, but that’s something else you don’t want to get involved in.’

‘Let’s not argue,’ he said. ‘Not now.’

‘You don’t want a nasty painful scene that might lodge in the mind?’

‘I don’t expect you do either.’

‘No,’ she said, ‘I don’t. But I’d rather have that than not look things in the face.’

‘Ah. Well, yes, I suppose there’s a case for that.’

‘A case! Oh, Tom.’

I wish this was over, he thought. I wish it was next week, or next year, even.

‘You’re an evasive person, you know, just a bit,’ she said.

‘Evasive?’

‘You duck things, where you can. Issues. Responsibities, even.’

‘Such as?’

‘I’m sorry – having said that I can’t think of anything specific. It’s a state of mind I’m talking about, more. You’re a very uncommitted person.’

‘Go on,’ said Tom sourly. ‘This is interesting. A good bout of character assassination is salutary, I don’t doubt.’

‘I haven’t got anything to lose, have I? I’ve lost it already.’

There was nothing he could say to that. Or do. Except avoid her eyes.

‘I don’t mean to assassinate. Just understand. And you are, you know. You’re against things rather than for things, and even when you’re against them you just turn your back and walk away. You’re a looker-on. You keep out of things. You step out of the way and make a wry comment.’

‘It comes of growing up in a temperate climate, I daresay.’

‘That’s exactly the kind of thing I mean,’ said Kate. ‘
Quod erat demonstrandum
.’

‘All right,’ he said after a moment, ‘you’ve got a point. Maybe I’d have been different in more strenuous circumstances. A child of the times?’

She shrugged.

‘Or perhaps it’s an innate tendency? I still think the climate may have something to do with it.’ His head was throbbing now; a timely reminder of last night, and serve him right, too. ‘You should have been here yesterday evening – I drank too much of your mother’s whisky and harangued her about the same kind of thing.’

‘About the
climate
?’

‘Sort of. Mercifully I can’t remember too much now.’

There were voices outside the door. Kate said, ‘You’ll go back with Tony tonight, then?’

‘I suppose so. But let’s meet up in a week or two, Kate – let’s have a drink and see what…’

‘Mmn. Maybe. I may have my holiday then.’

‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Where will you go?’

‘I haven’t the faintest idea.’

The door opened. Tony said, ‘Can I come in? I’m rather thinking this room might be better than the drawing room to do the sequence with Paul Summers – the rest of the stuff we’d hoped to have done up at the barrow. Yes, sitting at the desk might be nice – Mike, what do you think?’ People gathered in consultation; Laura appeared, concerned about dust and untidiness; Kate vanished.

Tom went into the drawing room, there being clearly no alternative but to subject himself to the Hamiltons. ‘Isn’t this fun?’ said Barbara Hamilton. ‘Do let me give you some coffee.’ He sat in gloom on the sofa, guilt and depression now added to the many ills of the day. From through the open door came the sound of Tony’s voice, telling people what to do. Presently it was replaced by Paul Summers saying loud, carefully phrased things about Wessex and Hugh Paxton and the state of mind of British archaeologists in the nineteen fifties.

I’ll go and see the Lakers for a bit, he thought. Or something. Bugger off for a week or two.

Kate came in, said, ‘Oh, I thought Aunt Nellie was here,’ and went out again at once.

Through in the study Tony said, ‘Cut.’ Then Paul Summers, ‘Sorry, I got myself tied up there.’ ‘Not to worry, we’ll go again.’

Tom conversed with Barbara Hamilton and her husband and marvelled at his own ability – hitherto unsuspected – to do this without being in any way aware of what they were talking about. From the garden came a curious wooden knocking noise; someone laughed. He looked out of the window.

Sue and a presently unoccupied BBC man were on the lawn, stooped over a long wooden box from which they were taking the component parts of, apparently, a croquet set. That knocking noise was accounted for. Sue, setting up a hoop, made some experimental shots; there was laughter and banter. Barbara Hamilton said, ‘Croquet – what fun! I had no idea Laura had a croquet set, do let’s have a game.’ Tom followed them onto the terrace.

There was argument about the placing of the central stick. Sue said, ‘This was Tony’s idea – he noticed the box in that old summer house at the bottom and thought it would be nice to set it up. He thinks it adds to the house’s Edwardian atmosphere.’ She giggled. ‘I must say I’m glad I wasn’t an Edwardian, I’m hopeless at it.’ She swung wildly at a ball, missed, and sent it skidding down the lawn through the gap in the yew hedge. ‘Oh God, now where’s that gone?’

Barbara Hamilton said, ‘Of course the thing is to cheat wildly, that’s half the point. Darling, I’ll take you on. You and – er – Sue against me and Tom. Or Kate – wouldn’t you like to play?’

Kate, standing now on the terrace, shook her head. Tom said, ‘Actually, I’d prefer really…’

‘Oh, come on, be a devil.’

He took the proffered mallet; presumably one could do this kind of thing in a semi-trance as well.

Nellie had fled from the house and its activities. Insofar as it is possible for anyone in a wheel-chair to flee. She had taken herself to the small orchard at one side of the drive, to the front of the house, and sat there under an apple-tree, reading. After a brief well-being in the middle of the day she felt, now, disordered again, unwell. She wished all these people would go away. Trying to concentrate on the book, she was disturbed by an odd noise: an odd, familiar yet unreckoned-with noise. She closed the book, listened. Began, after a minute or so, to trundle herself round the outside of the house towards the garden.

In the study, Paul Summers completed, finally and satisfactorily, his piece. Tony said, ‘Lovely, let’s have a break now.’ Laura, who had been watching from the door, made remarks of congratulation and approval. She had not, in fact, listened, being taken up with thoughts prompted by the sight of Hugh’s books, murky behind the glass of the case, Paul Summers’s tanned face and the greyish clouds racing in reflection across the surface of the books: a not entirely random sequence concerned with the possible sale of some books which after all nobody read nowadays, sunshine, the price of air tickets to Corsica, and this villa of the Hamiltons in which apparently there was room for one more. But now, breaking into this, there came a perplexing, evocative noise: she turned towards the door, frowning. From the garden were heard a thwack, a feminine squeak, a burst of laughter. Tony said, ‘Oh Laura, is it all right, I suggested they put up that old croquet set before we do those shots of the house – it adds a certain something.’ She walked through the drawing room and out onto the terrace without replying.