Aurelia said, ‘Thank you for coming to see me. I’ll look at your chapters.’ At the door she said, ‘Will you come to a party I’m giving? Perhaps we will talk more. An invitation will be sent to you.’
From across the road Marcia looked at the lighted house and the activity within, until the shutters were closed.
*
Marcia waited beside Sandor at his porter’s desk until he finished work at seven. They had a drink in the pub where they had met. Sandor went there every evening to watch the sport on cable TV. He didn’t ask her why she had suddenly turned up, and didn’t mention Aurelia Broughton, though Marcia had rung to say she was coming up to see her. He talked of how he loved London and how liberal it was; no one cared who or what you were. He said that if he ever had a house he would decorate it like the pub they were sitting in. He talked of what he was reading in Hegel, though in such a garbled fashion she had no idea what he was saying or why it interested him. He told her stories of the criminals he’d known and how he’d been used as a getaway driver.
He asked her if she wanted to go to bed. His request was put in the tone of voice that said it was just as fine if she preferred not to. She hesitated only because the house in which he had a room could have been a museum to the 1950s, along with the failure of the two-bar electric fire to make any impression on the block of cold that sat in the room like death. There was also the hag of a landlady who would sit at the end of his bed at midnight.
‘Don’t worry, I’ve just given her
Crime and Punishment
to read,’ Sandor laughed, following Marcia into his room. Books were piled on the floor beside the bed. His washing hung over the back of a chair. All his possessions were here.
Lying down with him, she noticed his loaf of white sliced bread and carton of milk on the chest of drawers.
‘Is that all your food?’
‘Bread and butter fills me up. Then I read for four or five hours. Nothing bothers me.’
‘It’s not much of a life.’ ‘What?’
‘You’re not in prison.’
He looked at her in surprise, as if it had never occurred to him that he wasn’t in prison, and didn’t have to make the best of nothing.
He kissed her and she thought of inviting him to her house at the weekend. He was kind. He would entertain Alec. But she might start to rely on him; she would always be asking for more. If anyone requested him to yield, shift or alter, he left them. She might not want him, but she didn’t want to be forsaken.
After, she stood up to get dressed, looking at him where he lay with his hand over his eyes. She couldn’t spend the night in such a place.
*
That night, for the first time, she wished Alec weren’t in mother’s bed. Marcia slept with her face in his unwashed clothes. In the morning she didn’t write. She had lost the desire, which was also her desire for life. What illusory hopes had she invested in Aurelia? Seeing her had robbed Marcia of something. She had emptied herself out, and Aurelia was full. Where would she find the resources, the meaning, to carry on?
Aurelia had asked her to bring someone to the party; another teacher, a ‘pure’ teacher Aurelia had said, meaning not a teacher pretending to be a writer. Maybe Marcia should have said no. But she wanted to leave the door open with Aurelia, to see what might develop. Aurelia might read the three chapters and be excited by them. Anyhow, Marcia wanted to go to the party.
‘How did it go with Miss Broughton?’ asked her mother the next time Marcia went round. ‘We’ve chatted on the phone, but you haven’t mentioned it.’
‘It was fine, just great.’
Her mother said, ‘You’re sullen, like a teenager again.’
‘I don’t know what to say.’
Mother said, more softly, ‘What came of it?’
‘You should have seen the house. Five bedrooms – at least!’
‘You got upstairs?’
‘I had to. And three receptions!’
‘Three? What do they do in all that space! What would we do with it!’
‘Have races!’
‘We could –’
‘The flowers, Mum! The people working there! I’ve never known anything like it.’
‘I bet. Was it on a main road?’
‘Just off. But near the shops. They’ve got everything to hand.’
‘Buses?’ enquired her mother.
‘I shouldn’t think she goes on a bus.’
‘No,’ said Mother. ‘I wouldn’t go on another bus again if I didn’t have to. Off-street parking?’
‘Yes. Room for two cars, it looked like.’ Marcia said, ‘We chatted in her library and got to know one another. She invited me to a party.’
‘To a party? She didn’t invite me?’
‘She didn’t mention you at all,’ Marcia said. ‘And nor did I.’
‘I’m sure she wouldn’t mind if I came with you. I’ll get my glad rags on!’
‘But why?’ said Marcia.
‘Just to go out. To meet people. I might interest them.’
Before, this would have been a kind of joke, and Mother would have returned to her moroseness. She certainly was getting healthy, if she thought she might interest people.
‘I’ll think about it,’ Marcia said.
‘I can’t wait!’ sang her mother. ‘A party!’
*
Aurelia rang from her car. The connection wasn’t good, but Marcia gathered that Aurelia was ‘in the neighbourhood’ and wanted to ‘pass by for a cup of tea’.
Marcia and Alec were having fish fingers and baked beans. Aurelia must have been close; Marcia had hardly cleared the table, and Alec hadn’t finished throwing his toys behind the sofa, when Aurelia’s car drew up outside.
At the door she handed Marcia another signed copy of her new novel, came in, and sat down on the edge of the sofa.
‘What a beautiful boy,’ she said of Alec. ‘Fine hair – almost white.’
‘And how are you?’ said Marcia.
‘Tired. I’ve been doing readings and giving interviews, not only here but in Berlin and Barcelona. The French are making a film about me, and the Americans want me to make a film about my London … Sorry,’ she said. ‘Am I making you crazy?’
‘Of course.’
Aurelia sighed. Today she looked shrewd and seemed to vibrate with intensity. She didn’t want to talk, or listen, rather. When Marcia told her that her will to work had collapsed, she said, ‘I wish mine had.’
She got up and glanced along the shelves of Marcia’s books.
‘I like her,’ said Marcia, naming a woman writer, of about the same age as Aurelia.
‘She can’t write at all. Apparently she’s a rather good amateur sculptor.’
‘Is that so?’ said Marcia. ‘I liked her last book. Did you read the chapters I gave you?’ Aurelia looked blankly at her. Marcia said, ‘The chapters from my novel. I left them.’
‘Where?’
‘On your table.’
‘No. No, I didn’t.’
‘Perhaps they’re still there.’
Marcia guessed Aurelia wanted to see how she lived, that she wasn’t looking at her but through her, to the sentences and paragraphs she would make of her. It was an admirable ruthlessness.
At the door Aurelia kissed her on both cheeks.
‘See you at the party,’ she said.
‘I’m looking forward to it.’
‘Don’t forget – bring someone pedagogical.’
Marcia put Aurelia’s novel on the shelf. Aurelia’s books were among the rows of books; the books full of stories, the stories full of characters and craft, waiting to be enlivened by someone with a use for them. Or perhaps not.
*
Mother refused to have Alec to stay. It was the first time she had done this. It was the day before the party.
‘But why, why?’ said Marcia, on the telephone.
‘I realised you weren’t taking me to the party, though you didn’t bother to actually tell me. I made other arrangements.’
‘I was never taking you to that party.’
‘You never take me anywhere.’
Marcia was shaking with exasperation. ‘Mum, I want to live. And I want you to help me.’
‘I’ve helped you all my life.’
‘Sorry? You?’
‘Who brought you up? You’re educated, you’ve got –’
Marcia replaced the receiver.
She rang friends and a couple of people in the writers’ group, even the boy who’d written about the tapeworm. No one was available to babysit. Half an hour before she needed to leave, the only person left to ask was her husband, who lived nearby. He was surprised and sarcastic. They rarely spoke but, when necessary, dropped notes through one another’s doors.
He said he had been intending to spend the evening with his new girlfriend.
‘How sweet,’ said Marcia.
‘What do you want me to do?’ he said.
‘Can’t you both come over?’
‘Desperate. Must be another new boyfriend. Have you got any crisps … and alcohol?’
‘Take what you want. You always did.’
It was the first time she had let her husband into the house since he had left. If the girlfriend was there he wouldn’t, at least, snoop around.
When they arrived, and the girlfriend removed her coat, Marcia noticed she was pregnant.
Marcia changed upstairs. She could hear them talking in the living room. Then she heard music.
She was at the door, ready to go. Alec was showing them his new baseball cap.
Her husband held up a record sleeve. ‘You know, this is my record.’
‘I’m in a rush,’ she said.
In the car she thought she must have been mad, but what she was doing was in the service of life. People don’t take enough risks, she thought. She didn’t, though, have a teacher who might interest Aurelia. However, Aurelia wouldn’t turn her away at the door. Marcia had done enough for Aurelia. Had Aurelia done enough for her?
It was Aurelia’s husband who let her in and fetched her a glass of champagne, while Marcia looked around. The party was being held on the ground floor of the house, and Marcia recognised several writers. The other guests seemed to be critics, academics, psychoanalysts and publishers.
The effort of getting there had made her tense. She drank two glasses of champagne quickly and attached herself to Aurelia’s husband, the only person, apart from Aurelia, she knew.
‘Do you want to be introduced as a teacher, or as a writer?’ he said. ‘Or neither?’
‘Neither, at the moment.’ She took his arm. ‘Because I am neither one nor the other.’
‘Keeping your options open, eh?’ he said.
He introduced her to several people, and they talked as a group. The main topic was the royal family, a subject she was surprised to hear intellectuals taking an interest in. It was like being at the school.
She liked Aurelia’s husband, who nodded and smiled occasionally; she liked being afraid of him. He understood other people and what their wishes were. Nothing would shock him.
He was a little shocked later on, in the conservatory, when she reached up to kiss him. She was saying, ‘Please, please, only this …’ when, across the room, she saw the headmaster of her school, and his wife, talking to a female writer.
Aurelia’s husband gently detached her.
‘I apologise,’ she said.
‘Accepted. I’m flattered.’
‘Hallo, Marcia,’ said the headmaster. ‘I hear you’ve been very helpful to Aurelia.’
She didn’t like the headmaster seeing her drunk and embarrassed.
‘Yes,’ she said.
‘Aurelia’s going to come to the school and see what we do. She’s going to talk to the older pupils.’ He lowered his mouth to her ear. ‘She has given me a complete set of her books. Signed.’
She wanted to say, ‘They’re all signed, you stupid cunt.’
She left the house and walked a little. Then she went back and traversed the party. People were leaving. Others were talking intensely. Nobody paid her any attention.
*
Sandor was lying on his bed with his hand over his eyes. She sat beside him.
‘I’ve come to say I won’t be coming so often now. Not that I’ve ever really come often, except recently. But … it will be even less.’
He nodded. He was watching her. Sometimes he took in what she said.
She went on, ‘The reason, if you want to know the reason –’
‘Why not?’ he said. He sat up. ‘I’d get you something … but, I’m so ashamed, there’s nothing here.’
‘There’s never anything here.’
‘I’ll take you out for a drink.’
‘I’ve had enough to drink.’ She said, ‘Sandor, this is hateful. There’s a phrase that kept coming into my mind at the party. I came to tell it to you. Sucking stones. That’s it. We look to the old things and to the old places, for sustenance. That’s where we found it before. Even when there’s nothing there we go on. But we have to find new things, otherwise we are sucking stones. To me, this’ – she indicated the room – ‘is arid, impoverished, dead.’
His eyes followed her gesture around the room as she condemned it.
‘But I’m trying,’ he said. ‘Things are going to look up, I know they are.’
She kissed him. ‘Bye. See you.’
She cried in the car. It wasn’t his fault. She’d go back another day.
She was late home. Her husband was asleep in his girlfriend’s arms, his hand on her stomach. On the floor was an empty bottle of wine and dirty plates; the TV was loud.
She carried the record from the deck, scratched it with her fingernail, and replaced it in its cover. She roused the couple, thanked them, pushed the record under her husband’s arm, and got them out.
She started up the stairs but stopped halfway, took another step, and went down again. She returned to the living room and put on her overcoat. She went out onto the small concrete patio behind the house. It was dark and silent. The cold shocked her into wakefulness. She removed her coat. She wanted the cold to punish her.
Early in the morning, during the summer holidays, she sometimes danced out here, with Alec watching her, to parts of Prokofiev’s
Romeo and Juliet
.
Now she put the kitchen light on and laid a square of bricks. She went back into the house and collected her files. She carried them outside and opened them. She burned her stories; she burned the play, and the first few chapters of the novel. There was a lot of it and it made a nice fire. It took a long time. She was shivering and stank of smoke and ash. She swept up. She ran a bath and lay in it until the water was tepid.