The Bradshaw Variations (22 page)

‘Why?’ he says. He is curious. ‘How are they not normal?’

‘I’ve told you about them,’ she says. It is true that her conversations with Stefan are repetitious. Perhaps this is what happens when you live on an island. ‘All I’m saying is that just to be a normal man and woman isn’t so easy.’

Lately, she has been watching Thomas and Tonie. It is her relationship with Stefan that has caused her to become aware of them: now that she has love, she is more interested in the sorts of love other people have. Before, she could find no frame of reference for Thomas and Tonie. They seemed both polymorphous and somehow null. Sometimes they were like brother and sister, at other times like old people imitating young ones. There was something iconic about them, something representative and wooden in the way they kissed or touched. But now she sees that they are real. She sees that they are serving the form of love as people used to serve their gods. She sees that love is as rigid and as invisible as a god, to whom over time people grow wooden and automatic in their obeisances. Yet it does not occur to them to deny it, this god of love. She wonders whether that constricted, invisible life is what Stefan means by normality.

‘I will support you,’ Stefan says, folding his arms across his chest magnificently. ‘If you want to have a child, that is all right. I will support you.’

‘I don’t ever want to have a child,’ Olga says.

She has had a child already. It was baptised before she gave it away: her mother insisted. Her sister’s boyfriend was the father. They all came to the baptism and stood around the font in smart clothes.

‘I guess it’s easier that way,’ Stefan admits.

‘Maybe we will always be outsiders,’ Olga says. ‘Maybe that won’t change.’

She thinks Stefan should know, that this safety can turn to imprisonment. When she hears Thomas playing the piano she thinks of a bird singing in its cage, lamenting in its safety. Yet she herself would like a cage. She would like a way of keeping the others out.

She looks at her watch. ‘We should go home,’ she says.

He rises. Already he has become her home. It doesn’t matter which room they are in, which country. Out in the street he lays his arm around her shoulders. They walk towards his flat. She thinks of her little room in Montague Street, the nights she spent alone there, innocent in her single bed. She has begun to think of those nights fondly. She recreates them in her mind. She remembers them, with rainbow-coloured nostalgia.

XXVIII

HOWARD [
upstairs
]: Claude! Claude, are you there?

CLAUDIA [
downstairs
]: What?

HOWARD: Claude!

CLAUDIA: What
is
it?

HOWARD: Claude, where are my deck shoes? They’re not in the place they normally are.

CLAUDIA: I’m on the phone.

HOWARD: They’re where?

CLAUDIA: I said I’m on the
phone
! I’m on the phone to Juliet. [
To Juliet
] Sorry.

JULIET: That’s all right.

CLAUDIA: It’s just Howard wanting his deck shoes. You know what it’s like when he starts looking for something. He starts taking everything out of the cupboards. We’re like the regional office, being visited by the chief executive. I feel I’m being audited.

JULIET: Why does he want his deck shoes? Are you going away somewhere?

CLAUDIA: Just Cornwall for the weekend.

JULIET: What, now?

CLAUDIA [
surprised
]: Yes.

JULIET: But it’s ten o’clock at night!

CLAUDIA: Is it?

JULIET: Ten
past
ten.

CLAUDIA: It can’t be! Ten o’clock? That’s ridiculous – the children ought to be in bed!

JULIET: You’re not taking them with you, are you?

CLAUDIA: Of course we are – we can’t put them into kennels, like the dog! They’re doing a weekend sailing course.

JULIET: But you won’t get there until two in the morning! How are you going to get them up to do a sailing course?

[
Silence
]

CLAUDIA: Well, I suppose they’ll sleep a bit in the car.

[
Silence
]

JULIET: I ought to let you go, in that case.

CLAUDIA: But I feel I haven’t heard anything about
you
!

JULIET: Oh well. Another time.

CLAUDIA:
Soon
, I promise.

JULIET: Bye then.

CLAUDIA: Bye. Howard?

HOWARD: Did you find them?

CLAUDIA: Howard, it’s ten o’clock! It’s far too late to go. The children ought to be in bed!

HOWARD: But I only got back from work at nine, Claude.

CLAUDIA: I thought you were going to come back early so that we could go!

HOWARD: I got back at nine. I came back as soon as I could.

CLAUDIA: Well, you could have told me.

HOWARD: I thought you knew. You usually know what time it is.

CLAUDIA: The children should be asleep. They probably
are
asleep. Have you checked?

LOTTIE: We’re not asleep.

CLAUDIA: This is ridiculous! Absolutely ridiculous! You should have heard Juliet on the phone when I said we were setting off tonight. She obviously thought we were
completely
mad!

HOWARD: Your sister thinks everyone is completely mad, darling. With the notable exception of herself.

CLAUDIA: Don’t be horrible, Howard.

HOWARD: Of course Juliet thinks ten o’clock is late. She’s in bed at ten o’clock. She’s in bed in her wimple, like a nun.

CLAUDIA: She wasn’t in bed. She was talking to me.

LEWIS [
from his room
]: She can be in bed and talk to you at the same time. She could even be asleep and talk to you. She might actually have been hypnotised.

CLAUDIA: She obviously thinks it’s
me
who’s driving everyone into the ground and forgetting I’ve got a family, including a child of six whose growth will be restricted because nobody could be organised enough to put her to bed –

LOTTIE: Sometimes I think I’d like to be a nun.

CLAUDIA: – and I can’t say, look, it isn’t me, can I? I can’t tell her it’s because some people are completely selfish and think only of themselves. It’s a sort of joke [
laughs
], a joke, when I could have spent all day in my studio working, all day and all evening too, and still have been in
exactly
the same position as I am now!

HOWARD: Well, you could have, Claude. That’s a true statement of the position, isn’t it?

CLAUDIA: What is?

HOWARD: That you could have spent the day working, without any loss to the family.

[
Silence
]

CLAUDIA: Just like you do.

HOWARD: I suppose so. I don’t know. I’m only repeating what you said yourself.

CLAUDIA: You, who come home and find that the beds have miraculously been made and the house tidied, and the food bought and the children picked up from school –

HOWARD: I’m just thinking of you, Claude. Your happiness.

CLAUDIA: – you, who have a slave, an actual slave, an unpaid person whose time you own!

HOWARD: Lucia’s not a slave. We pay her, don’t we? We can pay her more. She can pick up Martha, she can do the shopping –

CLAUDIA: I’m not talking about Lucia. I’m talking about me.

HOWARD: You don’t have to do anything. You can have all day.

CLAUDIA: You can’t pay Lucia to be your wife.

HOWARD: All day, if you want it.

CLAUDIA: It isn’t a day – it’s a hand-me-down, it’s a thing made out of other people’s leftover time. You can’t be creative between nine and five, Monday to Friday except bank holidays!

HOWARD: Can’t you?

CLAUDIA: You don’t understand creativity! You don’t understand what an artist loses by being responsible for other people!

LOTTIE: Are we going?

HOWARD: No!

[
Silence
]

HOWARD: Look Claude, let’s forget it. Let’s forget the weekend. Let’s stay here.

CLAUDIA: We can’t. You’ve booked the sailing course.

HOWARD: I’ll un-book it.

CLAUDIA: And the children have been looking forward to it. We can’t.

HOWARD: Then I’ll take them. You can stay here. You can have all tomorrow and all the next day on your own.

CLAUDIA: [
Pause
] Now I feel like I’m being punished.

HOWARD: But you just said –

CLAUDIA: I feel like you’re saying, all right then, if you want more time we’ll all go off to Cornwall and have fun without you. You can have your time, but only at a cost. Only at the expense of fun.

HOWARD [
bemused
]: Then come.

CLAUDIA: All right.

HOWARD: Though perhaps we’d better go in the morning. It’s nearly eleven.

CLAUDIA: But then you’ll miss half the day! There’s no point in going if you miss half the day.

HOWARD: It doesn’t matter all that much.

CLAUDIA: We’re better off going now. There won’t be any traffic.

HOWARD: What about Martha’s growth problem?

CLAUDIA: She can sleep in the car. I’ll put some blankets and pillows in the back.

HOWARD: Oh, Claude, it’s crazy. We won’t get there till two. Wouldn’t you rather just relax and go in the morning?

CLAUDIA: It’s fine. I can’t bear the thought of crawling across England on a Saturday morning with everyone and their grandmother. It’ll be fun,
rushing
through the night, don’t you think?

HOWARD: Oh, Claude. Oh, darling. I do love you.

[
They kiss
]

LOTTIE: Are we actually going or aren’t we?

HOWARD/CLAUDIA: Yes!

XXIX

Tonie goes to a party at Janine’s flat in Battersea. It is a warm evening and everyone is out on the terrace. Tonie looks around, not recognising anyone in the indistinct light. Then she sees Janine, a dark shape with pale accents, her bare arms and glittering dress picking her out from the others. But the terrace is crowded and Janine is far away. Tonie gets a drink. She wonders why everyone here is so formless and anonymous. Their bodies look lumpy in the dusk, their faces featureless and indifferent as stones. The lack of excitement almost frightens her. Only Janine, in the glamour of her party-giving, is distinct. The others, half-hidden in the shadows, don't seem to belong to the same reality as Tonie. Either they are unreal or she herself is.

She sees Lawrence Metcalf, too late to pretend that she hasn’t. He doesn’t move, but his eyes take on a devouring expression that obliges her to approach him.

‘How are you?’ she says.

He is tall, so that she has to look up to talk to him. He wears a gold hoop in one ear, like a pirate.

‘I’m very well, actually,’ he says, his eyes already moving around above her head. ‘I’ve just been in Stockholm for a few days, which was fantastic.’

‘You got your funding,’ Tonie says, resigning herself to the conversation.

‘Oh, absolutely. There was never really any question. The board put it straight through.’

‘That’s great.’ She tries to remember what his funding was for. Something to do with Vikings.

‘Stockholm is just a different world. Beautiful place, beautiful people, everything so clean and well organised – do you know it?’

Tonie does not know Stockholm.

‘They’re just light years ahead of us in every conceivable way. We’re like a Third World country by comparison, in terms of educational provision. And the quality of life is just staggering.’ His eyes dart around. ‘The women are pretty staggering too. Every other girl that passes you in the street is like a bloody goddess.’

‘Really,’ says Tonie.

‘And they’re pretty liberated, you know, I don’t mean in terms of the – ah – cliché about the Swedes, which they all seem to find quite funny, but in terms of their attitudes. You don’t get that female resentment you have here. Wouldn’t you say that’s true, Dieter?’

For the first time Tonie notices that there is another man there. He is much smaller than Lawrence. In the darkness Tonie can see only the bland oval of his face, and the watery shapes of his glasses.

‘I’m not sure I know what you mean,’ he says.

Lawrence throws back his head and laughs. The other man smiles slightly and looks at him inquisitively.

‘You see?’ Lawrence says to Tonie. ‘He doesn’t even know what I’m talking about. Resentment, Dieter. It’s what gives English women all those little lines around their mouths.’

‘I know what resentment is,’ the man says. ‘It is the ubiquitous consequence of sexual inequality. Swedish women are better protected by the law, that’s all. But it has to be enforced.’

Lawrence looks slightly sulky. Tonie ponders his big, fleshy face, his darting eyes, his luxuriant hair that he wears slightly long, curling around his gold earring. He is the sort of man that makes Tonie feel invisible. His interest seems to go in every direction but hers. She consciously dislikes him – why, then, does it trouble her that he has no interest in her? Why does she feel negated by the restless eyes of men like Lawrence Metcalf?

The small man turns to her.

‘I take it English men don’t have wrinkles.’

‘Only around their hearts,’ Tonie says.

He laughs warmly and his eyes glow at her behind his glasses. ‘That is much more off-putting.’

‘Dieter,’ Lawrence says, ‘come on, I must introduce you to our hostess. The fabulous Janine.’

Tonie is left alone again. Then she spends a long time talking to a junior lecturer whose name she can’t remember. The sky is black and smoky and starless overhead, and the commotion on the terrace remains formless and indistinct. She can’t seem to make a connection anywhere. She can’t seem to see people’s faces, to understand their motives, to penetrate their reality. She sees her boss Christopher and for a while she watches him, watches the way he talks and listens and laughs, watches his Adam’s apple moving in his narrow throat. He is not questioning the reality of Janine’s party. He is absolutely concrete, just as Lawrence Metcalf is concrete. She realises that most of the people here are men. In her life before, she was almost always in the company of women and children; she remembers the feeling of perennial afternoon and of something growing, growing and growing unimpeded, her unopposed sense of self expanding into empty space. She did not resent men, in those days. She forgot, quite simply, that they existed. It was as though she had become a child again herself, her knowledge of the male obliterated and replaced by a perennial female afternoon. When Thomas came home in the evenings, he seemed to have risen straight out of the swamp of creation, a recent invention, or else an obsolete one. It was his masculinity she could never remember. He seemed to stand at the door with it in his hands, an implement whose uses she couldn’t quite determine.