The Still Point (5 page)

But before it was Aunt Helen’s, like everything in the house, the decanter belonged to John Mackley. This is the very same decanter from which, on numberless evenings at the end of the nineteenth century, John poured port for his brother. Edward Mackley himself, who might have been knighted if he’d ever returned, held that slender neck in his strong hand. Now, you feel the weight of the thing. The wide flat bottom, the chink of the stopper as the ground glass slides out, and the satisfying heaviness of the ball in your hand. The diamonds cut into its side reflect the yellow light, everything is dazzling… But no, it is the sunlight. The chandelier is of course not lit. It is just past noon — the long hand of the Viennese clock on the wall has just clacked around to a quarter past twelve. The clock is old, and the beauty of its inlaid face can’t be quite trusted, despite Simon’s attentions. But whether his watch would tell us that it is a minute earlier, or forty-eight seconds later, it is enough to remind us that we are at the apex of a glorious midsummer day in the first decade of the twenty-first century, and it is more than a hundred years since Edward Mackley drank port in the drawing room, and more than a hundred years since he died.

 

The front door slams. And here in the hallway, at last, is Julia. It is dim and cool; she is suspended for a moment in the amber light from the etched-glass oval of the door. Here is Julia at last, pausing at the mirror, her skin a faint shiver after the midday heat of the street. Gilt-framed, some spotting at the bottom left corner. She is still a little sun-blind and can see the room behind her only darkly; the grandfather clock at the foot of the stairs is only a tall,
pale-faced brown shadow, thudding softly in the dust. She cannot meet her own eyes, unable to focus on the immediate centre of her vision; slowly her pupils grow huge, adjusting, and fix upon their own reflection. At this moment, she hangs somewhere between herself and her image, trapped by the glass.

Many hundreds of lives have been framed by this gilt. Might we yet scry something? What, after all, happens to them all, all the reflections that have passed through the mirror — might they not linger somewhere, those that have glanced or paused here? It may be that there is another young woman, another bronze-flecked gaze behind Julia’s eyes, still flickering in the depths of the silver surface. The past is not to be dispensed with easily, today. Everywhere it insists itself in this house, encroaching. The chandeliers, it seems, might after all be lit.

 

On a fine evening in October 1897, this very glass had the good fortune to reflect the image of nineteen-year-old Emily Gardiner, who, having excused herself from the party, made a quick assessment of her appearance and found it wanting. Brown eyes far too bright like a fever and a high colour in her cheeks as if she herself had just come in from the snow. It wouldn’t do. She must try to calm down and refuse any further offers of punch. For Jane Whitstable was sitting in the next room and had held the same cup all evening, sipping, speaking charmingly when spoken to, even conjuring a lovely pink blush when Edward Mackley bent to kiss her hand. When a man returns from the wilderness, such is the woman he wants to find waiting. Not some redcheeked heathen with a wild look in her eye.

But how could she not be thrilled by the Norwegian’s words? As Dr Nansen spoke of his journey, of the lights, the ice, she had glanced across at
Edward and felt sure that he, too, was transported; he was taut, his forearm on the mantel, his jaw. The dogs, and the sleds, and the men; the walruses and the whales, the waves, and everywhere the ice. The heave and the groan of it. And to hear the sky described so. To see the pallid flash of the lights across the night, to see the moon and then the sun circle the horizon for weeks on end. To hear the freezing sea turning, and the stars, ice white; the night deep blue-black and white. To eat plain hard biscuits out on the floe, to return to the ship for darts and beer and singing. To come home to the wife that waved from the shore, at last, after months of longing. To be the woman longed for. To lie beside a hero… No, this would not do at all. This carnality in the hallway; no wonder her cheeks were flaming. She smoothed her stomach and her skirts, correcting the S shape so that she was, if not so swan-like as Jane Whitstable, at least something like respectable. She breathed in, watching herself in the mirror, seeing her chest rise as the nostrils pinched. Pretty as a peach Jane Whitstable might be, but her funny little nose was nothing in comparison with Emily’s fine, straight, perfectly proportioned one. There. That was the finishing touch she needed and now she was ready, quite ready to resume the party with her chin (also, actually, rather good) held high.

And so she returned to the drawing room, and on that night the great romance of the Mackleys began; the story that the family has told itself for a century, that has passed down the years through a dozen retellings to reach Julia, now — the story that has been her favourite since childhood. The dashing, somewhat thin young officer whom Emily remembered, who had departed for the north when she was only fourteen and fanciful — although she might have liked him a little broader, and not quite so dark — had returned. And now the ten years between them were narrower; in the years that had passed, his chest
had filled out and she had discovered poetry and come around to the possibility that a man with a brooding countenance and a flash in his almost-black eyes might, after all, be ideal. A man with a set to his jaw and a strong forearm upon the mantel.

The ship upon which Edward had sailed in 1892 — leaving Emily to her adolescence — set out to explore the known, and no more. It reached a respectable enough latitude. The summer was spent hunting, and refining the contours of other men’s maps. They were far enough north to be embedded for two winters, and when the ship was released by the ice in the second spring, having survived the crush and the dull months of darkness, the captain set a course for the coast of Canada, with an enraged Edward stationed at the stern, furious to be turning back. He bade farewell to the lightening world he was leaving behind, jade and lilac in the slow dawn, and swore he would return as his own master. There was still space enough for his name to be writ large across that vast white semblance of a land, visible for ever in the snow, bright under the Arctic moon and the brilliant day alike.

When he heard Dr Nansen speak, at his brother’s invitation, in the family’s own drawing room, he thought: I might take that path, and sail north-east for Spitzbergen. And also, he thought: I could go further. Further than this man’s Farthest North; to the northernmost point, to find it, to fix it, to feel the world turn below me. This, then, was what Emily saw burn in him, the flare of ambition outshining the fire’s blaze.

Edward, for his part, had spent many months at sea without female company, and can surely be forgiven for following the wildness of his heart upon his arrival in London; but while the charms of Leicester Square’s ladies were not negligible, he had, after all, his duty, and had reluctantly returned to
the family home. It would be a duty sorely borne, for the women with whom he was expected to associate bored him. He was bored by their adoration for his one great adventure. He knew that the likes of Jane Whitstable would never tire of being wedded to an explorer, a hero, provided he was never so rash as to explore any further, ever again. He would for ever be known for this single futile expedition, a glory enough for the small town he’d be trapped in. And he would be respectable and sire children and his wife would sit and stitch; their girls would play the piano prettily, the boys would all be called John and Edward. There would be kippers and baked eggs and bacon for breakfast, there would be luncheons, casseroles and cutlets, and then there would be tea and muffins and buns and toast, and then there would be dinner, there would be asparagus soup then sole then quail then veal and cherry clafoutis for dessert, then cigars then port then sleep in separate beds then gout or rheumatism and then, eventually, death.

Then Emily Gardiner shook his hand, and blushed in confusion because he’d meant to kiss it, and she blushed deep crimson rather than pink and was really a terrible flirt — that is, she was terrible at flirting and didn’t seem even to try. But when they spoke about the snow, her eyes danced like the light upon it. She loved him for the dangers he had passed… and he loved her that she did savour them. She would never hold him back from the brink, but spur him over it to greatness.

And so began the Mackley family’s favourite story.

On the table in the hallway, there are flowers in a vase. Arranged with an artlessness that says they have art enough alone — surely by Julia’s hand. Bright blooms thrown together, yellow, blue, white and vibrant; imagine her, coming in from the garden, her arms full of summer, trailing hyacinth and lily scent behind her. But, you notice, they are dying. They have been snapped off and tossed in this china vase with no care for their frailty. Even as we watch, a petal shudders, seems to sigh, and slips onto the heap of those already fallen, gently and suddenly over the last hour. They are browning about the edges. Their leaves, left to stand in the water, are rotting. If we draw close enough to be daubed orange by their stamens, we will smell something foetid from the depths. There is a rusty stain where pollen has silently exploded on the linen tablecloth that John’s wife, her Great-grandmother Arabella, hand-stitched. (Simon, in the city, is thinking of buying his wife flowers; but of course he is not here to witness the petal fall, and it is only a coincidence that he should think of this just as the lily is dying — he has other reasons, which will become apparent perhaps, in time.)

The last petal to fall shivered itself free in Julia’s wake, for we caught her in the hallway in a momentary gilt-framed pause, and she has since moved off, breaking the gaze of the past in the mirror. In the kitchen, the spoils of her recent venture are spread before her in brown paper bags. She has kicked off her sandals and is standing in a square of light where the sun has warmed the
tiles, and she works her toes into the stone for a moment.
Terracotta
, she thinks, the baked earth beneath her feet.

 

 

And then a wiry softness around her ankles. Julia bends to lift Tess and press her flat cat face against her own, tells her she stinks and sets her gently down again, with which the cat is quite satisfied — she did not enjoy the hand under her belly, having gorged herself on tuna while Julia was out. Julia stands barefoot at the kitchen table, mopping olive oil with a torn chunk of bread. The tomatoes are sliced thickly, plucked from a ripe basketful on the pavement, and taste still of the sun. Italy filling her mouth and mind again, she bought three, full of that dark green vine-scent, that earthy almost bitter tang that belies the sweetness. Strawberries, too, in a punnet, she lifted them to her nose and the grocer, watching, felt his heart swell with redness. Then, next door, to the baker. It is indeed a very pretty market town, and there are still shops like these to be found on street corners, baking their own bread, selling local produce, eggs fresh from the farms, yolks of all yellows within their brown, nubbly shells.

Julia on her way back to the house, minutes ago, loaf tucked under one arm, the other swinging the bag of fruit: she’s humming to herself. The hot road smells of summer, she nods to her neighbours as she passes. The grocer, filling a tray with lettuces Peter Rabbit might have plundered, soft and frilled and grassy green, watches her go. A man mowing his front lawn pauses to admire her, her pale brown back and the narrow straps of her dress, her head
on one side, her hips insouciant in the sunshine, as if she’s dancing home. He thinks of his wife, who died last year and was also young once; he shades his eyes from the sun. If this shopping trip is little more than another way to sideskip boredom, if Julia is momentarily elated simply to have the eyes of others upon her, this man would never guess it.

The woman who lives in the house opposite Simon and Julia’s and two doors down is just locking her door behind her. She has the afternoon off, and is on her way into London, to do some shopping. She has a date this evening but is too restless and excited to wait until then; dates have been rare since the divorce, all she wants is to feel she has a chance. By the time she turns, Julia has passed, crossed the road and reached the house, and slipped inside unseen. The neighbour in the dressing gown (now fully dressed) has escaped the discomfort of polite conversation with her rival.

 

This is the journey from which Julia returned, slamming the door to alert us; and now she is in the kitchen, kneeling on the floor. There is a splash of oil on her dress and a broken plate before her. Tess, in the corner, licks a reproachful paw.

 

 

Julia’s cheek rests on her left palm. With her right she holds a piece of the plate
which is in five other pieces on the floor. Her eyes fix on a space somewhere between them.

 

 

She slides her fingers down the side of her face and taps the tips against her top lip slowly.

 

 

With sudden unexpected decision she rises, takes the dustpan from below the sink, sweeps up the pieces of the plate, throws them into the pedal bin and bends to pet Tess (who instantly forgives the alarm she caused) as she leaves the room, clasping the diary she has recovered from the garden. She trips lightly up the stairs, but pauses on the landing to admire the butterflies.