Treasures of Time (10 page)

She would have worked, if she had been permitted, until there was nothing she could usefully do. Inactivity had always annoyed her. When, from time to time, she had had jobs that seemed to her inadequate in their requirements, she had found herself more to do. She had never had high aspirations – Directorships, Chairs, were not for her. She had taken what was offered, been out of a job quite often, given her services on many digs for nothing, worked on necessary projects for a pittance. The small capital sum left her by her parents had made this possible; that, and the lack of dependants. Laura, similarly endowed, had got through the lot long ago.

Things are not so bad, she thought, there is worse, there is far worse. And she began once more to write to the old colleague, a cheerful, chatty letter, relating what was of interest or amusing, omitting much.

Laura said, ‘We adored each other, of course.’ She had had two glasses of sherry; she felt confidential, and melancholy in a rather agreeable way. ‘I was awfully young when we were married, just a girl really, Hugh was quite a bit older than me.’

Barbara Hamilton nodded understandingly. ‘I
do
so wish we’d known him. I just have that feeling we’d have got on so well.’

Laura hesitated. ‘Well, yes. Of course, Hugh had that impatient streak to him, it came of being half Welsh. I must admit he could be rude to people.’

Barbara said, ‘I think really clever men, really exceptional people, are allowed that, don’t you? They just are on a slightly different plane. We knew Willie Maugham rather well and one always felt that about him.’

One slightly tiresome thing about Barbara was the way she would keep mentioning important or interesting people she knew or had known, who were often as, if not more, important and interesting than the people one knew or had known oneself. Laura said, ‘Mmn, I s’pose so.’ Barbara’s husband was probably going to be made a Sir before he retired, it was hinted. Laura finished her third sherry and went on, ‘Of course, being with someone like that all one’s life one comes to feel that it’s nothing unusual.’

Barbara said, ‘And with him doing such a fascinating subject you must have been awfully tempted to get involved yourself.’

‘I always felt strongly,’ said Laura, ‘that he needed a background where he could be quite private, detach himself from work when he wanted to, get away from it all. I don’t think it would have helped at all for me to be involved too. Unfortunately, my sister rather… Hugh always felt it was a very good thing I wasn’t
all
that involved in archaeology, I mean, quite interested enough to know what was going on, but not immersed, if you see what I mean.’

‘Oh, quite,’ said Barbara.

He is being quite unreasonable, he is in one of his beastly Welsh tempers, I won’t stand for it, why should I? It is always what he is doing that has to come first, I am never thought of, I can be left at Danehurst for weeks on end while he is off somewhere.

We shout at each other. I shout about being left on my own at Danehurst and about going always by myself to dinners and things that he says bore him. I shout about not having holidays abroad like other people. I shout about money.

And he shouts back, horrid unfair things that I don’t want to remember. I can only hear his voice, with that hard angry edge to it, and see his face, looking at me as though I were someone he did not know. I feel sick to my stomach; it is like being afraid; is it that I am afraid?

I do care about his work. I do take the trouble to find out what he is doing. I know I could have gone to Spain with him.

All right, then, I shout, what did you ask me to marry you for, then? You should have married Nellie, if that’s the sort of wife you wanted.

He turns his back on me and goes out of the room.

I sit there and look at the shut door and I feel scared. And lonely. Perhaps I should not have said that. But it is true, and in any case…

Presently the scared feeling goes away. In any case, I know why he married me, and why he did not marry Nellie, never would have done. And later, in bed, I will be able to make it all right again, like I always can when I want to. Maybe in the end I will even be able to make him come to the Sadlers’ dinner with me.

Tom said, ‘You were pretty short with Tony Greenway.’

‘I didn’t like him.’

‘That was apparent.’

‘Oh dear,’ said Kate, stricken, ‘do you think he realized?’

‘No. And if he did, I should imagine he’s a pretty resilient fellow. I didn’t think he was all that bad. He makes a change, anyway.’

He was gripped with restlessness, clutched by it so that during the day he shuffled his papers, watched the clock, made frequent sorties for a smoke, a drink, a wander through the streets. In the evenings he dragged Kate, who would have preferred to stay in, to cinemas and pubs. He was doing the thing he wanted to do, in the place he found most stimulating, spent his time with the person he preferred, and he felt discontented. He heard his mother’s voice – ‘Never satisfied, that’s your trouble…’ When Tony Greenway rang one evening to suggest meeting for a drink, he accepted with enthusiasm; Kate said she thought she wouldn’t bother, if nobody minded. He left her in the flat, reading, a sullen-child expression on her face.

Tony looked tired. There was strain behind the sprightliness of his greeting. After a few minutes’ chat he began to relax and said, ‘Sorry, it’s been a hideous day, I’m knackered. I’ll be O.K. after a drink. Anyway, I’m out of the studio tomorrow, I’ve got to take a trip up north, that’ll set me up again.’

Later, dropping Tom back at the flat, he said suddenly ‘I suppose you wouldn’t like to join me on this jaunt tomorrow?’

‘Where is it you’re going?’

‘I’ve got to go and see this old dear up in Yorkshire. Someone we used on a programme. There’s been a bit of trouble about her fee – the contract people boobed somehow – and also she didn’t absolutely like the way we slanted her bit. It’s the sort of thing that
could
be done by letter, but can be smoothed out much more satisfactorily in a face-to-face situation. It won’t take too long. She lives near Fountains Abbey so you can have a look round that while I chat her up. And I’ve got one or two more chores to do while we’re up there.’

‘Yorkshire and back in one day?’

‘It’s no distance,’ said Tony, surprised. ‘What’s the problem? A quick run up the M1, that’s all. Fancy it?’

‘Yes. I rather think I do. Thanks.’

Tony’s car crouched above the road. It was long and low and sleek, with two seats into which you lowered yourself and were at once lapped in squashy leather: there were token concessions only to back seat passengers and luggage. Travelling, there was an awareness of faintly whistling tarmac only a few inches beneath. The map that Tony pulled from the leather pocket at his side showed an England held in a network of lines snaking out from London, probing out to the far west, up to the far north, shooting a bolt into East Anglia, tying up the Midlands. There were no county boundaries marked, no physical features, no places other than those snared by the motorway system. In the margin were scribbled names and numbers: Brm 1¼, Manch 2½, N’Castle 4½, Exeter 3. Tony spread the thing out for a moment over the wheel, ran a finger upwards, and said ‘Something under three should do it. You turn off soon after the Leeds road.’ He began to weave, with opportunist skill, through the early morning London traffic.

Tom said, ‘What exactly was this series?’

‘The series?’ There was a fractional hesitation. ‘Oh, I’m not sure it would be your cup of tea, Tom, truth to tell. It was a thing we did on way-out theories to do with places, with the landscape. Nutty stuff, I suppose, most of it, but you know people have the most tremendous taste for that kind of thing. These lines linking churches and prehistoric things and whatnot – leys – that may have some sort of mysterious force. And the powers that are supposed to be held by particular places, we had some people down in Somerset who do some funny stuff with a big stone down there, a kind of healing ceremony, there was a bloke who swore blind he’d been cured of cancer. And some straight ghost stuff, a rather good sequence at Kenilworth at night, there was something very weird on the film but I must say I’m not convinced the cameraman didn’t fake it up a bit. It was a natural for the cameramen – we got some very elegant film – and frankly it was very popular too. The letters are still coming in.’ He shot a sideways glance at Tom. ‘People really are awfully keen on this kind of thing, you know. It seems to fulfil a need of some kind.’

‘You shouldn’t encourage them.’

‘It was a piece of detached journalism,’ said Tony reprovingly. ‘We made our own position quite clear: uncommitted.’

‘Which particular brand of nut is this lady we’re going to see now?’

‘Well, it was astrology of a kind, but not quite that. She has this theory that in some parts of England the signs of the zodiac are sort of stamped on the landscape, outlined by old tracks and field boundaries and the edges of woods and roads and so forth.’

‘Ah,’ said Tom, ‘what for?’

‘That’s not made absolutely clear, of course. At Glastonbury, apparently you get the lot – Pisces and Aquarius and so on – and it’s all something to do with Arthur, she isn’t too explicit about that.’

‘I daresay she isn’t.’

‘It’s all frightfully far-fetched of course, but you can more or less see what she means when she shows you her maps and things. We tied it in with all the rest of the Glastonbury stuff. She used to live there, but I gather she ran into some kind of trouble with the authorities, she does push her views rather and of course not everyone has much time for it.’

‘I’m not surprised, if she was going round claiming that Somerset County Council is guided by unseen forces.’

‘Oh, it’s all quite cranky,’ said Tony. ‘One’s perfectly well aware of that, of course. You don’t find it just a bit intriguing all the same?’

‘No.’

There was a pause. They were on the motorway now, gliding up the fast lane, the car a private capsule of tinted glass. Tom went on, ‘Sorry – it’s just that personally I don’t have any time for people attributing psychic energy to bits of Somerset or Wiltshire or wherever.’

‘Oh, I take your point. But it goes on, that you can’t deny. Always has. After all, that place with the peculiar name we went to…’