Treasures of Time (12 page)

Dual carriage-ways and roundabouts swept them in a gentle curve above the suburbs: acre upon acre of dinky housing estates, spruce in the sunlight, indicated with pleasant rural-sounding names – Tile Hill, Broad Lane, Stivichall. Tony swung from lane to lane: City Centre, Ring Road, North, South, East, West. Buildings grew; traffic slowed and thickened; pedestrians appeared. They plunged into the maw of a multi-storey car park, swung up ramps, down ramps, slotted the car away, clattered down concrete stairs, emerged into a concourse of plate-glass windows and flocking people. ‘Hang on,’ said Tony, ‘just let me get my bearings. Somewhere by Marks and Spencer, I think it was.’ They walked a half mile or so, past Boots, Dolcis, the British Home Stores, Dorothy Perkins, W. H. Smith, Sainsbury’s. ‘Funny,’ said Tony, ‘I could have sworn…’ They retraced their steps: Curry’s, Lloyds Bank, Halifax Building Society, John Collier, Woolworth’s. Tony halted, bathed in muzak from the Wimpy Bar. ‘You know, I’ve made an idiotic mistake,’ he said. ‘It was Nottingham, not Coventry. I was beginning to feel there was something not quite right. Sorry about that.’

‘Not at all,’ said Tom. ‘Nice to see a place one doesn’t know.’ They hurried back, along the wide, peopled boulevards, up steps, along ramps. ‘Odd,’ Tony said, ‘my memory’s usually pretty good. Nottingham, that “Women at Work” series must have been. Here we are…’ Up more steps, along another ramp, more steps. Floor C, Deck 2: no car. ‘Christ,’ said Tony, ‘wrong bloody car park.’

‘It’s funny,’ he said, half an hour later, gliding back onto the motorway, ‘You do lose your bearings a bit, working at this sort of pace. I don’t just mean fetching up in the wrong shopping centre – sorry about that – I mean there’s never a chance to, well, sit down and take stock. I envy you, Tom, I really do.’

‘I was just wondering if I didn’t rather envy you.’

In Hertfordshire, Tony turned off the motorway once more. ‘I hope I’ll be able to find this place,’ he said. ‘It’s a year or more since I was here. Village called Hevenham.’ It was dusk, and raining. They splashed down narrowing roads. ‘Hmnn,’ said Tony. ‘Bit tricky.’ ‘Map?’ ‘There’s a road-map in the pocket beside you.’ Tom turned up the appropriate page in a book reassuringly spattered with place-names.

There was a crunch and a pop from under the bonnet. The engine died. Tony said, ‘Bloody hell’. He steered the car into a field-entrance. Tom said, ‘Oh dear.’

Tony got out, and opened the bonnet. He stared down. After a minute he came back. ‘I don’t suppose you know about the insides of cars? Well, the only thing to do is walk to the nearest house, I suppose.’

‘Actually,’ Tom said, ‘we’re only about a mile from this village.’ Tony brightened. ‘Well, providing we can rustle up a garage, and it’s nothing too serious, all is not lost. We can eat while they fix it and push on after. Can you just chuck me my jacket.’

‘Tony,’ said Tom after a moment, ‘I’m afraid you must have…’

Tony peered frantically into the back of the car. ‘Christ. That place we stopped for petrol. I took it out to pay. I must have left it at their cash desk.’ There was a silence. Tom said, ‘Well, you do seem to have bad luck with jackets, I must say.’ Tony was trying to restrain his agitation. ‘Wallet, cheque book, credit cards, the lot,’ he said. ‘Look, I’m most awfully sorry. Can we put this down to you and settle up later? I must say, I hope I can get my stuff back or it’s going to be a hell of a hassle.’

Tom said cheerfully, ‘Sure. It’ll have to be a cheap dinner, though. I’ve got about two fifty on me.’ Tony looked shaken. ‘Oh, I see. And you haven’t got…’ ‘’Fraid not. My credit’s not that good anyway.’

They set off. Tony, jacketless, in jeans and a sweater, the rain spotting his Mahler spectacles so that he had to keep taking them off to wipe them, looked less well-adjusted than usual; in fact, the stuffing seemed to have been knocked out of him. Tom noticed for the first time that he walked with a slight stoop. He said, ‘I’m afraid you’re getting soaked.’ ‘Mmn. What I’ll have to try to do, is get them to put it down to the BBC.’ ‘Do you think they’ll have heard of it?’ said Tom. ‘It looks pretty rustic round here.’ Tony laughed without conviction.

The village, at last attained, offered little but a pub of dauntingly functional appearance, a small garage, and the hotel-restaurant for which Tony had been heading. The garage was shut. The restaurant looked interestingly expensive. Tony said, ‘I suppose I’d better try the garage first.’ He hesitated, and then walked towards the bungalow at the back of the forecourt.

After a few minutes he returned, looking even more depleted than before. ‘They were unenthusiastic, to put it mildly. Eventually they said they’d send a chap out to have a look.’ Tom said, ‘I expect your stock’ll go up a bit after that – they’ll know an expensive car when they see one.’ Tony, clearly ruffled by his experience with the garage, was staring gloomily at the pub. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘let’s go into The Gay Adventure and see if we can’t fix something up.’ Tom followed him into the restaurant; it was ill-lit and thickly carpeted. Tony perked up.

The warm welcome cooled rapidly. Tony talked. Tom withdrew and studied some tasteful prints of old fire engines on the wall. Tony’s back view, glanced at from time to time, had an air of quiet desperation about it; a thin shoulder blade stuck out, moving up and down as he talked. Once, he laughed – a brief, self-deprecating, ingratiating laugh. It was not possible to see the restaurateur’s response. At last, the man lifted the telephone. Tom saw that agitated shoulder-blade slump in relief. There were diallings, brief exchanges, then Tony’s rather high voice saying ‘Mike? Tony here – thank God there’s someone around. Look, I’ve got a problem…’

He joined Tom. ‘Well, all’s well. We can eat. In fact, we can do ourselves proud after that little nightmare. They’re getting onto the garage too. What’ll you have to drink?’ He led the way into the bar.

Tom said, ‘And here was I thinking it was going to be the evening of the common man. You won’t be wanting my two fifty, then?’

Tony was reinflated. He scanned the menu, ordered Martinis, supervised Tom’s selection of a meal. The waiter came with a message from the garage. ‘It’s some nonsense with the electricals,’ said Tony. ‘Apparently it’ll take them a couple of hours at least, so we might as well take our time. Another drink?’

After a while Tom said, ‘I think I’d better ring Kate.’ He felt fairly high; lunch had been a long time ago; in the phone booth, the digits on the dial were not as clear as he would have liked. ‘Kate?’ ‘Where on earth are you? I thought you’d be back hours ago.’ ‘Well,’ he said, ‘it’s like this, actually it’s a long story, the fact is…’ ‘You’re in a pub,’ said Kate crossly. ‘Well, yes and no.’ ‘What do you mean, yes and no?’ Tom looked through the glass into the red-leather-and-tropical-plant reception hall: ‘Well, rather more yes than no, I suppose.’ ‘Are you with Tony thing still?’ ‘Sort of.’ ‘I can’t hear you properly, when are you coming back? Tom, are you there…’

He said confidingly to Tony, ‘You know, I think she thinks I’m with a girl.’

‘I hope you told her she had no cause for alarm. They want us to go through and eat.’ At the table, he went on ‘I have a feeling your Kate is a wee bit hostile where I’m concerned’. Tom made good-gracious-no faces; there was a nice big bottle of wine on the table.

It occurred to him that he would have no idea if Tony liked girls or not. Or what. He stared reflectively at Tony, who was talking about his time at Oxford, and his time wondering what he wanted to do, and his time beginning to do it.

Some while later, he thought of Kate again. He said to Tony, ‘I think I’ll just…’

Kate sounded muffled. ‘You what?’ ‘Just thought I’d see you’re all right.’ ‘What else could I be, sitting here? What are you
doing
, Tom? What do you mean, what’s my zodiac sign, how would I know? Tom?’ The lady at the reception desk, seen with intriguing distortion through the glass panel of the phone booth, appeared to have two sets of bosoms, one above the other; they undulated as she wrote in a ledger. ‘Gemini,’ he said, ‘I should think you’d be Gemini, whatever that may be.’ Somewhere a long way away, Kate crackled indignantly. This won’t do, he thought, this won’t do at all, this will all end in tears, this will.

She wasn’t best pleased, he said to Tony, she was a bit stroppy in fact, and Tony was laughing, and filling up their glasses. You know, Tom said, you know I’ll tell you something, nothing is what you think it is, that nut lady of yours has a point though of course her particular point is right off target. But nothing is what it seems to be, not people nor places nor nothing. Now take Kate’s Aunt Nellie, that you met the other day, now you might think though you would be quite mistaken in thinking…

And presently, Tony for some reason was very kindly giving him a hand into that inconstant car, and the motorway was humming again a few inches below. And his head was full of some very effective orchestra on Tony’s radio. And…

Chapter Five

Laura said, ‘And how is Tom?’ She looked at Kate across the restaurant table and thought, she is pasty, she doesn’t have the lovely complexion I did at her age, she looks much more like Hugh.

‘He’s fine. How’s Aunt Nellie?’

Laura inspected her salad: the dressing looked doubtful. ‘Well, darling, one goes on hoping for miracles, but I don’t know… Poor Nellie, it is dreadfully hard for someone used to being active, and of course she will keep trying the impossible. She is going to be very dependent on me in the future, I’m afraid.’

‘Do you mind?’

‘Mind?’ said Laura, startled. ‘It’s not a question of mind or not mind, it’s the way things have turned out.’

She doesn’t, in a funny way, Kate thought. She quite likes the idea. What is it like to have a sister? I can’t imagine it. I don’t think I’m very good at imagining.

‘What an unusual necklace, darling. That’s new, isn’t it?’

‘Tom gave it to me. We found it in a junk shop.’

It is quite nice, but it doesn’t go at all with that shirt, not that one must say so, of course. She has no colour sense, she never has been clever about clothes. I used to get her pretty things when she was a little girl and then she made a fuss about wearing them, it was all very tiresome. I can see her now.

… Standing beside me at my dressing-table, I can see both our faces in the mirror, mine and hers, she is not much like me which is a pity. And she has got grass stains all down the front of her frock, it is really too bad. I scold her, I say I
told
you not to roll on the lawn in that frock, go and take it off and ask Mrs Lucas to put it to soak; she sticks her lip out, pulls a face, really she can look plain when she wants to.

She has been threading beads. She wants me to wear this necklace she has made. She puts it round my neck, and I feel her sticky, hot fingers against me. I never like people to touch me, except – well except in the obvious ways. Children touch you all the time, they pat and paw and poke, it is something I have never much liked. I can’t help it, it is the way I am.

I am tactful. I say what a lovely necklace it is, but it is a pity it doesn’t go with my frock – look, I say, look at the colours. I want Katie to learn to have nice taste, to have an eye for things. I say
I
know, why don’t you go and see if Aunt Nellie would like it, I expect she’d love it, Aunt Nellie hasn’t got as many necklaces as I have.

‘In a junk shop near the flat,’ said Kate.

‘Which of course I’ve never seen.’

‘Oh, Ma, it’s awfully grotty. It isn’t your kind of place at all.’

‘I offered, ages ago, to come and make it nice for you.’

‘Thanks, Ma, but honestly, it suits me fine as it is.’

‘Well, it’s up to you,’ said Laura graciously. She was wearing a new coat, and had stowed a couple of shopping bags under her chair. ‘I have had quite a successful morning,’ she went on.

‘Oh, good.’

‘And this afternoon I am meeting Barbara Hamilton. We are going to an art exhibition together.’

‘You ought to come to London more often.’

Laura sighed. ‘Perhaps eventually, when one is less tied. Of course I sometimes think, eventually, of selling Danehurst. It will get too big. And if I hadn’t Mrs Lucas. Barbara and I have toyed with the idea of turning it into an Arts Centre of some kind. An Arts Centre for the county. The government would have to give us money, of course, and we would run it jointly, it would take time to get off the ground, but one imagines it in ten or fifteen years’ time being a sort of second Chichester. For art, though, not plays.’