Desire Line (36 page)

Her mind had been flicking through the Thomasina pages of its own volition, scanning ahead as only someone who has given birth to them is able to…
recited Horace's odes by rote, comprehended Pythagoras and Archimedes and yet was blessed with such an exquisite femininity that
—
Those opening paragraphs had remained unsatisfactory somehow though the drafts multiplied around her in her shady St Clement's cubby-hole. But who could fully grasp the sheer out-of-time, out-of-gender verve of Thomasina's spirit? It was the very thing whose likeness had been rekindled in women the world over and became their torch.

A pair of crumpled jeans lay draped over a chair next to the bed, a tide mark indicating the level the dirty water had fallen to before evaporation took over. The sight helped bring her to herself, as did the scarf, another stream of blue, dislodged from its position on the chest and seeming to flow down to the carpet. Bought for Eurwen… but she had to bolt for the bathroom and it was there Josh came and found her, slumped on the side of the tub, dry-heaving into the sink. His expression was easy to translate: pity flecked with revulsion at her goose-pimpled nudity. ‘I'm all right,' she lied and he backed out.

For penance, when she could stand upright again, it was beneath a barely warm shower. No wonder Josh had fled from mottled flesh the colour of putty, the bones everwhere highlighted. Her feet had the previous night's silt dried into them, a grey fringe to the nails and a gritty line in their hidden valleys, the
tweenies
of Eurwen's giggling joyous babyhood… but she fended off that memory, close to panic. Leaning over to attend to the dirt invited true vomiting so a gentle swish, a toe caress of toe, gave a tinge in the flowing water and had to do. She turned up the heat and washed, one-handed wherever it could reach, the other braced against the tiles until, flushed to a better tone, and very carefully she stepped out, straightened her spine like a good Bradwardine girl, slim not thin! …and marvelled at the human body's capacity to disguise its internal squalor. Even the face; a candid examination in the swiped mirror showed the jawline firm, skin maybe a touch puffy but unlined: a spatter of Rhyl freckles could almost be taken for good health. Teeth, perfectly maintained since their first erupting, were even and white, only this summer bleached at a very expensive Summertown dentist. Who would ever imagine what the assembled parts hid?

Downstairs, Josh was hardly in the house. He sat on the doorstep, the big muscles along his spine bunched and then relaxed in the familiar (to her) act of shoe-cleaning.
And the smell of it!
An eye-watering essence of turpentine. One and a half pairs were lined up between Josh's trainer-clad feet. His hand made a last for the singleton. Always an obsessive shoe-cleaner, the sight of this doppelganger of a husband was too cruel… he'd sat on the limestone threshold in Tackley Close, calling back over one shoulder, pleading almost
Anything, Sara? Black, brown— I'm on black now. Can do navy next…
the small brush dives into polish, onto a heel of boot, working it forward straight to the instep, roundabout and return. His array of polishes in differing shades suggested an artist's paintbox, every tin and brush and tube lined up, cloths folded neatly as handkerchiefs in bedroom drawers, spare laces coupled with Josh's special knot. At home there had always been a wooden case kept by him, old, steel-banded, also meticulously neat.

With every change of task came the possibility of his suspending what he was doing.

‘What time is it?' she asked.

‘Where's your watch?' He dismissed his own question. ‘Getting on for eleven.'

This boot he was restoring to gloss black had delivered a terrible
click
to a Murcott knee… she could feel its weight, hear again the retort. She squatted down, swivelled and sat, back up against his, experiencing his movements through a thin sweater… and his blessed warmth.

He did not move apart but said, ‘It's a wonder you don't have pneumonia. Or dysentery. The Marine Lake? A fuckin' joke, isn't it? It was only saying you could see the reflections did it. Made me think. Otherwise… Probably not even deep enough anyway. I mean if you were serious.'

‘Don't! Of course not. I was… I—' She was denied his expression but made a guess at a flinty look in the eyes. Another memory of their married life invaded her peace: the debates that ended only one way: with a slamming door. ‘Are you on duty? Are you going out… soon?'

‘Later. Tonight.'

‘Good.'

‘Good?' A long pause. ‘Why is it good, Sara? What could be good about being here? You and me, together.' For these few sentences he continued to polish away but something went awry, a lace-hole or boot-tongue catching at the bristles… he began to curse under his breath, annoyance rippling through him and into her like current. He was onto his knees, his feet; she watched him kick first one boot then its twin across the paving and away… Suddenly he was looming over her. ‘Just
stand up!
I can't talk to you down there.'

So not the figure cleaning shoes in Tackley Close after all: the change was more radical than a thickened neck, a network of crinkled flesh below the ears, and what had emerged? Some man he was destined to be. At last. The years in Oxford were not for him; they had been hers and then Eurwen's, with Fleur and Geoffrey sharing in the compound interest. Further out again were the friends and acquaintances, neighbours, dropping in from next door, the well-used jokes,
A pleasant journey, Hugo?
You were able to park, Nan?
Drinks carried up to the perfect blue-green sitting room with the perfect daughter already asleep above it: all benefits evenly distributed. Except to Josh. Now his true self had emerged, his proper setting. The pain of her futile, indigestible love seemed fair replevin.

She grasped his forearms to drag herself upright, mentally groping for the framework of what she wanted to say. Last night Eurwen had seemed very close. She was just there, or around the corner after next. And though Sara hadn't found her, it could have ended well… But she had
had
to drink. What better way was there to encourage Rhyl to open up?

‘It's awful. I know that. Eurwen—' but a slight shake of his head caused a veering off. ‘It's worse for you, I suppose. Having me here, on top of everything else.' Her mood felt sludge-like and Josh's lack of rebuttal a stroke of the stirrer. ‘I'm sorry.'

‘You were hammered.'

‘No.
No.
A couple of drinks, that's all because when you are meeting people and trying to talk…'

A satirical plosive
Huh!

‘—you need to have them on your side, obviously.'

‘I thought you were just going with Fortune now. Yeah? Wasn't that the latest? You promise the cards via that Kim Tighe – a Class A fruitloop by the way – to give up boozing. Eurwen walks back in as reward. Isn't that it? God, Sara, you're a kid yourself. You think I don't know? Master plan! But like I told you, Kim Tighe nuked what passed for brains years ago. And
you're
going the same way. Can't get through a week without—'

‘That's unfair! Until last night it was eight—'

‘Six days. I counted.'

They argued it out back and forth, tempers rising. And gradually something began to clear… off to one side but definitely there, daring her to look at it, a beckoning ally. The sparkling simplicity of drink.

Chapter 25

Scanning would make it more precise, if it was still available to scan. By rough estimate I started with 40,000 of Sara's words which isn't that many.
A First At Oxford has
341 pages in my hardback edition and runs with notes, index, bibliography, acknowledgments etc to 101,854. All about Thomasina Swift.

And mine is two people's story.

I am not ‘a drunk',
she wrote on the morning
after
Josh had dragged her dripping from four feet of water. And she is alive to report this new day, starting with a dream of Thomasina.
Truthfully, until my arrival here I was never less than controlled in a public place or an embarrassment to my daughter, ex-husband, parents nor even the few friends that are left. Much of what is reported on the subject of alcoholism is generic hostility by the fetishistically sober, observations that may be near the mark for
some
and for them only
some
of the time.

Alcohol and history: both confront the present moment. The former by a cushioning effect to life's hurt, though it is self-serving to choose this quality in particular: a commonplace to claim it as an anaesthetic. Also a calumny upon drink. By it we omit drink's positive force, that strong updraft on the spirit otherwise only available, by repute, to practitioners of mystical rites. Of course, in addition it eases embarrassment, instils optimism, smoothes a family's passage through all differences and resentments. It banks down envy, denatures fear, makes boredom bearable and, on your behalf, spits in the face of ageing and death. The second or third brandy of an evening: flames in the grate usurp the dying sun and your own hair gleams at the edge of vision, a robin warbles its possession of the garden… someone you love is about to enter this house. Approbation from your father's lips can arrive in the mind, word for precious word, unbidden, and yet your guilt still contrives to lie easy. A peace so sweet and expansive takes you that it threatens to overflow the skin.

Who would need to live forever?

To me, drink is endlessly beneficent. I have it, that unspoiled
evening,
the gift of dead stranger, one Hieronymus Brunschwig. Who remembers him now? Where are the statues put up in his honour? Where are the Brunschwig Crescents and Squares? A great man burdened by nationality (he was a Strasburger) and the times (1450-1512) with an unspellable name, even by its possessor, he gave the world a lasting legacy, ‘Liber de arte destillandi'. We know it as the
Little Book of Distillation
. By its use, Jean Martell would make cognac.

Then there is that other, higher realm of explicable completeness, The Past. You can take and tease its endless configurations, chose and reject, recalibrating what remains until you have a map for others to navigate by. Our exemplar is Thomasina Swift. Her enigmatic self unravels as a perfect parable for the age, for female power, for the flexibility of Georgian society or for the sexual vulnerability of males. Or any quartet of others… as you will. I pulled the thread that connected her with a highly gifted ‘natural' father, a titled, besotted lover and her putative Oxford tutor, the legendary Dr George Buller. Though the scourge of many lesser minds, was he duped by plain Tom Swift out of Heystrete, a second ‘marvellous boy'?

Yes. Duped and seduced, I decided: I am a poor but plausible historian so no one suspects I can be false.

All rubbish, to quote my daughter. Confess: how likely is it that Emeritus Professor Geoffrey Severing has no idea his daughter is privately inebriated at every opportunity? Did I mention Fleur in the list of non-combatants? I am inclined to revise the assertion with her also. Too many times I have fielded a look: just wondering. Though I was hardly drunk, no and with nothing vulgar as a slurred sibilant to offend, she is a penetrating woman, my step-mother. A year ago we were two Oxford ladies who lunch though technically employed, I with my next book, she an occasional lecturer at the Taylorian Institute… Small matter, I thought, that her glass remained full, mine empty again. Having gently tested ideas for Eurwen's birthday on me, she moved suavely to The Proposition, the real reason for dragging me out to eat in the middle of the day. Now, with pudding's arrival, Fleur inserted into the conversation the name of someone she had been at school with. Then this woman's protégée… had she ever mentioned she produced radio features and was hoping to pitch
The Legacy of Thomasina Swift
to a commissioning editor. Would I take part?

Absolutely!

A second drop of cream is dribbled unthinkingly over the poached pear. ‘But surely you would wish to talk to her yourself? If only to get a feel for what's being mooted?'

She gave me a chance. Dearest Fleur I see sitting at our window table in La Croix; her attention is strictly focused on the stream of bodies obstructing our view. Every few seconds they became petrified as, inches away, the pavements of The High simmered and seethed to gridlock .

No-o. If it's a young friend of Bea's… of course I remember Bea! Tell her I'm on board.

Fleur literally shied at this. Alarm had taken over her dependable horse's face. Rash, it said. The beginnings of an avalanche— and how ruinous the result? Because the pebbles are shifting. I've seen it before.

…in my mother, Fleur's alter-ego at St Hugh's. ‘Beauty and the beast, darling, though she would never have allowed it in her hearing. I'll wager there was many a pretty Teddy Hall boy called us that.'

Our family legend told how before Fleur loved Daddy, she loved Mummy, her precious friend, the first wife who died suddenly (I was an infant) from ‘a reaction to prescription medicine.' Fleur had known all and concealed the details. She, rather than my father, had played gatekeeper to my past. This is where the dead come into their own, with their dates, their solid pair of brackets for the intolerable mess of a life. They can surprise you (the odd outrageous fact is bowled in, adding spice) but still you have them. You have them. Too early to be a part of that particular social upheaval provoked by the Case of X and too late, naturally, to have encountered the notorious Y, they are caught for eternity in the grip of those arms.