The Widow's Tale (9 page)

I
f it had been John that had had an affair I would’ve forgiven him. Which probably sounds terribly arrogant, or as if I’m just trying to let myself off the hook. I’m sure I wouldn’t have been especially thrilled to hear about it, but the basic idea of him sleeping with someone else wouldn’t have destroyed me in the way I think it would have done John if he’d heard I’d been playing around.

Of course, it’s perfectly plausible that John did have an affair at some stage. That somewhere among the congregation at his funeral were any number of former lovers, each one crying her own precious little tears. But I doubt it. Not that John didn’t take an interest in other women or, I imagine, cultivate his own little fantasies to get him through the day. And it’s just about conceivable that some other woman on this planet might have felt herself attracted to the man with whom I shared most of my adult life. It’s just that John was the kind of man who, having performed an act of infidelity, would’ve felt compelled to come running and tell me all about it. He was a bit of a baby like that.

All I’m saying is that if the situation had ever arisen I’m pretty sure that I would’ve forgiven him. There would have been a good deal of angst and a fair bit of shouting. But if it was clear that the whole thing was over then
we’d’ve just gone limping on. Whereas, if John had ever found out about my little fling he would’ve left me. Of that I’m absolutely certain. It would’ve been the end of us.

E
ven now, I'm at a loss as to why I get so exercised about that bloody book on Holbein. I'm well aware that, on some level, it has nothing to do with the book at all. And that if I wasn't obsessing about Holbein I'd only be obsessing about how I seem quite determined to smash John's Jag up, which was, after all, his pride and joy. Or the fact that the blood blister under my thumbnail, where I trapped it in the bathroom, is slowly but surely taking on the appearance of a small black heart.

All the same, there really is something peculiarly beautiful about Holbein's portraits, and there's no question that they move me in some unfathomable way. Two or three of them I can remember quite clearly – namely, those on permanent display at the National Gallery. The most famous,
The Ambassadors
, is basically just a couple of fat guys standing around in all their finery, with a table between them on which a variety of spheres and measuring instruments have been placed. Each object, I don't doubt, is terrifically symbolic. But the painting's probably best known because of the hidden skull which is sort of smeared across the lower reaches and which you wouldn't necessarily notice unless you knew it was there. If you put your eye right up to the edge of the frame the skull suddenly jumps out
at you. It's just a trick of perspective and, presumably, a little reminder about how we're all of us mortal and how in the long run none of our material wealth is going to be any use to us – a fact which, strangely, I don't need to be reminded of right now.

But that particular painting has never quite grabbed me. There's another one, of some woman in a woollen bonnet, with a squirrel perched on one shoulder and various crows and magpies bobbing about the place, which always puts me in mind of Snow White where she yodels out of the kitchen window and gets all the woodland creatures to come and help her with the washing-up. Beyond that, as far as I can remember, Holbein's output is just one long catalogue of kings and bishops and wealthy merchants – a cast of people not exactly guaranteed to set one's heart going a-pit-a-pat.

And yet I know that there is most definitely something about old Holbein that truly moves me. I remember getting tremendously excited by the backgrounds to his portraits, which are painted in these incredible turquoises and electric blues, and seem altogether too modern for the sixteenth century. But I'd like to think that there's a little more to it than that.

Something's happened to my hair. Something to do with the texture. It's sort of thickening up. Which I suppose is down to all the wind and salty air it's been exposed to. Either that or all the weird stuff going on in my head.

I can't say I mind that much. Just as long as it doesn't
end up getting all matted. Matted hair isn't particularly flattering on a woman of my age.

Having noticed it, it's crossed my mind on more than one occasion that woolly hair might be just another small step along the path towards me assuming the mantle of Wild Woman of the Saltmarshes. You know, the Anchorite look.

3.30
A.M.

How very disappointing. I'd been doing so well on the sleep front lately, and was under the impression that all those vaults buried deep inside of me, where my sleep is stored away, were gradually being replenished and that, inch by inch, I might be shifting from a state of near-capsize towards something more like equilibrium. But when I stirred half an hour ago I knew straight away that I was scuppered. And that if I carried on lying there I'd just end up tying myself in knots. So I thought I might as well get up and move about the place, and see if that did any good.

I'd made the mistake of thinking about the Holbein book again and how much I want to have it. Just to hold it. And, having fretted about that for a while, I remembered a fellow I once met at a dinner party, quite a few years ago now, who was a restorer and might even have been working at the National Gallery at the time. When I expressed some interest in his work he dipped a hand into an inside pocket, pulled out a small colour photograph and placed it on the table in front of me.

‘Any idea what that is?' he said.

Of course, I hadn't.

‘Caravaggio,' he said. ‘
The Way to Calvary
.'

The reason I didn't recognise it as a Caravaggio, or, for that matter, a figurative painting of any kind, was because the photograph consisted of nothing but a series of luminous gold and blue strata, like something chemical or even geological. Or a frame of film which has got caught in the projector, before burning up on the screen.

When he was satisfied that I was sufficiently bamboozled, he explained that it was actually a cross-section of the painting, viewed through a microscope, which he and his colleagues were analysing in order to identify the various pigments and layers of varnish and determine the precise order in which they'd been applied.

I'd never really given much thought to this notion of underpainting. And, to be honest, it took me a while to come to terms with the idea of someone slicing away at a Caravaggio, no matter how thin a sliver it might be. But as I listened to this restorer discuss his work I began to appreciate how a painting has a third dimension. And that, buried away beneath the surface, there might be an arm or leg which hadn't quite worked in the overall composition and had been painted out, but with the help of a little X-ray or infrared could be revealed. And how a painting which we now see as fixed and as if it could only ever have been precisely what it is might, in fact, have stray limbs and indeed whole characters swimming about beneath the paint.

And as I lay in bed, thinking about all those lost limbs and faces, I remembered something I must have heard on the radio twenty years ago, about someone who claimed to have devised a way of analysing a painting's individual brushstrokes so that they could extract from each one the words the artist had uttered at the moment the paint was applied.

Turning it over in my mind just now, I became convinced that the whole idea was utterly preposterous. And yet I distinctly remember hearing it. Or reading it in a magazine somewhere. I'm almost certain that it wasn't fiction – i.e. simply some speculation about what scientists might be capable of doing in years to come. I heard someone discuss, in all seriousness, the art of carefully lifting a single brushstroke and, from the tiny vibrations captured in it, identifying the words of Rembrandt or Vermeer or Raphael, just as if it were a piece of audio tape.

I
t seems that north Norfolk is in the grip of an outbreak of absent-mindedness. Like those inexplicable incidents of mass hysteria when hordes of adolescent schoolgirls collapse one after another in fainting fits.

A couple of days ago I was driving along some country lane and came round a corner to find a whole host of bits of paper strewn right across the road. You could tell that these were important bits of paper, with phone numbers on them, etc., and, being a civic-minded sort of person, I stopped and gathered them up – including a doctor’s appointment card, a couple of folded five-pound notes and a pair of glasses – and took them along to the nearest police station. Judging by the state of the spectacles (i.e. aged and greasy) I’d guess they belonged to some doddery old fellow. I assume that he just liked to keep all his phone numbers and addresses in his specs case and was cycling along when they fell out of a pocket. Either that or he was abducted by aliens.

Then, less than an hour ago, I was marching through the drizzle to the Spar shop when I spotted some woman driving off with her handbag perched on the roof of her car. I had to flap my arms up and down as she drove towards me and was seriously considering throwing myself into the road. But when she finally stopped and
I explained the situation she seemed to find the whole thing unbelievably amusing. She couldn’t stop laughing. Whereas, if that’d been me, I would’ve been beside myself. I would’ve had to go and lie down in a dark room for half an hour.

I’m pretty sure that neither incident would have bothered me half as much if I hadn’t recently spent a couple of days up in the attic trawling through John’s belongings and generally trying to sort things out. I’d gone through the clothes and shoes and so forth well before Christmas, which was its own particular nightmare. But these were his personal things – most of which hadn’t seen daylight for a decade or more.

Christ, but what a hoarder that man was. There’s something rather morbid, I think, about hanging onto every last little thing. I’m quite the opposite. I pride myself in my ruthlessness; my lack of sentimentality. If it’d been my own stuff most of it would’ve gone straight into the recycling. But as it was John’s, and what with him being so recently dead, it wasn’t so easy and it’s very hard sometimes to know where to draw the line between what’s of any sort of significance and what’s not.

There were stacks of mags, including some of a 1950s boxing variety, in various bundles and tied up with string, which all went straight to the charity bookshop. There was a great stack of archaic photographic equipment and slide projectors, which I put aside for one of John’s old cronies who’s into that sort of thing and who can decide whether or not they’re any use to him. It was all the
personal papers and documents that were the problem.

To be fair, John probably hadn’t planned on dying when he did do. Perhaps he’d envisaged many a long evening in his dotage sitting up in the attic, getting all misty-eyed surrounded by boxing mags and his old cricket whites. The problem is, whatever I fail to dispose of now will only be disposed of later by some complete stranger. We never had kids. When he wanted them I didn’t, then vice versa. And by the time we were finally in accordance it was pretty much too late. I only note that here because when I’m gone there’ll be no one with heavy heart sifting through all our combined junk. And even if there was, most of it wouldn’t mean anything to them. Most of it doesn’t mean that much to me.

I occasionally wander round some saleroom, on the lookout for an old rug or piece of furniture, and there will always be several dozen cardboard boxes, full of letters and photographs and so on, usually labelled ‘Ephemera’. It’s just stuff that’s been dredged up along with everything else in some anonymous house clearance. But some of these things are deeply personal and private. That photograph of four men in the 1940s, posing on some unidentifiable beach in their big trunks with their arms around each other’s shoulders – to someone, somewhere that photo will have considerable emotional weight. Just not for you or me.

But it’s a salutary lesson. Personally, I shall be leaving strict instructions regarding exactly how big a bonfire to build. The alternative is surrendering your most intimate
possessions to some man with a van, called Steve or Gary. And the prospect of a crowd of strangers rummaging through your most personal mementos one Saturday morning. And that really does make me feel rather queasy, I have to say.

I
never told a soul. Not even Ginny. Which is probably a fair measure of the scale of the deceit, because ordinarily I tell Ginny just about everything. Whether she wants to hear it or not.

To be perfectly honest, since John’s death there have been a couple of occasions when, after the third or fourth glass, I’ve been tempted to blab about it. But I’ve always managed to stop myself just in time. I’ve instinctively known, I think, that I’ll regret it – either the next day or the very next minute. It’s as if, when John was still alive, I’d made a vow to keep it to myself, and that spilling the beans now that he’s gone would be unfair on him. Of course, it could just be me covering up my shame. Not the shame of the actual affair (of which there isn’t much to begin with) but the way that it ended. Maybe there’s something in that.

In fact, Ginny should probably shoulder some of the responsibility. It was, after all, her who browbeat me into signing up for the short course at Dartington Hall in the first place. And if she hadn’t backed out at the very last minute because of some drama with her current beau, then she would’ve been there, like my very own chaperone, and that would’ve been that.

I was tempted not to bother going myself, but finally
decided to make the effort. The course was fine. One or two of the sessions weren’t particularly inspiring, but there you go. I’m pretty sure I’d seen Paul around the place, though that could just be me investing some sort of significance after the event. But on the last night I definitely noticed him. There was a ceilidh in the Great Hall. And whilst we didn’t actually bump into each other amongst all the dose-dos and stripping-the-willows, I do remember glancing over at him once or twice and seeing him watching me.

The whole thing was drawing to a close and the band had struck up the opening bars of ‘Auld Lang Syne’ or something equally maudlin, and I’ve always been deeply allergic to that sort of forced sentimentality, so I headed for the door. I’ve tried a hundred different times to remember exactly what was going through my mind as I made my exit. Whether I felt any sense of disappointment at not having spoken to him or just how much of an impression he’d made on me. And I honestly can’t remember. But from that moment on it’s as if everything is carved in stone.

Between the Great Hall and the quadrangle there’s an old porch, like a church porch only bigger. And when I stepped through the wooden door into it I found him sitting there. I wasn’t even aware that he’d left the hall. I pulled the door to behind me and as I passed, happened to glance over at him. He said, ‘I’m sorry for staring. But you’re just about the loveliest thing I’ve ever seen.’

I carried on walking. Down the stone steps, and headed
across the quadrangle, towards the door which led up to my room. I made it all the way across the lawn. Was standing at the door, with the key in my hand. It was like some sudden, debilitating sickness. As if, within those fifty yards or so it had taken hold of me and struck me down.

I’ve often wondered if it was something to do with the way he said it. I feel quite sure that if he’d been smirking or even smiling then that would’ve been the end of it. But he wasn’t. The words seemed almost sad.

I was still standing there in the doorway, with that stupid key in my hand. I was having trouble breathing.

‘Jesus Christ,’ I said. My heart was pounding. Then I turned and headed back across the lawn.

It makes no significant difference how long there was between me walking back over to him and talking to him and the two of us being up in my room and on my bed, screwing. Whether we chose to go straight upstairs, or spent half the night wandering round the gardens, quoting poetry at each other by moonlight as some sort of preliminary. The fact is that as soon as I turned away from the door I knew that we’d be sleeping together. That decision had been made.

I’d had a couple of drinks but was barely even tipsy. I knew what I was doing. I wasn’t taken advantage of. Even so, it might well be that the fact that we were both on our own and far from home might possibly have contributed somehow. That, in effect, there was nothing to connect whatever went on that night down in Devon to our lives
back home. And that, if we’d chosen to, we could have remained quite nameless. Like some perfect little crime.

But within about five minutes I’d decided that, whatever this was, one night of it was not going to suffice. Not by a long chalk. And before the sun was up the following morning I was already plotting to make sure it didn’t slip away from me.

I can clearly remember sitting on the train the next day in a state of absolute distraction, not least by my newfound loveliness. Apparently, this young man, fifteen years my junior, had identified it, buried so deeply in me that I wasn’t even aware of it myself. As that train dragged me back towards London a great many things went through my mind, one of which I particularly remember. And I’m well aware just how supremely selfish this is going to sound. I kept thinking, ‘Whatever this is, how can it be anything other than a good thing?’ And not simply because it was providing me with so much unalloyed joy. It was as if my very spirit had been plugged into a whole new universe of goodness. Everything around me was transformed. The world was kinder. Dammit, the world was downright wonderful. And how could that possibly be a cause for regret?