body looked as if she were cold – as if there would be no more summers for her, nor for the missing shape she appeared to cradle sometimes, down in the straggle of her long brown hair. Sometimes too in her ceaseless drift about the place, I’d seen her pause, her lips moving privately, while the twitch of a smile hovered about them – as if she were answering the whispers of a ghostly lover standing behind her. But she hadn’t touched any chords in me – not then. And my revelation down there in the toilets had spilled too much too soon. I was resisting it; who would not indeed? So it was that something at the back of my mind drove me on all day towards what ought perhaps to have been a gentler discovery. For the forgotten and the forbidden constantly seek to be brought to light. I ventured in.
An almost untouched relic of the Arts and Crafts era, it might have been used for an interior by Holman Hunt – the Virgin’s Studio, mawkish, but a distillation of the pure. There was an arrangement of old easels, tables and stools. Certain Victorian values were enshrined here. The discreetly barred larger windows which ran all round between the oriels at the corners had stained borders with emblems. One of them was open, unhasped and swinging slightly, the only moving thing. I could see through it dark cloud-heaps gathering over the western horizon. But the studio was unoccupied.
On newspaper on a cupboard top nearest us stood a collection of crude uglinesses in clay, left by sad hands lovingly to dry. I wandered past it, uncertain what to do. In the centre someone had been sitting very recently at the main table. Brushes stood in a jar of cloudy, greenish water, and the house on the paper, with its wonky perspective, had pools of colour still wet on its lawns. Beside it was laid out a photographic print, monochrome, enlarged, clearly the source material for the work: a big, old house, in front of which was a car and a tiny family almost lost in the graining. A plastic cup of coffee stood nearly full, steaming faintly.
‘Ar, nice,’ said Polly, picking up the painting so that the greens trailed in droplets down over the bright blobs and dabs that were herbaceous borders. She put her head on one side. ‘Ar, nice.’
Behind us, on the wall of the arched entrance, one corner and much of the space had been partitioned off and labelled ‘Do Not Enter When Light Is On’. The warning light was on; but the dark-room door wasn’t closed. Perhaps that was where she was. I put my head in. The tower’s windows had been faced off with boards; in the murk I made out a sink, a photographic enlarger, and, on the bench nearest us, a white porcelain tray in whose chemical a darkening image lay. Polly pushed by me and took the thing out, dripping.
‘Tha’s ’er, look. See! Tha’s ’er. Ar.’ It was a formal portrait. ‘See!’ said Polly, pointing with her finger into the overexposed emulsion. Half out of the door, I held one edge. The image, taken in happier times, restored her youth and confidence. That face … An excitement tugged at my heart from beyond the sudden rational grasp of who she was. For now I could place her at last: a woman from public life. Her name was Celia Jenner.
We hadn’t noticed that there rested on the corner of a desk a cigarette with an inch of ash beyond the burn. I laid down both the enlargement and my canister and made as if to put it out; the ash fell off as I picked it up. ‘Ms Jenner!’ I called, not quite sure what to do. Was there a toilet somewhere up here? Or down a stage, off the stairs perhaps?
‘Ms Jenner!’ I knew why the doctors had described her as a special case. It had been a heavy political story. She’d taken the rap for a financial scandal in her party, a homelessness project, had it been? A striking and distinguished academic, she’d moved into the public eye, and found herself manipulated. And then a breakdown; I remembered the papers now. The tabloids had claimed she couldn’t hack it, of course, but there must have been more to it. Much more, to put her in this state. And no private clinic – still a woman of principle.
Polly called as well: ‘Muzz! Muzz! Where you gone, Muzz?’
I looked again at the haunting photograph – so like. A pair of birds suddenly appeared in the room and proceeded to flap crazily against one of the barred windows: martins, with white fronts and thin tails. They had a frightful urgency. Polly grabbed on to me and the cigarette spun out of my hand on to a stack of loose artwork.
‘I don’ like birds!’ She clutched at my overalls. ‘I don’ like ’em!’ She screamed as one launched itself in our direction. ‘Aaaah! They’ll get in my ‘air.’ She pulled me across the room as protection. An easel toppled.
‘It’s alright, Polly. They’re as scared as you are. Just keep calm.’
But she was in no degree calm. ‘Get ’em away! Get ’em away! My ‘air!’ With one hand she covered her head; with the other she held very firmly to me and yanked me to the door. ‘Help! I don’ like ’em! Polly don’ like birds! Fuckin’ birds!’ She now had the one hand over her offending mouth and had started to cry with the extremity of her distress and guilt. But she still hung on.
I got her outside the door and tried to force her to let go, because I’d seen flames starting where the cigarette had fallen.
‘Don’ go back! There’s birds!’
‘There’s a fire, Polly.’ Everything, absolutely everything, had gone out of control. But in turn tears sprang up for me. I had the room. It wasn’t Victorian – no, earlier. I have to go in. A man in a full wig holds a stick. There is a child. Something unspeakable takes place. Eyes like the eyes of a monstrous owl are so close, so frightening. Here are coats with many buttons. Men have wide hats. My mother’s breasts are pushed up by the squeeze of a curious dress. It is a voiceless, horrible knowledge that somehow it all makes sense at last; but it is impossible.
I scrabbled with Polly’s wrists. Whenever I got one grip off she’d grab me again, with surprising strength. We wrestled for the doorway – I could hear the crackling sound inside. I must get in there to stamp it out. At the same time I knew that trace from the past was important. Both worlds fought for the freakish moment. Even up here in this unsullied haven I have brought my chaos and created a destruction. My ankle felt the splash of wet; the stone floor under us turned dark, and I saw the drips at the hem of Polly’s skirt. She wailed in embarrassment, but she didn’t let go. We twisted round in that outer gallery again. ‘Polly! Don’t you see? Polly!’
In a flash, there is a yard with horses; the copulation of dogs; the story of a wolf. Upstairs, in the house, there is a wig, a window, a coat with its full skirt hung on the chair, a woman’s dress waiting, pain which can’t be screamed. Hang on to something – it will end. It will be over before I die. Tied to their beds. Downstairs my mother plays the spinet. Outside, the grind of cartwheels and the thump of hoofs: inside, the peculiar breathing, panting, riding. And if I speak my mother will die. ‘Polly!’ I wrenched free and sprang into the room.
There was a livid sky now. Driving the Ford back to Walton after I’d worked out my shift, I watched through the windscreen the heavy cumuli that had been building from the West ever since I came down from the tower. I’d said no word of my efforts with the fire; not to anybody. Polly was incoherent. I certainly hadn’t told Seco. I’d changed my overall and kept my distance, even when he tried to chaff me to good humour, and called me over to enjoy from our scullery the spectacle of the emergency services, and the chance to down tools. So, of course, he knew no more of my activities than the chlorine incident.
‘Eeeh, Jacob! Vieni qui! We sit down for a smoke, yes? You an’ me. No one’s bother us, eh? It’s OK. No more gas. No problems. Look at that lot – commotions, eh? Why don’t you just relax ever? You find the
