Tenderness, page 59
In these incandescent moments, by the light of a mean lamp, with the all of Cathleen pressed to him, soft, alive and wanting, he simply is he is he is he is, and there is peace at last.
* * *
—
But – what? – she’s rising from his chest and shaking his shoulder, her voice low and urgent. ‘Mel, wake up. Mel, there’s someone outside.’ Lights through the thin curtains catch her across her face and she raises her arm to her eyes.
He opens his eyes; sits up, rigid. She’s reaching for her dress and pulling it over her head, as if someone is about to break down the door. ‘You in some kind of trouble with the police.’ She says it flatly, as a statement, not a question. But it’s not an accusation either. She’s frightened.
The strobing brightness comes again and again, like searchlights slashing the dark.
Harding stumbles into his trousers, gets to the window, and looks, his hands pressed to the pane.
Gone. They’re gone. ‘It’s not the police,’ he says.
‘Are you sure?’
He opens the curtains to show her and steps back. ‘Not the police.’
He unlocks the door and the storm-door, and steps outside onto the low porch that borders the parking lot. In the Dagenharts’ station wagon, the dogs are going wild.
Whoever it is will still be watching him, from some vantage point, before they drive back to their own accommodation, or maybe back to Boston while the roads are still quiet.
Cathleen is at the door, on the threshold, just behind him. ‘Who then?’
‘It’s cold out here,’ he says. ‘It’s nothing. Some Halloween prank.’ He can see his breath on the air, fast and shallow. What if they’ve seen her?
There’s no ‘what if’ about it. The bastards. They’ll know who she is and where her family lives by the time they file their end-of-day reports tomorrow.
She hugs herself against the night. ‘It’s two in the morning, for God’s sake, Mel. That was no prank.’
They go back inside. She crawls into bed in her dress, her skin goose-pimpled under the covers as he holds her. The dogs don’t settle. They bark for hours: banging up against the car windows, smelling something through the cracks, baying for blood.
xviii
On Irving Avenue, Jacqueline Kennedy is seated at her desk which, in her final trimester, has become increasingly difficult to reach. Although she has been assured that all is well, she remains fretful. She doesn’t know why. It’s a boy, she senses – just a feeling, but it’s strong.
She hasn’t told Jack. Best not raise his hopes. One of each. Caroline and a son. It’s all he’s ever wanted.
Well, not all.
Never all.
She shakes herself and concentrates on her letter to Lionel.
October 31st, 1960
Hyannis Port
Dear Professor Jack,
It does still make me smile to call you that. Jacks and I seem naturally to go together.
Bad news out of London, I’m afraid. The reports I managed to get off the wire this evening said it didn’t go well for Allen Lane on the witness stand today. Also, Kingsley Amis failed to turn up. That must have been a blow. Perhaps I’m merely feeling gloomy – the time of year – but now I wonder whether Lady Chatterley will walk free. The Defense have one more witness to call. I so hope poor Allen Lane doesn’t land in prison.
Yours, in hope,
Jacqueline
She addresses the envelope, Maud appears at the door, and she looks up: ‘Ah, yes! Bath-time!’
‘I’m afraid she’s still covered in green paint, Mrs. Kennedy. I don’t mind bathing her if it’s—’
She stands, smiles, and rubs the small of her back. ‘Thank you, Maud. I’ll manage.’
Caroline is growing fast – she’ll be three next month. She was a happy wicked witch for the children’s party. Jackie had suggested she dress up as ‘Madeline’, the little Parisian schoolgirl from her favorite storybook, but Caroline insisted on a witch’s hat and cape. She wanted a magic wand. Who didn’t? Mrs. Clyde ran up her cape on her Singer, and Jackie made the pointy hat and wand.
It is a moment before Jackie realizes that Maud has something in her hand, something that, judging by her face, looks like bad news. ‘I picked these up today from Whelan’s, Mrs. Kennedy.’ She hesitates. ‘A young girl served me. But I did glimpse Mr. Harding through the service window in the processing room. He’s still in Hyannis, I’m afraid. He saw me too. He handed out the pictures to the clerk. He even nodded to me.’
‘Thank you, Maud. That’s very helpful,’ and she takes the envelope of photos and stuffs them in her desk. She doesn’t know why she doesn’t want to see. Perhaps it’s the thought of Mel Harding’s fingerprints all over her life. Again.
* * *
—
Jack arrives home late that evening from another ‘Kitchen Cabinet’ meeting across the lawn at the Big House. She is reading – it’s only ten – but he goes straight to bed. He hasn’t touched her for most of the year. Her body is either sacred or taboo when she’s pregnant. She forgets which. Either way, she’s off-limits. Plus, her father-in-law reminds him often enough: she’s fragile.
She takes deep baths and rubs rich emollients into her touch-starved skin.
Mrs. Clyde has packed her husband’s bags, as she has ever since his boyhood. Tomorrow, with just a week to Election Day, Jack will begin a seventeen-state tour.
Only later, as Jackie climbs into bed beside his softly rumbling bulk, does she switch on the low bedside lamp and break the seal of the Whelan’s photo envelope. She’ll glance through the Labor Day pictures before sleep, for the happy little faces – for the semblance of warm company – then she’ll put out the light.
But the image on top, she can see right away, is black-and-white, and much larger than an ordinary snap. She eases out the print and stares.
It’s not the Labor Day children’s party in the sun-room of the Big House.
There’s no note of explanation with it.
Nor does she need one.
It’s a protective amulet.
From Mel Harding.
She glances at Jack, sleeping soundly, and she stares again at the glossy print, mesmerized by the two clasped hands on the tabletop; by the way the fingers – on the one hand, short and blunt; on the other, long and refined with a ring – close round each other like a completed circuit. Like two chambers of a heart.
She holds the shot closer to the lamp-light.
Whatever else is rushing through her mind – triumph at last over Hoover – envy of him – gratitude to Mel Harding – there’s no mistaking what it is: love doesn’t lie.
xix
In the alleyway opposite the Old Bailey, the Magpie & Stump is packed at the lunchtime adjournment. Here, during any trial, the Old Bailey’s lawyers and functionaries share the saloon bar with the whizzers, jigglers and firecrackers of the East End – the pickpockets, lock-picks and safecrackers to you and me – individuals they might well, on some future occasion, either defend or put away.
Today, the Queen’s English and Cockney jostle for position at the bar. Journalists dash off court reports in the lavatory stalls, while those who can pay for the privilege congregate at private tables upstairs. In a bygone era, these were the diners who wanted a clear view of the executions across the road at Newgate Prison. These days, with the old gaol demolished, they are ‘gov’nors’ and ‘geezers’ in search of low lighting, rolls of snout, and a gander at the latest ‘April fool’, wrapped in chamois leather, with the safety in place.
The entire pub is carpeted in a mucky-brown weave which masks spillages and the ubiquitous soot that comes in on shoes. The carpet, if rancid, is an improvement on the sawdust from the days before the last war. It’s a proud establishment. The old panelling is dark, the windows are leaded, and the winged benches are famously uncomfortable. The atmosphere is one of cheerful resignation in the face of life’s trials.
A spirit of goodwill pervades the fug of smoke, ale and cheap perfume. Traditionally, the publican always sent a final pint over the road on Execution Day. A forgiving outlook – or blind eye turned – remains the tradition on which the clientele still rely.
On the afternoon of the 31st of October, Day Four of the trial, and the final day of the witness parade, Dina and Nick have managed to get a corner table, with a good view of all the comings-and-goings. Last week, Mr Rubinstein asked her to make sure she was in the Great Hall by two o’clock sharp. He wasn’t able to say exactly what time she would be called – it might be a long wait – but she was not to worry on any account. She only had to tell the court what she had told him. Mr Hutchinson – who was jolly nice, he assured her – would help her to say what she wanted to say when she took the stand.
Now, at the table, her walk-on part is finally becoming real. What if she makes a hash of it? Every other witness has been a true expert. She is only a graduate. She hopes what she is wearing is all right: a long grey jumper and a red-and-black woollen skirt. Nick tells her she looks both ‘bookish and lovely’, and she relaxes a little. ‘Perhaps,’ he says, squeezing her hand, ‘you’ll be spotted by a literary agent who will snap up your novel!’
‘I’ve not written even half of it yet,’ she says, ‘and it might all be nonsense.’
‘That’s nonsense. Now,’ he says, springing to his feet, ‘a shandy? Rations?’
‘Just a soda and lemon. I have to keep my wits about me. But I am hungry: sausage-and-mash for me, please.’
She is relieved he’s come up from Cambridge, to offer moral support, although she said he really didn’t have to. He’s missing his Monday lectures for her, and there wasn’t even one spare ticket for him for the afternoon session in court. ‘Don’t fret,’ he said to her on the Tube. ‘I’m Nobody, and Grossmiths’ The Diary of has come with me.’ He taps his paperback. ‘I’ll stay in the pub and read. I’ll be there whenever you emerge. I’m not going anywhere.’
At the bar, he competes with many others for the barmaid’s attention. He’s rather out of his depth, Dina can see, a country boy from somewhere on the Norfolk fens, which seemed to her, when they visited his parents, marshy and less comforting than the solid green Downs of her childhood.
A copy of LIFE magazine lies on the bench beside her. It’s a couple of weeks old and marked with glass rings. But she leafs through it, to distract herself from thoughts of the witness box, and arrives at the centre spread: ‘New York to Washington: On the Campaign Trail with John F. Kennedy’. John and Jackie Kennedy are perched aloft an open-top car in New York City. They’re riding on the top of the back seat.
Yonder come the train, she coming down the line…Blowing every station—
A blizzard of ticker-tape drifts down on them from offices which go up, up and up, out of the frame of the shot. They look like they’re having the best time ever. When she was a child living with her Granny Madeline in Greatham, her Aunt Mary (actually her mother’s older cousin) taught her some foot-tapping old song, an American ballad about a president whose name Dina couldn’t remember. She has never been much good at remembering songs or jokes, but she does have a good memory for learning poetry by heart.
Surely Mr Kennedy has to win. He and Mrs Kennedy look so dreamy as a pair, and doesn’t the world deserve youth and freshness at last, to blow out all the grey old cobwebs and brokenness of the war? Mrs Kennedy is only thirty or so. In the picture, she’s wearing an ivory maternity coat with big buttons, a matching hat against her pretty dark hair, and three-quarter-length white gloves. It’s hard times, it’s hard times She looks effortless.
Look-it here, you rascal, you see what you’ve done
You shot my hus―
Nick returns with the drinks, and toasts both her and their day’s adventure ‘in the Smoke’. He’s wearing a green tweed jacket, a tie and a pair of brown polished brogues. She lowers her voice and says he really must stop calling London the ‘Smoke’, especially here, in the Magpie, or he might get taken out back and dusted up. She reminds him that he doesn’t get out of Cambridge or his box-room at the library that often. She, on the other hand, has grown up in London. She knows it intimately, and if it is foggy and besmirched, it is also thrillingly real.
‘Does Bayswater really equip you for the East End?’ he asks, his brow quizzical. Under the table, he runs a hand over her left leg and leans towards her ear: ‘Fuck, you’re sexy.’ She presses his hand between her skirted thighs, and he surreptitiously reaches up under her jumper and strokes her warm flank. It’s a year since they first met, and electricity still fizzes.
‘You might get your picture in the paper,’ he says.
‘Don’t be silly. I’m the least starry of the witnesses. I only hope that that Mr Griffith-Jones doesn’t make mince of me.’
‘When they see you, the photographers won’t be able to help themselves. I expect your granny will cut out your picture, frame it, and hang it on the wall at Winborn’s for ever.’
‘She’s old, Nick. Not daft.’ But she smiles. She’ll be fine, she tells herself, once it’s all in motion. The waiting is the worst bit.
She reaches into her skirt pocket and produces a curled-up hand, magic-trick style.
‘What is it?’ he says.
She opens her fingers. ‘My lucky charm. I found it in Shed Hall. My grandmother said it’s an eye-stone. It’s ancient.’ She places it over her eye and peers through.
‘I spy…’ he begins.
‘With my third eye…’ she says.
‘Something beginning with…’
‘H! Look, there’s Mr Hutchinson at the bar. I recognise him from the papers. And how sweet! He’s forgotten to take off his wig!’
‘Who’s that he’s speaking to?’
The woman is in her seventies, and tall, with her hair loose across her shoulders. It’s mostly silver, but it might have once been chestnut, Dina thinks – it still glints with hints of copper under the lamps at either side of the bar.
She has soft features, good cheekbones still, and deep-set, intelligent eyes. She’s wearing a grey cashmere cardigan over a matching cashmere dress; understated, elegant garments, but sensuous. One almost wants to reach out and touch her. At her breast is a delicate gold chain with a small crucifix pendant. A handbag and an old Burberry coat hang over one arm. An ivory-coloured headscarf trails from the sleeve. She’s upright, with a still-womanly form, though she leans on a cane.
‘Do you recognise her?’ Nick says.
‘Not at all.’
‘She’s Someone,’ he says, ‘because that was just an admission ticket Mr Hutchinson passed her.’
From a bench along the rear wall, a solicitous, middle-aged woman stands and waves to catch the attention of Mr Hutchinson’s interlocutor. ‘Rosalind! Ros, I found a seat! Over here.’
Dina peers again through her stone monocle. ‘She looks…warm.’
‘Takes one to know one.’ Nick kisses the top of her head and goes off in search of the gents.
Rosalind, Ros, she thinks. Rosalind, Ros…
He feels a rush to the head, a wind knocking at his soul.
‘Mr Meynell, may I present,’ says Joan, ‘my sister, Mrs Rosalind Baynes.’
‘How do you do?’ says Mrs Baynes to the crowd of Meynells and friends.
Rosalind. Ros. Rose…Thorn…Rose…and, as if in reverse, through the eye-stone, the sight of a Lawrence poem loops back through time to her, from the English Tripos exam question of the previous year.
She did quite well on it, apparently. She read the poem twice before composing her essay. Lawrence had written the poem – she remembered in the exam room – in 1920, during a short stay in a village called San Gervasio, a village on a hillside which overlooked Florence. That would have been about five years after he left the Colony and Sussex, escaping England when borders opened again after the First World War. It was about five years, too, after he published the story about Granny Madeline and Grandfather Percy.
The location, ‘San Gervasio’, she recalls, was noted by Lawrence at the bottom of each poem in the series. She can see it now, in her memory of the layout of the page. He’d lived alone there for a time – in a borrowed house, without windowpanes, although she couldn’t remember why.
His letters of that year show he was writing to his wife, Frieda, and resisting her appeals to join her and her family in Baden-Baden. This was, Dina noted in her exam essay – to identify a sense of context – six years before he would begin to write Lady Chatterley’s Lover, in ’26, on another hill on the opposite side of Florence, and less than ten years before he died in France.
In her essay’s introduction, she enthusiastically highlighted the erotically-charged fruit and ‘rose’ imagery of his lush San Gervasio sequence. In his deployment of the rose motif, the poet had, she argued, not merely drawn upon the traditional conceit in which the beloved woman is compared to a rose; he had reinvented it.
Lawrence’s ‘universe of the unfolded rose’ was not merely a mechanical nod to a poetic tradition; nor was it purely an engagement with the mystic tradition of the rose, such as we find in the Song of Solomon in the Bible, or in the rose windows of the great Catholic cathedrals of the Gothic period. It was a vital dynamic – she had underlined ‘dynamic’ on her ruled exam paper – an active, ‘on-the-pulse’ expression of the narrator’s longing – the narrator’s, or perhaps even the poet’s himself.
The summoning of the rose to the page was an invocation of a living, ‘unfolding’ beloved, not one fixed or pinned in memory.
‘Here’s to the thorn in the flower! Here is to Utterance!’
But why the thorn? she asked. Might it be phallic? One could be forgiven for thinking so, given this was D. H. Lawrence, and the phallus was central to his principles of ‘the life-force’ and ‘blood-consciousness’. But the thorn, she pointed out, belonged to and was intrinsic to the rose – to the beloved – not to the admiring narrator.
