What We Can Know, page 30
We discuss her thirty-five-year-old marriage as if I was not an element in her unhappy story. This is the vital suppression we collude in, although sometimes Jane will say sadly, ‘Of course, you knew him almost as well as I did.’
And I’ll reply with something like, ‘Jane, I hardly knew him at all.’
When it’s my turn to talk about my marriage, I can’t afford the luxury of Jane’s candour. The corrupting secret that bound Francis and me has driven me, as I walk the hills with her, into devious accounts, almost too plausible to be true. I’ve worked the clichés hard. How I suffered the pressures of marriage to a famous man, how living with a creative genius was a roller-coaster ride through darkness and light, failure and triumph, how my own identity was progressively eroded. Nothing to tell of my inaction when Francis came to the house in the night with his shoulder bag. Nothing to say of my Faustian bargain, of marrying Percy’s murderer in exchange for an interesting and comfortable life. But Jane and I talk often of our childhoods, our parents and siblings, and find common ground in the space stolen from us and given to our brothers. That conversation becomes even livelier when sister Rachel comes to stay and joins in. Jane has no time for her brother’s poetry, or any poetry. She is annoyed with herself for wasting her childhood on Francis and his needs. As for the missing ‘Corona for Vivien’, she is bemused. She never asks what I’ve done with the poem. ‘They make all this fuss, but most of these people haven’t even read the stuff of his they can buy in the bookshops.’
But she has warm memories of my birthday night, the moronically named Second Immortal Dinner. ‘What an evening that was! What a lovely bunch of people! Did you know, the Sheldrakes had a row and spent a delicious night making up? The caterer or his waitress dropped one of my best ever bowls on the floor, then John Bale told us how he’d operated on a snake that got run over! And Fran read his poem. It went on forever. It was all I could do to stay awake! I’m not supposed to say it, Vivien, and I know he wrote it specially for you, but it was no bad thing that poem got lost, don’t you think? Too bloody long!’
I have no memory of the snake or of how that bowl was broken. Almost six years have passed, and Jane and I experienced different evenings. Memory is purposefully selective. Of the inconsequential moments, Francis on a climate rant stands out for me. Bad enough back then, but the years that followed made a fool of him. I think he knew it. The Corona was a retraction he could never admit to. Because he had been working on it so intensely, he cancelled appointments and hadn’t been away in three months. No chance then of seeing Harry and I missed him. The day before the dinner, I drove all the way to Ledbury where he was giving a lunchtime lecture on John Masefield, whose birthplace it was. We spent a couple of hours together in a creaky bedroom above a Tudor pub. To my surprise, Harry told me that he was ‘beginning to think’ that he loved me and that it was therefore impossible for him to commit to writing Francis’s biography. Harry said, ‘Simply too squalid, even for me.’
That room over the bar of an old pub brought back memories of my hiking jaunts with Percy and the inns where we used to lodge. On the drive back from Ledbury, I couldn’t see for tears. I pulled over and submitted to the sorrow and guilt that the years had not dispelled. When I recovered, I checked myself in the rear-view mirror. I glimpsed behind me on the back seat the chocolates, flowers and a Stilton – in case Francis asked, cover for my expedition. Those items caused me to sit for a while and reflect on the sickly compulsion of my infidelities that at other times, when I was feeling more robust, presented themselves as a healthy appetite for life. Surely, I was too old for this. In the littered layby, I felt sated, and longed for a simpler life without or beyond sex. How much more I could achieve if my thoughts were free! But an hour later I was a mile from the Barn when I found the lane blocked by a fallen oak branch. A young local farmer helped me move it, and after I had thanked him and was driving on, I fantasised about him. Nothing serious, but enough to impede for several minutes a free state of mind.
The chocolates and the rest were for the dinner the following evening. It did not trouble me as much as it might have that so much fuss was being made over my fifty-fourth birthday. My duties would be peripheral. A caterer and waitress would take charge of the meal, the setting and serving, Francis would see to the wines. I would arrange the flowers, take our friends on a tour of the autumnal garden, and later pass round the chocolates. I had known for weeks that Francis was working on a birthday poem for me and was going to read it aloud at dinner. I did not look forward to that, but I was resigned to it. He had shown me the vellum on which he was going to write out a fair copy. I no longer recall how I came to know that he was intending to destroy all other drafts and notes. I suppose I was used to his eccentric ways.
My carelessness or indifference extended in other directions. The next day, when Harry arrived for the dinner at the Barn with Jane, it meant little to him or me that we had made love in the afternoon of the previous day. We were inured to our respective betrayals and it no longer seemed tragic or even interesting that Francis was pouring a generous gin and tonic for the brother-in-law who was cuckolding him. The passing years had worn our scruples smooth. If I’d thought about it, I would have remembered that during my and Francis’s union, I’d had two lovers, whereas he had racked up at least a dozen, some of whom he would have forgotten. For him and me it would have been trivial or retrograde to declare an open relationship. Deception conferred significance. It implied that our marriage was important enough to be worth the hazard of a lie.
So many people who were not there have written about my birthday dinner and it is oddly tense to be setting down the ordinary details I can remember. It’s as if I am creeping into a house to retrieve stolen goods. It was a beautiful early evening, extremely warm for October. The caterer and waitress from Stroud came and set to work, our usual gang arrived with presents and Francis managed the welcoming drinks from his big flask. I must have taken all or most of the party outside to see the late-flowering roses. I don’t remember the conversations while we were in the garden or, later, indoors. Most likely it was Russia’s annexation of Crimea, about which Francis was obsessed and had made himself a fierce expert. Unless we helped Ukraine push the Russians out, Europe would one day soon face a new and murderous chapter in its history, was his drift. The rest of the group probably thought he was overstating the case but would not have wanted to argue. Francis was overbearing and had facts to hand that no one could question. Besides, this was supposed to be a celebration, not a war game. I steered attention back to the roses. It was a relief when Francis took Chris to inspect the sit-on lawnmower that needed repair.
As soon as the sun was down it grew cold and we sat round the fire. It must have been the prospect of reading the poem that caused Francis to be so wired up about climate change. Even by his standards he was heavily aggressive in conversation. Everyone in the room had heard him on the subject before, but nothing could stop him. I wanted to kick him hard. The general embarrassment made everyone drink more. Harry especially looked unwell and ready to leave. He was drinking wine like it was beer. Later, I would be relieved that we were almost or completely drunk. Attention and memory would usefully suffer. I remember nothing about the food that was served or how expertly it was cooked, though I know we never asked that caterer back. But I remember Harry’s speech before the reading. It was without notes and it was well over the top, a parody of extravagant claims for Francis’s poetry. He was sending up the kind of speech he himself had made at the Sheldonian when he introduced the star. Occasionally, he met my eye and I saw his drunken glee. He continued to pile it on until Francis couldn’t tolerate it and shut him up.
*
My husband was unsteady as he went round the table to take his speech from the mantelpiece. He had trouble unfastening the vellum scroll. It was so unlike him to have thought of a piece of kitsch like that. I half rose from my chair to help, but he shook his head. Then he couldn’t find his glasses. They were under his napkin by his place setting. Once they had been passed along, he was ready to begin. It took me a while to settle into the poem. I think Harry’s speech had put me in a satirical frame. There was a bucolic sonnet in praise of a landscape that could well have been the one around the Barn. The sonnet ended and just as I was getting ready to stand and thank him, he began another, with a repeat of the last line of the first. I vaguely knew the form of a corona. Birds, butterflies, wildflowers and a crested newt paraded by us as if on their way to Noah’s ark. I recalled that Francis had taken, to my surprise, various of my old field guides from the shelves.
Francis and I, as I heard it, stroll delightedly through an exquisite landscape. We are down by the stream, where he puts his hand in clear water and finds a little squat fish, a bullhead, hiding under a stone and shows it to me before gently returning it to its place in the stream. So improbable, I almost laughed out loud. In the third sonnet another figure appears, a farmer, I thought, or an old-fashioned peasant. But that is not it. This person is more ethereal, not even a mortal. He is a symbol, and then, in the fourth sonnet, a minor god, big and bearded and genial like Father Thames or Falstaff. He is seen through the eyes of this Francis and Vivien.
I looked around me. Half our guests had their eyes closed, almost asleep. When the waitress had called us to the table, I noticed as I came away from the fire that we had emptied five bottles of wine. We had each drunk two or even three glasses of the house gin and tonic, a hefty brew. If Francis was going to lay on the full fifteen sonnets, none of us was going to last the distance. Perhaps it would be a mere John Donne-seven. Then some of us might be awake by the end to rouse the others.
I too had let my thoughts wander. I did not doubt that the poem was beautiful. Its language was rich and pure and compact. There was now a gorgeous description of a swim in a river. We were on sonnet eight or nine when Falstaff reappears. He is indeed a figure of misrule. He is also fecund, abundant, an enchanted gardener, responsible for the landscape and everything that moves through it or is rooted there. I thought he must be the Green Man of legend, with foliate face, leaves for beard. In some incarnations he spews green shoots from his mouth. There was a stone carving of him by the porch of our local church, which had Saxon origins. Some scholars saw him as a bridge between pagan and Christian worlds.
Later, when I was in the kitchen helping the caterers and making coffee for the remaining guests round the fire, I unfurled the scroll and had some time to read the poem, picking up from where my attention had started to wander. The bearded figure is reaching for a fiddle. The lovers come closer to listen to his ‘awkward melody’ of broken rhythms. But suddenly he is sickening, and as he clutches his head and begins to stumble, I saw how obtuse I had been. Reading rather than listening made it clear. The luxuriant evocation of a swim downstream through a gorge, that was Percy and me in the River Wye. This green person was not a god or fertile chimera or symbol of all threatened nature. The large bearded figure was Percy. That fiddle was a violin. His sickness was Alzheimer’s. As he falls to the ground, we, that is, Francis and Vivien Blundy, move in and are by his side, but not for succour. Francis picks up a rock and, with both hands crashes it down against Percy’s forehead. The woman does not intervene.
A mere half-dozen years earlier, we would have counted any evening a failure that ended before midnight. Mary and Graham Sheldrake had gone to bed straight after dinner to repair their marriage, so I’ve learned from Jane. The rest went back round the fire to drink the coffee I had made. The party was over. The long, barely understood poem had killed it off. As we sipped, there were murmured assertions of ‘wonderful … brilliant, Francis … quite extraordinary’. Only Harry and I said nothing. He kept looking in my direction. I wanted to say to him, Not now, not here! Instead, I looked away. He and Jane were the next to leave, along with Harriet and Chris. I stood to embrace them, but I let Francis go out with them to their car. I felt bad about it, for Harry did not look well. The caterer and waitress carried their crates of crockery to their van and came back to say goodbye and receive their tip. We sat yawning and barely speaking, then John and Tony got up to leave. This time I went outside to see them off. Francis and I watched their tail-lights recede, then I turned back towards the house, reluctant to be alone with him and be obliged to talk about the poem. I did not yet know what to think.
He was close behind me as we entered the house. It was a relief when he grunted goodnight and headed towards his study. I paused to listen for the rattle of his keyboard and heard nothing. I went into the kitchen and rolled up and secured the scroll and crossed the room to rake out the fire and collect the coffee cups. In my usual way, I plumped up the cushions. I was turning off the lights when I heard a sound and turned. He was there in the kitchen, obliquely illuminated by one dimmed spot over a work surface, his head and shoulders in shadow. We were a good distance apart. There was silence. He was waiting for me to speak but I was determined not to.
At last he said, ‘I saw you reading it.’
‘Yes.’
‘And?’
I paused. ‘I suppose it’s beautiful.’
‘But?’
I was trapped in the conversation I did not want to have. I spoke through a sigh. ‘It’s a fake. A beautiful fake.’
‘Go on.’
‘You don’t understand the natural world. You can’t conceive how it’s threatened.’
‘Yes?’
‘Plunging your hands in the stream, lifting a rock to show me a fish? Strolling the lanes, picnic in a meadow, bottle of wine, easy flow of talk? Naming the butterflies! It’s mockery.’
I was making myself angry. He was calm. As he came a little closer, I could see his face under the light.
He said, ‘What else?’
I didn’t hesitate. ‘If you can’t keep your mouth shut, go to a police station. But leave me out of it. The way you promised in the car. Remember? “All the risks will be mine.” Instead, look what happened. You said it in Amorgos – if I go down, so will you. Why isn’t blackmail in my birthday poem?’
I decided to stop. This was about to be an argument among villains. I was party to a crime and did not want myself exposed. Hardly a noble cause, and there were other matters I could not raise. I was too vulnerable and could not trust myself. I was sick with guilt. We stared at each other across the room. He stood with his arms loosely at his side, his white hair, uncut these past three months, was swept back from his enormous forehead. He reminded me of the figure I had seen and admired in the Sheldonian as he commanded the audience with his fierce stare. The downlight made a shadow under his high cheekbones. His lips were faintly pursed. I could not imagine what was coming next.
His tone was sorrowful. ‘I wrote you a poem about the two most important elements in your life, love and nature. Everyone knows I don’t like country walks. I don’t know the names of flowers and I don’t give a damn. You know I can’t swim, I’d never get married in a church. I dislike picnics. Trees, paths, the entire swarming world that isn’t human, this is what you love, not me, so I got down to learning about it. You’ve said it yourself, I’m an indoor person. If I’m not writing, I’m thinking about it. Otherwise, I’m reading. That’s all I do.’
I said, ‘You know that’s nonsense.’
‘Just hear me out. To do what I do, I need to be alone. I know I’ve neglected you. I wanted to make amends with a poem. As for the climate stuff, if that’s relevant, you know my views. This is clearly not me in the poem and therefore it’s not you. It’s not a portrait of our marriage, it’s not about me or you. It’s for you. It speaks for your interests and concerns, not mine. It’s a gift, as simple as that.’
‘It’s a confession. I didn’t ask to be implicated.’
He looked away. Across the silence we heard the indignant squeak of a little owl.
At last he said, ‘I think about it every day. I’m haunted by what I did … tormented by it and it can’t stay out of what I write. It’s driven me inwards as you’ve noticed. I deeply deeply regret it. Saying that comes nowhere near what I feel. The memories have hounded me, as they should. A few months later, I came into that money. I should have waited. I would have made sure Percy was in a place you and he would have been happy with. What I said when we were on Amorgos was despicable. I should have apologised long ago, but I completely forgot that conversation. All I can do is apologise now. You’re wrong to think the poem puts you at any kind of risk. There’s nothing there that anyone could base a case on.
‘I love you dearly, Vivien. I’m sorry – to put this at its mildest – that I’m an insufficient husband. You’ll have to believe me when I tell you that what you have in your hand is the only copy of the poem. I hope one day that will make it precious to you. Now I’m tired, beyond tired, drank too much as usual and need to go to bed. We’ll talk more in the morning if you’d like. Goodnight. And again, happy birthday.’
Like a very old man he shuffled away from the pool of light and vanished like a ghost. I don’t know why, but I called his name. He did not reappear.
I took the scroll, locked the Barn behind me and went across to the dairy. This too I locked, back and front, not against my husband or an intruder, but as if to secure myself against the evening that had passed. It surprised me that it was only eleven fifteen. I lit a fire in the woodburning stove, poured myself a drink of water and sat facing the flames. At first, soot obscured the heatproof glass, then it was burned off like an idea becoming clear. I remember thinking that first thing the next day I would make some appropriate journal entries. I was touched by what Francis had said. I went in fighting, expecting a row. He loved me – I believed that. He didn’t doubt his own sincerity. But I knew him as well as he knew me. Of course he didn’t devote every minute of his existence to writing, reading and thinking. No one could. He kept vowing to give it up, but he put himself about in public, in interviews, in readings at festivals from Trondheim to Sydney. He loved talking and drinking with friends, and why not? He liked good restaurants. He chased women and I was in no position to condemn him for it. If he neglected our marriage, it was not by necessity, it was a choice. What I’d just heard was a performance, a reading, nicely delivered. The effect was heightened by the lighting, a single spot. Still, he moved me. I could probably accept his apologies. I loved him once, and something of that lingered.
