The Secret Intensity of Everyday Life Read online

  Henry joins the steadily moving stream of cars coming off the Lewes roundabout, and so dives into the orange twilight of the tunnel. The morning rush hour is tailing off. The traffic moves smoothly through the town. Over the river, past Safeway, past the bottom of School Hill, and the Friends Meeting House, and the Chinese restaurant, to the sharp left turn down to the station car park.

  A woman in an Audi is pulled up by the barrier, fumbling in her handbag for the necessary coins. Henry draws up behind her and watches with growing astonishment as she searches the inner recesses of her purse. How much looking does it take to identify and select a few coins? Then to his greater astonishment he sees her get out, point her key fob at the car to lock it, leaving it blocking the entrance to the car park, and without so much as a backward look, head off into the station. Henry can’t believe she’s doing it. He pulls out his own handful of coins to see if he can supply the £2.30 needed to raise the barrier, and sees at once that he only has the coins for his own needs. Two pounds thirty! Who dreamed up such an eccentric figure? No change given, declares the notice on the yellow pillar. No change given. God help us all.

  The Audi lady will be on her way to the newspaper kiosk for change. Had she not locked her car, he would release the hand brake and roll it out of the way himself. The nerve of the woman! No word to him, not even so much as a guilty apologetic glance. And now she’s gone, disappeared into the station building. He has no option but to sit and wait.

  By now the brief moment of calm he experienced on the long straight is no more than a memory. He feels like a prisoner, hemmed in by walls of anger, tension and guilt. Without any words having passed between them, without even eye contact, he has entered into brief but intense relationships with three other people: Big Ears, a truck driver, and the Audi lady. All three have generated frustration and conflict. Just when he could have done with a quiet journey up to town he is subjected to this sequence of aggravations. Anyone could be forgiven for seeing something deliberate in it all. It has the look of a plot. After all, what are the odds on meeting, in one morning journey to the station, a big-eared driver in a trance, an unending convoy of container lorries, a train, and a woman with no coins in her purse? Who is the mastermind behind this complex operation, designed to destroy his sanity? God? Aidan Massey?

  The Audi lady is returning. She avoids his outraged eyes. How many other drivers’ mornings has she wrecked? He glances in his mirror.

  No, no surprise. A twisted smile at the sadism of fate forms on Henry’s lips as he sees the red Honda roll to a gentle stop behind him. He watches as the driver’s door opens and the man with the big ears gets out. He fixes his attention on the man’s feet, as if by such a childish stratagem he can render himself invisible, or at the very least insignificant. Then he takes his eyes off the mirror altogether and stares ahead at nothing.

  He hears the footsteps of nemesis approaching his car door. He doesn’t turn, or move in any way. Nemesis walks on past him without stopping. He is making for the Audi lady, who has just reached her car. Big Ears will vent his anger on her, and so the storm will pass him by.

  But no, it seems nemesis wants only to be helpful. He is offering the Audi lady some coins. The Audi lady smiles, grateful and apologetic. She shows her own handful of change, obtained along with today’s Daily Mail. Nemesis turns back to his car. Only now does Henry Broad, looking up with a rapid and evasive glance, see that he is the rector of Edenfield, Miles Salmon.

  Henry and the rector sit together on the train to Victoria. Henry is not a churchgoer, and knows Mr Salmon by sight only. The rector knows him as the owner of the fine property called River Farm. He says nothing about the incident on the A27. Henry, feeling the need to clear the air, gives him an opening.

  ‘I’ve just dropped the children off at school. You must have been driving from Edenfield to Lewes at about the same time.’

  ‘I suppose I must.’

  ‘Dangerous stretch of road.’

  ‘Yes. I always take it slowly.’

  Is it possible he noticed nothing? Of course he is a man of God, maybe he’s already forgiven and forgotten.

  ‘Your wife phoned me yesterday evening,’ says the rector. ‘Hoping to trace a villager from the past.’

  This means nothing to Henry.

  ‘Something she found in the library at Edenfield Place.’

  ‘Oh, yes.’

  Henry remembers what Laura told him. Some letters. An affair.

  ‘Poor old Billy,’ he says.

  ‘Yes. We hear there are financial problems. There are rumours that the estate’s to be sold. I do hope not. We should hate to have some Arab prince living there.’

  How about that? The old boy’s a racist.

  ‘You don’t like Arabs?’

  ‘Oh, no. It’s not that. It’s the wealth that’s the difficulty. Some member of the Saudi royal family bought the Calthorpe estate, I’m told, and they never go there. Stands empty, year in, year out. I would hate to see Edenfield Place empty. We villagers are rather proud of it.’

  We villagers. We churchgoers. We real inhabitants.

  ‘Laura and I still feel like newcomers. Eight years now. But that doesn’t make us real villagers.’

  ‘Not at all,’ says the rector courteously. ‘Your beautiful young family brings us joy. You’re certainly real villagers.’

  Henry is touched. My beautiful young family. He thinks of Laura, already in London, on her way to wherever one goes to buy expensive frocks. Harvey Nichols?

  It’s the wealth that’s the difficulty.

  He returns the rector’s courtesy.

  ‘I suppose I’m making an excuse for not going to church.’

  ‘Please!’ The rector raises both hands, palms outwards, smiling. ‘No excuses are required. If the church offers you nothing you need, why should you go there? We don’t go to the doctor until we get ill.’

  ‘But I suppose everyone gets ill at one time or another.’

  ‘And so does everyone feel the need of – well, not of my services, I confess, nor of my church – let’s say, the need of a greater context in which to set our life. One grows weary of narrow horizons. One longs for a view.’

  ‘Yes. Maybe that’s so.’

  Henry falls silent, thinking over the rector’s words. The rector does not speak. Henry watches the greening woods roll by beyond the train window. He glances at the rector, and sees at once that his travelling companion is silent not for want of something to say, but to allow him, Henry, the space to think. This is not a common experience in Henry’s world. Conversations with friends or colleagues take the form of alternating acts of self-assertion. Most statements are opinions, and most opinions are designed to raise the speaker’s status. Out of politeness one waits for the other person to stop before starting to speak oneself; but this waiting one’s turn does not involve listening. The other person’s speech serves rather as a useful interlude within which to find the right words to present one’s own next opinion.

  ‘I’m working in your neck of the woods right now,’ he says. ‘Making a television film about Puritan iconoclasm. Trying to get inside the minds of the men who smashed the stained glass and defaced the statues.’

  ‘Do you know,’ says the rector, ‘I’ve always had a secret urge to break things. Sacred things most of all.’

  Henry laughs.

  ‘Me too. My inner vandal.’

  ‘I think it’s a sign of respect, don’t you? One only wants to break things that have power over one.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose so.’

  Henry is surprised. The rector is more interesting than he had expected.

  ‘What brings you up to town?’ he asks.

  ‘This is my monthly outing. I have a sister in Ealing. She has what she calls a maisonette but what I call a flat. She gives me lunch. She lives very quietly. Sometimes I think that but for my monthly visit she never speaks to a soul. Though she does pray aloud.’

  ‘By herself?’

  �
��Yes, it is unusual. Vocalized prayer tends to be reserved for group worship. Quite why, I don’t know. After all, if the entire congregation prayed in silence throughout one assumes the Almighty would be able to hear them.’

  The more the rector says, the better Henry likes him.

  ‘You’re quite right,’ he says. ‘One does grow weary of narrow horizons.’

  ‘But you. A television director! I speak from my pulpit to thirty people, you to millions. I envy you that.’

  ‘Oh, it has its down side. Believe me.’

  ‘Of course. This is the human condition. We’re designed for unhappiness. Hence our constant hurrying about.’

  ‘We’re designed for unhappiness? Isn’t that rather a doctrine of despair?’

  ‘You could call it despair. But a doctrine, no. Just a hunch.’

  ‘Why would God design us for unhappiness?’

  ‘Well now, there’s a question. Why indeed? Why create us in the first place? And why, having made man, forbid him the fruit of the tree of knowledge? Why force him to choose between being either ignorant or wicked?’

  ‘Why indeed?’

  ‘The answer, of course, is original sin. It has to come from something. I’m very attached to original sin. It explains so much, without being in any way personal.’

  ‘And lets us off so much,’ says Henry. ‘I’d rather believe we’re all responsible for our own sins.’

  ‘You may very well be right,’ the rector concedes. ‘But yours is the harder path to follow. You believe in original happiness.’

  ‘Do I?’ Henry is amused by this picture of himself.

  ‘Which means, of course, that any deviation from perfect happiness is a failure on our own part.’

  ‘I was claiming responsibility for my sins, not for my unhappiness.’

  ‘My dear sir.’ The rector wrinkles his brow. ‘Sin is unhappiness. They are the same thing.’

  ‘Sin is unhappiness! Nonsense! Sorry, but I can’t let you get away with that. What if I fall ill, or lose my job, or my wife leaves me? Is my unhappiness sinful?’

  ‘Yes, it does seem rather hard. I can’t say I’ve thought the matter through. And yet – are all sick people unhappy? Must losing your job make you unhappy? You see, I have a glimpse of a way of living – perhaps I should say, a way of being – in which these external accidents make no difference, no difference at all. But I think that to get to that place, if it is a place, one must be without sin.’

  ‘Which is impossible.’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  ‘So God help us all.’

  ‘Yes, yes. Or we can help each other.’

  The refreshment trolley comes rattling towards their seats.

  ‘Would you like a cup of tea?’ says Henry.

  ‘No, thank you. But if they have a KitKat?’

  They do. Henry pays for the chocolate and for his own tea. The trolley lady gives him an extra plastic cup for his teabag. Miles Salmon notices this.

  ‘They don’t always do that,’ he says. ‘It shows imagination on that young lady’s part.’

  He eats his KitKat with care, one stick at a time.

  ‘Tell me,’ Henry asks him, ‘in the light of this conversation, would you say you are happy?’

  The rector thinks about that.

  ‘There are times. This may be one of them.’

  ‘You don’t wish for things you haven’t got? Or feel you could have done more with your life than you have?’

  ‘I don’t think so, no. But then, I was very timid when I was young. Not at all ambitious. I could never be a television director. I would be quite incapable of ordering people about. You make far greater demands on yourself than I do, Mr Broad.’

  ‘Maybe I do.’

  Henry gazes out of the train window at the countryside dressed in the new green of high springtime. That singing green. There should be a word for it.

  ‘Then again, maybe I’m an idiot.’

  Tread softly. You tread on my dreams.

  25

  At Victoria, Laura Broad directs the cab driver to South Molton Street.

  From the moment of waking this morning she has permitted herself the rare luxury of thinking only about one thing. Let Henry chivvy the children over their breakfast and into their blazers and school shoes. She is preparing herself for the mission ahead. Not a grand mission of any value to mankind, but nonetheless one that demands planning, focus, and drive. She has decided far too late in the day that she needs a new frock for Saturday. The summer ranges will be in. And this chilly spring, she needs something warm.

  She has dressed tactically: comfortable shoes for all the walking, no laces or buckles because she’ll be taking them off many times. An elasticated skirt, easy to slip out of. A loose top, that she can pull over her head without messing her hair too much. Pretty underwear, because the saleswomen see everything.

  She has made herself up with care. She’ll be examining herself in mirrors again and again, and must be able to withstand the scrutiny. She has chosen her lightest handbag. She means to have more to carry on her return journey. She will travel alone. This is her day. She wants no companion whose needs she must consider, whose face she must check for signs of boredom. She has a mission to accomplish, and wants no civilians to slow her down.

  The dress or outfit that she seeks has as yet no form. She does not set out with a clipping from a magazine, or a preference for a style or colour. It could be anything. At the same time, it could be only one thing, which is itself, because it already exists. When she sees it she will know it. Somewhere it’s waiting for her, hanging on a rail, partly hidden by other uglier garments, and not at first available in her size. She will track it down, and by a combination of persistence and extravagance, she will possess it. Like Howard Carter, who looked on the desert rubble of the over-worked Valley of the Kings and knew that somewhere before him lay the tomb of the boy-pharaoh, so Laura Broad, stepping out of a taxi on Oxford Street and looking down South Molton Street, knows her object of beauty is already present, and requires only the patient clearing away of all that obscures it.

  She begins slowly. Later, as the hours slip by, she will feel the pressure, she will move rapidly, she will accelerate towards the moment of commitment. Now, at ten in the morning, the shops are beginning to open, and she can permit herself to drift.

  She works the windows of Browns. South Molton Street is already busy with pedestrians, walking briskly down towards Bond Street, talking on mobile phones. Outside Vidal Sassoon a cluster of trainee hairdressers smoke and chatter. Laura sees none of this. She has already begun to screen out all non-essential sensory information, including hunger and thirst, to concentrate her powers of attention on clothes.

  She moves from window to window, down the neighbourly terrace of cream-painted houses that is Browns; each house modest in size, the whole yielding floor after floor of possibility. She comes to a stop before a mannequin wearing Dries van Noten. A fine silk jacket over a heavy slub-silk waistcoat, offered in the display with a pair of slinky trousers that she is no longer thin enough to wear. But the jacket has promise. It’s a gleaming tobacco-brown, cut short at the waist, matador-style, its narrow sleeves embroidered with stars and spirals of tiny coloured beads. The waistcoat beneath is honey-coloured, undecorated but heavily textured by the knit of the fabric. It gives the mannequin a touch of the old Annie Hall look. Laura studies the effect carefully, transferring both garments in her mind to herself. The problem, of course, is what to wear with them. A skirt would look too Annie Oakley; but those pencil-slim trousers? She checks the price card that stands on the window floor like the artist’s name check at an exhibition: jacket £765, waistcoat £251. A thousand pounds and the lower half of her body still unclothed. How much is too much? The answer, as always, is relative. It depends on how much wear she’ll get out of an item, and on the price of the alternatives. Henry need not know the figure. He never asks.

  Oh. Money.

  Laura’s family was not rich w
hen she was a girl. They were what is called comfortable, which meant that paying the children’s school fees left little over for anything else. Laura still feels to this day that the natural season for buying smart clothes is the sales, where a large part of the sense of fulfilment comes from the price reduction displayed on the tag. For so many years she has gazed on these small biro figures, one impossible number with a diagonal line through it, one just-possible number beneath, and thought with amused contempt of the gullible and profligate women who paid the higher price. Then one day her mother rang up and said, ‘Guess what? Daddy’s got a buyer for his company. We’re going to be rolling in money.’ The windfall, coming late in her father’s career, has been generously shared with Diana and Laura. The share has dwindled, of course, since buying the house, and this and that, but still seven figures. Funny how shy everyone is about money. The numbers always modestly draped so their intimate lineaments remain obscure.

  It’s a strange sensation, knowing she can have what she wants: one that teeters dangerously close to its opposite, which is discovering that you want nothing. To defend herself against the void, Laura sets herself several conditions that must be met before she commits. The outfit must not be the most expensive among those she likes. It must be classic enough in style to be wearable for at least three seasons. It must be the sort of look that Henry likes. And she herself must be convinced beyond reasonable doubt that it is right.

  She goes into Browns. At once, as she begins her long patrol of the racks, she feels the outer world fall away. A good clothes shop is designed like a church, to concentrate the mind on the one object of contemplation. No one stands and gossips here. No lesser concerns register themselves. No one eats, no one drinks. No one sings, no one laughs. The sales assistants watch in attentive silence, speaking only to say, ‘Do you need any help?’ The entire energy of this white-walled space is directed towards Laura and her sacred quest. The staff of Browns, like spectators at a race of champions, silently will her on to glory. But all know, Laura knows, the South American-looking assistant with the sweep of dark hair knows, that this race is no sprint to be won by a burst of showy speed. This is a marathon.