An Enormous Yes (17 page)

‘I’m not attacking anyone. I just want you to see sense.’

‘Meaning you’re the fount of wisdom and I’m seriously deluded?’

‘Well, actually, I do think the way you live is somewhat misguided – your obsession with economy, for one thing, never splashing out and spoiling yourself. It’s part of the whole Catholic thing – renunciation, self-denial …’

‘That’s nonsense!’ she retorted, incensed on her forebears’ behalf: Theresia first orphaned, then penniless; Franz-Josef jobless after his
imprisonment
; widowed Hanna forced to scrimp and save. ‘It’s nothing to do with religion; it’s to do with basic finances. My family never had money and I’m not exactly rolling in it myself. Just because you’re loaded, you assume everyone else can splurge.’

‘Come off it, Maria! You know nothing about my finances.’

‘Well, judging by the treasures in this flat, you’re not exactly short of a bob or two.’

‘That’s not the point. It’s a question of attitude. Your Church taught you all these so-called virtues that happen to be negative.’

‘I’m not so sure they
aren’t
virtues – at least compared with nowadays, when everyone’s fixated on conspicuous consumption. Yet people are
actually
more miserable – dissatisfied and envious, because, however rich they may be, there’s always someone better off than them. Frankly, I’d rather live my own way than spend my time having to accumulate possessions and—’

‘But why go to extremes? We don’t have to be either out-and-out
materialists
or Gandhis in loincloths, begging for our daily crust. All I’m suggesting is that you throw off some of the baggage you seem to have inherited from a succession of frugal killjoys.’

Stung, she leapt to her feet. ‘Look, if you’re so dammed judgemental about me and my whole family, what am I even
doing
here?’

He said nothing more; just slumped down on the bed, his back towards her, while she stood, shaken, by the door. Despite her residual annoyance, it slowly began to register that he might, in fact, be right. Hadn’t Kate said much the same, and even Amy criticized her penny-pinching?

As the silent minutes ticked on, her sense of shame increased; horrified that they were quarrelling at all, when normally their relationship was so blessedly harmonious. Worse, they were ruining the evening – an evening he’d wanted to make magical, purely for her sake. He had gone out of his way to boost and support her; introducing her to everyone; ensuring her glass was filled and that she never felt out of her element.

Tentatively, she approached the bed, touched his shoulder, coaxed him to turn round. ‘Why are we arguing,’ she whispered, lying back full-length again and drawing him towards her, ‘when we have much better things to do?’

In place of an answer, he let his hand move slowly down her body, lingering over her breasts, caressing her belly and the inside of her thighs and, finally, running teasing fingers through her bush.

And, all at once, their argument was over.

‘Oh, Felix, I just can’t tell you how that felt. It was like I’d moved into some extraordinary realm where I’d left my normal self behind. I suppose it was such a relief to have told you about Silas and not to have to hide things any more, it seemed to … sort of release me. I’m sorry, I’m not explaining it properly, but I don’t seem to have the words.’

‘You don’t need words.’ He smoothed her hair where it lay tangled on the pillow. ‘I felt it myself. It was our best time ever, I’d say.’

She closed her eyes, wanting to concentrate on the sensations before they slipped away: the slight stinging of her face from the graze of Felix’s chin, his touch still sparking her body, the warm wetness between her legs, and that sense of having moved beyond her conscious self, into a state of raw, uncomplicated being, where nothing else existed except her body under his. Even the smells seemed part of the experience: turpentine and varnish mingling with the last vestiges of the musky perfume she’d bought at Tachbrook Market for tonight. Her senses were so heightened that, when a car zoomed down the street, the sound shuddered through her bloodstream, and the stumbling notes of an out-of-tune piano, leaking through an open window, seemed to transmute into a lovers’ serenade.

Felix, never good at silence, suddenly knelt up on the bed, but she kept her eyes tight shut and refused to be distracted. Nothing must dissipate this rare and blissful state. Somehow, she had managed to transcend the
pettifogging
sphere of everyday concerns; leave behind the nervy trivialities that often clogged her mind.

‘Now I have something to tell
you
,’ he announced, speaking with such eagerness she had no choice but to surface. ‘Not a confession, Maria, my sweet, but a possible plan for the future.’

‘What, you intend to become Pope and change all the Church’s rules?’

‘Well, yes, that, too – all in good time. But, first, I’m thinking of moving to Cornwall.’

The words jolted her into a state of total alertness; aghast at the thought of him being hundreds of miles away.

‘It’s only a vague idea, as yet, but I do need a bigger studio and London’s fiendishly expensive. And I have this really good mate who lives there – a guy called George I first met when we were at the Hornsey together. He and a group of fellow artists left London ages ago and bought an abandoned farmhouse, with all its adjoining outbuildings. It needed a hell of a lot of work before any of it was habitable, but they were all young and fit and keen then, and eventually they turned it into a flourishing concern. Two families with children now live in the farmhouse, but George bagged the big old barn for himself and shared it for years with his partner, Tony. Sadly, Tony died two years ago, but quite recently George linked up with another guy – a much younger one called Daniel. I met him last time I stayed there and I can tell you he’s a really pretty boy!’

‘Oh, I see, you stay with them?’ She was struggling to show some interest whilst quietly dying inside.

‘Yes, I must have been down at least half a dozen times and it’s certainly an idyllic spot – a few miles north-west of Fowey, but much less touristy than Fowey itself, or somewhere like St Ives. For all their charm, those places become more commercial every year, whereas George chose
somewhere
a bit off the beaten track. Anyway, over time, he and the others have built up a real community of painters and sculptors and craftspeople, who all encourage and support each other and arrange joint shows and
suchlike
. And they have regular studio open-days, when the public can visit and view the work-in-progress. Well, he’s been nagging me for ages to buy a place close to his and become part of the local scene. Oh, I know Cornwall’s corny – if you’ll forgive the pun – and definitely a cliché, but, cliché or no, the landscape is sensational and the light is quite unique. A decade or so ago, I used to do a lot of landscape painting and I feel this urge to return to it.’

She searched for something positive to say, knowing her voice would betray her and sound despondent and flat. ‘I’ve never actually been to Cornwall,’ was all she managed, at last.

‘You’ve never been to Cornwall?’ he exclaimed. ‘Well, that’s a lack we must remedy at once. I’m going there in two or three weeks’ time, just to have a recce and a brief look at properties. I was going to ask you to come with me, except I knew, if we went together, I wouldn’t view a thing except your gorgeous body. Never mind – I’ll gladly trade the most fantastic bargain on the books of every estate agent in Cornwall for the sake of having you in bed with me a whole night! I hate the way you always rush off home, and get up and dress, each time. In fact, it’ll be four or five whole nights, because I intend staying several days.’

As yet, they had never spent a single night together, so she couldn’t help delighting in the prospect. However, mixed with her elation was a harrowing awareness of what his long-term move would mean for her: a return to celibacy; no one to give her confidence and compliments; no enthusiastic fellow artist to encourage and appraise her work.

‘If I do decide to join them, George offered me the converted pigsty, which happens to be free. I suspect that was a joke, though, and, anyway, I’m not wildly keen to live right on top of the others. But, as long as I find a place within a few miles, I’ll be near enough to gain all the advantages, without the risk of losing my privacy. And, of course, there’ll be much more chance in Cornwall of being taken on by a decent local gallery. The London art scene’s becoming just too money-oriented; more in love with celebrity than talent. Recently, quite a few galleries have dropped the artists who’ve been with them for years, and now deal in minor doodles by bankable Big
Names. But things are slightly less venal in Cornwall and, anyway, I feel I can start again there, with a new style and real new energy.’

He appeared to be slipping away from her into an exhilarating venture that would totally exclude her, apart from the initial exploratory trip he’d just proposed. Was there any way she could change his mind, she wondered desperately, already dredging up a raft of reasons why he shouldn’t,
mustn’t
go. Whatever the lure of a new start, would that really compensate for losing all his London friends; giving up this enchanting London flat; having to stop tutoring his classes? And he would be exiled from the dizzy whirl of London’s cultural life and its whole sense of innovation and excitement.

Slowly, she sat up, as another option occurred to her: couldn’t he settle for
renting
a Cornish cottage, somewhere close to George, just for short breaks and holidays, rather than buy a permanent place and sever all links with London? Perhaps, when they were away together, she could implant that idea in his mind; work on him subtly but compellingly, whenever a chance arose. And, if she had to use her sexual powers to supplement her persuasive ones, well, what was wrong with that?

M
ARIA DARTED INTO
a doorway to shelter from the sudden shower; peering out at the graffitied walls, boarded-up shops and general air of desolation. Lewisham, she had blithely assumed, would be a pleasant, leafy sort of place, given its proximity to Greenwich and Blackheath, yet this particular part of it seemed unutterably bleak.

Once the worst of the rain had eased off, she ventured along the street, head down, trying to dodge the puddles. Despite the dismal late-May weather, she had worn her best clothes and shoes, since it seemed crucially important that Silas didn’t judge her as an unfashionable old crone. Not that she could actually count on him being at this address. Since he was bound to be still single, with no ties, he could live as a nomad, if he chose, continually moving on.

Yet, refusing to lose hope, she made her way to the faceless block of flats and stood gazing up at the small, mean windows, ugly metal grilles and dingy concrete façade. This was worse than Tolworth, which at least had small front gardens and a variety of paint colours for windowsills and doors. Here, everything was uniformly grey, as if the building was simply too dejected to sport brightly coloured paintwork or even a few green plants.

The rain suddenly increased in force, so she dashed inside, shook off the worst of the wet, and rummaged for her handbag-mirror to ensure her lipstick hadn’t smudged and that her hair was reasonably neat. Both lifts were out of order so, having found a door to the emergency stairs, she began toiling up to the seventh floor. The concrete steps were stained, the whole stairwell chill and desolate, and it seemed totally unjust that a man of Silas’s talent should have to call this place his home, while
she
had the good fortune to be living in a large, ultra-stylish house. In fact, in light of Felix’s comments about her obsession with economy, perhaps she
should
be less abstemious, since she was basically secure, with no heating, lighting or housing costs.

However, her awareness of inequalities had sharpened since she’d moved to London. In a small northern village, there weren’t the flagrant contrasts between billionaire bankers and hapless down-and-outs. But at least, in just the last few days, the Westminster Cathedral Protest had achieved a minor victory: the ban on rough sleeping had been lifted and indoor soup-runs were now allowed.

Once she reached the seventh floor, her initial apprehension escalated to a sense of almost panic. Would Silas even recognize her and, if he did, might that prompt some furious reaction? Some people
did
bear grudges for a
lifetime
, so, for all she knew, he might slam the door in her face with a string of accusations. If only she didn’t have to face him on her own, but although Amy, Felix, Ruby and Kate had all offered to accompany her, each of them, for different reasons, was likely to hinder rather than help her mission.

Nonetheless, it required a supreme effort on her part actually to ring the bell. As she heard it shrill inside, she was aware of her tight chest and sweaty palms. No one came. She rang again, sick at the thought that, after all the build-up, all the stress and fear and speculation, she might have to trail back home, with nothing achieved. Ruby had advised her to write to Silas in advance, but that seemed self-defeating. Warned, her quarry could well flee, or hide.

Of course, he might have just popped to the local shops, so perhaps she should calm down and simply wait for his return. But supposing he was out for longer, or had gone away on holiday? She could hardly camp out on his doorstep for a week, or two, or three. Indeed, a couple of people had already passed her in the corridor and glanced at her suspiciously and if she lingered here too long they might report her to Security. Perhaps her fears were right and he
had
moved on elsewhere, or even died some time ago, so if no one answered her third ring she decided to give up.

As she stood with her finger on the bell-push, the door was opened, suddenly, and she came face to face with Silas – the first time in over
thirty-eight
years. It was all she could do not to let her expression reflect her sense of shock. His former emphatically dark hair, falling thick and glossy to his shoulders, had always been his defining feature, making other men’s hair seem meagre and anaemic in comparison. Yet now he was completely
shiny-bald
.

‘What the hell do you think you’re doing,’ he barked, ‘making such a racket? I was trying to take a nap and—’ He broke off in mid-sentence, the angry grimace fading as a look of astonished recognition slowly dawned on his face. ‘Maria!’ he exclaimed, clinging to the door-frame as if her presence was so startling it had actually knocked him off-balance. ‘Is it really you?’

She gave a nervous laugh. ‘Yes, back from the dead!’

‘I can’t believe my eyes! Last night, I dreamt about you – which I haven’t done in decades – and now you’re here, standing on my doorstep. Is that just pure coincidence, or was the dream some sort of …?’

His voice tailed off again, although she was barely listening anyway, still focused on the appalling change in him: the jowly face and saggy skin disguising his once-distinctive cheekbones; the stooped, round-shouldered posture a total contrast to the old days, when he had always stood as tall and straight as a mast. And what had happened to his dress sense: those stylish clothes in offbeat or brilliant colours, which had allowed him to flaunt like a peacock amidst a flock of dreary sparrows? She had never seen him dressed so badly, in baggy tracksuit bottoms and a crumpled off-white sweatshirt.

Aware of her scrutiny, he shrank back in distrust. ‘Are you sure I’m not still dreaming? I mean, it seems so odd that you should turn up after all this time. And, anyway, how on earth did you know where I lived?’

She explained her odyssey to Tolworth and subsequent meeting with Barbara, wondering all the while if he intended to invite her in – although she could understand his wariness. If
she
were shocked, how much greater the shock for him: a ghost from so long ago, materializing in the flesh. ‘Well, aren’t you going to ask me in?’ she said, deciding she had better take the initiative.

Still he hesitated. ‘The place is in an awful mess. I wish you’d warned me you were coming, then I could have tidied up a bit.’

‘Silas,’ she said, with a disarming smile, ‘I’ve come to see
you
, not your flat.’

‘But
why
have you come? What for? I still don’t understand.’

No way could she explain the purpose of her visit whilst standing on his doorstep so, forced to dissemble, she mumbled something about wanting to get back in touch and catch up with his news. After all, her duty was to Amy, first and foremost.

Reluctantly, he ushered her in to a small and ill-lit sitting-room, bare in terms of furniture but with a tide of flotsam littering the floor: battered files, old newspapers, dirty cups, tomato-stained pizza boxes and empty McDonald’s cartons. When she’d first met him, he couldn’t so much as boil an egg and now, it appeared, he lived on takeaways. Had he ever learned to cook, she wondered, in the intervening years?

‘Do sit down.’ He gestured to the sole armchair; a dilapidated thing, covered in rough brown fabric.

Picking her way between the clutter, she felt distinctly over-dressed in this cramped and shabby room.

‘Can I get you a cup of coffee? You do look rather wet.’

‘No, honestly, I’m fine.’ Having not seen him for close on forty years, she had no wish for him to disappear, even for five minutes.

He sat opposite, on the only other chair, a swivelling vinyl one that looked as if it had come from surplus office supplies.

‘Well,’ she said, knowing she must gain his trust before presenting him with unwelcome news, ‘tell me what’s been happening all these years. Are you still writing poetry?’

He gave a hollow laugh. ‘I lost heart, Maria, years ago. My work’s always been misunderstood. It was ahead of its time – that was the basic problem-and most critics were too blinkered to appreciate its worth.’

As a young girl in her twenties, she had accepted that as true; now it seemed an excuse for failure.

‘Poetry’s a mysterious process. It requires a gift, even a certain genius, I’d go so far as to say. But most run-of-the-mill people fail to recognize true genius, even if it’s right in front of their nose.’

Over the years, the word genius had made her increasingly uneasy. She had come to realize that any form of art required years of work and a long, dedicated perfection of one’s technique. But, way back in 1970, she too had believed in Silas as a genius. After all, he appeared to breathe the same rarefied air as those he read and talked about – Rimbaud, Nietzsche, Sartre, Ginsberg, Mailer, Burrows, Kerouac – and she had seen him as their equal, if not their superior.

‘But the sole concerns of editors and publishers are money and
commercial
appeal, and both of those are the kiss of death for poetry. So, in the end, I just gave up the struggle.’

Her eyes strayed to the cluster of pill bottles ranged along the single bookshelf, and, hanging above it, last year’s calendar. ‘But how did you earn your living, keep the wolf from the door?’

‘Well,’ he said, defensively, ‘I did meet another woman – soon after you walked out, in fact.’

‘Walked out’ was hardly an adequate description of what had actually occurred, but she let that go, more concerned with the woman in question. If Silas had fathered other children, that might have some important bearing on Amy’s situation.

‘A gorgeous girl called Camilla, who believed in my talent one hundred per cent and was more than happy to support me – pay the bills and so on. Her parents were loaded, so it wasn’t any hardship. We lived in her snazzy flat in Primrose Hill for more than eleven years, but then it all broke up. She betrayed me, the cow, as people always do.’

Everything he was saying took her directly back to the past. Then, too, he would damn those very folk who had befriended and supported him – once their patience or their bounty had run out. At the time, she had failed to see that Silas had a pernicious habit of pushing people too far and demanding just too much. ‘Did you have children?’ she dared to ask, although unsure whether a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’ would bode better for Amy’s purposes.

‘God, no. Camilla didn’t want them, thank Christ!
I
was her main project in life, which, of course, made it all the worse when she two-timed me.’ He frowned in irritation, as raucous music from a neighbouring flat all but swamped his words. ‘That cretin drives me insane! He’s nothing better to do all day than play his ghetto-blaster. What I was
trying
to say—’ He raised his voice above the din ‘—was that, after the bust-up with Camilla, I did have a stroke of luck. I succeeded in landing a job on a small poetry
magazine
, and, although they only paid me a pittance, I managed to survive. Not that it was easy. The editor was a pain and treated me like shit. And, after I’d slaved out my guts for him for a good five years or so, he sacked me, would you believe? It was totally his fault, of course, but
I
was the one who got the push.’

All at once, the music stopped and, with a histrionic sigh of relief, he resumed the story in his normal tone of voice. That, too, had changed, she noted; no longer exuberantly confident, but a cowed, complaining whine.

‘I was on the dole for a while, but they made me take these sod-awful jobs. Well, demeaning work like that kills the poetic instinct stone-dead and, eventually, the stress took its toll and I went down with a series of illnesses. Then, to cap it all, I was diagnosed with bowel cancer, seven years ago.’

‘Oh, Silas, I’m terribly sorry.’ For all his pretentiousness and self-
deception
, all his sponging off other people, she did feel genuine pity. No one could deny he looked a broken man. He had always been skinny, but now he was near-skeletal; his complexion porridge-grey, and dark circles etched beneath his eyes. His eyebrows alone seemed healthy – still dark and fiercely thick – but their very vigour only emphasized the pallor of his face.

‘You’ve no idea how humiliating it was. I even had a colostomy-bag at one stage and, before that, chronic diarrhoea. It got to the point where I didn’t dare go out, for fear of being caught short.’

Mixed with her compassion was a distinct feeling of revulsion. This was her one great love, for God’s sake – her Byron, Shelley, Swinburne – but romance simply couldn’t co-exist with diarrhoea and a colostomy-bag.

‘I lost my hair, of course and, although it grew back, it was thinner and
much greyer. And then, just as I dared hope I was in the clear, the cancer returned, last year. So I was back to the horrendous round of chemo and radiation, and it was much worse, second time around. Apart from anything else, not a single hair has regrown, as you can see.’ He touched his bald pate with an expression of disgust. ‘In fact, I’m surprised you recognized me. I did try a wig, but it was hot and itchy and I was terrified it might fall off.’

Byron in a slipping wig! Her sympathy was tainted with a sense of crushing disillusionment. She was even beginning to wonder if she had ever been in love at all, or just mired in self-deception, on a par with his. Or perhaps she’d simply mistaken excitement for love. There
had
been a
definite
thrill in being swept into a different world by an older man who scorned religion and convention and all her former values. Despite her years at art school in so-called swinging London, the sixties had passed her by entirely and she had remained devout, naïve and timid, until Silas exploded her into life.

Aware that he was still talking about his illness, she forced her mind back to the present. ‘But how are you now?’ she asked. ‘What’s the current
prognosis
?’

‘Well, they say I’m in remission but … but …’ As he fumbled for the words, an expression of fear suddenly flickered across his face. ‘I mean, they could find another tumour any time. I just have to live from day to day.’