But this is not before the Ellison Fellow has been subjected to a concerted campaign of persuasion, across the dinner table, to release his close-kept manuscripts, there being among the assembled guests at least two other members of the History Faculty, previously briefed, no doubt, and there to voice the wider view of the Faculty that, with all due respect, he might not be the best man for the job, etc., etc. To which he responds, let it be said, with unbudging tenacity. And not before, unobserved himself, he has observed, in the kitchen (this will give some idea of the fluid nature of Potter’s soirées and his delight in mixing old and young), Potter with his hand firmly on the left buttock of one of his guests, a research graduate called Gabriella (black eyes, black hair; flashing, Italian glances), who is definitely not, as it happens, the Ellison Fellow’s type.
And whereas Potter did not know that he was observed with his hand on Gabriella’s buttock (let us be plain, his hand was thrust beneath the waistband of her undeniably fetching, tight black evening trousers, so we are not talking about the seat of her pants), it is clear to the Ellison Fellow that Potter sees Katherine, his wife, put her hand on his, the Ellison Fellow’s, wrist and, what’s more, that Katherine knows it, and doesn’t take her hand away. Which makes the Ellison Fellow, who still likes to put into his thoughts the words, if not of Hamlet, then (more appropriately perhaps) of Polonius, think springes to catch woodcocks. But since she does not take her hand away, he is forced to look into her eyes. They are blue-grey eyes. His eyes are grey. Gabriella’s eyes are black. His dead wife’s were seaweed-brown. How strange that we each have these different eyes, like jewels set in our bodies, and that when we look into someone’s eyes we think we can see who they are. These are not the eyes of a natural temptress. They seem to be pleading for his co-operation and at the same time to be saying, “I know, I married the wrong man.” And he cannot tell if she is acting.
She walks towards me across the lawn; waves; I wave in return. She is wearing a sleeveless, mutedly floral summer frock of some thin fabric, which, if it were not for the dark yew hedge behind her, would allow the sunlight to show up, in hazy outline, her still slender-but-firm body — which, let me make this plain, I have never seen otherwise exposed.
Though the point came near.
She walks with a fluid stride, which would be truly gazelle-like if there were not a touch of sheepishness about it, a self-induced and long-practised hesitancy, an air of brave cheerfulness undermined by contrition. She carries this large straw bag, out of which there peeps the glossy cap of a thermos flask and a rumpled blue-and-white-check cloth; and I know, without seeing, that also in the bag, along with the decanted, chilled white wine in the thermos, are a few choice morsels purchased on her way: the rudiments of a little déjeuner sur l’herbe. Though there will be nothing scandalous, not now, in this picture.
The straw bag is strangely affecting. It reminds me of those ubiquitous, oddly rustic “shopping bags” that were once, in those far-off days before the advent of polythene, a standard accoutrement of every woman, including even my mother, but which now seem folksy and quaint. It somehow looks right in the hand of Katherine Potter, in whose simple, flaxen tresses, vulnerable shoulders and Arcadian attire you might detect the traces of a pastoral wistfulness: a former Sixties flower-child (fallen since on thorns), a one-time student of Eng. Lit., wallowing, Ophelia-like, in simpering, whimpering poetry.
Not my type. Not my type at all.
She waves. The nurse; the convalescent. The wounded paladin; the pitying lady. These titbits stolen from the lord’s table. I think she thinks she is restoring me to life. That that is her duty now. I think she thinks it was because of her—
A little fact I omitted to mention above: When she touched my wrist that evening at Potter’s, it was as though I had forgotten that I still had a wrist, as though I had forgotten that my wrist, with its little forest of dark, pliant hairs, still belonged to me. Later, alone, I looked at my wrist and said to myself, absurdly: This is my wrist.
And when I watch her walk across the lawn, she seems to me (but don’t trust the words of someone newly snatched from the grave) like life itself. Like life itself.
She crosses the lawn and halts in front of me. “Hello,” she says. “Hello,” I say. She puts down the basket. A light breeze wafts across the garden and just for a moment it wreathes her hair about her face and flutters her thin dress against her body with almost sentient, Botticellian tenderness. The bare shoulders are infallible. Their appeal goes to some helpless spot at the centre of the chest. She starts to unload the basket. There are real napkins, real wine glasses, nothing skimped. I take the notes I have only just placed on my tray — it reconverts, you see, to its proper use — and shuffle them into my briefcase.
“I haven’t come at a wrong moment?” she says. She always says this, or something like it—“I’m not disturbing you?” “Would you rather be by yourself?” And it’s then that she wears her most contrite looks.
“How’s it going?” she says.
“Fine,” I say.
I don’t know which would hurt her more. To tell her (but I think she knows this, I think she really does) that it wasn’t because of her, no, not exactly — and so deprive her of her stricken but gratifying role. Or to tell her that it was because of her, yes, as a matter of fact — and so turn that role into a lasting, remorseful truth.
I don’t know which is true myself.
How can one person take the place of another?
She pours wine from the thermos, and condensation mists the bowl of the glass. She hands me the glass, then she says, meaning it lightly but somehow sounding reproachful, “What was that you had to hide in your briefcase?” And it’s only at this moment that I know for certain that I’m going to go through with the decision I’ve made.
“I’ll tell you — in a while,” I say.
First, we eat, we drink. We are surrounded by warmth and flowers. Under the Indian bean tree, who loves to lie with me … In far-away Chicago Potter will be just waking up. I’m prepared to bet that he is alone in his bed. I’m prepared to bet that, for once, he will not avail himself of the customary opportunities of a conference abroad. He will be the chaste scholar. And he will think a lot of Katherine, and of me.
I drain my glass, then reach over to my briefcase and take out — no, not these scribbled pages, but a complete, freshly made copy of the Pearce manuscripts. What does it matter? Who am I to raise Matthew Pearce from the dead?
“For you,” I say. “For both of you. I want you to have it now.”
9
The thing was that he saw an ichthyosaurus. The thing was that he had come face-to-face with an ichthyosaur, on the cliffs of Dorset in the summer of 1844 (age: twenty-five).
I see him lurching, slipping, fleeing down that wet path towards the beach. Everything is chance. It might so easily have been otherwise. He might have gone to the aid of the young woman who even then, as he scrambled blindly by, sat on the damp ground, encircled by a little attentive group, nursing a twisted ankle. Only a minute before, under the flapping tarpaulin, he would have heard her sudden cry. And if he had gone with the others to assist, if he had not lingered alone for those few mesmerical moments, his whole life might have been different. He might have married the young woman. What an opportunity missed! There she was, pale, shaken, in need of rescue and obliged to show, for all the fussing of her chaperone, an unaccustomed amount of lower leg. He might have fallen in love with this pretty invalid and lived happily ever after. Instead of which, he chose to stare into the eye of a monster.