Dreaming of the bones Page 13

Nathan just looked at her blankly. “What are you talking about, Vic?”

  “Did you look in the book before you gave it to me?”

  “Just the copyright page, and that marvelous photo on the flyleaf. No wonder Marsh-”

  “That’s all right, then,” Vic said on a breath of relief. “No wonder you didn’t see them.” She proceeded to explain about finding the manuscript drafts of Lydia’s poems in the book, and that she thought them among the last of Lydia’s work.

  When she’d finished, Nathan said thoughtfully, “Well, no one would know better than you. But how odd. I suppose the logical step would be to ask Ralph if he knows anything about them.”

  “Ralph Peregrine? Her publisher?” she asked, while silently blessing Nathan for not questioning her competence.

  “A nice chap, and he seems to have had a good working relationship with Lydia. Have you met him?”

  Vic nodded. “Briefly. He was very accommodating. He told me as much as he knew about Lydia’s methods of working, and made me copies of his correspondence with her.”

  “And there was nothing about these poems?”

  “No. She wrote him a series of friendly, chatty letters from abroad over the years, but they seem to have conducted most of their business in person or over the telephone.”

  “I suppose that makes sense, in view of the fact that they were both in Cambridge.” Nathan fell silent for a moment, then smiled brightly at her. “You could ask Daphne.”

  “That’s exactly what Adam said, only about something else. What-”

  “How did your visit go with Adam?” Nathan interrupted, sounding avuncularly pleased with himself.

  “He wasn’t at all what I expected,” Vic said, smiling. “He was quite charming, and he gave me very good sherry. It seemed all I needed was your seal of approval.”

  “Adam always did have a taste for expensive sherry-it’s probably the one little luxury he allows himself, poor chap. It was he who began the sherry party tradition at college, you know.” As if reminded of his empty glass, Nathan got up and poured himself a bit more whisky. Returning to his chair, he said, “Lydia took it up, but with a bit more flair. I’d forgotten that.”

  “Why refer to him as a poor chap?” Vic asked, intrigued. “I’ll admit the rectory is a bit shabby-well, I suppose I’d have to admit that Adam’s a bit shabby himself-but he seemed quite comfortable with his circumstances.”

  Nathan grimaced. “You’re quite right. That was bloody condescending of me. That’s what comes of projecting your own ambitions onto someone else.” Frowning, he sipped at his drink. “But you see, all of us-Adam and Darcy and I-came from the same sort of comfortable, middle-class background. Well, mine was a bit less comfortable than Adam’s or Darcy’s, but the point is, we started with the same aspirations, and Darcy and I made a moderate success of it. Adam, though…”

  “What?” said Vic, her curiosity further aroused by his hesitation. He looked up at her and for once she found his dark eyes opaque, unreadable.

  “All of a sudden, one day Adam decided that wasn’t good enough for him. He wanted to contribute something, save his own little corner of the world. And I can’t say he’s made a great success of it-a failed mission, then a decaying church that’s in danger of closure, full of aging and decrepit parishioners.”

  “Nathan,” said Vic, taken aback, “you actually sound as if you’re jealous! I’d never have thought it.”

  He looked at her for a long moment, then said, “It’s more guilt than jealousy, I’m afraid. At least he made an effort to do something for someone, poor bastard, while the rest of us just grew fat and content and more blind by the day. I used to tell myself that do gooding was just as self-serving, but I’m not sure I can swallow that anymore.”

  “I wouldn’t have thought you’d make a very good cynic.”

  “Thanks.” He smiled at her. “Perhaps your good opinion means I have some hope of redemption.”

  “What about Daphne? Did she get a case of middle-aged tunnel vision, as well?”

  “Daphne?” Nathan tilted his head to one side as he thought. “I’m afraid I couldn’t say, really. I never had much contact with Daphne after college. She’s certainly been outwardly successful, though.”

  “But you said-”

  “It was Lydia and Daphne who stayed close. And I must say I wondered even then if Daphne only put up with the rest of us for Lydia’s sake. It was Daphne who was most privy to Lydia’s work, especially in the later years.”

  “But I interviewed her.” Vic slid her feet to the floor with an outraged thump. “From the way she talked, you’d have thought they’d hardly seen one another since college, a nodding-acquaintances-in-the-street sort of thing. And there’s no record in Lydia’s papers, except for the occasional mention in her letters to her mother-”

  “Daphne’s a very private person, as was Lydia. When Lydia died, Daphne asked me to return all the letters she’d written to her over the years. I saw no reason not to.”

  After a moment, Vic realized she was gaping and snapped her mouth shut. “But couldn’t you have… But what about-”

  “Literary posterity?” Nathan supplied helpfully. “I rather thought that the wishes of the living people involved came first.”

  Vic stared at him for a moment, then gave a deflated sigh and rubbed her cheekbones with the tips of her fingers. “You’re right, of course. You couldn’t in good conscience have done anything else.” She shook her head. “What’s happened to me? Am I turning into some sort of dreadful vulture?”

  Nathan grinned at her. “Next thing you know you’ll be applying for a job on The Sun.”

  “God forbid I should come to that,” Vic said, smiling back in spite of herself. “But, oh, Nathan, I was so ignorant when I took this on. I actually thought that biography was an academic and critical pursuit-can you imagine that? But it’s as much fiction as any novel. How else can you create a whole person out of the bits and pieces we leave behind? And where do you draw a morally defensible line as far as privacy is concerned, for both the living and the dead?”

  “I don’t know, my dear,” said Nathan, all trace of levity vanishing. “But I trust your judgment. And I think if you are going to be happy with yourself, you’re going to have to trust your judgment, too. And don’t be afraid to follow your instincts, else you might end up fat and self-satisfied. What was it that Rupert Brooke advocated to his friends? That they should all live together in licentious freedom on an island, then kill themselves when they reached middle age?”

  “You’re not fat or self-satisfied.”

  “Vic-”

  She interrupted him, intent on following her train of thought. “All right, then, what am I missing about Daphne? In Adam, I caught the occasional glimpse of what Lydia must have seen, but I couldn’t imagine Daphne had ever been anything but a middle-aged and very proper headmistress.”

  “For starters, Daphne was anything but proper,” said Nathan with a glint of amusement. “And she was gorgeous. They both were, but in different ways. Daphne could have posed for any number of mythical or biblical paintings-you know, Rape of Lucretia sort of thing. She had that timeless, feminine, corn goddess quality, all heavy breasts and flowing copper hair.” He paused, then said more slowly, “While Lydia-there was something more androgynous about Lydia, with her slender body and her triangular, almost feline little face-but she was no less appealing for that. And she certainly made up for any sexual aggressiveness that Daphne lacked,” he added, as if it were an afterthought.

  Frowning, Vic said, “But I thought… that it was always you and Daphne. And Adam and Lydia. I mean…”

  “Are you trying to be tactful, Vic?” Nathan asked, the veiled amusement evolving into a wicked grin. “I’d never have thought it of you.”

  She felt herself blushing and said defiantly, “All right, then. Are you telling me that you slept with them both?”

  “You must remember that this was, after all, the early sixties, and that we th
ought we had invented it all.” His tone was still teasing, but the laughter had gone from his eyes. “It all seemed so daring and liberated, and we were so smug with it.”

  “You don’t sound as if you enjoyed it much.”

  “I was… what? Nineteen? Twenty? I’m not sure enjoyment is the operative word with males at that age. It’s a bit more basic than that.”

  Vic tried to imagine Nathan as he had been then, but his presence now was too real, too strong. She found the thought of him making love to Daphne and Lydia surprisingly arousing, and found also that it gave her an odd sense of connection to the two women. She would have to see Daphne again. And she would certainly have to revise her picture of Lydia’s university days, which up until now had been gleaned mostly from Lydia’s early poems and the oh-so-innocent letters to her mother. “Nathan,” she said as she slid from her chair and positioned herself at his feet, her chin resting on his knee, “tell me what it was really like.”

  He stroked her hair. “Maybe when you’re older.”

  “No, seriously.” She looked up at him. “I need to know.”

  “Seriously,” he countered, “I will. But not tonight. It’s getting late and I’m afraid you’re going to turn into a pumpkin.”

  “Not until you’ve taken off my glass slippers,” Vic said, and smiled.

  Newnham

  29 April 1963

  Dear Mummy,

  Oh, glorious, glorious red-letter day. Now I truly understand the expression for the first time.

  Flying back from afternoon lectures with the sun shining and the east wind nipping my face, there was the post in my box in the JCR. Sorting the letters as I climbed my staircase, I saw the familiar envelope at the bottom of the stack.

  There is a necessary ritual for these things. The sanctuary of my room, and the putting away of books, and the making of a cup of tea, and then the paper knife. I saved the magazine’s envelope till last-I always save them till last-and opened it with only half my attention. I was thinking of the paper I’m writing on some obscure eighteenth-century poets, and doing a fairly good job of ignoring the knot that always forms in my stomach, more dread than hope. But finally, I slit the envelope with razor neatness, unfolded the very ordinary letter, and carefully smoothed out the creases, and had no further excuse for delay.

  “What an odd rejection,” I thought as I read, then had to read it over twice more before the words penetrated.

  I’ve sold not just one poem, but three! And to Granta, no less. ‘The Huntsman,’ and ‘The Last Supper,’ and ‘Solstice.’ And they like the English myth series (’Huntsman,’ ‘Solstice’) so much that they want to see the rest.

  How is it possible to feel numb and ecstatic at the same time? Haven’t told anyone yet, not even Daphne, as I wanted you to be the first to know.

  I realize you’ve been concerned for me these last few months, but I seem to have got over the sticky patch, and the sale of the poems confirms to me that I have been going in the right direction all along. I have to admit I had doubts this last winter, wondering whether I had the courage and the stamina to succeed as a poet, and the truly awful thing about it was not being able to imagine doing anything else.

  But it seems that I have made a beginning, and now I must live up to it.

  Your loving

  Lydia

  The front door creaked and Vic looked up from her desk, listening. She glanced at the clock. It must have been the wind, she thought-she had half an hour yet before Kit should be home from school.

  When the second supervision of her Monday afternoon schedule had canceled due to flu, she’d taken advantage of the opportunity to come home early and put in an extra hour’s work. She’d cleared a space on her desk and laid Lydia’s manuscript pages out like pieces in a jigsaw puzzle, shuffling and reshuffling the order of the poems.

  That they were good she had no doubt-brilliant, even-a final step in the evolution of Lydia’s work. The poems reached back, integrating elements from her early, mythically themed poetry with the later confessional style, and in doing so achieved a new balance. And when these missing poems were added to the ones published in her last volume, the book gained a wholeness, a sort of unity not evident in her work before.

  Vic would see that the book was published as it should have been, a testament to Lydia’s talent.

  But there was something more, she thought as she swapped two of the poems again, a feeling that there was a sequence, a pattern to them that kept shifting just out of her mind’s reach. Perhaps if she read them once more, in a slightly different order-

  The door slammed, Kit’s signature, and a moment later she heard the thud of his backpack hitting the floor outside her study. “Hi, sweetheart,” she said, not looking up. “How was school?”

  No answer. She turned and saw Kit standing in the doorway, face set in a sullen scowl. Although he suffered from the occasional preadolescent mood, he was normally a good-natured child, and particularly boisterous when let out of school for the day. “What’s the matter, love?” Vic asked, concerned. “Are you all right?”

  He shrugged and didn’t speak.

  All right, thought Vic, try another tactic. She took off her glasses and stretched. “Bad day?” she asked mildly.

  Another shrug. He wouldn’t meet her eyes.

  “Me, too,” she said as if he’d answered. “Maybe we’d both feel better if we took a walk. What do you say?”

  This time she thought the shrug looked a bit more positive.

  “Want a snack first?” she asked, and received a sharp, negative head shake. A bad sign-he was usually ravenous after school. “Then let me get my coat.”

  She heard him stomp through the kitchen as she stopped in the loo, then the back door slammed. Oh, Lord, she thought, leaning against the sink for a moment. One was never prepared for these things, and she had had a particularly bad day already. Lost lecture notes this morning, then an hysterical student, and to top it off, a furious row with Darcy after lunch.

  The argument had started, of all the silly things, over whose turn it was to use the photocopier.

  Vic had taken a stack of books into the photocopier room, intending to make handouts of some selected poems for her lecture on the Romantics, then had to run back to her office to retrieve a volume left on her desk.

  When she’d returned to the photocopier a few moments later, she’d found her books moved and Darcy firmly in position over the humming machine.

  “Oh, so sorry. Were those yours?” he’d said. “One should really be more careful about leaving one’s property untended. So much petty theft these days, even the hallowed halls of the English Faculty might not be sacrosanct.”

  “You knew perfectly well that they were mine,” she said, exasperated. “And no one in their right mind would steal secondhand copies of Keats and Shelley.” She eyed the stack of papers in the machine’s In tray with dismay. “Couldn’t you let me run these few things, Darcy? I need them for tomorrow morning’s lecture, and I’ve got a supervision in ten minutes. After all, I was here first.”

  His presence seemed suffocatingly large in the small room, and she could smell the beer on his breath, no doubt the result of a rather liquid pub lunch. He still wore his gown, and as he leaned against the photocopier with his arms folded, he looked like a dissipated King Lear. Or Olivier playing Lear might be more like it, she thought. There was always something a bit overly theatrical about Darcy.

  Smiling, he said, “Perhaps if one were better prepared one wouldn’t be in such a panic.”

  The fury that seared through her caught her completely by surprise, and she found herself suddenly shouting at him, “Don’t you dare criticize me, Darcy. You’ve no right. And you had no right to undermine me to Adam Lamb. You knew how important it was to me to see him.”

  “My dear Victoria.” Darcy raised his brows and looked down his rather fleshy nose at her. “I have a perfect right to express my professional opinion to my friends, and I am not responsible for the
success or failure of your little projects.”

  “Don’t patronize me,” she hissed back, making a belated effort to keep her voice down. “Of course you’re not responsible for my work, but you’ve no right to deliberately sabotage it just because it doesn’t fit into your archaic little definition of academic respectability. Did you say the same sort of things about me to Daphne Morris that you said to Adam?”

  Oooh,” said Darcy with pursed lips, mocking her. “On a first-name basis with Adam now, are we? How chummy for you.” Coldly, he added, “For your information, I haven’t seen Daphne since Lydia’s funeral, and I have no intention of doing so in the foreseeable future. I quite despise the woman. I’d have thought the two of you would have got on quite well.”

  While Vic struggled to think of a suitably stinging retort, Darcy had scooped up his papers from the photocopier’s trays and turned towards the door. “Take all the time you want,” he said sweetly, over his shoulder. “I shan’t need my copies until next week’s lectures.”

  Just thinking about it made Vic flush painfully. Darcy Eliot could be quite charming-she’d even seen him behave considerately to other staff members on occasion-so why did she let the man reduce her to such childish behavior? She had meant to talk to him about Adam, meant to do it in a civilized, rational way, in a place and time of her own choosing. But somehow she and Darcy always seemed to be at cross-purposes with one another, and their constant infighting did her reputation no good in the department. In future, she’d have to make more effort to find some sort of common ground, difficult as it might be.

  With a sigh, she splashed some cold water on her face, ran a brush through her hair, and went out to meet Kit in the garden.

  She found him at the gate, scuffing his feet in the pile of last year’s leaves she’d been meaning to rake up. He still wouldn’t meet her eyes, but when she said, “The river path?” he nodded.

  Once through the gate, they automatically turned left, towards Cambridge. Vic put her mind in neutral as they swung along in silence, trusting that the exercise and companionship would eventually loosen Kit’s tongue. Now she found herself glad of the excuse to be out, for it was her favorite sort of day-soft, still, and damp, the world a comforting and uniform gray. She had no objection to sunshine; in fact, she liked it as well as the next person after a long wet spell, but clear days didn’t exhilarate her in the same way. Gloomy, her mother had disapprovingly called her as a child, but Vic didn’t see how she could help something as innate as a love of rainy weather.