The Lost Life Read online

  Without as much being said, Catherine was given to understand, very early in her employment, that such discretion was crucial, in case this woman, this weak woman, who held on to things longer than she had any right to, intruded upon their special time together. For, although she was weak, Catherine was given to understand through the urgency that Miss Hale radiated when speaking of these visits from her special friend, she was, this woman, cunning, as the weak and selfish inevitably are, and not to be under-estimated. She follows him, this woman, plagues and turns up just when he thinks he is alone. It is not an exaggeration, Miss Hale had suggested, to say there are even times when, with some justification, he can lay claim to being haunted, her friend.

  ‘You may even know of him,’ she once murmured, with the faintest of smiles, not even a smile but a hint that one was not far away, a suggestion that when Catherine was out of the room and she was alone, Miss Hale might allow herself a smile, and a vaguely satisfied one at that.

  It was said in such a way that implied her friend was known to the public and that she may very well have seen his photograph in the newspaper, or perhaps not. And then, Miss Hale had dropped the matter, as if having gone too far, become too loose in her talk. For what was noteworthy to Catherine about this particular remark was that Miss Hale was not simply passing on information important in assuring that these visits were treated with discretion, but almost (and that shadow of a smile had suggested as much) in the manner of someone passing on a piece of gossip. Passing on a piece of gossip because they just can’t help themselves, and, almost simultaneously, reprimanding themselves. For with that hint of a smile came the shadow of a boast. And this was what was so noteworthy about the moment: that Miss Hale was not a boastful woman and yet she had almost let one slip from her. A slip that would, in Catherine’s estimation (as, indeed, it would in Miss Hale’s) have been beneath the lady.

  Nonetheless, when Catherine arrived one morning early in the summer to begin her tasks, she observed the tall, stooped figure of Miss Hale’s friend standing by the drawing-room window of the main house, and she couldn’t help but stare. She did indeed know him, and when Miss Hale saw this, Catherine noticed, once more, the caged bird of a smile fluttering beneath her control.

  But she kept all this to herself (until later when she told Daniel, for she never imagined that discretion excluded him). And on each occasion, the two or three times that the matter came up in conversation with Miss Hale, Catherine nodded, making it perfectly clear that she understood everything. That discretion was guaranteed. That her loyalties could not be doubted, Miss Hale’s confidences were in safe hands and her trust would be returned because Catherine was, if not in fact then at least in spirit, one of Miss Hale’s girls.

  And so, here they are, Miss Hale and her friend, no more than twenty feet or so away from them. Catherine and Daniel are perfectly still, two children hidden in the leaves, desperate not to be found out. It is only the second time she has seen Miss Hale’s friend. He is tall, not stooped this time, his shoulders back as he stares ahead up the pathway, his stance as formal as the neatly folded white handkerchief in the breast pocket of his coat. Then, slowly, as if to unheard music, Miss Hale and her friend emerge from under the arch and stroll slowly up the central pathway of the rose garden.

  They are solemn. Happy, but solemn. And it is this very solemnity that draws Catherine in. As they pass by directly in front of them, she has no fear of being discovered, for they seem to belong to another time and place altogether — a time completely outside that which Catherine and Daniel are experiencing. They are at once real and ghosts from another age. They glide by in front of her as if inhabiting another garden in another time. And, without knowing exactly why, from the bits and pieces of their history that Miss Hale has offered up in conversation from time to time, Catherine is sure that they are enacting something they never did, once upon a time, when this act was there to be performed, but which, for one reason or another, never was. And it is possibly for this reason that they seem to inhabit, as they now approach the end of the pathway at the foot of the house, another time. There is a then-and-now manner to the way they move through the garden, a grace, a solemnity that belongs to another age, and implied in it all an order of feeling that may well have gone out with the horse and buggy — an old-world couple in an age of uncertainty, with its constant newspaper talk of war and revolution and choosing sides.

  They turn at the top of the path and face the garden. He removes his cap and turns to her. They hold hands. He speaks softly, words meant for two people and two people only. And the moment he is finished, his eyes raised in the manner of a question, she nods. He replaces his cap, reaches into his coat pocket and fishes out a tin of some sort, like a tobacco tin, from which he produces a small golden object. And it is then, while Catherine is absorbed in the spectacle of Miss Hale and her special friend, who now face the garden as if facing an assembly or a congregation, that she hears laughter. Low laughter, muffled laughter. But laughter nonetheless. And she is not sure at first where it is coming from, for she feels as though she has been hypnotised by the spectacle, by the day and its sleepy heat, and is only now shaking the sleep off her and returning to the here and now. Drawn back to reality by this laughter that, at first, she can’t place. Then, as she snaps free of the spell the garden has cast upon her, she turns to see the curved, sneering, laughing lips of Daniel beside her. She could kill him. This is no time for laughter. Not even happy laughter, let alone the sniggering laughter of the Daniels of this world. Her heart has gone out to Miss Hale. Her heart has gone out to the Miss Hale she knows about from the scraps of personal history that have been offered up to her (how they met in a garden in Boston and parted in a garden, and are now, for all she knows, reclaiming their garden), and her heart has gone out to Miss Hale in the same way that it goes out to a paper character in a novel, a character who is travelling the winding path to what may or may not be a happy ending, depending on the whims of the novelist and the nature of the characters he has created. Please, please, her whole attitude, her whole pose suggests, let them be happy. Let nothing go wrong. They must be happy. But just as her heart went out to Miss Hale, this laughter broke out beside her, the spell was broken, and the very thing she dreaded became a possibility. For what has only just preceded his laughter is the longed-for moment when the man declares his love, the woman accepts, and happiness is theirs. While Catherine’s heart was going out to Miss Hale, her special friend had taken that small golden object from the tin, which Catherine knew with absolute certainty was a ring, and was poised to place it on the finger of Miss Hale.

  But as he does this, laughter erupts from Daniel, and Catherine’s palm slaps hard against his mouth, sealing it and silencing him, while signalling with her eyes that she would dearly love to kill him for this. And with her hand across his mouth, she turns back to the garden path to see if the laughter has intruded upon the solemnity of the scene and notes, straight away, that Miss Hale’s friend has swung round, his eyes like those of an eagle, staring right at them, and she is certain they are about to be discovered, and shame will follow when Miss Hale sees that the intrusion of sniggering laughter came from one of her girls, who was not worthy of the confidences entrusted in her, after all.

  They remain silent and still, the eagle eyes of Miss Hale’s friend on their part of the garden, his hand still poised in mid-air, the unwanted tension that Daniel’s laughter brought to the moment still there. But soon the eyes of Miss Hale’s friend return to her and smile, a smile that Catherine can see even from the distance of the bushes. As the tension breaks, his hand descends and he places the ring on her finger. He then produces a second ring from his coat pocket for her to place on his finger. She does this swiftly, and happiness is restored. With a deep sigh, Catherine drops her hand from Daniel’s mouth and turns to him, shaking her head, only to see that he is still grinning. But she also sees that his eyes have a slightly glazed look. And this is when she remembers the beers they d
rank with their sandwiches — how he had drunk all of his bottle, for the walk was thirsty work, and then half of hers (as he always does), and she wonders if this particular local brew is not stronger than they thought. Wonders if half of this is the beer laughing along with the prankster, and ponders the possibility of some little devil having been let loose in Daniel’s brain, intent on shaking things up.

  Daniel knows who they are, this couple, because Catherine has told him all she knows. Catherine, actually, talks quite a lot about this Miss Hale. And she talks about her with great enthusiasm, as if she had not so much been admitted but introduced to some secret society. Or is it just that she talks about her the way a middle-class heroine in a Jane Austen novel might talk about Lady So-and-So who has condescended to take her into her confidence? He can’t make up his mind, but he doesn’t like the sway that this Miss Hale has over his Catherine. And, of course, he knows all about Miss Hale’s special friend (their very language, the way they talk about each other, Miss Hale, her ‘special friend’ and so on, grates in itself, the way code — ‘some people’ and ‘certain types’ — in the mouths of town gossips does). He knows about this special friend. Who doesn’t?

  Not having heard of her friend is a bit like not having heard of Westminster Abbey. And he’s got a face like the Abbey too, the way he looks down on you in those larger-than-life photographs on bookshop walls; his great nose, and great eyes. And they talk about him at Daniel’s college at the university as if he were Westminster Abbey. Mr Eliot says this, and Mr Eliot says that (mind you, Daniel counters them by saying that Marx says this and Marx says that). And this whole Mr Eliot talk, too, like it’s all some gentlemen’s club, a club for which they sign themselves up (don’t bother applying). No, Miss Hale’s special friend is nothing more than a jumped-up snob who’s got a special way with mumbo-jumbo that everyone seems to swallow whole. But what Daniel really hates is that underneath all the mumbo-jumbo, what he is really saying is wouldn’t it be nice to get back to the middle ages? Wouldn’t it be nice to get back a bit of order in the crumbling world, eh? Yes, underneath all that fancy, dazzling mumbo-jumbo, this special friend of Miss Hale’s would dearly love to see the three-field system back, right out there, just beyond the rose garden, the empty pools and the estate grounds, out there in the fields they’ve just walked over, where Daniel’s stride had so resolutely proclaimed to all manner of animal and vegetable life that the world belongs to everybody. And a select few, like the stuffy few in the gentlemen’s club they call English Literature, watching over it all, making sure everything runs smoothly, and the muck stay in the fields where they belong, with the consolation of God just a little above their bowed heads at Evensong, or whenever it is that the muck bow their heads in thanks for all they’ve received. Yes, underneath all the fancy mumbo-jumbo, that’s what Miss Hale’s friend (and all their other like-minded friends) gets teary-eyed about having lost. And he smiles at this, tossed between the impulse to laugh again and the impulse to put a bomb underneath the whole shooting match.

  But his smile fades in the face of Catherine’s anger, his jaw still feeling the impact of her hand as she slapped it against his laughing mouth and silenced him. Giving him the once-over (and there’s no mistaking what the look means), she returns her gaze to the scene in the rose garden in time to see Miss Hale and her special friend slowly moving back up the path through which they entered the garden, holding hands, happiness theirs. Then, halfway down the path, they stop and kneel by a bed of white roses, and it is then that he removes his cap and places it on the lawn beside the hedge and takes the small tobacco tin from his pocket, for she can see it clearly now (can even recognise, from the colouring and lettering, the brand of pipe tobacco it once contained). He removes it slowly, with a deliberation that suggests they had agreed on this before coming here, and takes the flower from his lapel, she from her dress, and together they place the roses in the tobacco tin. He then, with obvious reluctance, takes the ring from his finger and places it in the tin with the roses. Finally, he takes a small piece of folded paper and places that in the tin along with the other things. Then he snaps it shut, rises quickly, and returns with a small branch fallen on the ground nearby, and digs a hole in the rose bed, just deep enough and wide enough to take the small tobacco tin. He lowers the tin while Miss Hale watches and covers it in earth, smoothing the surface. As he does, they both suddenly look up, back towards the house (as do Catherine and Daniel) as a motor car, with loud disrespectful urgency, enters along the gravel driveway, and the sound of a motor car’s doors, opening then slamming, disturbs the stillness of the day. Together they quickly level the soil so that it gives the appearance of never having been turned, then, mindful of the driveway and the possibility of prying eyes, they leave, almost hastily, pausing for a brief, reflective moment under the arch, then disappearing back along the aisle. His cap remains by the flower bed where the tin is buried, the soil by the hedge having clearly been recently dug up, despite their best efforts to hide this.

  The garden belongs to Catherine and Daniel again, but it is not the same garden. And there is this motor car in the driveway. But whose? Should they stay where they are and wait? Part of Catherine would still dearly love to strangle Daniel, for his eyes still retain the disturbing look of someone with the devil let loose inside him. Be it the beer or the prankster, his capacity for the odd, crazy act is well known throughout the town. Nothing serious, nothing even wayward, just a tendency for a bit of skylarking. He’s got ‘go’, they’ll tell you in the town, this Daniel, then nod, puzzled, as if not sure just where his ‘go’ will take him.

  And it is while Catherine is considering this and gauging the intensity of the devil in him that he suddenly kisses her, a big kiss, smack on the lips (for, despite everything, he is head over heels in love with Catherine, and she knows it), and in the manner of a mission, undertaken on her behalf, he bursts from the bushes and out into the open, now deserted, rose garden. Catherine, still crouching, half a smile on her face from the kiss, watches him, fascinated, wondering what on earth he might be up to. It’s for her; she knows this. He does things for her, unexpectedly. Should she say she loves the look of someone’s peaches, ripening on a tree under the summer sun, he brings one to her. And he has throughout the summer. Peaches and plums. And when she says that’s theft — he’ll be arrested and transported — he tells her in the manner of the teacher he will more than likely become that the peach existed in what we call a state of nature, and by investing the peach with his labour, he made it his to do what he likes with, and he chooses to give it to her. The peach was, he’d say with a grin, up for grabs.

  And so she watches him, fascinated as to what he will bring back for her (roses, pink and white, she imagines) that they will pin to their shirts or simply take home as something by which to remember the day. Half dreaming, she follows his swift strides across the lawn to the flower bed, the very bed Miss Hale and her friend have just paused alongside, to the exact spot they just knelt by, and it is then that the dreamy smile drops from her face and the wonder leaves her eyes, for she knows, without doubt, what he is about to do. She rises. Bursts forth from the bushes, calling out as she does.

  ‘No. Don’t!’

  But he is too quick, too agile, and she is not even sure he heard anyway. Before she can even leave the bushes behind, he plunges his hand into the soft, freshly disturbed soil, plucks the tin from the ground and holds it aloft as if it were a prize. His gift. But maybe something more than just his gift, for she knows what he thinks of Miss Hale, her special friend and everything they stand for, and she doesn’t dismiss the possibility that even though he’s holding it up as the prize he has won for her, this might also be Daniel’s way of shaking things up a bit and getting one up on the Miss Hales and their friends of this world. Something for Catherine, yes. But something for Daniel too. As she rushes towards him, his face alight with triumph, she is ready to brain him.

  Yet, even as she acknowledges this impulse, almos
t as soon as she stops and stands in front of him, she finds herself (eyes darting from him to his prize and back) irresistibly peering into the tin as he opens it for her. And, in so doing, in surrendering to the impulse to peer into the tin, to spy upon its contents, to satisfy her curiosity, she also acknowledges that this weakness, this impulse to peer, makes her complicit. And even as she gazes upon the freshly cut roses, the gold ring that had so briefly been upon the finger of Miss Hale’s friend, and the folded piece of paper that might contain anything, she is also acknowledging that she is as bad as him. That they are jackals together. As bad as each other. But, in spite of this, even as she gazes upon the prize, she lets him have it. ‘You idiot. You great, dumb village idiot!’

  Sobered by her anger, and her censure, the devil bolts from his eyes. She takes one last look before telling him to close the tin. Then she attempts to collect herself. It is not, after all, a difficult situation, the calm Catherine inside her is saying. He has stolen the tin, but the garden is theirs, it is unoccupied, and they have, she reflects, all the time in the world to put the tin back in the ground where it belongs, cover it in soil, and smooth the surface for the second time, almost in as many minutes, in such a way as to suggest that the ground has not been disturbed and they are not jackals together after all.

  But just as this consoling thought is passing through her mind, just as the calm Catherine inside is about to save the situation, she notices the tweed cap still sitting on the lawn beside the low hedge where it was left. And no sooner does she notice the cap than she hears their voices and the sound of their feet moving swiftly up the pathway, as yet still behind the arched wall, and she knows there will be no time to put the thing back in the ground where it belongs. And, without even trying, she and Daniel rush back to the bushes from which they have only just emerged, and conceal themselves once more, Daniel still clutching the tin firmly in his hand.