(they opened! They poured down blessings!), it remained there, as on many a subsequent night, to rust even more.
Chucking it down at half-past two in the morning. I would get drenched (said Mandy and Diana). I would catchmy death (said Miss Rita). Mr Silvester was shrewdly silent. And at last she said it. At last we stepped into each other’s limelight. And I dare swear that after we left, Miss Rita and the girls and even Mr Silvester and assorted unimpressible staff gave a little round of relieved applause. A midsummer night. No sylvan sorcery, no moonlit magic. But that night a wand was waved. I forgot I was Hamlet. I was a puckish soul. The world was no longer weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable, and for months I would not plot a single act of further reprisal against my wicked stepfather.
These things are meant to be. Jack shall have Jill; nought shall go ill. I might have lived thenceforward happily ever after. (But what does “ever” mean?) Her best line, her most unforgettable line, delivered with such casualness but with such depths of promise:
“Share my taxi?”
8
The little ironwork gate into this garden, which can only be opened by those honoured with a key, has a distinctive and now easily recognisable repertoire of sounds. There is first the exploratory scraping and clicking of the key in the lock—not a sound that carries far but one easily picked up by the ear if you are used to opening the gate yourself (the mechanism is temperamental and demands coaxing). Then there is the mixture of rattles and squeals with which the gate swings open; then, after a pause, the vibrant, percussive jingle with which it returns on its sprung hinge.
A tinkling bell, specially made for the purpose, would be no more effective in announcing someone’s coming. Thus I lift my head, I am prepared: though her arrival is not unexpected—she has visited me now, here under the bean tree, for several days in succession. Nonetheless, as the gate gives out its warning, I take these pages (I am writing this later—days later) from the tray on my knee and slip them into my briefcase. Then I take my notes on the Pearce manuscripts from the briefcase and pretend to be working on them.
She walks towards me across the lawn with that by now familiar gait and that soft and bulging straw basket in her hand. One of the disquieting thoughts that beset me in this curious post-mortal condition of mine is that everything might be beginning again. This
is
my second life, my reincarnation. Perhaps there is life and life again, always and for ever. Perhaps the world has been reinventedfor me in its full potential. This is the Garden of Eden. And here comes Eve.
But no, she is not Eve. And nothing is going to happen, not this time around, even if Potter is far away at a conference in Chicago. She is more like one of those pitying and piteous women of medieval romance—yes, that is more her style. And this garden, with its locked gate which only the favoured may open, is like one of those semi-allegorical gardens into which the Lady of the Castle steals (unknown to her absent lord) to solace some wounded knight-errant (ha!). Which, with a good deal of twisting and stretching of the imagination, is not unlike our situation.
A brief history of the Potters, Michael and Katherine. Part fact and part surmise, just like my reconstruction of the life of Matthew Pearce. Just, if it comes to it, like my reassembly, here in this afterworld, of my own life. A brief history of the Potters—pieced together from hearsay and conjecture and from what Katherine herself, in circumstances rather different from these decorous meetings under the bean tree, has told me …
Picture a scene in the office of Michael Potter, university lecturer at the University of X, it doesn’t matter where. Year of our Lord, 1970. Potter is twenty-seven. Katherine is nineteen. And it is Katherine who has sought this not-so-common cross-disciplinary meeting between a lecturer
Chucking it down at half-past two in the morning. I would get drenched (said Mandy and Diana). I would catchmy death (said Miss Rita). Mr Silvester was shrewdly silent. And at last she said it. At last we stepped into each other’s limelight. And I dare swear that after we left, Miss Rita and the girls and even Mr Silvester and assorted unimpressible staff gave a little round of relieved applause. A midsummer night. No sylvan sorcery, no moonlit magic. But that night a wand was waved. I forgot I was Hamlet. I was a puckish soul. The world was no longer weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable, and for months I would not plot a single act of further reprisal against my wicked stepfather.
These things are meant to be. Jack shall have Jill; nought shall go ill. I might have lived thenceforward happily ever after. (But what does “ever” mean?) Her best line, her most unforgettable line, delivered with such casualness but with such depths of promise:
“Share my taxi?”
8
The little ironwork gate into this garden, which can only be opened by those honoured with a key, has a distinctive and now easily recognisable repertoire of sounds. There is first the exploratory scraping and clicking of the key in the lock—not a sound that carries far but one easily picked up by the ear if you are used to opening the gate yourself (the mechanism is temperamental and demands coaxing). Then there is the mixture of rattles and squeals with which the gate swings open; then, after a pause, the vibrant, percussive jingle with which it returns on its sprung hinge.
A tinkling bell, specially made for the purpose, would be no more effective in announcing someone’s coming. Thus I lift my head, I am prepared: though her arrival is not unexpected—she has visited me now, here under the bean tree, for several days in succession. Nonetheless, as the gate gives out its warning, I take these pages (I am writing this later—days later) from the tray on my knee and slip them into my briefcase. Then I take my notes on the Pearce manuscripts from the briefcase and pretend to be working on them.
She walks towards me across the lawn with that by now familiar gait and that soft and bulging straw basket in her hand. One of the disquieting thoughts that beset me in this curious post-mortal condition of mine is that everything might be beginning again. This
is
my second life, my reincarnation. Perhaps there is life and life again, always and for ever. Perhaps the world has been reinventedfor me in its full potential. This is the Garden of Eden. And here comes Eve.
But no, she is not Eve. And nothing is going to happen, not this time around, even if Potter is far away at a conference in Chicago. She is more like one of those pitying and piteous women of medieval romance—yes, that is more her style. And this garden, with its locked gate which only the favoured may open, is like one of those semi-allegorical gardens into which the Lady of the Castle steals (unknown to her absent lord) to solace some wounded knight-errant (ha!). Which, with a good deal of twisting and stretching of the imagination, is not unlike our situation.
A brief history of the Potters, Michael and Katherine. Part fact and part surmise, just like my reconstruction of the life of Matthew Pearce. Just, if it comes to it, like my reassembly, here in this afterworld, of my own life. A brief history of the Potters—pieced together from hearsay and conjecture and from what Katherine herself, in circumstances rather different from these decorous meetings under the bean tree, has told me …
Picture a scene in the office of Michael Potter, university lecturer at the University of X, it doesn’t matter where. Year of our Lord, 1970. Potter is twenty-seven. Katherine is nineteen. And it is Katherine who has sought this not-so-common cross-disciplinary meeting between a lecturer
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