A Pure Clear Light. Madeleine John St.
to believe that he would stumble across the detail of the story as long as he just kept on walking. There would be – say – a house, in a row of others like it, in which the door would open: a woman would come out, and stand there for a moment at the top of the steps, uncertain –
directed by
SIMON BEAUFORT
and he might have found the house, the row of houses, seen the door open and the woman who came out and stood at the top of the steps – stunned by the sudden magnitude of the motorway traffic’s roar – for a moment, uncertain, so soon as the end, say, of the first week of his solitude; might have begun to see the details of that story coming, slowly, then faster, into focus, might even have sat down and begun actually to write something (it was a long time since he’d actually written something: he could remember, just, what it felt like to write). He might have done all this were it not that, tragically, or perhaps fortunately – he couldn’t, one couldn’t, say which – the dinner invitations started to come in.
‘Oh Simon you poor old thing. A whole month! Come round for a meal one night – let’s see, what about Thursday?’
‘Oh Simon I hear you’re a grass widower – poor Simon! Why don’t you pop round here for a square meal one night – are you doing anything on Tuesday?’
For as everyone knows, men can, but don’t, look after themselves when their wives are away, and it is one’s duty – and, it must be admitted, one’s pleasure – to give them a dinner or two. Poor Simon! He even found himself sharing the honours one evening with poor Alex – poor Alex Maclise, Claire being away – at the compassionate dinner table of the Ainsworths. ‘I thought I might as well kill two birds,’ said Lizzie to Alf. ‘Poor old things.’
And it was at one such dinner table – this one, as it happened, in Camden Town – that Simon met a woman called Gillian Selkirk. The name alone ought to have been enough to warn him off: as Louisa Carrington was, much later, to observe to Robert of that ilk, ‘It writhes. And so I dare say does she.’
Flora opened the shutters and looked down beyond the terrace, where Thomas was playing with some Lego, to the pool. Nell was sitting on the edge, dangling her feet in the water; Janey in a bikini was lying in the sun on a chaise longue. I should shout down and warn her not to stay in the sun too long, thought Flora.
She wondered vaguely where the Hunters could be, and then remembered that they had all – William and Denzil having found at the last minute urgent reasons of their own for doing so – gone into the village.
Flora had already had words with Janey on the subject of William Hunter, who was a year older than Janey and ought therefore to have been treated with the respect due to equals; but Janey would have none of it. ‘He’s a dork,’ she told Flora, when upbraided for acting too much the little madam.
‘He’s nothing of the kind!’ exclaimed Flora. ‘He’s a very nice, and I may say very intelligent young man. And if his manners weren’t so good he wouldn’t put up with your airs for five seconds flat.’
‘There you are, then,’ said Janey. ‘He’s a dork. I’m not saying he can help it. All the boys at that school are.’
‘What could you possibly know about all the boys at that school,’ said Flora. ‘You, at your age.’
‘Everyone knows about that school,’ said Janey. ‘It’s absolutely famous for dorks; it always has been.’
‘That school, miss,’ said Flora, ‘is one of the very best and most ancient not only in this country but in the world.’
‘There you are then,’ said Janey. ‘Dork City.’
‘If none of them will ever want to have anything at all to do with you, ever, said Flora, ‘it will serve you right.’
‘Suits me,’ said Janey.
‘I’ll remember you said that,’ said Flora. ‘Now go away, and be nice to William. Just to prove how superior you truly are. We all know now how superior you can make yourself look; the point has been made more than adequately. Let’s see how genuinely superior you are.’ Her request was granted, but she came soon enough to wish that it had not been; that she had never made it; that Janey might not be so truly, one way or another, superior.
‘Of course,’ Janey said, accommodatingly, to her mother, ‘they’re probably all utterly dorky at that age. From what I’ve seen so far.’
‘Possibly,’ said Flora. ‘If you insist on seeing them in that light. To me they just seem nice, if slightly awkward, well-meaning young men.’
Janey shrieked. ‘Men!’ she cried. ‘I wouldn’t call them men!’
Flora had to laugh. ‘Well, whatever,’ she said. ‘I mean, you can’t call them boys, it’s too infantile.’
‘No, they’re not boys, and they’re not men, they’re dorks,’ said Janey.
Flora was just about to shout out and warn Janey out of the sun when she saw two people whom Janey would unhesitatingly have termed dorks bicycling up the road. Dorks as they might be, they were now turning in at the driveway, and cycling towards the house. Flora stood watching, fascinated. Dorks they might in Janey’s estimation be, dorks they might truly be: but brave new world, that had such dorks in’t!
They were, as far as she could see from here, identical twins, and they were surpassingly beautiful: tall – albeit still evidently adolescent – slender, fair-haired and graceful. Having arrived at the piscine and sighted Janey on her chaise longue, they stopped cycling and stood lankily astride their machines. They looked at each other and shrugged interrogatively and one of them then spoke. ‘Mademoiselle, s’il vous plait!’
Janey, aware for the first time of the intrusion, opened her eyes and sat up, staring, in a passable representation of the startled faun. ‘Qu’est-ce que vous voulez?’ she said.
‘Ah!’ exclaimed her interlocutor; ‘you’re English!’ His companion smiled pleasantly. ‘Do forgive us,’ said he, ‘for disturbing you, but we’re looking for one William Hunter, whom we believe to be staying somewhere hereabouts. We thought this might be the house, but it seems we’re mistaken. We’ll leave you in peace. So sorry for the intrusion. As you were.’
They were on the point of pedalling away again when the astonished Janey found her voice. ‘No, wait,’ she said. ‘This is the right house. William’s just gone to the village. He’ll probably be back soon. You could wait, if you like.’
Flora continued to stand just inside the window, where she could not easily be seen from below, and went on watching, enthralled.
‘Shall we do that?’ said one of the youths to the other.
‘Or shall we go into the village and try to find him there?’ that other replied. They turned their identical blue-eyed gazes full upon the still-overwhelmed Janey who remained seated on the chaise longue, her legs now folded up beneath her, staring at them in dumb entrancement. They were indeed – it could now quite clearly be seen – identical twins; their wonderful beauty made this phenomenon even more than usually startling.
‘What do you think?’ one of them asked her.
‘We’ll do whatever you think best,’ said the other.
Flora watched as Janey struggled for composure. Not for anything would she have interrupted this scene, momentous in her daughter’s life; not for almost anything