On Beauty Read online

  Zora’s all-time academic fantasy was to address the faculty members of Wellington College with a barnstorming speech.

  ‘You want me to go?’

  ‘Only, only, if you felt comfortable doing that.’

  ‘Wait – a speech that I’d devised and written?’

  ‘Well, I didn’t mean an actual speech speech – but I guess as long as you knew what you wanted to –’

  ‘I mean, what are we doing,’ asked Zora loudly, ‘if we can’t extend the enormous resources of this institution to people who need it? It’s so disgusting.’

  Claire smiled. ‘You’re perfect already.’

  ‘Just me. You wouldn’t be there?’

  ‘I think it would be much more powerful if it was you speaking your own mind. I mean, what I’d really like to do is send Carl himself, but you know . . .’ said Claire, sighing. ‘Depressing as it is, the truth is these people won’t respond to an appeal to their consciences in any language other than Wellington language. And you know Wellington language, Zora. You of all people. And I don’t mean to get overly dramatic here, but when I think of Carl, I’m thinking of someone who doesn’t have a voice and who needs someone like you, who has a very powerful voice, to speak for him. I actually think it’s that important. I also think it’s a beautiful thing to do for a dispossessed person in this climate. Don’t you feel that?’

  11

  Two weeks later Wellington College closed for the Christmas recess. The snow continued. Every night unseen Wellington street workers shovelled it back from the sidewalk. After a while every road was edged with grey ice banks, some over five feet high. Jerome came home. Many dull parties followed: for the Art History Department, drinks at the President’s house, and at the Vice-President’s, at Kiki’s hospital, at Levi’s school. More than once Kiki found herself walking around the perimeters of these hot, crowded rooms, champagne in hand, hoping to see Carlene Kipps somewhere among the tinsel and the quiet black maids, circulating with their trays of shrimp. Often enough she spotted Monty, leaning against the wainscoting in one of his absurd nineteenth-century three-piece suits, with his timepiece on a chain, bombastically opinionated, and almost always eating – but Carlene was never with him. Was Carlene Kipps one of these women who promises friendship but never truly delivers it? A friendship flirt? Or was Kiki herself mistaken in her expectations? This, after all, was the month in which families began tightening and closing and sealing; from Thanksgiving to the New Year, everybody’s world contracted, day by day, into the microcosmic single festive household, each with its own rituals and obsessions, rules and dreams. You didn’t feel you could call people. They didn’t feel they could phone you. How does one cry for help from these seasonal prisons?

  And then a note arrived at the Belsey house, hand-delivered. It was from Carlene. Christmas was approaching, and Carlene felt she was behind as far as presents were concerned. She had spent another spell in bed of late, and her family had gone to New York for a short break so the children might shop and Monty attend to some of his charity work. Would Kiki think about accompanying her on a shopping trip into Boston? On a drear Saturday morning, Kiki picked up her friend in a Wellington taxi. She put Carlene in the front passenger seat and sat herself in the back, lifting her feet so she didn’t have to contend with the ice water swilling around on the floor.

  ‘Where you want?’ asked the cab driver, and when Kiki told him the name of the mall, he had not heard of it, although it was a Boston landmark. He wanted the street names.

  ‘It’s the biggest mall in town. Don’t you know the city at all?’

  ‘It not my job. You should know where you want go.’

  ‘Honey, that’s exactly your job.’

  ‘I don’t think they should be allowed to drive with poor English like that,’ complained Carlene primly, without lowering her voice.

  ‘No, it’s my fault,’ mumbled Kiki, ashamed to have started this. She sank back in her seat. The car crossed Wellington Bridge. Kiki watched a swell of birds swoop under the arch and land on the frozen river.

  ‘Are you of the opinion,’ asked Carlene worriedly, ‘that it is better to go to a lot of different shops or just to find one big shop and stick with it?’

  ‘I’m of the opinion that it’s better not to shop at all!’

  ‘You don’t like Christmas?’

  Kiki considered. ‘No, that’s not quite true. But I don’t have a feeling for it like I used to. I used to love Christmas in Florida – it was warm in Florida – but that’s not it really. My daddy was a minister and he made Christmas meaningful to me – I don’t mean in the religious sense, but he thought of it as a “hope for the best things”. That was his way of putting it. It was a kind of reminder of what we might be. Now it feels like you just get presents.’

  ‘And you don’t like presents.’

  ‘I don’t want any more things, no.’

  ‘Well, I’m still putting you on my list,’ said Carlene brightly, and from the front seat waved a little white notebook. Then, more seriously, she said, ‘I would like to give you a gift, as a thank you. I’ve been rather lonely. And you’ve thought to visit me and spend a little time with me . . . even though I’m not much fun at the moment.’

  ‘Don’t be crazy. It’s a pleasure to see you. I wish it were more often. Now take my damn name off that list.’

  But the name stayed on, although no present was written beside it. They tramped though an enormous, chilly mall and found a few pieces of clothing for Victoria and Michael. Carlene was an erratic, panicky shopper; spending twenty minutes considering a single lovely item without buying it, and then buying three not so nice things in a flurry. She spoke a lot about bargains and value for money in a manner Kiki found faintly depressing, given the Kippses’ clearly robust finances. For Monty, though, Carlene wanted to get something ‘really nice’, and so they decided to brave three blocks of snow-walking in order to reach a fancier, smaller, specialist boutique that might have the cane with the carved handle which that Carlene had in mind.

  ‘What will you do at Christmas?’ asked Kiki, as they pressed through the crowds on Newbury Street. ‘Will you go somewhere – back to England?’

  ‘Usually we have Christmas in the countryside. We have a beautiful cottage in a place called Iden. It’s near Winchelsea Beach. Do you know it?’

  Kiki confessed ignorance.

  ‘It’s the most beautiful spot I know. But this year, we must stay in America. Michael’s already over, and he’ll stay till January third. I can’t wait to see him! Our friends have a house we’re to borrow in Amherst – just nearby where Miss Dickinson lived. You’d like it a lot. I’ve visited it – it’s lovely. It’s very big, though I think not as pretty as Iden. But the really wonderful thing is their collection. They have three Edward Hoppers, two Singer Sargents and a Miró!’

  Kiki gasped and clapped her hands. ‘Oh, my God – I love Edward Hopper. I can’t believe that! He floors me. Imagine having things like that in your own private home. Sister, I envy you that, I really do. I’d love to see that. That’s wonderful.’

  ‘They dropped around the key today. I wish we were all already there. But I should really wait for Monty and the children to come home.’ This last word, said broodingly, brought other things to the forefront of her mind. ‘How are things at home now, Kiki? I’ve thought of you a lot. Worried for you.’

  Kiki passed an arm around her friend. ‘Carlene, honestly now, please don’t worry. It’s all fine. Everything’s settling down. Although Christmas is not the easiest time in the Belsey household,’ trilled Kiki, niftily turning the subject. ‘Howard can’t stand Christmas.’

  ‘Howard . . . my word. He seems to hate such a lot of things. Paintings, my husband –’

  Kiki opened her mouth to counter this with she knew not what. Carlene patted her hand.

  ‘I’m mischievous – I was only being mischievous. So he hates Christmas too. Because he is not a Christian.’

  ‘Well, none of us is
that,’ replied Kiki firmly, not wishing to mislead. ‘But Howard’s just pretty determined about it. He won’t have it in the house. It used to upset the kids, but they’re used to it now, and we make up for it in other ways. But, no, not an eggnog, not a bauble shall cross our threshold!’

  ‘But you make him sound like Scrooge!’

  ‘No . . . He’s not at all stingy. Actually he’s incredibly generous. We eat ourselves into a stupor on the day, and he spoils the kids with a crazy amount of gifts come the New Year – but he just won’t do Christmas. I think we’re going to stay with friends in London – it depends if the kids agree. A couple we’ve known a long time. We went there two years ago – it was lovely. They’re Jewish, so there’s no issue. That’s just the way Howard likes it: no rituals, no superstitions, no traditions and no images of Santa Claus. It sounds strange, I guess, but we’re used to it.’

  ‘I don’t believe you – you’re having fun with me.’

  ‘It’s true! Actually, when you think about it, it’s a pretty Christian policy. Thou shalt worship no graven images; thou shalt have no other God but me –’

  ‘I see,’ said Carlene, dismayed by the levity with which Kiki was approaching the subject. ‘But who is his God?’

  Kiki was limbering up to answer this difficult question, when she was distracted by the noise and colour of a group of Africans one block along. Taking up half the sidewalk selling their rip-offs, and among them, surely among them –

  But, as she called his name, a cross-stream rabble of shoppers blocked her sight line, and by the time they’d passed the mirage had vanished.

  ‘Isn’t that weird? I always think I see Levi. Never the other two. It’s that uniform – cap, hood, jeans. All those boys are wearing exactly the same thing as Levi. It’s like this goddamn army. I see boys who look like him just about everywhere I go.’

  ‘I don’t care what the doctors say,’ said Carlene, leaning on Kiki as they walked the short flight of steps to an eighteenth-century townhouse, hollowed out to accommodate goods and their buyers and sellers; ‘the eyes and the heart are directly connected.’

  In this place they found a cane that was a reasonable approximation of the one in Carlene’s mind. Also some monogrammed handkerchiefs, and then the most dreadful cravat. Carlene was satisfied. Kiki suggested they take these gifts to the in-store wrapping service. Carlene, who had never considered that such indulgence might exist, hovered all the while over the girl who was doing the wrapping, and could not restrain herself from occasionally offering her own fingers to press down a bit of tape or help position a bow.

  ‘Ah – a Hopper,’ said Kiki, pleased at the coincidence. It was a print of Road in Maine, one of a series of poorly reproduced lithographs of famous American paintings meant to signal the classiness of this store in contrast to the mall they’d just been in. ‘Someone’s just walked down there,’ she murmured, her finger travelling safely along the flat, paintless surface. ‘Actually, I think it was me. I was moseying along counting those posts. With no idea where I was going. No family. No responsibilities. Wouldn’t that be fine!’

  ‘Let’s go to Amherst,’ said Carlene Kipps urgently. She gripped Kiki’s hand.

  ‘Oh, honey, I’d love to go some time! It would be such a treat to see paintings like that, not in a museum. Wow . . . that’s such a kind offer, thank you. Something to look forward to.’

  Carlene looked alarmed. ‘No, dear, now – let’s go now. I have the keys – we could get the train and be there by lunch. I want you to see the pictures – they should be loved by somebody like you. We’ll go right away when this is wrapped. We’ll be back for tomorrow evening.’

  Kiki looked out of the exit doors at another sidelong sweep of snow. She looked at the sunken, pale face of her friend, felt the wobbling hand in her own.

  ‘Really, Carlene, another time I’d love to go, but . . . it’s not really the weather – and it’s a little late to start out – maybe next week we could organize a trip, properly, and . . .’

  Carlene Kipps let go of Kiki’s hand and turned back to her present wrapping. She was annoyed. They left the store soon after. Carlene waited under an awning, while Kiki stood out in the wet to hail a cab.

  ‘You’ve been very kind and helpful,’ said Carlene formally as Kiki opened the passenger door for her, as if they were not both getting in the same cab. The ride home was tense and quiet.

  ‘When do all your people get back?’ asked Kiki, and had to ask it twice because it was not heard, or there was a pretence of not hearing.

  ‘It will depend on how long Monty is needed,’ replied Carlene grandly. ‘There is a church there that he does a lot of work with. He won’t leave until they can spare him. His sense of duty is very strong.’

  Now it was Kiki’s turn to be annoyed.

  They parted at Carlene’s house, Kiki choosing to walk the rest of the way back. Pushing through the slush, she was struck by the growing, upsetting conviction that she had made a mistake. It had been stupid and perverse to greet such passionate spontaneity with complaints about the weather and the hour. She felt it to be a kind of test, and now she saw she had failed it. It was exactly the kind of offer Howard and the kids would have thought absurd, sentimental and impractical – it was an offer she should have taken up. She spent the late afternoon in a snappy sulk, testy with her family and uninterested in the peace lunch (one of many of the past few weeks) that Howard had cooked for her. After the meal she put on her hat and gloves and walked back round to Redwood Avenue. Clotilde answered the door and said that Mrs Kipps had just left for the Amherst house and wouldn’t be back until tomorrow.

  In a bit of a panic Kiki jogged as best she could to the bus stop; gave up on the bus, walked to the crossroads and managed to hail a cab. At the station she found Carlene buying a hot chocolate and preparing to board the train.

  ‘Kiki!’

  ‘I want to come – I’d love to – if you’ll still have me.’

  Carlene put one gloved hand to Kiki’s hot cheek in a manner that unexpectedly made her want to weep.

  ‘You’ll stay over. We’ll eat in town and spend all tomorrow in the house. You’re such a funny woman. What a thing to do!’

  They were just walking arm in arm up the platform when they heard Carlene’s name cried out several times: ‘Mum! Hey, Mum!’

  ‘Vee! Michael! But this is . . . hello, my darlings! Monty!’

  ‘Carlene, what on earth are you doing here? Come here, let me kiss you, you silly old thing – what about this! So you’re feeling better, then.’ Here Carlene nodded like a happy child. ‘Hello,’ said Monty to Kiki, frowning as he did so, and shaking her hand briefly before turning back to his wife. ‘We had a New York nightmare – the incompetent running that church – it’s either incompetence or criminality – anyway, we’re back early, and very pleased about it – not a chance Michael’s getting married in that place, I can tell you that – not a chance – but what are you –’

  ‘I was heading up to Eleanor’s house,’ said Carlene, beaming, accepting hugs on either side from her two children, one of whom, Victoria, was looking over at Kiki like a jealous lover. Another young girl, plainly dressed, with a blue polo neck and pearls at her throat, held Michael’s spare arm. His fiancée, Kiki assumed.

  ‘Kiki, I think we shall have to postpone our trip.’

  ‘The man claimed to know nothing – nothing – of the last four letters we sent him about the school in Trinidad. He’d washed his hands of it! Shame he didn’t tell anyone at our end.’

  ‘And his accounts were so dodgy. I went through them. Something was definitely not right there,’ added Michael.

  Kiki smiled. ‘Sure thing,’ she said. ‘Rain check – another day.’

  ‘Do you need a lift?’ Monty asked Kiki gruffly, as the family turned to go.

  ‘Oh – thank you, no . . . there’s four of you, and a cab wouldn’t . . .’

  The happy clan bustled away back down the platform, laughing and speaking
over each other, as the Amherst train pulled away and Kiki stood with Carlene’s hot chocolate in her hand.

  on beauty and being wrong

  When I say I hate time, Paul says

  how else could we find depth

  of character, or grow souls?

  Mark Doty

  1

  A sprawling North London parkland, composed of oaks, willows and chestnuts, yews and sycamores, the beech and the birch; that encompasses the city’s highest point and spreads far beyond it; that is so well planted it feels unplanned; that is not the country but is no more a garden than Yellowstone; that has a shade of green for every possible felicitation of light; that paints itself in russets and ambers in the autumn, canary-yellow in the splashy spring; with tickling bush grass to hide teenage lovers and joint smokers, broad oaks for brave men to kiss against, mown meadows for summer ball games, hills for kites, ponds for hippies, an icy lido for old men with strong constitutions, mean llamas for mean children and, for the tourists, a country house, its façade painted white enough for any Hollywood close-up, complete with a tea room, although anything you buy from there should be eaten outside with the grass beneath your toes, sitting under the magnolia tree, letting the white upturned bells of blossoms, blush-pink at their tips, fall all around you. Hampstead Heath! Glory of London! Where Keats walked and Jarman fucked, where Orwell exercised his weakened lungs and Constable never failed to find something holy.

  It is late December now; the Heath wears its austere winter cloak. The sky is colourless. The trees are black and starkly cut back. The grass is hoary with a crunch underfoot, and the only relief is the occasional scarlet flash of the holly-berries. In a tall, narrow house that backs on to all this wonder, the Belseys are spending their Christmas break with Rachel and Adam Miller, very old college friends of Howard who have been married longer even than the Belseys. They have no children and do not celebrate Christmas. The Belseys have always loved visiting the Millers. Not for the house itself, which is a chaos of cats, dogs, half-finished canvases, jars of unidentifiable food, dusty African masks, twelve thousand books, too many knicks and a dangerous density of knacks. But the Heath! From every window the view commands you to come outside and enjoy it. The guests obey despite the cold. They spend half their stay in the Millers’ small brambly garden that makes up for its size by ending where the Hampstead ponds begin. Howard, the Belsey children, Rachel and Adam were all in the garden – the kids skimming pebbles into the water, the adults watching two magpies build a nest in a high tree – when Kiki pushed up a triple sash window and walked towards them, holding her hand over her mouth.