On Beauty Read online

  Behind a line of yew trees in the northern part of this cemetery, Carlene Kipps was buried. Walking away from the grave, the Belseys kept a distance from the rest of the party. They felt themselves to be in a strange social limbo. They knew no one except the family, and yet they were not close to the family. They had no car (the cabbie having refused to wait), and no clear idea of how to get to the wake. They kept their eyes to the ground and tried to walk at the proper funereal pace. The sun was so low that the stone crosses on one line of graves cast their spectral shadows on the plots of graves in front of them. In her hand Zora held a little leaflet she’d taken out of a box at the entrance. It featured an incomprehensible map of the cemetery and a list of the notable dead. Zora was interested in seeking out Iris Murdoch or Wilkie Collins or Thackeray or Trollope or any of the other artists who, as the poet put it, went to paradise by way of Kensal Green. She tried suggesting this literary detour to her mother. Through her tears (that had not stopped since the first scattering of earth was thrown over the coffin), Kiki glared. Zora tried falling behind a little, veering slightly off course to check out any grave that looked likely. But her instincts were all wrong. The twelve-foot mausoleums with winged angels on top and laurels at their base are for sugar merchants, property dealers and military men – not writers. She could have searched all day and not found Collins’s grave, for example: a simple cross atop a block of plain stone.

  ‘Zora!’ hissed Kiki, in that powerful scream of hers that yet had no volume. ‘I’m not going to tell you again. Keep up.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘I want to get out of here tonight.’

  ‘Okay!’

  Levi tucked his arm around his mother. She was not right in herself, he could tell. Her long plait swung against his hand like a horse’s tail. He grabbed it and gave it a playful tug.

  ‘I’m sorry about your friend,’ he said.

  Kiki brought his hand from behind her back and kissed the knuckles.

  ‘Thank you, baby. It’s crazy . . . I don’t even know why I’m so upset. I barely knew the woman, you know? I mean, I really didn’t know her at all.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Levi thoughtfully, as his mother pulled his head softly into her shoulder. ‘But sometimes it’s like you just meet someone and you just know that you’re totally connected, and that this person is, like, your brother – or your sister,’ adjusted Levi, for he had been thinking of somebody else entirely. ‘Even if they don’t, like, recognize it, you feel it. And in a lot of ways it don’t matter if they do or they don’t see that for what it is – all you can do is put the feeling out there. That’s your duty. Then you just wait and see what comes back to you. That’s the deal.’

  There was a little silence here that Zora felt the need to puncture.

  ‘Amen! ’ she said, laughing. ‘Preach it, brother, preach it!’

  Levi punched Zora in her upper arm, and then Zora punched him back, and then they ran, weaving through the graves, Zora racing from Levi. Jerome called after them both to have some respect. Kiki knew she should stop them, but she could not help feeling it was a relief to hear curses and laughter and whoops fill the darkening day. It took one’s mind off all the people underfoot. Now Kiki and Jerome paused on the white stone steps of the chapel and waited for Zora and Levi to join them. Kiki heard her children’s clattering footsteps reverberate through the archways behind her. They rushed towards her like the shadows of people escaped from their graves, and came to a halt by her feet, panting and laughing. She could no longer see their features in this dusk, only the outlines and movements of beloved faces she knew by heart.

  ‘OK, that’s enough now. Let’s get out of here, please. Which way?’

  Jerome took his glasses off and wiped them on the corner of his shirt. Hadn’t the burial been just to the left of this very chapel? In which case they had walked in a teasing circle.

  After taking leave of his father, Howard walked across the street and into the Windmill pub. Here he ordered and began drinking a perfectly reasonable bottle of red wine. His chosen seat was, he thought, in a neglected corner of the bar. But two minutes after he sat down, a huge flat screen that he had not noticed was lowered down near his head and switched on. A football game commenced between a white team and a blue team. Men gathered round. They seemed to accept and like Howard, mistaking him for one of those dedicated souls who come early to get the best seat. Howard allowed this misinterpretation and found himself taken up in the general fervour. Soon he was cheering and complaining with the rest. When a stranger, in his enthusiasm, tipped some beer down Howard’s shoulder, Howard smiled, shrugged and said nothing. A little while later this same fellow bought Howard a beer, saying nothing when he put it down in front of Howard and seeming to expect nothing in return. At the end of the first half another man beside him knocked glasses with Howard in a very jolly way, in approval of Howard’s random decision to cheer the blue team, although the game itself was still 0–0. This score never changed. And after the game finished nobody hit each other or got angry – it didn’t seem to be that kind of game. ‘Well, we got what we needed,’ said one man philosophically. Three other men smiled and nodded at the truth of this. Everybody seemed satisfied. Howard also nodded and polished off the end of his bottle. It takes a lot of practice to ensure that a whole bottle of Cabernet and a pint of beer makes only a slight dent in your sobriety, but Howard felt he had reached this stage of accomplishment. All that happened these days was a pleasant imprecision that settled itself around him like a duvet, padding, protecting. He’d got what he needed. He went down the hall to use the phone opposite the loos.

  ‘Adam?’

  ‘Howard.’ Said in a tone of a man who can finally call off the search party.

  ‘Hi. Look, I’ve been separated from everyone . . . Have they called?’

  There was a silence at the end of the phone that Howard correctly identified as concern.

  ‘Howard . . . are you drunk?’

  ‘I’m going to pretend you didn’t say that. I’m trying to find Kiki. Is she with you?’

  Adam sighed. ‘She’s looking for you. She left an address. She said to tell you they’re going to the wake.’

  Howard rested his forehead on the wall next to the pinned-up list of minicabs.

  ‘Howard – I’m painting. I’m getting it all over the phone. Do you want the address?’

  ‘No, no . . . I have it. Did she sound –?’

  ‘Yes, very. Howard, I’ve got to go. We’ll see you back at the house later.’

  Howard ordered a minicab and went outside to wait for it. When it arrived, the driver’s door opened and a young Turk in the literal sense leaned out and asked Howard a rather metaphysical question: ‘Is it you?’

  Howard stepped forward from the pub wall. ‘Yes, it’s me.’

  ‘Where you go?’

  ‘Queen’s Park, please,’ said Howard, and walked unsteadily round the car to get into the front seat. As soon as he sat down he realized that this was not the usual procedure. It was surely uncomfortable for a driver to have a passenger sitting so close to him, wasn’t it? Or was it? They drove in silence, a silence that Howard experienced as unbearably fraught with homoerotic, political and violent implications. He felt he must say something.

  ‘I’m not trouble, you know, I’m not one of those English thugs – I’m a bit pissed, that’s all.’

  The young driver looked at him with a defensive, uncertain air. ‘You trying to be funny?’ he said in his thick accent, which yet possessed a fluency that made You trying to be funny? sound like a Turkish homily.

  ‘Sorry,’ said Howard, blushing. ‘Ignore me. Ignore me.’ He put his hands between his knees. The cab swung by the tube station where Howard had first met Michael Kipps.

  ‘Straight down, I think,’ said Howard very quietly. ‘Then maybe a left at the main road – yes, and then over the bridge and then it’s on your right, I think.’

  ‘You talk quiet. I can’t hear.’

  H
oward repeated himself. His driver turned and looked at him incredulously. ‘You don’t know name of street?’

  Howard had to admit he did not. The young Turk grumbled something furiously in Turkish, and Howard felt one of those English minicab tragedies coming on in which customer and cabbie drive round and round, and the fare rises and rises, finally you reach the ugliness of being sworn at and cast out on to the street, further from your destination than ever.

  ‘There! That’s it! We just passed it!’ cried Howard and opened the door while the cab was still moving. A minute later, the young Turk and Howard parted on frosty terms, not much warmed by Howard’s twenty-pence tip, the only extra change he had in his pocket. It is on journeys like this – where one is so horribly misunderstood – that you find yourself longing for home, that place where you are entirely understood, for better or for worse. Kiki was home. He needed to find her.

  Howard pushed open the Kippses’ front door, ajar once again, though for quite a different reason than the last time. The chequered hallway was busy with sombre faces and black suits. Nobody turned to look at Howard except one girl with a tray of sandwiches who came forward and offered him one. Howard took an egg and cress and wandered into the living room. It was not one of those wakes in which the tension of the funeral is released and dissipated. No one here was laughing softly at an affectionate memory or retelling a scurrilous story. The atmosphere was as solemn as it had been in the church, and that lively, surprising woman whom Howard had met a year ago in this very room was presently being piously preserved in the aspic of low voices and bland anecdote, pickled in perfection. She was always, Howard heard one woman say to another, thinking of other people, never of herself. Howard picked up somebody else’s large glass of wine from the dining table and went to stand by the French doors. From here he had a good view of the living room, the garden, the kitchen and the hallway. No Kiki. No kids. No Erskine, even. He could see half of Michael Kipps opening the oven door and taking out a large tray of sausage rolls. Suddenly Monty came into the room. Howard turned towards the garden and looked out on that huge tree where, unbeknown to him, his eldest son had lost his innocence. Not knowing what else to do, he stepped out and closed the door quietly behind him. Instead of walking down the long garden where, as the sole person out here, he would only make himself more conspicuous, Howard walked round the side return, a thin alley between the Kippses’ place and next door. Here he paused, rolled a thin cigarette and smoked it. The combination of this new, sweet white wine in his hand, the bitter air and the tobacco made him feel light-headed. He walked further down the alley to a side door and sat down on its cold step. From this perspective the suburban opulence of five neighbouring gardens announced itself: the knobby branches of the hundred-year-old trees, the corrugated roofs of the sheds, the moneyed amber glow of halogen bulbs. So quiet. A fox keening somewhere like a crying child, but no cars, no voices. Would his family have been happier here? He had run from a potentially bourgeois English life straight into the arms of an actual American one – he saw that now – and, in the disappointment of the attempted escape, he had made other people’s lives miserable. Howard put out his cigarette on the pebbled ground. He gulped thickly but did not cry. He was not his father. He heard the Kippses’ doorbell go. He rose up halfway, listening out hopefully for his wife’s voice. Not her. Kiki and the kids must have come and gone. He pictured his family like a Greek chorus, repulsed and outraged by him, rushing from the stage the moment he stepped on it. Maybe he would spend the rest of his life trailing them from house to house.

  Now he stood up properly and opened the side door behind him. He found himself in a kind of utility room packed with appliances for washing, drying, ironing and vacuuming. This room led back on to the hallway, and from here Howard kept his head down and turned with the banister, climbing the stairs two by two. On the upper landing he was confronted by six identical doors and no clues as to which of them might open on to a bathroom. He opened one at random – a pretty bedroom, as clean as a room in a show house, without sign of habitation. Two side tables. A book on each. This was sad. He closed the door and opened the next. What he glimpsed was a wall painted like an Italian fresco, with birds and butterflies and winding vines. He could not imagine such fancy anywhere but a bathroom, so he opened the door a little wider. A bed with a pair of bare human feet at its far end.

  ‘Sorry!’ said Howard and pulled the door too strongly towards him. This had the effect of making it slam and then bounce right back to where it had been and beyond, clattering against the inner wall. Victoria, dressed in her funeral black down to the waist. But the knee-length skirt had been replaced by a very small pair of green velveteen sports shorts with a silver trim. She had been crying. Her long legs were flat out in front of her; now she gathered them up in her arms in surprise.

  ‘Fucking hell!’

  ‘Oh, God, I’m sorry! Sorry,’ said Howard. He had to step deep into the room to grab the doorknob. He tried to look in the opposite direction as he did so.

  ‘Howard Belsey?’ Victoria flipped round on the bed and knelt up.

  ‘Yes, sorry. I’ll just close this.’

  ‘Wait!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Just – wait.’

  ‘I’ll just . . .’ said Howard and began to close the door, but Victoria jumped up now and held the door from the other side.

  ‘You’re in now, so come in. You’re already in,’ she said angrily and pushed the door shut with her flat hand. They stood close together for a second; then she retreated to the bed and glared at him. Howard held his wine glass with both hands and looked into it.

  ‘I’m . . . sorry for your loss, I . . .’ he began absurdly.

  ‘What?’

  Howard looked up and watched Victoria take a swig out of a tall glass filled with red wine. He saw now that there was an empty wine bottle next to her.

  ‘I should go. I was looking for the –’

  ‘Look, you’re in now. Just sit down. We’re not in your class now.’

  She pushed herself up to the bedstead, and sat leaning against it with crossed legs, her toes in each hand. She was excited, or at least excitable; she fidgeted around on her seat. Howard stayed where he was. He could not move.

  ‘Thought it was the bathroom,’ he said very quietly.

  ‘What? I can’t hear you, whatever you’re saying.’

  ‘The walls – thought it was the bathroom.’

  ‘Oh. Well, no. It’s a boudoir,’ explained Victoria and performed a sloppy, sarcastic flourish with her free hand.

  ‘I see that,’ said Howard, looking about at the vanity table, the sheepskin rug and the chaise covered in a fabric print that seemed to have been the original inspiration for whoever had painted the walls. It did not appear to be a Christian girl’s bedroom.

  ‘And so now,’ said Howard steadily, ‘I’m going to go.’

  Victoria reached behind her for a huge furry cushion. She threw this violently at Howard, getting him on the shoulder and spilling a little of his wine across his hand.

  ‘Hello? I’m in mourning?’ she said with that nasty transatlantic twang Howard had noted before. ‘The very least you can do is sit down and give me a bit of pastoral care, Dr. Look, if it makes you happier,’ she said springing from the bed and tiptoeing across the room to the door, ‘I’ll put the lock on so no one can disturb us.’ She tiptoed back to the bed. ‘Is that better?’

  No, it was not better. Howard turned to leave.

  ‘Please. I need to talk to someone,’ came the breaking voice behind him. ‘You’re here. Nobody else is here. They’re all praising the Lord downstairs. You’re here.’

  Howard put his fingers to the lock. Victoria thumped her bedcovers.

  ‘God! I won’t hurt you! I’m asking you to help me. Isn’t that part of your job? Oh, forget it, OK? Just forget it. Fuck off.’

  She started to cry. Howard turned around.

  ‘Shit, shit, shit. I’m so bored with crying!’ s
aid Victoria through tears, and then began to laugh at herself a little. Howard moved to the chaise opposite the bed and slowly sat down. It was actually a relief to sit down. He was still experiencing an unhelpful head rush from his cigarette. Victoria wiped her tears with the sleeves of her black shirt.

  ‘Blimey. That’s far away.’

  Howard nodded.

  ‘Bit unfriendly.’

  ‘I’m not a friendly man.’

  Victoria took a deep gulp from her tumbler. She touched the silver edges of her green shorts.

  ‘I must look like a total freak. But I just have to be comfy once I’m in the house – I’ve always been like that. Couldn’t take that skirt any longer. Have to be comfy.’

  She bounced her knees up and down against the mattress. ‘Is your family here?’ she asked.

  ‘I was looking for them. That’s what I was doing.’

  ‘I thought you said you were looking for the loo,’ said Victoria accusingly, closing one eye, stretching out her arm and pointing one unsteady finger at him.