The Squire Quartet

Squire laughed. ‘Well, that’s a consolation.’

The sun enveloped Squire’s body, bathing it in summer. He felt the heat on his sparsely protected head and the occasional runnel of sweat down his chest. That suited him well. Yet he felt uneasy, he did not know why.

He was sorry to hear his brother-in-law speak as he did. The world was a dangerous place – that was the open secret a younger generation of Englishmen resolutely refused to learn; they believed that as long as everyone earned the same wages, all was well. Marshall’s generation of Americans knew better than that. But everyone, of whatever nationality, seemed to prefer to forget that certain ancient laws were not revoked simply by the setting up of trade unions and health services: predators were about. The world was a dangerous place: for the individual as well as the nation.

The patient ponies carried them to the flat ground by the harbour.

‘We’re going to grab some ice creams, Dad,’ Douglas called.

Squire and Kaye handed the ponies over to Old Man Hill’s daughter, a gnarled woman, who sat patiently by the artist’s van. The men looked in at the paintings displayed for sale inside the van, and were confronted with a conventional array of windmills, churches, cows, and willows. They strolled together towards Marsh House, which faced them from the other end of the quay. Along the quayside, they passed the hotel where Squire had dined with Tess, Grahame Ash, and the camera crew a year ago; it seemed a happier time in retrospect.

‘You gain a different perspective on the world when you’re engaged in a dig,’ Kaye said. ‘In a sense, you live in the past, the present becomes remote.’

‘Professionally, that must be a good thing … Your salary is still paid in 1978.’

Kaye laughed.

Without any change in tone, Squire said, ‘We’ll have a beer when we get in. But I see Teresa’s car parked outside your front door.’

Kaye shot him a swift glance. ‘She must have driven over from Grantham to see you. Is that a hopeful sign?’

‘It depends what you mean by hope. I want us to be together again but, as time goes by, I inevitably want it less. As you with Eurocommunism, so I with separation: resignation masquerading as wisdom sets in.’

They both laughed.

‘Deirdre and I are sorry you suffer all this trouble, Tom. I just hope you have something by way of consolation.’

‘If you mean Laura, no, I haven’t. We broke it up to satisfy Tess almost a year ago. Perhaps that was a mistake. Tess remains unsatisfied.’ Bitterness crept into his voice.

As Kaye and Squire entered the gate of Marsh House, Teresa appeared at the front door and waved to her husband. Something misplaced inflated the gesture: it was designed for someone considerably more distant than Squire. He went up to Tess, took her hand and kissed her cheek.

They regarded each other with reserve, like military commanders looking for ground cover. Teresa’s gaze held that elusive suggestion of a squint which sometimes lent even her serious moods a touch of mischief.

His nostrils received a warm perfume from her.

She wore a light dress suited to the weather, low-cut and showing the cleft between her breasts. She was tanned as far as the eye could see.

‘Tess, you’re looking well. How are Ann and Jane?’

‘That’s good, because I’m feeling rather terrible, having just been given a good going over by your sister. The girls are fine – at school today. They break up later than Doug and Tom.’

She turned to speak to Kaye, who kissed her. They all moved into the house.

‘You drove over from Grantham just to see me?’ Squire asked.

‘I happened to ring Deirdre and she said you would be here for the weekend.’

As they moved from the hall into the living room, Teresa’s mother appeared, and greeted Squire. Mrs Davies was wearing an uncharacteristic costume, a kaftan in orange and lemon, and dark glasses.

‘Tom, it’s charming to see you. So you’ve managed to tear yourself away from London? I was taking the sun in the back garden – we’ve only been here an hour, not more, have we, Teresa? And the traffic was so thick on the A17, is it?’

‘You’re looking very summery, Madge.’

‘Do you know, I’ve had this old kaftan for years, but haven’t dared to wear it. I hope I don’t look too much like chicken dressed as lamb, or whatever that phrase is. We’re driving over to Norwich to see Willie. He’s coming back with us to Grantham, to stay the weekend, as I expect Teresa told you.’

‘No, I didn’t, Mother,’ Teresa said, in some exasperation. ‘I’ve hardly said a word to Tom.’

‘Well, you mustn’t let your silly old mother interrupt you. You talk nicely to Tom and I’m sure you can get back together again. Tom, your misdeeds are in the past, or so I hope, and I want you and Teresa to kiss and make up. Remember that you’re both my children. Let’s have an end to this silly, pointless quarrel, for the sake of family harmony. Your Uncle Willie would say the same if he were here.’

Deirdre appeared in the archway of the living room. She tucked a thumb under her ample chin. Grace also materialized, still bearing the tabby.

‘This meeting does promise to be a shining example of family harmony, I must say,’ Deirdre remarked. ‘Marsh, you’d do well to get us all a drink – the sooner we’re tanked up, the better. As for you, Grace, I think you’d better make yourself scarce.’

‘Oh, Mummy …’

‘Go on, go and bully your brothers. You know too much already.’

‘You do chase the poor girl,’ Mrs Davies said to Deirdre as Grace disappeared. ‘Of course, I know I’m only an old woman and it’s none of my business.’

‘Quite so,’ agreed Deirdre, blandly. ‘All the same, Grace can look after herself. She told me yesterday that she is going to be an aircraft designer, and I believe her. She has some fantastic ideas about airliner loos and galleys which could revolutionize aviation history.’

Kaye entered through the french doors from the back garden. ‘The drink trolley’s outside. I thought you’d like to take a drink on the terrace while the sun shines.’

As they trooped out, Grace reappeared in a crimson beach robe, and curtsied to them one by one, cat under her left arm. Mrs Davies came last, taking the opportunity to grasp Squire’s wrist.

‘I just wanted to say to you – you’re at a responsible age, Tom. I think that your Tess would come back to you gladly if you gave up that younger woman. She can’t be good for you.’

‘I have given her up, long ago. I believe it if nobody else does.’

‘Don’t be cross. What I mean is, you must understand Teresa. I think it is the idea of – well, of this sex business that scares her off. Your Uncle Willie and I wouldn’t have anything like that. We have discussed the subject, oh yes. At your age, Tom, you’re nearly fifty, it is disgusting. Undignified. Ernest and I gave up all that sort of thing on my fortieth birthday, and neither of us were any the worse for it. Funnily enough, we were talking about it in the spring of last year, just before he was killed – when you were away in California, or wherever it was.’

Abandoning the cat at last, Grace sidled up to them and let out squeals of suppressed laughter. ‘Grannie, that’s awful! I’d have thought that you and Willie would be a bit more swinging. After all, what’s the point of getting married unless … Well, anyhow, I think it’s just terrific that Uncle Tom is the age he is and is still able to mate. Bully for him! It’s wonderful.’

‘But not exactly unique in the annals of medical science, Grace,’ Squire said, laughing.

Mrs Davies looked reproachfully at Grace. ‘My nerves are all to pieces. I’ve had my say, now I’m going to have a cigarette. To hear you talking so brazenly about sex, my girl … We never mentioned it, or thought about it, when I was your age. I don’t know what the world’s coming to.’

Kaye poured them all drinks. ‘Your beer at last,’ he told Squire, handing over a full tankard.

He raised his glass cheerfully. ‘Here’s to us all. Good to be back home, good to see Madge and Teresa and Tom here. Let’s hope the family will be a little more stable now.’

‘That’s a bit optimistic,’ Grace said, sotto voce.

‘Quiet, child, it’s only a toast,’ Deirdre said.

‘The country’s been going to the dogs steadily while you’ve been doing your archaeological work in Greece,’ Mrs Davies reported. ‘The unemployment figures are still rising, and the inflation rate. It’s this terrible Labour government of ours.’

‘Don’t despair, Madge,’ Kaye said. ‘Deirdre and I see a different aspect of things, coming from abroad. After Athens, England seems remarkably stable, sensible, and prosperous.’

‘That’s because we’re having a heat wave, Pop, you nit,’ Grace said. ‘People only go on strike in winter, when it’s cold.’

A lull fell over the conversation. Everyone became preoccupied with their drinks, or looked at the sails glittering far across the wilderness of marsh.

‘So how did you enjoy your trip to this Greek island, where exactly was it, Marshall?’ asked Mrs Davies, in a palpable attempt to blanket the difficulties in the room with words. ‘I kept meaning to look it up in my atlas and then I never did so. It seems years since Ernest and I had our Greek cruise. It is years, alas … The weather was lovely but I didn’t care for Athens at all. So noisy, even then.’

Squire and Teresa were standing awkwardly apart. ‘Grantham always reminds me of Athens,’ he said, but she did not take up the small joke.

Marshall Kaye began to deliver an archaeological lecture, ostensibly to Mrs Davies. Tom and Douglas appeared, licking ice-cream cones, took the temperature of the terrace, and slipped rapidly away.

‘The great days of Milos ended when the Athenians, who were at war with Sparta, invaded the island in 416 BC. Eventually Milos had to surrender to the Athenians, who took all the women and children into slavery, and slaughtered all the men of military age.’

‘What a terrible way to behave!’ said Mrs Davies severely, as if some of the discredit reflected on Marshall Kaye.

‘Yes, and it still happens. It happened also before the days of Athens. We could learn lessons from the Athens–Milos encounter – except that lessons of history are never learnt. The Athenians demanded that the Milians surrender, in which case they would not be destroyed. The Milians tried to get out of a difficult situation by offering friendship. That wasn’t good enough for Athens. They made a resounding speech to the Milians, which Thucydides reports, or possibly invents.

‘They said, “You’re weaker than we are, so you’d better give in. We have concluded from experience that it’s a law of nature to rule whatever one can. We didn’t make this law, nor were we the first to act on it. We found it in existence, and we shall leave it in existence for those who come after us. We are merely acting in accordance with it, and we know very well that if you had our power, then you’d act in the same way to us.”

‘And they also said that the standard of justice done depends on the equality of power to compel. “The strong act as they have the power to act, and the weak accept what they have to accept.” It is a lucid exposition of realpolitik, and often applies to situations in the world today. It’s also applicable to individuals.’

He looked round to address this final remark to Squire and Teresa.

‘And to Eurocommunists,’ Squire said. He took Teresa by the hand and led her upstairs to Deirdre and Marshall’s bedroom, where half-unpacked suitcases skirted the walls.

‘Let’s talk,’ he said. ‘Forget Marsh’s lectures. You’re looking summery.’

‘You needn’t flatter me.’ She looked as if she was going to say more, but nothing more emerged. In Squire’s eyes, she appeared smaller than before, perhaps because she was wearing flat seaside shoes. Her shoulders were vulnerable. Her face looked as if it had tanned unevenly, and her wrinkles showed. Her gaze had gone to the carpet under his anxious scrutiny; he saw the dark roots of her dyed hair.

‘At least you came alone,’ she said, almost in a whisper.

‘I’m living in London because I can’t bear to be in the Hall without you and the girls.’

She made a gesture, perhaps thinking he missed her point.

‘Matilda Rowlinson is looking in every day, to see it’s all shipshape … How’s Nellie?’

Teresa smiled. ‘A bit of a nuisance in mother’s flat. The girls love her … Oh, I’m looking after the girls properly and feeding Nellie regularly, don’t worry, while you’re playing the great successful man. I shop at the corner supermarket and talk to mother and play cards with her and her friends and all that – not at all the life you imagine I’m leading, I’m sure, while you’re being feted as Guru Number One all over London.’

‘The English critics have been a bit hard on “Frankenstein Among the Arts”. Didn’t you read the reviews?’

‘You know I don’t read reviews.’

‘Teresa, you can’t be jealous of my limited success. It’ll all be over soon, forgotten. But it is a sort of culmination of my life. I’m uncertain myself of its value but I want to share it with you. I have been able to express and demonstrate elements of popular culture in perspective, in such a way that it gives pleasure and – well, perhaps hope to a lot of people.’

‘Ha! It hasn’t affected us that way, has it?’

‘As a nation we’ve become defeatist. I hope I have somehow made us that bit stronger. Let everyone see how much we have, things precious to our day, how much we have to lose – how we should value the beauty of which technology is capable, the richness of an expendable plastic cup or a match-box, the visual delight of a traffic jam at night …’

She walked over to the door, looked out on the landing, and closed it. ‘Grace is such an eavesdropper. You don’t have to lecture me. You treat me as if I was stupid, do you realize that? Ever since we’ve been married, you’ve been telling me things, things I just don’t want to know, things about your damned family, about art, Pippet Hall …’

He broke in. ‘Tess, dearest, please do not say that. We need a grand reconciliation – talk like that will reduce me to silence, utterly.’

‘I want your silence. I’m sick of your talk.’

He stood and stared at her. ‘If I’ve talked to you … I don’t lecture you. I – of course I talk to you, I’ve always wanted to share everything. Isn’t that the purpose of marriage?’

‘All this talk about your book and your television series … It’s not my thing, any more than your farm is. You address me as if I was one of your viewers. Oh, I can see how you think the series in some way squares you in your father’s eyes, eases that chip on your shoulder, makes you famous, as you discourse so cleverly about things you imagine he would have enjoyed. Really, at your age, it’s pathetic!’

‘Why pathetic? My father remains a strong influence. Why be ashamed of that? He’d understand that there is idealism still today, waiting to be freed—’

‘I’m sorry, I think that’s all rubbish. You see yourself as some sort of knight of old, a one-man crusader—’

‘But that’s not true—’

‘Tilting against nostalgia, or received values, or – I don’t know, and I didn’t want this conversation anyway. They’re always your bloody conversations, not mine. Damn and blast the art of today. God, if your father only knew … Your mother was lucky, she died just in time to escape the mess we’re in.’ She shook her head wildly, so that her hair flew. ‘It’s too late, Tom, it’s too late. I don’t know. You’ve hurt me, I do know that much.’

He moved towards her. She moved away. A box of Silk Cut lay on Deirdre’s side of the bed. Squire slid a cigarette from the packet and lit it. He never smoked.

‘I’m trying to make amends, Tess. Just let me try. You know Laura is out of the picture.’

‘You’ll get cancer, smoking. Where did you catch that habit? I’ve warned Deirdre but she takes no notice of me. No, as a matter of fact it’s not Laura, it’s you. The way you are. Only three years ago, you were having a mad love affair with that dreadful art-historian woman, Sheila Lippard-Milne. I never told anyone about that, not even mother and father. That hurt me bitterly, but you didn’t care. How could I escape what I felt? How could I escape? And what am I supposed to do this time? If it’s not Sheila or Laura, it’ll be someone else. Am I supposed to be sorry for you because you won’t grow up? What’s the matter with you? No, don’t tell me, I know you’ll tell me. All I really want’s your silence from now on …’

‘You know that Sheila—’

‘Let’s not hear her name.’ Teresa raised a hand in caution. ‘I don’t intend to go into all that again. Your bloody sister downstairs and your uncle think that you’re at the male menopause. Did you ever hear anything so silly? I defy you to find that malady in a medical dictionary! They don’t know about Sheila Lippard-Milne. I never told anyone about you and precious Sheila Lippard-Milne. How long’s this male menopause supposed to go on for, eh, how many years? As long as it suits you? Till we’re all in our graves? My nerves are ruined, do you wonder I sought refuge with the first likely man who came along? I had to build up my dented self-esteem. No, don’t say it – I know he turned out a rascal, but you can laugh, my moral judgement was at zero, I paid in blood for every drop of pleasure I had.’

‘Yes, people do, you know.’

Sighing, she went over to the window which opened on the front of the house. The lower part of the sash window had been pushed up to let in sea breezes, presumably in Deirdre’s desire to clear the house of its closed-up smell. Teresa leaned out with her forearms on the sill, as if she could not bear her husband’s proximity, and gazed towards the boat-filled harbour.

She was wearing a flimsy summer dress, low-cut round the shoulders. Squire had a good view of her shoulder-blades. From behind, she looked slender and youthful, almost thin, for her cramped attitude made the shoulder-blades project. His fancy saw her as a member of a mutated species, developing wings and about to fly away from him.

The tender bones, so functionally shaped, protruding under the flesh. The skin itself, clear and fair, roseate with a touch of the summer sun. The bumpy little tract of her backbone, leading down under the material of the dress, and there glimpsed in outline. The downy line of hairs following the track. The curve of her neck up into her dyed bright hair. At all these things Squire gazed during the silence, heavy with their frustration.

And said to himself, ‘Whatever arguments I put up, however I attempt to reason, however unreasonable she is, she will win. Because she has that beautiful body.’ Biology was always going to win in the end.

He walked round the room, and stubbed his cigarette out in Deirdre’s ashtray, hardly aware of what he was doing. Stuck into the side of Deirdre’s mirror, beside other treasures, was a card he had sent her from Tinjar Park in Sarawak, showing ancient supplicatory hands painted on a cave wall. He felt gratitude to his sister for caring enough to keep it.

‘Tess, I know how you must be distressed,’ he said to her back, moving unhappily behind her.

She brought her torso in from the window and slowly drew the sash down.

‘Depressed! You’re joking.’

‘I said distressed. I’m trying to tell you that I understand. I won’t say what I think about Jarvis, but I have bought him off and paid the debt to your Italian packaging firm. I’ve settled all the financial side of things. Now I want to look after you and see you happy again. We are too old for this sort of emotional jag.’

‘Oh, Tom,’ she said wearily, brushing a curl of hair from her eyes. ‘You’re being superior again.’ She sat down on the foot of the bed; her back to him.

‘Well, I’m trying not to be superior. I’m trying to keep my temper. Perhaps you think I’m complacent – that’s simply because mainly I’m happy, most of the time. Despite the male menopause … Or perhaps I’m not …’

‘You’re only interested in yourself,’ she said feelingly. ‘That’s more to the point.’

‘Did you drive over from Grantham just to insult me? If you won’t make our quarrel up, then what more do you want from me?’

She regarded the carpet, inspecting the grains of sand on it. ‘I want nothing more. Mother persuaded me we should look in here. I hoped … Oh, hell. I know I sponged off you, and that kept me quiet. I hate myself, it’s not just you. Life’s so bloody difficult. Everything’s gone wrong. Besides – you turned me out at New Year. A fine start to the year that was. Don’t deny it.’

‘You were with Jarvis, Tess. Don’t forget that. You were with Jarvis.’

‘That dreadful row. In front of the Broadwells … Now my business ruined on top of everything.’ She produced a handkerchief and wiped her nose. ‘You’ve paid up generously. I know. I’m supposed to be grateful and come creeping home. But you’re not really sorry. The truth is, you bought me. I’m another Squire acquisition, like the furniture. You just want me standing around while your life goes on.’

He stood looking helplessly down at her, wondering what to do. ‘You needn’t stand around. Come back and start up your business again at the Hall.’

She stole a glance at him. ‘Those dreams I used to have. A dark figure trying to break into the Hall … It was you all the time breaking into my life.’

‘Or Jarvis, disrupting our lives?’

‘You would think that …’

‘Actually, I don’t think it. It’s too glib. If you remember, I used the dark figure in the TV series …’ But it was no good trying to talk to her about that, no good trying to cool the temperature. Like God, the dark figure was a part of the lives of all men and women; sometimes it merely waited in the wings, idly; sometimes it came marching in boldly through the french windows. Like God, it lurked in the attic at the back of the skull, the space created by generations of blood and perception; the trick was to acknowledge its existence and yet manage to live sanely. At the moment, Teresa could not bear to live sanely; and that was still his responsibility, whether he wanted it or not.

She stood up, confronting him with slightly downcast face, regarding him through her eyelashes, one hand resting pensively on the brass bed-end.

‘You know I’m sorry, Tommy.’

Unwished, the memory came back to him of their first encounter outside his tutor’s rooms in Cambridge, when he and Teresa were both undergraduates. Later, he had said to his friend Rotheray, reporting the meeting, ‘Either she was giving me the old come-on, or she has a slight squint.’ There the fugitive thing was again – rarely seen, the slight strabismus lent her helplessness in his eyes. He reached for her bare arm. Her hair had been dark in Cambridge days; she had been the first girl he knew to wear a sweater under a shirt.

‘Well, you’ll have to help me, Tess, or I can’t help you.’

‘That’s what you said three years ago.’ She shook her head.

‘It’s as true now as it was then. You bring up the name of Sheila Lippard-Milne. I admit I loved her, though amazingly I didn’t realize it at the time, but I gave her up, as I have Laura. I chose you. I’ve not seen Sheila since, or written to her. I felt at the time I was making a considerable gesture, proving my love for you. Yet it honestly seemed as if you never noticed.’

‘Oh, I remember how miserable you were. You made it pretty obvious.’ She was silent, and went to stare out of the window at the sunshine, resting her finger-tips on the glass. ‘Perhaps marriage is always a cage … What do you want me to do?’

He stood up. ‘Let’s have a grand reconciliation. All back to the Hall, you, the girls, the dog, try and get John to come back, at least for a day or two. Celebrate, throw a party. Make love to each other. Both say we’re sorry – all that kind of thing. Start again, see if it’s possible, make it possible.’

Still looking out of the window, she said, ‘The horoscope in the paper this morning said I should look out for a betrayal by someone close to me.’

‘Did you hear what I said?’ Angrily.

‘Oh, I know you think they’re rubbish. Anything I believe in is rubbish. But they were right about Sheila. “A disruptive influence”, they said, and I remember it was that very day I discovered that letter she wrote you from New York. Don’t tell me there isn’t something in it. I date the start of my cancer from then, you’ll be interested to know.’