Welcome to Monday Night Reads! It’s time to relax (like me, above), put all your cares to one side, and lose yourself in Episode Six of Larchfield! I’m so happy to welcome new subscribers and I hope you find the site easy to navigate — all the episodes of Larchfield so far are available on the main site, here:
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PREVIOUSLY IN LARCHFIELD: Dora’s friends, who know her as RJ, come to visit from London and she struggles to remember who she used to be. Harriet, a lady from the Church, interferes. In 1930, Wystans first book of poems is published, he struggles with the boredom of his pupils and longs for his friends.
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EPISODE SIX: In which Dora gives Kit an ultimatum, and a mysterious new addition to the family appears on the doorstep. In 1930 Wystan tries and fails to work in the sun of his room and visits the local kirk where he lights a candle in memory of Uncle Henry, the man he considers his ‘true ancestor’.
Chapter sixteen
Dora
‘Good morning, darling.’ The tea went down on the bedside table. If Kit ever left Dora, she would be unable to get up anymore. This tea he made was an elixir.
Exhaustion crept through her, as if her blood were the thin, grey run-off from a watercolour. The baby had fussed in the night. It was dull and raining outside, and so cold. The central heating wafted feebly in the cavernous rooms before shooting up the stairs and through the skylight.
Kit crept in beside Dora and they clung together in the early- morning chill. Kit had warm skin; he was one of those people who was always warm. Dora burrowed into him. She found it almost impossible to express in words the unease that permeated everything.
There was a creak upstairs, as if someone were crouching right over their heads. Kit gently stroked his wife’s face. ‘You’ll be all right?’ he asked.
If one is not to admit to being stark staring mad, there is no reply to this except yes. Alone all day with the strange neighbours creaking overhead, playing their insane Jesus music? Fine! Dora had chosen this! Afraid to go out because the looks Mo gave her chilled her to the bone? No problem! No friends? Who needed friends? She had a baby!
‘Please . . . stay for a while,’ she said, reddening as she did so. It was humiliating to ask for help, to believe she actually needed help. Kit extricated himself and sat down awkwardly on the bedroom chair. ‘I have to go to Edinburgh – for a meeting,’ he said.
‘Oh. What about?’
‘Actually, it’s for Susie – to discuss a grant application.’
‘Can’t she do that?’
‘I said I’d go with her.’
Kit looked uncomfortable. Susie was a new member of the La Scala team. She was younger than Dora and also single.
Dora suddenly saw herself from above: an exhausted woman approaching middle age, unkempt, whining and paranoid. She wished she could be like Susie – unencumbered, the sort of woman a man wanted to assist.
‘You know,’ said Kit, coming back and taking her hand, ‘I’ve been thinking about this. I wonder if you’re being too hard on yourself, trying to do too much?’ Checking Dora’s expression, he pressed on. ‘I thought of two things. First of all, why don’t we have a Christmas party? To show you off as hostess? To show off Bea? You’d be so good at it ... And it occurs to me that you might be happier if you eased off on trying to write, just for a little while. It’s causing you so much frustration and distress, when what you probably need is just a rest from it. You know, just let life catch up with you a bit?’
He squeezed her hand encouragingly. Dora noticed that he had somehow become dressed; it seemed that he was always dressed and on his way out, and she was always in her nightclothes, or some terrible ensemble of ex-maternity clothes she had hauled on, and in some way always on the back foot, always behind him.
His expression remained calm and kind. ‘Yes? What do you say? A lovely party. We could plan it together this evening.’
‘A party.’ The words came out slowly, wonderingly. It was such an outlandish idea, so far from what she wanted that the initial blow of it felt almost pleasurable. Like a slap to the shoulder that, for a moment, seems just vigorous, friendly, and only slowly does the sensation reveal itself to be the dull thud of pain.
‘But my idea . . .’ Dora said, haltingly. ‘This thing about Auden, about him living in Helensburgh? I thought you liked that. I could really do something with it; I mean, no one seems to care much about him – maybe because he’s gay, or English or something – but the biography idea is a good one, isn’t it? One poet to another, you know?’
Dora shifted in the bed so she was propped up on the pillows. ‘It’s been giving me something to do, the research and so on . . . I really feel I’m starting to know him . . .’ She trailed off.
‘Darling, look at you; you’re so tired. Why take on such a big project right now? With everything that’s going on? Don’t take this wrongly, but . . . you’re going to snap if you put yourself under more pressure . . . and what if no one wants to publish the book? It would be terrible to do all that work and get nowhere with it. Honestly, darling, I really believe that you need to rest.’
‘And have a party?’
‘Yes, a party. You and me.’
He smiled encouragingly and got up to leave.
‘Wait,’ Dora said, holding him back. ‘I . . . I don’t want you to go to the meeting with Susie. I know it sounds unreasonable, but I don’t. I really don’t. I want you to stay here with me.’
‘She needs me to go. The project needs me to go.’ A third of him was out of the room. He said, from the door frame, ‘Look, why not just take the day off? You and Bea. Don’t try to accomplish anything. Watch some TV, read a book. Go for a walk.’
‘Kit, I don’t want you to go.’
‘I have to. I’m sorry.’
‘So, you’re going to leave me alone all day with our baby in this freezing house, with these people up above who hate me – while you spend the day in Edinburgh with Susie?’
‘She doesn’t know how to work these meetings.’ He was extremely calm.
Dora understood now. She had blinked and her husband had become a different person, one who was not dishevelled, shivering and covered in baby sick and fighting tears all day. He was a person in the world. He was meeting people, forming friendships with Susies. He was escaping Mo and Helensburgh and everything in it. And the part that frightened Dora – that was bringing her out in a sweat as it dawned on her – was that he was strangely untroubled by her distress.
Fury took charge of her tired bones, her chapped lips. She snapped upright and pointed at him and spoke clearly in a wobbling voice.
‘You can’t go to Edinburgh with Susie and leave me like this.’ He began once more, patiently, ‘I have—’
‘If you do that ... if you leave me here, your wife, and go to Edinburgh for the day with Susie, you are telling me it’s the end of our marriage. I will divorce you.’ Panting, she fell back.
‘Divorce me? Don’t be ridiculous. It’s just a meeting. Susie doesn’t know how to do it. It’s a kitchen refurbishment at stake.’
‘If she doesn’t know how to do it, then why did you give her a job? You are not everyone’s friend or dad or honorary husband or whatever you think you are. You’re my husband and you can’t leave me like this. I gave up everything for you.’
It was this last statement that penetrated Kit’s patient demeanour. The threat of divorce could be written off as mad. But this was an accusation.
‘Coming here was a joint decision,’ he said, leaning close over her on the bed. ‘Don’t you put that on me. Remember? Our new start?’ ‘I haven’t had a new start! I’m trapped in a horrible house with nasty people, and I’m all alone.’
‘You wouldn’t be alone if you made more effort,’ he said. ‘How are you going to make friends if you lie around all day being so negative?’ Kit paced around the bedroom, red with anger. ‘I won’t be told I can’t go to work as I see fit. I won’t be.’
Dora said, ‘You just don’t understand, do you?’ She put her head in her hands. ‘You want your own way more than you want me. Have you any idea how frightening that is, now that we are married and I have no one else? Nowhere to go?’
Kit sat down heavily on the bed and sighed. ‘Okay, okay! If our marriage is on the line, then obviously I can’t go. I’ll have to ring her up and tell her . . . God knows what I’ll say. And she can’t possibly go on her own. But, just so you know, darling – this is a monumental overreaction. I’m going along with it because I have to. But you’re being completely unreasonable.’
They stared at each other, perhaps for the first time, as two indi- viduals with no romantic illusions. Then Dora’s husband unpeeled from the bed and looked back at her. Kit had an actor’s face: beautiful, and always slightly reminding you of someone else.
He didn’t say a word as he left. Dora knew he would be home late that evening and would not ring her all day. Sadness pressed her back against the pillow. The compromise they had reached, unspoken yet clear, was that Dora would be alone all day, but her husband would not be spending the time in a romantic city with another woman.
‘Fine. See you later,’ she mumbled as the front door slammed.
Exhaustion tugged at her, but it was time for Bea to wake. Dora got out of bed, shivering, and microwaved the bottle. She lit the hob and let the flames push a little warmth into the air. As she did so, the door upstairs opened and the familiar black shoes clopped down the staircase. Dora did not even flinch now. The flagstones ached through her slippers.
Kit worked five days a week, but it was a little architectural company, a start-up, and he often didn’t take a full wage. And, of course, Dora had left all sources of income behind in her old life. They couldn’t afford to have the heating blazing all day; the house seemed to drink fuel. Worse, the fireplace in the sitting room didn’t draw, though Kit had persisted in trying to light it. After she’d col- lected Bea from her cot, Dora placed the electric fire on the hearth, switched on the lights of the little artificial Christmas tree they’d bought, and wrapped herself and her baby in blankets.
Beatrice wriggled in her fleecy jumpsuit and sucked the warm milk like a hungry calf. Her eyes were closed in bliss.
It was not even eight-thirty. Dora looked out over the front lawn, which was a tangle of mist, overgrown hedging and the sea beyond, all of it shades of the same grey. Her feelings were a similar fog. A little hand crept up to grab her nose.
The CD player started upstairs. The first inspirational tune of the day pounded through the ceiling.
Beatrice needed to be awake for another hour or so, so Dora got out the play mat, with its little meadows of felt, its bells, its rivers of Velcro and lakes of velvet. Bea ran her fingertips over it, gurgling with pleasure, pressing a yellow button that quacked and made her smile.
The simple truth was that Dora had given up one life and started another. The two were unrelated. She used to have an apple, and now she had an orange.
That fucking music! Dora scrambled to the CD player and the Mamas and the Papas rang out. Bea looked startled as Dora turned the music right up.
It was just that Kit had an apple and an orange. He had not given anything up. His life was about more. Why was hers about less?
Love. Marriage. The words turned over as mother and daughter played. Dora had thought she knew what they meant. Did she even love her husband anymore?
The floorboards creaked right over her head, and Mo’s voice warbled like a bird trapped somewhere in the stonework.
‘Don’t they ever go out?’ Dora asked her baby. Bea was engrossed in the seashore of sequins on the play mat, and pressed the quacking button time after time.
Dora’s idea about the Auden biography . . . How could she have been so stupid? She sensed embarrassment from Kit, as if she were overstepping herself, somehow, in his eyes. Of course . . . she was a lonely, defeated mother, with delusions about her capabilities. He was trying to save her from herself. And yet . . . it would have been fun, wouldn’t it? To write about a poet, live in his mind a little, even as she couldn’t write poems herself?
She was tired. He was right about that.
Dora went to the window and looked out over the thorny tangle of the lawn. Something really needed to be done about it. In another season or two it would envelop the drive and completely enclose the house.
But then she saw it.
Simply because it was the only perfectly black thing in a world composed of grey.
Just outside the window was a small dog. It had enormous ears and an elegant way of sitting, like some kind of Egyptian talisman.
Dora blinked, but it remained. It was young. And thin.
‘Bea, look at this!’
Dora ran to open the front door, and the little black dog trotted in, as if he had been living there all along.
Chapter seventeen
Wystan
The sunlight, when it comes, is horrible.
Wystan likes to remember his Icelandic heritage, but he will never feel comfortable in the northern sun, with its searchlight that asks of him, constantly, And why are you not working? And why is your skin so useless, blistering?
He will spend most of his late years in Italy, where the Mediter- ranean sun pours over the hills like honey. The southern light asks nothing of the man who finds himself in it. Rest, it says. Let me warm you. There, if he closes his eyes, he feels as if he is in a gentle embrace.
In Helensburgh, there has been so much rainy gloom that the sun is shocking. His room faces south and he cannot work with the sharp light cutting across his attention. He longs for the anonymity of winter, for the fug of darkness in which he can think and be who he really is.
The scareball, as he has privately named the sun, points as if trying to drive out a confession. That is nature, always prodding one, showing one up for what one is: pale, etiolated, inadequate.
Wystan places his small table to face the wall and closes the shut- ters tight. His room is plunged into a pungent gloom, with knives of light darting through the gaps. He tears some little strips of fabric from his sheet and these he stuffs into his ears; he would prefer to play a record on the gramophone, but he is aware that everyone can hear this, even if it is very quiet, and as what he needs to do is to play the same record over and over, it is impossible.
The only problem now with this strategy is that he can no longer see his own spidery writing. So he lights the candles bought from the twins in the hardware shop and now, in the middle of the day, he can almost persuade himself that it is night-time. Finally, he can concentrate. He will emerge, some hours later, with a headache, blinking like a mole. He coughs and splutters after inhaling his own smoke, several times over, in the tight little space.
In the artificial dark, his thoughts take on a slightly hysterical and hallucinatory quality. He tells Christopher in a letter that his long poem, The Orators, will likely destroy the Church.
In the dark cave he has created for himself, he is thinking explo- sively today. He is thinking of freedom.
He rocks himself, mumbles. His mouth feels full of earth.
A tiny thread of light works its way through the shutters, splits and waves a dim rainbow across the wall. The candle waves back, like someone earthbound to a celestial relation.
He wants to tell the truth about himself.
But the truth is that he is immature and loathsome and will never be loved. How can he set that truth down?
He rubs his eyes. The boy at the station drifts into his mind. The thought of him is a thrill, which, in a second, becomes pain.
No one must ever see this, the hunched young man, making blots on the page about his pathetic secret life. For is his love not pathetic, conducted as it must be either in the dark or in his imagination?
Wystan thinks back to the lovely Erich, his nonchalance and bleeding feet.
How was it that he could seem free?
At this very moment, Erich will probably be out performing some kind of heroic act of survival. He will be out on the farm back in his village, or gambling the money Wystan gave him on some race or other. He’ll be dreaming of better days.
How Wystan wishes he could be like Erich, be him, instead of the thing that he is.
He can write about a hero, but he cannot be one.
The hero is free of shame, and shame is what cripples Wystan as he bends his white frame over the too-small desk.
Why does God despise him so? Of course, he knows why. He was the brilliant, delightful son of a good mother, who got stuck somehow and became an abomination.
Christopher manages not to feel this cancerous shame. Chris- topher coexists with his nature – embraces it, even. But then, he does live in Berlin.
There is a price to pay for hiding from the truth.
One can love, but never be loved.
One can describe freedom, but never be free.
It’s too much. Wystan throws open the shutters and the light
bursts in, as if the glass itself had broken. It is dazzling and awful. He wipes his eyes, lays down his pen and strides out of the room and out of Larchfield, going he is not sure where.
A little after he has gone, Olive knocks and comes into the room to clear up. It reeks of old smoke and sweat. Dirty plates and cups are piled on the floor. A candle is burning dangerously close to a chaotic pile of paper. She blows out the flame and begins to gather up the plates. The room is in semi-darkness; she opens the shutters fully and heaves open the window, letting in a gust of fresh air. Outside, the trees stand newly green, and, beyond them, the sea shimmers. It’s going to be a hot one today. Mr Auden must have gone down to the lido. He’s a strange one, that’s for sure. So alone, and so polite. Her eyes fall on a heap of clothes in the corner.
And going out in his slippers. Really, it’s not very Helensburgh. It won’t work out well.
She sighs and surveys the room. The filth in there haunts her. Not sure where to start, she straightens his bed, sending a haze of ash into the air. Books slide out of the folds of the blanket; she stacks them neatly by the bed. These sheets have not been washed for weeks; Mr Auden is paying for his keep, is he not?
She pulls the sheets off, used to little boys and their fetid ways, wrinkling her freckled nose. The stained pillowcase is next; when she lifts the pillow, she finds yet more papers. She holds them uncertainly in her hands and her eyes fall on the first line: Daylight, striking at the eye from far-off roofs, why did you blind us: we who on the snow-line were in love with death . . .
What does that even mean, anyway?
Is Mr Auden afraid of daylight?
Is he a vampire? Olive has seen Nosferatu and did not sleep for days afterwards.
He is awfully pale and funny-looking.
Olive lays the papers with the others on the desk without looking again and runs out of the room with the dirty sheets.
Wystan strides quickly away from the school, down the hill. Immediately, he feels calmer. He shields his eyes, annoyed that he forgot his hat, and almost bangs into a street lamp. Recovering him- self, he sees, pasted on to the lamp, a poster: SIR ALAN COBHAM’S FLYING CIRCUS COMES TO HELENSBURGH and an illustration of planes wheeling in a blue sky.
His slippered feet seem to be taking him of their own accord towards the kirk on the corner.
The door is closed, but he can hear church organ music from inside. Cool air brushes his lips as he pushes it open. Flagstones chill the soles of his feet.
The congregation is standing, singing a hymn he’s not familiar with. It’s too late to back out now, so he slips in beside a tall lady in furs, who looks him up and down before giving a thin smile in the direction of her hymnal.
The church is spartan and cold but slightly less so than the kirk further along the road. This is the Scottish Episcopalian church, the Piscy as he heard others call it. At the kirk, there are no kneeling pads; the Scots do not kneel. There are no cushions on the hard benches. The Piscy reminds him a little of the church in Birmingham where the Auden family have marked all their important events. Light, through the massive stained-glass window, illuminates the dust motes.
The last chords of the hymn die away and everyone sits down. A man in plain ecclesiastical dress ascends the pulpit. He has a most fantastic head of auburn hair, out of all proportion to both his physique and his age. Wystan is quite transfixed as it bobs and slides over his forehead. It distracts him from the matter in hand, which is that he has come to church, where he most certainly does not want to be, in his slippers and with nothing of use in his heart or his soul.
But then he remembers. He is here for a reason. His very unconscious has brought him to where he needs to be. For it is the anniversary of Uncle Henry’s death.
Every year, on this anniversary, Wystan finds a church and lights a candle. There is never a mention of the date from his parents; Wystan knows his mother loathed Uncle Henry and blames him for the unmentionable way her youngest son has turned out. She fears his attachment to Uncle Henry, dead or no.
Mostly, we are absolutely unknown to our parents. They hover at the edge of our adult consciousness; we are as impenetrable to them as the sea. Wystan does not feel even related to his mother. Whilst he finds himself longing for some kind of tenderness from her, he avoids her as far as he can. Our real ancestors are often someone else entirely; certain characteristics are planted, discovered, created by those other than our parents. Uncle Henry is Wystan’s true ancestor, and now, while he waits for the sermon to finish, he bows his head and worships.
Uncle Henry was a chemist; he was clever. Even Wystan’s mother grudgingly conceded this when trying to come to terms with Hen- ry’s interest in her son. Wystan’s first memories of his uncle were confused; his appearance made him uneasy. He had protruding eyes which seemed to change colour. On visits to the Auden home in Birmingham, Henry radiated disapproval, which made Wystan feel ashamed. But Wystan liked to run little errands for him, and, when he won a kind word or a sweet as a result, he was delighted for the whole day. Uncle Henry began to write letters to Wystan when he was about thirteen, to send him money and tell him little facts that Wystan hoarded. His mother would hand the letters over with a sniff.
But it was not until Wystan was sixteen that he actually visited Uncle Henry alone. At sixteen, Wystan was a clever blank, full of facts and opinions, but a sea of ignorance to himself. His fumblings with Christopher and other boys were, to his mind, corrosive immaturity, part of the poison that the public school system produced. And yet he had grown to feel comfortable with Uncle Henry, enjoying his snobbery, lascivious smile and extremely funny impressions of the female members of the family. When the invitation to visit came for Wystan, his mother sulked, but how could she articulate the unsayable? That would make it true and in the world.
That was the evening Wystan suddenly had a vision of himself in the future. Uncle Henry was him; he was Uncle Henry, just thirty years behind: a cigarette in hand with a huge droop of ash; solitary but gregarious; apart from the world.
He would have liked to see himself in his father, but he did not. His mother needed a quite different sort of partner, a Latin Lothario who would have dominated her and treated her badly but ravishingly; his father needed someone simple and happy, who could be satisfied. He was gentle and weak, and though Wystan loves his father, he feels forever distant from him.
As he and his uncle sat down to dinner and drank champagne, Wystan knew this was a turning-point. Afterwards, Henry casually showed him his collection of photos of naked choirboys and asked him, did he like them? When Wystan said yes, and embarked on a new glass of champagne, Henry stroked his hair, pulled him on to his lap and asked if he liked that. Wystan’s champagne spilt a little, but he gulped and assented. They had remained in this awkward position for a little while. His uncle’s breath warmed his cheek, and it was the first time he had felt this, the breath of a grown man upon his face. Henry slid his large hand into Wystan’s trousers, and Wystan waited for the question: did he like it? But it didn’t come. Anyway, what he felt was not possible to express in a yes or a no.
When he left Uncle Henry’s flat, some hours later, he knew that Uncle Henry was his true ancestor. And this was why he remembered him with a candle, for he was grateful to his uncle, who had shown him what he was, and what his life would be.
Now the congregation is filing out, with great rustlings of furs and clacks of heels and wafts of scent and hair cream.
At the back of the church is a small rack of candles and, when everyone is gone, Wystan drops a shilling in the box and takes one, lighting it from one of the others. He plants it carefully in the top row and he bows his head again.
The ancestor must be worshipped for showing him the truth. That he in no way prepared him for love is beside the point. How to face the loneliness, the longing, the sheer overwhelming pain of desire that cannot be fulfilled . . . these are his burdens, as all people who face the truth must carry burdens.
All Episodes of Larchfield can be found here:
And finally…
It’s hard to work when the swans are being so beautiful….
Til next time,
Polly x
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