INTRODUCTION



The Unlikely Adventures ofClaudia FaradayPatsy Trench‘She had the oddest sense of being herself invisible . . . there being no more marrying, no more having of children now, but . . . this being Mrs. Dalloway, not even Clarissa any more; this being Mrs. Richard Dalloway.’Virginia Woolf,?Mrs. Dalloway §‘I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.’?Oscar Wilde,?The Importance of Being EarnestINTRODUCTIONClaudia’s diaryLondon, a few months agoIt began with a visit from Claudia's great granddaughter. She'd heard from a mutual friend that I was a writer and there was this diary she'd come across in the attic of the family home she was clearing. She wondered, would I mind giving it a quick look and telling her if I thought it might be publishable? It was her great grandmother's, she explained breathlessly as she thrust the linen bag into my hands, so it would mean changing all the names of course, including hers, because there were reputations to be protected, and well, you know.I was intrigued enough to start reading the diary right away, and I have to say that once I’d got used to the quirky handwriting and the opaque references to things unutterable I became so absorbed I could barely put it down. It took some editing to create a proper narrative and to clarify episodes that were, shall we say, hinted at rather than openly described. The ‘inciting episode’ that set off the chain of Claudia’s adventures is a case in point. So here it is: all names changed as promised to Claudia’s granddaughter, who remains anonymous of course. I have done my best to stay true to the Claudia who emerged from the diary, and to the accompanyingphotograph of her as a mature woman: elegant, beautiful, a little remote, smiling shyly at the camera.Here and there, for fun, and by way of adding an extra touch of period flavour to the piece I have embedded references to books, films, plays and people from the 1920s. Kudos to you if you can spot them. (Answers at the end.)1It was strange how enormous the house seemed now there was no one in it. When the girls were around the place felt like an overstuffed cubby hole. It was impossible to move from one room to another without tripping over something - an object, a human being, someone’s dog - and there never seemed to be the smallest corner where a person could be quietly on her own. But now, as Claudia wandered from room to room, several times within the last hour, all she could hear was the sound of her heels clacking on the floorboards and bouncing back at her off the walls as if to remind her, as her friend Prudence had put it, ‘How clever you are, managing to get rid of three girls in less than a year.’The other day she had spent the best part of an hour walking up and down the wooden staircase. It had occurred to her, the second time she had made the journey, that despite placing the same feet on the precise same spot on each step - setting off on her left foot because, as she had only recently discovered, she was left-footed - the boards creaked differently each time, and sometimes not at all. And it seemed to make no difference whether she stepped lightly or heavily, the nature and volume of the creak, if there was one, was never quite the same. This harmless, if pointless experiment had absorbed her to such a degree it was only the sound of the clock striking noon that had restored her to her senses.Only this afternoon she had gone upstairs to fetch something from her bedroom and, having forgotten what it was, had sat down on her bed for a moment and drifted right off to sleep. The next thing she knew it was an hour and a half later and Lily was tapping at her door.‘There’s a gentleman to see you, madam,’ said she.‘A gentleman? What kind of gentleman? Am I expecting someone?’‘A young gentleman,’ said Lily. ‘He says he’s a friend of your husband’s.’‘Oh. Then tell him I’ll be down directly.’This was, needless to say, unexpected, not to say unprecedented. In normal circumstances there was no reason why a woman like Claudia should feel in the least obliged to interrupt her daily routine in order to entertain a total stranger who, for whatever reason, lacked the grace to wait to be invited, or indeed to have written to announce his intended visit beforehand. But, she reminded herself, normal circumstances were not what they were; and so she rose quickly from her bed, slipped on her shoes and checked her appearance briefly in the mirror of her dressing table, before presenting herself to the young man in the drawing room on the ground floor.‘Mrs Faraday.’ He turned from the window out of which he had been gazing and stretched out a hand. ‘Apologies for the lack of protocol, but I found myself with an unexpected afternoon free, so I thought - Why not jump on a train and pay a call on Mrs Faraday, as promised.’‘Do you have a name?’ asked Claudia, receiving the hand, tentatively.‘Gabriel Carter.’He was an odd-looking young man and he did not sound in the least apologetic. He was tall and thin and had a mop of unruly light brown hair that had constantly to be pushed, or tossed, out of the way of his eyes; which were, Claudia observed, an unusual light green and remarkably penetrating.‘As promised to whom?’ she enquired.‘To your husband of course.’ He tilted his head at her in a way that was almost coquettish, and Claudia smiled despite herself.‘Well, now that you’re here, perhaps some tea?’‘Splendid.’So Claudia rang for tea, and as they sat together, the young man and the middle-aged woman, in the fading light of an early autumn day, she asked the stranger how he came to be acquainted with her husband.‘I was working with him,’ he said. ‘In Africa. A great privilege.’‘And what part of Africa would that be?’‘Tanganyika, the Olduvai Gorge, you may have heard of it.’Claudia nodded vaguely. ‘How is he?’‘Excellent. Yes. You’ve not heard from him recently? No, he did confess as much. He gets very caught up with his work, very dedicated. Single-minded, you could say.’‘He only made it to one of the three weddings,’ said Claudia.‘Three weddings?’‘Three daughters, three weddings, within a few months of each other. He made it to one but was unable to stay for the others.’‘I see.’‘And what exactly did he confess?’ said Claudia, trying to keep the archness from her voice.‘Confess?’‘“He did confess as much.” Your words.’‘Ah. He confessed he had a family.’‘“Confessed he had a family”?’ Claudia’s eyebrows lifted imperceptibly. ‘And did he talk much about his family?’‘I believe he said he’d been over, yes, he’d been over for a wedding earlier in the year, he said as much, though he didn’t mention a daughter. A family wedding I gather, I didn’t really ask.’ He flashed her a disarming smile. ‘But I did promise to call in on you,’ he went on. ‘To give you news of him.’‘Ah, not to see how I was.’‘I beg your pardon?’‘Never mind,’ said Claudia. She gave a small sigh.‘I’m tiring you. Would you like me to go?’‘You might as well stay for supper,’ she found herself saying.‘That’s very kind of you,’ said the young man. ‘I accept.’So he stayed for supper, and they spent the evening talking about Africa, and what it was like living in the wilds, far from civilisation. He described to Claudia in vivid detail the process and the aims of working on an archaeological dig and the excitement of new discoveries – or revelations, as he called them – that stood to alter one’s entire perceptions and understanding of ancient history; and above all to be working alongside a man of such inspirational spirit, such insight. He told the story of the day they came across a piece of blackened rock, no bigger than a child’s fist, which no one but the master thought to be of significance. So while the rest of the party slept the master worked through the night, by the light of a failing torch, until his fingers were bleeding, and by dawn he had uncovered a portion of the skull of what some time later proved to be Homo Habilis. And while to some extent Claudia had heard it all before – indeed she had herself many years ago witnessed what it was like living under canvas, in the middle of nowhere – such was the young man’s passion and eloquence she felt she was hearing it for the first time.‘So,’ he said finally, and fell silent. A moment passed and then he added, ‘And what about you?’ ‘Me? What about me?’‘It can’t be a lot of fun, here at home, a woman on her own, no husband.’He was watching her out of the corner of his eye. She was not disposed to rise to the comment so she said something to the effect that she managed quite well, thank you, as did many other women with absentee husbands.She wondered what her husband Gerald had made of this forthright, enthusiastic and forward young man, at which point a startling thought came into her head and she said, ‘Did my husband send you on a mission perhaps? To spy on me? See what I get up to while the cat’s away?’‘Spy on you? Gracious.’ He pretended to look shocked for a moment. ‘What an intriguing thought. So I must unearth your secrets.’She was about to tell him that would take no time at all, but deciding a little mystery would do no harm she gave him her best Giaconda smile before realising, to her simultaneous alarm and amusement, that he might think she was flirting with him. So by way of a change of subject she asked her visitor where his adventures were to take him next, at which point the conversation took an unexpected turn.‘India,’ was his instant and emphatic reply, and in particular a temple in a place whose name Claudia could not quite catch; where, he explained, were to be found sculptures representing the Hindu ‘Four Truths’, among which is Kama, or Desire. He had a specific interest in a set of erotic sculptures which were believed to date back to the eleventh century and which contained, he burbled on, in addition to representations of homosexuality and hermaphroditism, images of self- pleasuring, both male and female.‘Self . . . ? Oh!’ said Claudia, in such a way, she later realised, that might have given the (mistaken) impression she wanted to hear more. So the young man hurtled on, relating what he knew of the culture of sexual congress through history and at what point it was believed that women, as well as men, had discovered the delights of self-pleasuring. It was his view that the ancients, in this respect at least, were ahead of their time – you only had to look at the Romans and the Greeks – indeed, ahead of our time. Imagine attempting to display such artefacts in modern society!Quite what all this had to do with archaeology was unclear, and so Claudia sat, silent and perfectly still, until the clock struck ten; at which point the young man at last drew breath and said, ‘It’s ten o’clock, I must be on my way.’‘Where do you have to get to?’ Claudia asked.‘London.’‘Well, you’ve missed the last train.’‘Really?’ he exclaimed.‘You will have to stay the night.’‘Ah.’ He said. Then, ‘How kind.’‘Not at all,’ said Claudia. She rang for Lily and asked her to prepare Flora’s room, because her guest was compelled to stay overnight.‘This was not intended,’ he said, unnecessarily.‘It’s been a most interesting evening,’ said Claudia. ‘And enlightening too. This Dr Faraday you have been describing, he sounds fascinating, I would so love to meet him.’ She smiled. ‘Sometimes one discovers more about one’s nearest and dearest through – well, in this case through a total stranger.’‘Indeed.’‘Lily will show you where to go,’ said Claudia, as she rose to her feet. ‘I hope you sleep well.’‘I always sleep well,’ said the confident young man, and gave her a little bow.~What happened later on that same night is a matter on which Claudia would ponder for some time to come.It’s true she was glad to have Flora’s room occupied again, albeit by a stranger. It had been a month since her youngest daughter had married her Spanish husband, and brought to an end the ceaseless bustle of preparation and panic that inevitably accompanies the planning of weddings. But later, Claudia would wonder whether she had appeared a little too eager, too ready to invite a stranger to stay the night, especially in mind of the evening’s conversation. Had the young visitor misinterpreted her intentions? A man and a woman alone in a house together, why what would her friends have made of that? What would Gerald have said? It was not like Claudia, not at all, to show unnecessary encouragement. Was it?Yet how else to explain why the young man felt he had the right – or more to the point, permission - to enter her bedroom, late at night, for the purposes of . . . For the purposes of something she couldn’t quite bring herself to articulate, even to herself. That it had to do with their previous conversation, that much she acknowledged, but had her unfamiliarity with the notion of ‘self-pleasuring’ been quite so obvious? And even if it were, had she given the slightest indication that she had wished him to come to her bedroom for the purpose of what one might term a tutorial on ‘Nature’s miracle’, as he had described it?At the same time she had to admit there had been plenty of opportunity for discouragement; not for one moment did she feel she had been, shall we say, taken advantage of. On the contrary one could argue she had colluded in the whole business.It was a big puzzle. All Claudia knew for certain was that life would never be quite the same after the young man came to visit.She only had herself to blame.? Patsy Trench 2015patsytrench@ 020 8830 0634 / 07553 948 553 ................
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