Jonathan Buckley - The Great Concert of the Night

I admitted that I had been watching from the window.

‘I know,’ she said, making an adjustment to her hair. From an adjoining room her name was called. She curtseyed with prim dignity, in the character of Beatrice.

Imogen’s mother had fallen a week before one of our visits. Her arm was in a sling, and we watched her as she attacked the roses with secateurs, one-armed, as if to demonstrate to an invisible assessor that the cast was a needless encumbrance. She had been thrown several times, Imogen told me. Once she had ridden home with a broken wrist and two broken ribs. This was when Imogen first spoke about the curse on the family’s women. She had known nothing of her mother’s diagnosis and nothing of the surgery until it was done. When she came home from school at Easter her mother told her about the operation. In her mother’s mind, the cancer had been defeated: the surgeon had removed the tumour, the chemotherapy would deal with any residues, and any further invasion could be repelled by an act of will. There was barely any further discussion. In the morning she spent a little longer in bed than was usual, but she was not visibly ill; she was not visibly anxious. And her mother’s cancer did not return. But other women in the family had died of it, Imogen had later learned. The ordeal was inevitable, she had come to think. She talked about it as others might talk about the debilities of old age.

The museum enjoins us to be humble: memento mori, it whispers to us. Soon, very soon, your life will be reduced to fragments such as these, a ruin, a miscellany of fragments from which the past can be reconstituted only as a picture in which most of the space is blank.

A new message on Val’s homepage: ‘We are living in times of great uncertainty.’ Politically, economically, socially, the world ‘is in a state of flux’. It is not surprising, then, that ‘dangerously high levels of stress’ have become ‘endemic’ to our society. She sees the symptoms of stress everywhere. It is good to know, then, that help is at hand. Under Val’s tutelage, she tells us, we can overcome anxiety, eliminate ‘fear and resistance’, acquire ‘resourcefulness and resilience’. We can learn to ‘grow and change’. Her coaching is a ‘dynamic and self-generating process in which we work in partnership to harness and develop your skills and capabilities. I will help you to identify who you want to be, and to recognise what is preventing you from achieving self-fulfilment.’ She impresses upon us that her approach is not prescriptive. She has been trained in ‘a wide range of techniques and theories’, and in addition to ‘mindfulness practices’ often makes use of ‘archetypal psychology and psychosynthesis’. Solutions will differ from one individual to the next. The common denominator is that Val will always bring her full attention to bear upon the client. ‘My promise: to be wholly present to the person I’m working with.’

Today, nobody came to the Sanderson-Perceval Museum. Not one person.

On our first evening, Imogen told me about the body double: ‘Antoine needed someone who was comfortable with the close-up,’ she told me. ‘A specialist.’ We had drawn the attention of the couple at the table nearest to ours. They were sixtyish, and exuded a miasma of ineradicable boredom. At the word ‘porn’, they turned their heads in unison, abruptly, as if struck in the same instant by a waft of ammonia. The woman maintained a five-second glare.

‘Likewise with the male member,’ Imogen continued, ignoring the scrutiny. ‘The erection was a guest appearance. A tricky problem for continuity, but I think it was managed well. Could you tell?’

‘I could not. But I had assumed,’ I said.

The director had intended to use a prosthesis, Imogen explained. Instead of penetration there would have been some modest hip-thrusting; the customary decorous routine. ‘But the replica just didn’t have the screen presence. No charisma.’

At which point the woman set down her knife and fork decisively; her face took aim.

Imogen turned to face her and said, in a shopworker’s tone of brisk courtesy: ‘Can I help you, madam?’

‘Yes,’ replied the woman. ‘Could you please keep your voice down?’

‘I don’t believe I’m talking loudly. On the contrary. Am I talking loudly?’ Imogen asked me.

‘I don’t think so,’ I answered.

‘We can hear you very clearly,’ the woman told her.

‘Then perhaps you shouldn’t be trying so hard.’

The husband, a man of smooth and copious jowls, now intervened. ‘You are causing offence,’ he stated. He pronounced like a magistrate.

Imogen, undaunted, surveyed the room. Nobody else was sitting within ten feet of us, and nobody was paying any attention to our corner. ‘I don’t think so,’ she said.

‘Yes, you are,’ said woman.

‘What precisely is it that has displeased you?’

‘You know perfectly well.’

‘Was it the silicon dick? Surely not. I thought the dick was funny. But I can see that you are not amused,’ said Imogen, assuming an expression of some gravity.

‘You are a very rude person,’ the woman told her.

‘We cannot all be blessed with charm such as yours, I’m afraid.’

From a face that had begun to pucker with disgust, the man emitted the sound of a punctured ball. His wife said: ‘You are spoiling our evening.’

‘And you seemed to be having such fun. I do apologise,’ Imogen replied. Turning to me, she smiled and said, brightly: ‘Coffee?’ It was as if the complainants had vanished.

But I could not so easily disregard our neighbours; they were listening. I suggested that we call for the bill.

‘Really?’ she protested, exaggerating the disappointment. ‘I could talk to you about my family. Or you could tell me about yours. I think that would be inoffensive enough,’ she said, raising her voice.

Ten minutes later we were leaving. She leaned towards the woman and said to her, in a gossipy girlish whisper: ‘We’re just getting to know each other. It’s going well, I think.’ Then she smiled at the husband, as if he and his wife had been in our company all evening, to everyone’s delight. ‘It’s been a pleasure,’ she said.

Some time after Imogen’s departure, Samantha at last remarked: ‘Very nice, but not really your type, was she?’ The phrase would not have irked as it did, had I not heard it as an echo of Val; types and archetypes were coins of Val’s currency.

My liaisons prior to our marriage were not numerous – just three of significance. No common denominators other than femaleness were immediately apparent, I might have pointed out. Instead, all I said was: ‘What might my type be?’

‘You know what I mean,’ said Samantha. ‘She was a bit more… well…’

‘Extravagant?’ I suggested, attempting a tone of simple curiosity.

‘Maybe.’

‘Posh?’

‘Posher than anyone I know, certainly.’

The big house had been a major element of Imogen’s appeal, I confessed.

‘There’s no need to be so defensive.’

I denied that I was being defensive; then apologised.

It was evident that I was still very fond of Imogen, Samantha observed.