Tessa Hadley: Sunstroke and Other Stories

There was a second pack of cards on the table, rejected for building towers because the corners were too soft: Gina picked it up and fiddled with it on her lap without Josh noticing. The six-base tower came down in a shout of frustration, and Josh washed his hands groaning in the mess of cards.

— D’you want me to show you a card trick? Gina asked.

— OK, he said. — Anything. Just don’t let me begin another one of these.

— Actually, I’m not going to do it, she said, — you are. Put those cards out of the way. We’ll use this older pack. It feels more sympathetic.

He was amiable, obliging, clearing the table, his eyes on her now to see what she could do.

— I’m going to give you power, she said. — I’m going to make you able to feel what the cards are, without looking at them. You’re going to sort them into red and black. It’s not even something I can do myself. Look.

She pretended to guess, frowning and hesitating, dealing the top few cards face down into two piles. — I don’t know. Black, red; black, black, black; red, red. Something like that. Only I don’t have this magic. I’ll turn them over. See? All wrong. But you’re going to have this power. I’m going to give it to you. Give me your hands.

He put his two long brown hands out palm down on the table; she covered them with her own and closed her eyes, squeezing slightly against his bony knuckles, feeling under the ball of her thumb a hangnail loose against the cuticle of his. Really, something seemed to transfer between them.

— There, she said briskly. — Now you’ve got the power. Now you’re going to sort out these cards into black and red, face down, without looking. Black in this pile, red in this. Take your time. Try to truly feel it. Concentrate.

Obediently he began to deal the cards into two piles, doing it with hesitating wincing puzzlement, like someone led blindfold and expecting obstacles, laughing doubtingly and checking with her. — I have no idea what I’m doing here.

— No, you have. You really have. Trust it.

He gained confidence, shrugged, went faster: black, red, black, black, red, black, red, red, red. Halfway through she asked him to change round: red cards on the right, now, and black cards on the left pile. — Readjust: don’t lose it. It’s really just to keep you concentrating.

Then when he’d put down his last card and looked at her expectantly, she swept up the two piles and turned one over in front of his eyes. — So you see, if it’s worked, this one should run from red to black. Look, there you are!

She spread the second pile, reversing it so that it seemed to run the other way. — And this one here, from black to red.

— Oh, no. No! That’s just too weird. That’s really weird, man. How did you do that? Jesus! He laughed in delighted bafflement, looking from the cards up to her face and back again.

She was laughing too, hugging her secret. — Do you want me to do it again, see if you can guess? Only hang on a sec, I need the loo.

He never guessed, he didn’t notice that she took the second pack of cards with her to the bathroom to make them ready. (‘Shall we use these newer ones, see if it works with them?’) Gina couldn’t quite believe that he couldn’t see what she was doing. She had worked it out for herself, the first time that the trick was done on her.

— It’s just spooky, he said in awe, shaking his head. — It doesn’t make sense. There’s just no way I should be getting these right. You must be making me deal them right, somehow.

— No, it’s you, it’s you, she insisted. — I can’t do it. It’s only you.

He wouldn’t let her tell him how it was done, although she was longing to explain. He was right: it was better to hold off the climactic revelation with its aftermath of grey; the power of the mystery he couldn’t break was a warm pleasure, satisfying and sensual between them. They ran their eyes over each other’s faces in intimate connection, smiling; he brimmed with puzzlement and she was replete with knowledge. Then the moment slipped away; they gave up the trick after the third time, and played Mastermind and battleships, and exchanged talk in low, lax friendly voices. The others returned, crashing down through the garden, tipsily exalted. When Gina climbed between the sheets in her pyjamas, she found a warm pleasure persisting, a soft surprising parcel under her lungs; she examined it, and thought that it was probably happiness, a small preparatory portion of the great ecstasies she supposed life must have in store for her.

It was twenty-five years before she visited Wing Lodge again.

This time she was alone. She remembered that she had been there before, with Mamie, although she couldn’t quite imagine why she had been staying with her: there had never been any real intimacy between their families. Dickie and Mamie had divorced not long after that holiday, and Mamie had died recently. One of the boys had drowned, years ago, she couldn’t remember which one (she would have to ask her mother). The visit, now, was uncharacteristic of Gina. She never went to stately homes or birthplaces, and she deplored the heritage industry; she gave ironic lectures at her university on the enthusiasm of the masses for traipsing humbly and dotingly round the houses where they would once, and only sixty years ago, have been exploited as estate hands or scullery maids. But then this was an unsettled time in her life, and she was doing uncharacteristic things. She was making her mind up whether to embark on a full-scale new relationship; she had been divorced five years earlier, and now her lover wanted to move in. On impulse, leaving her son with friends for the weekend, she had booked herself into a hotel and come down to this little town to be alone, to think.

She hadn’t imagined that she would actually go inside Wing Lodge, although she had been aware, of course, that the town she had chosen to think in was the one where John Morrison, who was still her passion, had spent his last years. She had perhaps had a quixotic idea that by moving around in his streets she might arrive at his clarity; needless to say the streets remained just streets, full of cars and tourists; and for someone used to London, there weren’t many of them to explore. With determined austerity, she had not brought any books away with her, imagining this would concentrate her mind. But the habit of years was too strong to break; over drawn-out coffees in the wood-panelled tea room, where the waitresses really did still wear white frilled aprons, she found herself reading the menu over and over, and then the ancient injunction against asking for credit in red calligraphy above the till, and then the left-behind sports pages of a newspaper. In the end she joined the little party of visitors being taken round Wing Lodge because there wasn’t anything else to do. She was a middle-aged woman now, tall and statuesque in a tan linen Max Mara skirt and jacket; in her mass of thick dark curls grey hairs were sprouting with a coarse energy which made her suspect that age was going to impose itself differently to how she had imagined: less entropy, more vigorous takeover. However she tried to shrink it to size, her habit of authority was conspicuous. There were copies of her book about the novels in the little bookshop upstairs, but she wasn’t going to own up to that; she followed the guide obediently about and listened with amusement to the way the wonderful works abounding in disruptive energy became, in the retelling, so much sad sawdust, so much lament, as Pound had put it, for the old lavender.

She wondered sceptically, too, whether the place was really arranged as Morrison would have known it. He and his wife had never had much money, even in the years of his critical success, and the couple were famous for their indifference to creature comforts. Friends complained that although the conversation was excellent you never got a decent meal or a good night’s sleep at Wing. Gina recognised one or two drawings she knew Morrison had possessed, and a few things he might have brought back from the East; but it must have been his wife who made Wing Lodge into this tasteful cosy little nest, after he died, when she inherited money from her family in America. No doubt the frail ladylike guide and her possibly lesbian frail ladylike companion, who must live here quietly together on the days when they were not intruded upon by a curious public, had added their bit of polish to the deep old charm.