Along past the butcher’s window, with its midweek display of pork hocks and cartons of dripping, and up the alley by the constabulary and the public conveniences, Esther could see other women converging, singly and in groups, to the lych-gate. Burdened by their cumbersome woolens and drab hats, they seemed, without exception, gnarled and old.
As Esther and Mrs Nolan hung back at the gate, nudging Rose ahead, Esther recognized the uncommonly ugly person who had come up behind her, smiling and nodding, as the woman who sold her an immense swede for one-and-six at the Harvest Festival. The swede had bulged like a miraculous storybook vegetable above the rim of Esther’s shopping basket, filling it entirely; but when she got round to slicing it up, it turned out to be spongy and tough as cork. Two minutes in the pressure cooker, and it shrank to a wan, orange mash that blackened the bottom and sides of the pot with a slick, evil-smelling liquor. I should simply have boiled it straight off, Esther thought now, following Rose and Mrs Nolan under the stumpy, pollarded limes to the church door.
The interior of the church seemed curiously light. Then Esther realized she had never been inside before except at night, for Evensong. Already the back pews were filling with women, rustling, ducking, kneeling and beaming benevolently in every direction. Rose led Esther and Mrs Nolan to an empty pew halfway up the aisle. She pushed Mrs Nolan in first, then stepped in herself, drawing Esther after her. Rose was the only one of the three who knelt. Esther bowed her head and shut her eyes, but her mind remained blank; she just felt hypocritical. So she opened her eyes and looked about.
Mrs Nolan was the one woman in the congregation without a hat. Esther caught her eye, and Mrs Nolan raised her eyebrows, or rather, the skin of her forehead where the brows had been. Then she leaned forward. ‘I never’, she confided, ‘come here much.’
Esther shook her head and mouthed ‘Neither do I.’ That was not quite true. A month after her arrival in town, Esther started attending Evensong without a miss. The month’s gap had been an uneasy one. Twice on Sundays, morning and evening, the town bell-ringers sent their carillons pounding out over the surrounding countryside. There was no escape from the probing notes. They bit into the air and shook it with a doggy zeal. The bells made Esther feel left out, as if from some fine local feast.
*
A few days after they had moved into the house, Tom called her downstairs for a visitor. The rector was sitting in the front parlor among the boxes of unpacked books. A small, grey man, with protruding ears, an Irish accent and a professionally benign, all-tolerating smile, he spoke of his years in Kenya, where he had known Jomo Kenyatta, of his children in Australia, and of his English wife.
Any minute, now, Esther thought, he’s going to ask if we go to church. But the rector did not mention church. He dandled the baby on one knee and left shortly, his compact, black figure dwindling down the path to the front gate.
A month later, still perturbed by the evangelical bells, Esther dashed off, half in spite of herself, a note to the rector. She would like to attend Evensong. Would he mind explaining the ritual to her?
She waited nervously one day, two days, each afternoon readying tea and cake which she and Tom ate only when the tea hour was safely past. Then, on the third afternoon, she was basting a nightdress of yellow flannel for the baby when she happened to glance out of the window toward the front gate. A stout, black shape paced slowly up through the stinging nettles.
Esther welcomed the rector with some misgiving. She told him right away that she had been brought up a Unitarian. But the rector smilingly replied that as a Christian, of whatever persuasion, she would be welcome in his church. Esther swallowed an impulse to blurt out that she was an atheist and end it there. Opening the Book of Common Prayer the rector had brought for her use, she felt a sickly, deceitful glaze overtake her features; she followed him through the order of service. The apparition of the Holy Ghost and the words ‘resurrection of the flesh’ gave her an itchy sense of her duplicity. Yet when she confessed that she really could not believe in the resurrection of the flesh (she did not quite dare to say ‘nor of the spirit’), the rector seemed unperturbed. He merely asked if she believed in the efficacy of prayer.
‘Oh yes, yes, I do!’ Esther heard herself exclaim, amazed at the tears that so opportunely jumped to her eyes, and meaning only: How I would like to. Later, she wondered if the tears weren’t caused by her vision of the vast, irrevocable gap between her faithless state and the beatitude of belief. She hadn’t the heart to tell the rector she had been through all this pious trying ten years before, in Comparative Religion classes at college, and only ended up sorry she was not a Jew.
The rector suggested that his wife meet her at the next Evensong service and sit with her, so she should not feel strange. Then he seemed to think better of it. She might prefer, after all, to come with her neighbors, Rose and Cecil. They were ‘churchgoers’. It was only as the rector picked up his two prayer books and his black hat that Esther remembered the plate of sugared cakes and the waiting tea tray in the kitchen. But by then it was too late. Something more than forgetfulness, she thought, watching the rector’s measured retreat through the green nettles, had kept back those cakes.
*
The church filled rapidly now. The rector’s wife, long-faced, angular, kind, tiptoed back from her front pew to pass out copies of the Mothers’ Union Service Book. Esther felt the baby throb and kick, and placidly thought: I am a mother; I belong here.
The primeval cold of the church floor was just beginning its deadly entry into her footsoles when, rustling and hushing, the women rose in a body, and the rector, with his slow, holy gait, came down the aisle.
The organ drew breath; they started on the opening hymn. The organist must have been a novice. Every few bars a discord prolonged itself, and the voices of the women skidded up and down after the elusive melody with a scatty, catlike desperation. There were kneelings, responses, more hymns.
The rector stepped forward and repeated at length an anecdote which had formed the substance of his last Evensong sermon. Then he brought out an awkward, even embarrassing metaphor Esther had heard him use at a baptism ceremony a week earlier, about physical and spiritual abortions. Surely the rector was indulging himself. Rose slipped another peppermint between her lips, and Mrs Nolan wore the glazed, far look of an unhappy seeress.
At last three women, two quite young and attractive, one very old, came forward and knelt at the altar to be received into the Mothers’ Union. The rector forgot the name of the eldest (Esther could feel him forgetting it) and had to wait until his wife had the presence to glide forward and whisper it in his ear. The ceremony proceeded.
Four o’clock had struck before the rector allowed the women to depart. Esther quitted the church in the company of Mrs Nolan, Rose having caught up with two of her other friends, Brenda, the wife of the greengrocer, and stylish Mrs Hotchkiss who lived on Widdop Hill and bred Alsatians.
‘You staying for tea?’ Mrs Nolan asked, as the current of women ferried them across the street and down the alley toward the yellow brick constabulary.
‘That’s what I came for,’ Esther said. ‘I think we deserve it.’
‘When’s your next baby?’
Esther laughed. ‘Any minute.’
The women were diverting themselves from the alley into a courtyard at the left. Esther and Mrs Nolan followed them into a dark, barnlike room which reminded Esther depressingly of church camp-outs and group-sings. Her eyes searched the dusk for a tea urn or some other sign of conviviality, but fell on nothing but a shuttered upright piano. The rest of the women did not stop; they filed ahead up an ill-lit flight of steps.
Beyond a pair of swinging doors, a brightly-lit room opened out revealing two very long tables, set parallel to each other and swaddled with clean white linen. Down the center of the tables, plates of cake and pastries alternated with bowls of brass-colored chrysanthemums. There was a startling number of cakes, all painstakingly decorated, some with cherri
es and nuts and some with sugar lace. Already the rector had taken a stand at the head of one table, and his wife at the head of the other, and the townswomen were crowding into the closely-spaced chairs below. The women in Rose’s group fitted themselves in at the far end of the rector’s table. Mrs Nolan was jockeyed unwillingly into a position facing the rector, at the very foot, Esther at her right and an empty chair that had been overlooked at her left.
The women sat, settled.
Mrs Nolan turned to Esther. ‘What do you do here?’ It was the question of a desperate woman.
‘Oh, I have the baby.’ Then Esther was ashamed of her evasion. ‘I type some of my husband’s work.’
Rose leaned over to them. ‘Her husband writes for the radio.’
‘I paint,’ said Mrs Nolan.
‘What in?’ Esther wondered, a little startled.
‘Oils, mainly. But I’m no good.’
‘Ever tried watercolor?’
‘Oh yes, but you have to be good. You have to get it right the first time.’
‘What do you paint, then? Portraits?’
Mrs Nolan wrinkled her nose and took out a pack of cigarettes. ‘Do you suppose we can smoke? No. I’m no good at portraits. But sometimes I paint Ricky.’
The tiny, extinguished-looking woman making the rounds with tea arrived at Rose.
‘We can smoke, can’t we?’ Mrs Nolan asked Rose.
‘Oh, I don’t think so. I wanted to the worst way when I first came, but nobody else did.’
Mrs Nolan looked up at the woman with the tea. ‘Can we smoke?’
‘Ooh, I shouldn’t think so,’ the woman said. ‘Not in the church rooms.’
‘Is it a fire law?’ Esther wanted to know. ‘Or something religious?’ But nobody could say. Mrs Nolan began to tell Esther about her little boy of seven, named Benedict. Ricky was, it turned out, a hamster.
Suddenly the swinging doors flew open to admit a flushed young woman with a steaming tray. ‘The sausages, the sausages!’ pleased voices cried from various parts of the room.
Esther felt very hungry, almost faint. Even the ribbons of clear, hot grease oozing from her sausage in its pastry wrapper didn’t stop her—she took a large bite, and so did Mrs Nolan. At that moment everybody bowed their heads. The rector said grace.
Cheeks bulging, Esther and Mrs Nolan peered at each other, making eyes and stifling their giggles, like schoolgirls with a secret. Then, grace over, everybody began sending plates up and down and helping themselves with energy. Mrs Nolan told Esther about Little Benedict’s father, Big Benedict (her second husband) who had been a rubber planter in Malaya until he had the misfortune to fall sick and be sent home.
‘Have some dough bread.’ Rose passed a plate of moist, fruity slices, and Mrs Hotchkiss followed this up with a three-layer chocolate cake.
Esther took a helping of everything. ‘Who made all the cakes?’
‘The rector’s wife‚’ Rose said. ‘She bakes a lot.’
‘The rector,’ Mrs Hotchkiss inclined her partridge-wing hat, ‘helps with the beating.’
Mrs Nolan, deprived of cigarettes, drummed her fingers on the tabletop. ‘I think I’ll be going soon.’
‘I’ll go with you.’ Esther spoke through a doughy mouthful. ‘I’ve to be back for the baby.’
But the woman was there again, with refills of tea, and the two tables seemed more and more to resemble a large family gathering from which it would be rude to rise without offering thanks, or at least seeking permission.
Somehow the rector’s wife had slipped from the head of her table and was bending maternally over them, one hand on Mrs Nolan’s shoulder, one on Esther’s. ‘This dough bread is delicious‚’ said Esther, thinking to compliment her. ‘Did you make it?’
‘Oh no, Mr Ockenden makes that.’ Mr Ockenden was the town baker. ‘There’s a loaf over though. If you like, you could buy it afterwards.’
Taken aback by this sudden financial pounce, Esther almost immediately recollected how church people of all orders were forever after pennies, offertories and donations of one sort and another. She had found herself walking out from Evensong recently with a Blessings Box—an austere wooden container with a slot into which one was apparently intended to drop money until the next year’s Harvest Festival, when the boxes would be emptied and handed round again.
‘I’d love a loaf,’ Esther said, a bit too brightly.
After the rector’s wife returned to her chair, there was a muttering and nudging among the middle-aged women in best blouses, cardigans and round felt hats at the table’s foot. Finally, on a spatter of local applause, one woman rose and made a little speech calling for a vote of thanks to the rector’s wife for the fine tea. There was a humorous footnote about thanking the rector too, for his help—evidently notorious, in stirring the batter for the cakes. More applause; much laughter, after which the rector’s wife made a return speech welcoming Esther and Mrs Nolan by name. Carried away, she revealed her hopes of their becoming members of the Mothers’ Union.
In the general flurry of clapping and smiles and curious stares and a renewal of plate-passing, the rector himself left his place and came to sit in the empty chair next to Mrs Nolan. Nodding at Esther, as if they had already had a great deal to say to each other, he began speaking in a low voice to Mrs Nolan. Esther listened in unashamedly as she ate through her plate of buttered dough bread and assorted cakes.
The rector made some odd, jocular reference to never finding Mrs Nolan in—at which her clear, blonde’s skin turned a bright shade of pink, then said ‘I’m sorry, but the reason I’ve not called is because I thought you were a divorcee. I usually make it a point not to bother them.’
‘Oh it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter now, does it,’ muttered the blushing Mrs Nolan, tugging furiously at the collar of her open coat. The rector finished with some little, welcoming homily which escaped Esther, so confused and outraged was she by Mrs Nolan’s predicament.
‘I shouldn’t have come,’ Mrs Nolan whispered to Esther. ‘Divorced women aren’t supposed to come.’
‘That’s ridiculous,’ Esther said. ‘I’m going. Let’s go now.’
Rose glanced up as her two charges started to button their coats. ‘I’ll go with you. Cecil will want his tea.’
Esther glanced towards the rector’s wife at the far end of the room, surrounded now by a group of chattering women. The extra loaf of dough bread was nowhere in sight, and she felt no desire to pursue it. She could ask Mr Ockenden for a loaf on Saturday, when he came round. Besides, she vaguely suspected the rector’s wife might have charged her a bit over for it—to profit the church, the way they did at Jumble Sales.
Mrs Nolan said goodbye to Rose and Esther at the Town Hall and started off down the hill to her husband’s pub. The river road faded, at its first dip, in a bank of wet blue fog; she was lost to view in a few minutes.
Rose and Esther walked home together.
‘I didn’t know they didn’t allow divorcees,’ Esther said.
‘Oh no, they don’t like ’em.’ Rose fumbled in her pocket and produced a packet of Maltesers. ‘Have one? Mrs Hotchkiss said that even if Mrs Nolan wanted to join the Mothers’ Union, she couldn’t. Do you want a dog?’
‘A what?’
‘A dog. Mrs Hotchkiss has this Alsatian left over from the last lot. She’s sold all the black ones, everybody loves those, and now there’s just this grey one.’
‘Tom hates dogs,’ Esther surprised herself by her own passion. ‘Especially Alsatians.’
Rose seemed pleased. ‘I told her I didn’t think you’d want it. Dreadful things, dogs.’
The gravestones, greenly luminous in the thick dusk, looked as if their ancient lichens might possess some magical power of phosphorescence. The two women passed under the churchyard, with its flat, black yew, and as the chill of evening wore through their coats and the afterglow of tea, Rose crooked out one arm, and Esther, without hesitation, took it.
Ocean 1212-W
My childhood landscape was not land but the end of the land—the cold, salt, running hills of the Atlantic. I sometimes think my vision of the sea is the clearest thing I own. I pick it up, exile that I am, like the purple ‘lucky stones’ I used to collect with a white ring all the way round, or the shell of a blue mussel with its rainbowy angel’s fingernail interior; and in one wash of memory the colors deepen and gleam, the early world draws breath.
Breath, that is the first thing. Something is breathing. My own breath? The breath of my mother? No, something else, something larger, farther, more serious, more weary. So behind shut lids I float awhile;—I’m a small sea captain, tasting the day’s weather—battering rams at the seawall, a spray of grapeshot on my mother’s brave geraniums, or the lulling shoosh-shoosh of a full, mirrory pool; the pool turns the quartz grits at its rim idly and kindly, a lady brooding at jewellery. There might be a hiss of rain on the pane, there might be wind sighing and trying the creaks of the house like keys. I was not deceived by these. The motherly pulse of the sea made a mock of such counterfeits. Like a deep woman, it hid a good deal; it had many faces, many delicate, terrible veils. It spoke of miracles and distances; if it could court, it could also kill. When I was learning to creep, my mother set me down on the beach to see what I thought of it. I crawled straight for the coming wave and was just through the wall of green when she caught my heels.
I often wonder what would have happened if I had managed to pierce that looking-glass. Would my infant gills have taken over, the salt in my blood? For a time I believed not in God nor Santa Claus, but in mermaids. They seemed as logical and possible to me as the brittle twig of a seahorse in the Zoo aquarium or the skates lugged up on the lines of cursing Sunday fishermen—skates the shape of old pillowslips with the full, coy lips of women.