Passing On

  He swam vigorously, ducking his head in the water and flinging back his wet hair. The dog circled him, barking. At last they both climbed out onto the little beach. The man dressed, put on his shoes, stood up, and then bounded up the bank into the field, followed by the dog. They were gone as suddenly as they had come. The water of the pool was still muddy and heaving where they had swum.

  ‘I don’t think I’d fancy it,’ said Giles. ‘Too much weed.’

  It had been, while it lasted, electrifying; now, it was as though neither man nor dog had ever been. The shape and texture of the man’s body were still before Helen’s eyes, but as an image, a picture once seen. Giles reached for the wine and emptied the rest of it into their glasses.

  She was intensely conscious of him. When his leg brushed against her it seemed to bum her. I’m not sure how much of this I can endure, she thought. She glanced at Giles; she had no idea if he felt anything, or nothing. He was sipping wine and talking about dogs. He had seen a sheepdog trial in Cumbria: amazing creatures. It seemed to Helen that they might sit there thus for ever. All my life, she thought, I have let things pass me by.

  They were sitting side by side. She turned to face him. He stopped talking and, presumably, saw. Afterwards, she thought perhaps she had touched him, but could not remember. Giles leaned forward; he took her face between his hands and kissed her on the mouth. She felt his tongue. Then he drew back and looked intently at her. ‘Helen, my dear …’ he said. He sighed, ‘We mustn’t …’ He stood up. She heard herself say, ‘Why not?’

  but if the words reached him he made no sign. He began to pack things into the picnic basket. He said, Now what I have in mind is a stroll to the end of the valley just to see what goes on there, then back to the car and home for tea, how about that?’

  South of France anyway. The children are a pain, frankly, and Tim has sinus and won’t give you the time of day. So what’s new with you?’

  South of France anyway. The children are a pain, frankly, and Tim has sinus and won’t give you the time of day. So what’s new with you?’

  There was a spell of hot weather; mosquito larvae hatched in the stagnant pond on the far side of the Britches. Some children broke in and trampled down the surviving patch of ramsoms. A cat killed one of the young magpies. A decaying treestump sprouted a collar of saffron fungus of a kind Edward had never ‘I’m coming down for a night,’ said Louise. ‘Thursday. O.K.?

  I’ve got to get out of London. The office can bloody do without me for a couple of days. Everyone else is swanning around the

  seen before. He observed all these happenings but wrote: ‘Dogs: four including the one that got run over when only six months.

  Tam is fifth. I have always wondered if mother left the front door open deliberately; he was a spaniel mixture, very nice.

  Pickle was first — tan and white terrier, died of cancer at eight.

  Best, too, in many ways. Then Jess — collie from Canine Defence, had to be put down eventually. Then the run-over puppy. Then Minnie — terrier type again, very loving, strayed a lot, died suddenly, probably ate something. Cats: the tabby next door, when I was a child — but of course that wasn’t mine. Then the ginger kitten I hid in the garden shed and mother found it and there was a monumental scene and Helen called her a beast; funny, I can hear it now, mother going on about the kitten and Helen suddenly exploding and mother’s face. It was Louise who said things like that, not Helen. The kitten lived to be nine, so came out of the whole business best, I suppose. Then Prince — black and white tom. Then no more cats because of problems with birds.’ He paused. He pushed his chair back and wandered around the room. Everything in it was old and shabby; little had been chosen by Edward himself. There were some World Wildlife Fund posters and a carving of a red-throated diver he had once bought in Orkney. There was a small case of books.

  The candlewick bedspread on his bed dated from his schooldays; an area at the end was worn completely bare by the five dogs.

  The rug on the floor had once been in his father’s study. A Victorian jug on the mantelpiece had been given him by Louise one Christmas. The dressing-gown on the back of the door had been bought by Helen to replace one twenty-five years old.

  Edward returned to the desk. He wrote: ‘I cannot sleep at night. There is nothing to be done. The boy came again last week.’

  He could not remember now the precise moment at which he had realised, once, time out of mind ago, that he found male bodies inviting and female ones not. He could remember a period of engagement with art — with Greek statuary and the young gods of Renaissance paintings, those bodies officially sanctified on the page or given sexual neutrality as museum displays. Here, you were licensed to admire without discrimination: the body as aesthetic object, pure and simple. Edward had come to realise that he found some bodies more appealing than others, and that the contemplation of them aroused feelings that had nothing to do with artistic appreciation. He made the connection between these bodies and those he saw all around him — clothed, partially clothed, or unclothed in the roaring maelstrom of the school changing rooms. He had had to conceal his revulsion at the creased and thumbed photographs handed round from desk to desk at school — those grey girls with their balloon breasts and gaping hairy forks. And presently revulsion gave way to indifference: he ceased to see the flaunted female bodies of advertisements and magazines because they had nothing to do with him, they were irrelevant. It was other images, now, that disturbed, from which he turned in anxiety and in guilt.

  And, over the years, he had learned to avert his face, to sidestep, to damp down the fires. On the rare occasions when sharp eyes had penetrated his facade, when complicity had been invited, he had fled in panic. When, once, he had thought himself on the brink of an alliance for which he yearned, he was suddenly and shatteringly rejected. Thereafter, he turned inwards.

  Five days after the picnic Helen received a postcard from Giles Carnaby. The picture was of a well-known local church. Giles said: ‘I can see I must brush up on my Perp and Dec if I am to keep up with you. Thank you for a gorgeous outing. Will be in touch very soon.’ No signature.

  You don’t know where you are with him, do you? said Dorothy. From one week to the next. Blowing hot and cold like that. Time to put it to him, fair and square, I’d say. Mind, you may not like what you hear.

  She loomed large these days, as in the weeks after the funeral.

  Her airy presence filled the house. Above all, her comments rang in Helen’s ears.

  ‘Is Edward all right?’ said Louise. ‘There’s something distinctly odd about him lately, you know. I mean, even odder than usual.

  He never was much like other people. And you’re looking a bit off-colour, to be honest. Seedy, as mother used to say. Not that I can talk — I’ve got almost as many spots as Phil. Maybe adolescence is contagious. God — what’s going on here?’

  They were walking through the village. Louise wished to visit Dorothy’s grave, where the memorial stone was now in place. A confusion of lorries and cement mixers defaced the area just past the green. Helen explained that someone was converting the disused Baptist chapel into a house. They entered the churchyard.

  She said: ‘Is Phil still being … difficult?’

  ‘Of course he’s being difficult. And Suzanne. Do you know, I am nostalgic for nappies and broken nights. I look in prams, with a soppy smile on my face. At the time, I thought one had hit rock bottom. There’s a bloody great silent conspiracy that goes on, and it’s the conspiracy of those who’ve had children against those who haven’t yet. What you don’t know, till you’re in it, is that it’s a life sentence. The other thing of course is that you haven’t got any choice anyway, because the yen to have children is about as basic as the yen to have sex. It’s all devilishly neat.

  Contraception is merely cosmetic. You breed, willy-nilly, and lo and behold! you find life isn’t ever going to be the same again.

  Even mother — even mother — I now realise, must have
gone through some of this. Even mother must have had the odd twinge, incredible as it seems. And the whole process is made as simultaneously agonising and amazing as it could be — you labour to give birth, that’s the right word all right, and it’s about as ghastly as possible and then at the end there’s this absolutely wonderful feeling, that the conspiracy has never hinted at, when you hold it and see it and you suddenly realise there’s a whole new emotion you didn’t know anything about. Nobody’s ever mentioned that. And from then on you’re done — they’ve got you by the short hairs. You’re going to spend the next few months hanging over them with your heart thumping in case they’ve stopped breathing and the next few years after that stopping them committing suicide because a perfectly ordinary house has turned into a minefield of electricity and stairs and windows and boiling kettles. Every day the newspapers are telling you what happens to other people’s children. They’re being run over and raped and burnt; there’s leukemia and meningitis and muscular dystrophy; it’s all out there waiting to spring, if you’re fool enough to relax. But at the moments you wish you were shot of the whole thing you know perfectly well that it’s precisely because you couldn’t endure to be without it, now you know about it, that you’ve got to go through all this. You’ve lost your innocence. And then they get bigger and they start thinking and watching and you realise you’re fouling them up yourself too and there’s not much you can do about that either. And you know that at the same time as you could clout them you’d actually die for them also if it came to the point. It’s a fiendishly clever system for making sure the human race continues and most people over twenty never have a tranquil moment. God — what a spiel! I don’t blame you for looking edgy.’

  ‘Sorry,’ said Helen. ‘I didn’t realise you were talking to me, in fact.’

  They had arrived at the grave. ‘Do you think it’s all right?’

  Helen enquired, after a moment.

  The stone? Fine. Nice lettering. Simple and straightforward.’

  ‘It’s considered a bit austere by some.’

  ‘Of course. Look around. It sticks out. Offends against the prevailing taste. Well, that would have given mother quiet satisfaction.’

  They stood in contemplation. ‘You know something?’ said Louise. ‘She’s changing. In the head, that is. I’m beginning to see her differently. She’s losing her edge, somehow. Fading.

  What about you?’

  ‘Fading? I wouldn’t say that, no. I’m seeing her differently. I wouldn’t say that I’m seeing her faded. Interesting. And even more interesting is the way in which I see myself differently.

  What I am and what I’m not, and why. All of which slots in with what you’ve just been saying. Did mother foul me up? As you put it. Or does one hammer the nails into one’s own coffin?

  As mother used to have it. Sorry about the language. Inept. It slipped out.’

  ‘What do you mean — fouled up? You’re not. .

  ‘Of course I am. As are we all. To a greater or lesser extent.’

  ‘Oh, gawd …’ said Louise, turning from the grave. She dumped herself down on the low stone wall that skirted the churchyard.

  Helen joined her. ‘Mother, I now discover, once scuppered my romantic prospects. Do you remember Peter Datchett? No — I daresay not — and in any case who’s to say what would have come of it? I might at this moment be living in anguish with Peter Datchett. Perhaps I should thank mother. But one would prefer to have made one’s own mistakes. And there’s the question of the yellow muslin dress — not on the face of it a central matter but … but again there is this sense of one’s fate having been manipulated by another. By mother, to be precise.’

  Louise was staring intently. ‘I do remember Peter Datchett. I always wondered why he disappeared without trace. What did she do? And what yellow dress? I simply can’t see you . .

  ‘No, I’m sure you can’t. And you would have been about seven at the time. What bothers me is not so much the loss of either Peter Datchett or the yellow dress, but the awful glimpse of my own acquiescence.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ said Louise after a moment.

  ‘Why should you? Neither do I, in a sense. I see, simply, that at some point I became pathologically compliant. The habit of avoiding confrontation with mother became a habit of not confronting anything. Of accepting without question. You used to go on at me about getting out. You were of course entirely right.’

  ‘Oh, goodness… One said that sort of thing. I didn’t always mean . .

  ‘It’s all right,’ said Helen. ‘I’m not bemoaning the past. I’m merely casting a beady eye on it. Hoping, perhaps, to learn something.’

  Louise, dissecting a cushion of moss, laid green fronds upon her knee — and switched tactics. ‘What did mother do?’

  ‘Oh — failed to hand over a letter. A sin of omission rather than of commission, quite possibly. One will never know. I’m more interested now in what I didn’t do. Put up a fight. Rage against the universe.’

  ‘You aren’t that kind of person,’ said Louise.

  ‘Ah, there you have it. And why not?’

  ‘Nor is Edward …’ continued Louise, shredding the green fronds, sweeping them to the ground.

  ‘Precisely. Whereas you are. Odd, isn’t it? I can see you now — it’s my earliest memory of you, incidentally — I can see you now biting mother. Aged about one.’

  Louise laughed. ‘What did she do?’

  ‘She put you in a cot and shut the door on you. You yelled for an hour without stopping.’

  ‘No wonder. It’s surprising I’m as normal as I am. That we all are.’

  …’ Helen rose. ‘We’d better get back. I haven’t done anything about supper. Edward will be getting restive.’

  ‘Where is he, anyway? He was around for five minutes when I arrived and then he vanished.’

  ‘In the Britches, I expect.’

  ‘Edward’s relationship with that place would keep half a dozen psychiatrists busy. Oh, that sounds snide. It’s not meant. You know. When I was little I thought the light shone out of Edward’s eyes. Now I get frightened for him. The world’s a brutal place and he wanders around worrying about toads and orchids. He wouldn’t have enough sense of self-preservation to come in out of the rain. In the dark ages people like Edward got crucified or burned as witches. He lives in a jungle today and he doesn’t know it.’

  ‘Hardly,’ said Helen. ‘Here.’ They were turning out into the village street again now, leaving behind them the stone ranks of the dead, with their propitiatory offerings of flowers and foliage.

  A clutch of young mothers gossiped outside the shop, with children eddying around them. Radio One leaked from the open windows of a house.

  ‘Of course. Social violence is universal, and I don’t mean mugging and burglary. A place like this has fangs like anywhere else, given the circumstances.’

  ‘Edward’s rather popular in the village.’

  ‘That’s not what I’m getting at,’ said Louise. She appeared to lose interest in the subject and began to talk about Suzanne.

  Suzanne wished to leave school at sixteen and become a hairdresser.

  Louise fulminated. Helen heard Dorothy, twenty-three years ago, screaming at Louise. Louise, glancing at her sister, caught the silent comment and said, ‘There is absolutely no parallel. Mother was obstructing, purely and simply. I’m trying to stop Suzanne making an idiotic mistake.’ Then she started to laugh and added, ‘Do you always know what I’m thinking? God — it’s as bad as marriage!’

  By the time they got back to the house it was past eight. There was a rich and spicy smell; Helen had left the dinner in the oven.

  ‘Coriander …’ said Louise, sniffing. ‘You really are into contemporary cuisine, aren’t you? Mother would have a fit. Here — I’ll lay the table.’

  Edward came down from his room. Helen served the meal.

  They began to eat. After a few mouthfuls Edward put his knife and fork down and said, ‘Oh — the
lawyer rang. Half an hour or so ago.’

  ‘Funny time to ring up,’ said Louise. ‘Out of office hours.’

  Edward started to eat again. ‘She goes to the opera with him.’

  Louise turned sharply to Helen, who felt herself turn a treacherous red. ‘What’s all this?’

  ‘And picnics,’ said Edward.

  ‘The probate thing will be sorted out in a month or so,’ said Helen in strangled tones. ‘Apparently.’

  ‘Picnics?’ demanded Louise. ‘Picnics where?’

  ‘He uses after-shave stuff,’ said Edward. ‘I don’t really like him.’

  ‘So what?’ snapped Helen.

  Louise, wide-eyed, looked from one to the other. ‘What on earth is going on?’

  ‘Nothing,’ said Helen, ‘is going on.’ She got up. ‘Would anyone like some more of this?’

  Louise turned to Edward. ‘What did he want?’

  ‘He didn’t say,’ said Edward smugly. ‘He just chuntered on a bit and then rang off.’

  Helen dumped a spoonful of stew on to each plate except her own and sat down again.

  ‘This is delicious,’ said Louise, in a social tone. ‘You must give me the recipe.’

  After three days Helen dialled Giles Carnaby’s number. There was no answer. The next evening, too, he was out. She rang his office, and then panicked at the secretary’s voice, and put the receiver down without speaking. This, she thought, is how adolescents behave; to this is one reduced.

  ‘I hate August,’ said Joyce Babcock. ‘Nothing but overdue books and kids fooling around. And the town jammed with coaches.

  Nothing happens in August. Everyone’s away — even the people you never think you’d miss, like the neighbours. I’ve not spoken to a soul in the last fortnight, except for you — sorry, no offence meant. No, I tell a lie — I saw Kate Blackford outside Marks. You know — from Oxford Central. She’s living up here now. So we had a nice chat. Oh — and this’ll interest you — while we were talking who should go past but your solicitor friend. Again. I’m always seeing him, aren’t I? Anyway, he didn’t see me but Kate recognised him too — her sister works in his office, apparently.