“Yes, you’d better.”
“I’m sorry to interrupt you.”
“It’ll keep.”
“Where shall we go?”
“Just drive me home.”
“Do I have to?”
“I think that would be best.” She stared at the stub of her cigarette, greedily, and wound down the window to hurl the glowing end out into the night. She put on her seat belt.
“Will you finish the story?”
“For a year they didn’t have sex, and then they did. They say—he, the man, said—that she had lost her will to live by then. At least he had the work, weaving, putting up the loom and taking it down. She had nothing except the earth and the wool, and thinking over the past and hating him. All this time, you have to remember, she hated him. But she says differently, that he threatened to drive her out of the hole if she wouldn’t have sex with him.”
“He could have raped her. Who could she have complained to?”
“Perhaps. Perhaps he did. After another year they had a child. It was a girl.”
“But how could they?” He was aghast. “How could they, in that hole?”
“You fool,” she said bitterly. “Now do you see why she didn’t want to have sex? Do you think she could pop out and go to the chemist’s for something? Sometimes…very occasionally…they went up into the world and walked about. Only at night. Not very often. They wanted, you understand, to scream at each other, just scream, but the farmer said he’d throw them out if they didn’t keep absolutely quiet.”
“But the baby must have cried, mustn’t she?”
“They put their hands over her mouth. For a year and a half. For a year and a half, the mother had milk, but then it gave out. The baby had to eat the raw vegetables. But you see then, the mother couldn’t kill herself, could she, she couldn’t walk out of the hole. She had the baby.”
They were on the main road now, driving through town. An odd figure under an umbrella scurried away from their sight. A gang of boys huddled under the yellow lights of a shopping centre.
“Shall we stop for a drink?” He looked sideways at her. “Anywhere. It doesn’t matter now if we’re seen. Anywhere you like.”
“Better go home, I think. Shall I finish the story?”
He sighed. “Yes, go on. It’s a terrible story. I don’t like to think about things like that.”
“None of us likes to think of other people’s hells. We avoid it if we can.”
“But you’re paid to do it, aren’t you?”
“Yes, but even so. You see there was food of a kind, shelter, and it was warm—at least it was warm. That’s how they survived. And nobody found them, they did survive. The Russians came. They were sent to a Displaced Persons Camp. I think, later, they went to America, and the couple split up. I don’t know. The end of the story isn’t important.”
“But what about the child?”
“Well that’s what’s most horrible. She was like a wild animal. When she was brought out of the hole she screamed and clawed and attacked people. At other times, she was completely mute. As if they still had their hands over her face.”
“But they’d had to do it. I suppose. Or her existence would have destroyed them all. But later—what became of her?”
“Oh, she went from one institution to another. No one could keep her. I told you, she was like a wild animal.” She paused. “What is the point?”
“The point?”
“Of the story.”
“I don’t know,” Colin said. “I wish you hadn’t told it to me. It’s one of the most horrible things I’ve ever heard.”
Isabel looked at him appraisingly. “Would it have been more bearable if the child had grown up in some other way?”
“Normal?”
“Yes, normal.”
“I suppose so.”
“At that time, when they were buried in the hole, the people above them were much worse than animals. Animals have no cruelty; we always defame them. At least, whatever became of the child, she had no opportunity to become cruel.”
“But you can’t speculate…you don’t know about these people. To survive like that you would have to be a different breed.”
“I think they must have been terrible people, to breed such monstrosity out of desire for life. But not different.” She turned her head. “Do you see how he made her suffer, by loving her? When she had the child she could not even walk out and go to Treblinka. Now I know all about it…the stifling power of love.”
They had reached her front gate. Colin stopped the car. He was afraid to look at her, knowing that he had failed to find any meaning in the story, to give anything at all back to her.
“I didn’t know such issues preoccupied you,” he said. “Have you found some moral in it to apply to me?”
“I hadn’t thought of it in that light, but now that you speak of it—”
“Isabel, kiss me, don’t just go.”
She unclipped the seat belt, swung open the door, and paused halfway out of the car.
“Now that you speak of it, when you are so spiritually stifled, what kind of life can you hope to give birth to?” The door clicked behind her. “I’ll miss you, Colin. You think I won’t, but I will.” She walked around the back of the car and bent her face to his window. “When you are fifty you will be able to tell people what a gay dog you were. What an untrammelled life. And look at the heap of ashes you live on, and blame Sylvia.” He stretched out a hand but she pulled away almost playfully, and with a little smile turned and walked in at the gate. She was playing all the time, Colin said to himself. Hunched in his seat, he sat for fifteen minutes watching the front of the house; lights going on, upstairs curtains drawn, light finally switched off. She has slipped through my fingers, he thought. He drove home.
Muriel looked pale. Suspecting her to be undernourished, Evelyn got her coat on, picked up her purse and her basket, and set off for the butcher’s shop on the Parade. When she got to the door she saw that there was quite a queue waiting to be served. Her first thought was to pretend she had not wanted anything and walk away down the street. But she hesitated for a moment, and heard a voice behind her:
“Liver looks nice. Hello there, Mrs. Axon. I thought I saw you passing.”
She would have to go in now. After all, nobody looks into a butcher’s window for idle amusement, they would think she didn’t have the money, they might talk about her. Evelyn turned her head stiffly. Josie Deakin from number four, a woman of forty-five in her brown leather knee-boots and pixie-hood. She heaved up to Evelyn, bustling with her shopping bags, edging her into the shop doorway.
“Nasty weather, Mrs. A.,” Josie said cheerfully.
Mrs. A.? Evelyn thought. As if she were the subject of an experiment.
“Seasonable,” she replied.
“How are you keeping then?”
“Very well, thank you.”
“And Muriel?”
“Very well.” Some residue of social unction oiled her tongue. “And you, Mrs. Deakin?”
“Can’t complain.” Mrs. Deakin took off her woollen gloves and rubbed her hands together. “Haven’t seen Muriel about for a bit. Too cold for her, is it?”
“Yes. Too cold.”
“I used to see her last summer, striding along, you know, not a care in the world, and very nice she looked in that pink angora cardigan. You do keep her lovely, Mrs. A. I said to Dennis, Mrs. Axon keeps Muriel lovely, to look at her you’d never know. Well, I said to Dennis, if people only knew. I bet Muriel’s got more about her than people give her credit for.”
“And what did Dennis say?” Evelyn enquired.
“Well…I expect he said, I agree with you. I don’t remember exactly what he said but he certainly agreed with me. To tell you the truth, Mrs. Axon, it is a coincidence me running into you today like this.” She craned her neck to look at the counter. “Oh, aren’t they slow in this shop! The thing is, do you still do seances? Only Uncle Bill’s passed on, end of September, liver
complaint, he’d had it for years—and Auntie Agnes—she’s my father’s sister, you remember our Ag—she’s mislaid one of the policies.”
“And so she wants to get in touch with him?”
“Well, I know you do that sort of thing.”
“I’m afraid I don’t any more.”
Evelyn was careful to keep all colour out of her tone, all emotion off her face. And no doubt, she thought, this about Dennis Deakin thinking Muriel attractive, it was something and nothing, a passing fancy. She imagined Mr. Deakin coming softly down the path in his bedroom slippers, putting his hand on Muriel’s arm, guiding her down the garden to the shed; the smell of grass cuttings, compost, the lawnmower oil, and Muriel’s dumpling thighs exposed in the broad sunlit afternoon. No, he could not be the father, flies undone amongst the diving swallows, Ena Harkness rotting softly towards midsummer. Deakin’s beds were orderly ones.
“Oh, don’t you do them now? Ag will be that disappointed.” Mrs. Deakin bobbed up on her toes. “Don’t put that roast ham away, I want six ounces,” she called out in a piercing voice. “Well, I mean, it’s no good letting them wrap it up and put it away again, is it? Only I mentioned you, you see, I’d a feeling you’d given seances at one time, and I asked Florence Sidney, and she said she’d a feeling you did as well.”
“I’ve given it up.”
“That’s a shame. Only you ought to be more sociable, Mrs. Axon. Florence was saying she never sees you. Couldn’t you just do one for Ag? You might enjoy it. Take you out of yourself.”
“Thank you, but I really have given it up.”
“Only can you recommend anybody? Mrs. Dobson in Argyll Street has a ouija board.”
“Has she? She must be careful that she doesn’t get more than she bargained for.”
“How do you mean, Mrs. Axon?”
“Oh…” Evelyn sighed. Could she really be bothered to explain, on the chance of saving Mrs. Dobson, whom she did not know, and who probably deserved what she invited? “Oh, people get in…things get in…the house gets overcrowded.”
“She says she does limit it to six people. Because their rooms aren’t big, you know, and that’s all she can get round the table.” The queue shuffled forward a bit. “I mean, it’s only harmless fun,” Mrs. Deakin said.
When Evelyn got to the head of the queue she asked for steak, two large pieces. She would have been appalled at the price if she had stopped to think about it, but in the event she pushed some crumpled notes into the man’s hand, leaving him to hand one back to her and then sort out her change; she snatched it from him, thrust the parcel into her bag, and made for the door without a word. The man shook his head comically, and made little circular motions with his forefinger. The queue went tut-tut, at this insult to a paying customer, and crackled their stiff raincoats. Mrs. Deakin said, “You can’t expect that lady to waste her time chatting with tradesmen. She’s a very well-regarded Spiritualist.”
Evelyn arrived home, and put down the parcel of meat on the kitchen table. The brown blood was seeping through the wrapping. She heard a rustling noise from the lean-to, and went to investigate it. When she returned, having found nothing, the meat was gone. A trail of dark drops led towards the kitchen door and out into the hall. Bending painfully, she peered at the floor. On the parquet of the hall she lost the trail, but there was another splash, on the staircarpet, halfway up.
Evelyn sat down on the bottom step, and rocked herself back and forth like a child. Such appetites, she thought, such vile appetites for raw and bloody meat. Were their jaws at work, behind the spare-room door? And if she went up there would she hear them, salivating and sucking, smacking unpicturable lips? Baby flesh would tear like butter.
They do not have claws, Evelyn told herself, they do not have claws or jaws, they do not have faces at all. But one thing was for sure, she would not dare to stand in their way. Muriel might, if she liked; self-sacrifice is a mother’s prerogative, and Muriel would be a mother soon enough.
Since Christmas, Muriel had become more and more lethargic. Her ankles swelled. She took no interest in anything.
“I have to think of everything myself,” Evelyn complained. She worried quite often about what she would do if Muriel got into difficulties. “You ought to be all right,” she reassured her. “You’re a strong type of woman. There’s nothing wrong with you, Muriel. Not physically anyway.”
Conscious of the responsibility facing her, she went to the public library to borrow some books. She chose first aid books, which told you how to deliver babies in an emergency. The library had changed a good deal, she noticed. The old wooden desks had gone, and the newspapers in racks. There were low vinyl seats that an elderly person could not get in and out of comfortably. There were modern pictures on the wall, sun-bursts of yellow and orange, and a part marked “Children’s Play Area.” Children did not play in it, but ran about, loud and healthy. Fluttering notices on a cork board advertised yoga classes and Community Welfare Programmes, playgroups and Councillor’s Surgeries. People talked quite unashamedly, in ordinary voices; there had been only an odd subdued whisper in the past, in the old days when Clifford used to step down to get a detective story, and she used to ask for a nice mystery from Miss Williams on the desk.
Evelyn shuffled up to the counter, cradling her books. “Where’s Miss Williams?” she asked, as she put them down.
“Who?” A fat girl looked up at her, a fat girl in a fluffy pink cardigan, very like the one that Muriel used to wear.
“Miss Williams. The Librarian.”
“We don’t have a Miss Williams here.”
“Has she left?”
“I don’t know. I don’t remember any Miss Williams. Frances!” she called. “Frances, have you got a minute?”
“Shhh,” Evelyn said.
“What’s the matter?” The girl was irritated. “You asked me a question, didn’t you? I’m trying to find out, aren’t I?”
Frances glanced up from the books she was stacking onto a trolley. “There’s been no one of that name while I’ve been here. Miss Williams? No, I don’t think so.”
“Never mind,” Evelyn said. She put her tickets down by her books.
“What are these?”
“Oh, really,” Evelyn said, “don’t be so foolish.”
The girl picked the tickets up and held them by one corner, as if they were contaminated. “These expired thirty years ago,” she said. She looked at Evelyn, a strange sideways look, as if she were considering calling for help. “You’d better fill in a form,” she said at last. “Are you a ratepayer?”
“Where did you get that cardigan?” Evelyn demanded.
“What?” The girl’s head jerked back, her eyebrows raised, her leaky ballpoint pen poised in the air. Evelyn turned her back and made for the door.
“Just a minute—” the girl said, but she didn’t come after her. Somebody laughed. Evelyn found herself back on the street.
She walked down to the town centre, to the Central Library. They had the same books, the ones she wanted. She just put them under her arm and walked out, past the desk, nodding to herself. Nobody saw her go, nobody tried to stop her. It was easier that way.
It was a cold, misty day. The town was full of people tramping to the January sales. The buildings seemed distant and insubstantial, walls of air and smoke. Nobody looked at her, stumping along in her old grey coat. Nobody looks at an old woman to see if her clothes are fashionable; old women have a set of fashions all their own. The crowds clutched their parcels and their slippery plastic bags, heading for home, weary and overheated from the department stores. Evelyn stopped on a street corner, by the entrance to a great cavern brilliantly stacked with scented soap and woollen hats. She felt a kind of safety and peace that she had not known in years, or that perhaps she had never known; but it touched her with a warm finger of nostalgia. Treading in the footsteps of the crowd, no demon would know her. She would get herself a parcel, jostle in a bus-queue, she would never, never go home. Impulsive
ly, she turned to go into the store, and a young woman collided with her, a pale woman with dark almond eyes that seemed familiar from somewhere.
“I beg your pardon,” Evelyn said; but the girl did not look at her, simply closed her arms about her burdens, gathered them to her chest with an irritated twitch of her lips, and hurried on, her eyes downcast. City manners, Evelyn thought, the vast indifference of the heated crowds. She shrugged inwardly. Courtesy had gone, gone with Miss Williams, no one remembered that it had ever existed. But then another thought struck her. Had the girl seen her at all? Was there anything to be seen? In sudden panic, she started to walk, seeking her reflection in the plate glass windows. She saw other women goosestepping with their stout legs, the glow of their faces almost warming the glass, their big check coats and their big boots; and then, faint and flickering, a wraith of herself, her melting face with its hollow eyes, her hatchet nose like the nose of a corpse. She began to hurry, faster and faster, trundling up the hill to Lauderdale Road, panting, trying to outpace the fate she had seen for herself.
CHAPTER 6
The week before half-term, Frank O’Dwyer made good his long-standing promise, and invited Colin and Sylvia to a dinner party. Sylvia would normally have worried about what to wear, but in the circumstances had no choice but one of the all-purpose floral smocks she had kept from one pregnancy to the next. Colin thought, I should have noticed that she had not got rid of them, after Karen. If he looked in Sylvia’s wardrobe more often, he might be able to divine her intentions.
Sylvia had been to the hairdressers. Her pale hair, heavily lacquered, was fluffed up like a ball of cotton wool. With her pink face, and her cheerful frock of red and green leaves and sprigs, she looked like a badly constructed Christmas decoration that someone had forgotten to put away. It occurred to Colin now that he had never told anyone his wife was expecting. Would they congratulate him, and then mock him behind his back, or would they pretend not to notice?
Since September he had rehearsed imaginary conversations in which he told his colleagues about the break-up of his marriage and about his new relationship with a young professional woman with no ties. This way and that he put it to them, in his head. These monologues had become a habit, and a ghostly parallel to his real speech. Sometimes he interjected his listeners’ exclamations of amazement, incredulity, and envy; sometimes he elaborately countered difficulties they raised. Now these conversations would never be held, but they were hard to give up all the same. He let them run, little hallucinations to accompany his pain.