Blackground

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Blackground Page 12

by Joan Aiken


  I stared at him.

  “Ty, what total nonsense! Joel and I have known each other for ever. Besides, to the best of my knowledge he’s gay.”

  “You are wrong,” said Ty dogmatically. “He is in love with you. I know things like that which you seem blind to. I would not,” he added, “have been so taken with you myself if it weren’t for another man being after you.”

  It took me a minute to assimilate this, then I replied, “You deceived yourself. In order to jack up my value, you deceived yourself. And you are entirely wrong about Joel.”

  He gave me a look of naked hostility, then shrugged, smiled, and said, “Have it your own way. What difference does it make? I must call Parkson to pack for me. — Here, swallow these pills. The doctor left them — said you were to have them when you woke.” And he passed me a little gilt-edged saucer of tablets, a whole handful of different ones, some white, some red, some round, some torpedo-shaped.

  “Better have a glass of Mouton to wash them down,” said Ty, and poured it. Then he rang for Parkson and went away to his dressing room. I, however, drank the wine and dumped the pills down the loo. I have a complete antipathy to pills, perhaps dating back to the huge horrible codliver-oil capsules Masha forced me to swallow when I was a child; or, more probably, from my experiences as a student nurse, obliged to make poor old characters in the geriatric ward gulp down fistfuls of tablets which, I knew full well, were intended only to keep them quiet, not to cure them of anything. Consequently I will never swallow a pill, though my life depended on it. It is, I suppose, yet another manifestation of my terrible neurosis — which, I see, it is now incumbent upon me to describe.

  I am a hypochondriac. I know that I am one, I am heartily ashamed of myself and feel a fool, but there is absolutely no way in which I can rid myself of the shaming weakness. I own a big leather-bound book, a dictionary of symptoms, left over from my nursing career, and it is my bible. For whole days I have limped around utterly certain that I am dying of progressive bone disease; or that the spots in front of my eyes are signs of advanced glaucoma; or that my stiff neck and difficulty in swallowing are due to cancer of the throat. My knee, my shoulder, my palate, my ear, my inability to sit still for very long, to breathe cigarette smoke, to drink milk, are all warning signs of terminal diseases. I can mock myself out of the more far-fetched afflictions, such as Cheesewasher’s lung or pulpy kidney, or Kuru (suffered only by cannibals in New Guinea), but cancer of the stomach I know I have, and shall presently die of; how else could my symptoms reproduce so identically those of Masha? Of course I am not going to go to a doctor; what would be the point of that? His ineffectual remedies and messing about would only prolong the grisly process as it did in her case; I intend to keep silent until the very last moment or (preferably) beyond, so that my loved ones need not endure the protracted agony and horror that we went through with Masha.

  That is why — I must acknowledge — I married Ty with a certain feeling of guilty deceit and irresponsibility. This did seem a major factor among the things about me of which he was ignorant, and I did acknowledge to myself that he might be getting rather a poor deal. But — on the other hand — I did fend him off as long as I could. In the end, since he seemed so extremely keen on acquiring me, I thought, Hell! Why not? I shall be given a bit of fun and comfort and luxury, welcome indeed after a life confined to hard work and short commons; Ty wins the blonde prize he apparently wants, and will soon have the distinction of being a stricken widower mourning his youthful bride. Everyone will feel extremely sorry for him and he can have his pick of any number of sympathetic girls. It seemed quite a fair bargain, ailing though I was. (This valetudinarian streak is horribly important in my life. As will be seen again.)

  But now that a mysterious rift had opened between Ty and me, I found it hard to make plans. I didn’t know what Ty was thinking. Could he really have taken such a violent dislike to me (for that is how it seemed) simply on account of this odd little discovery, that we had met once before, momentarily, eighteen or so years ago? I had been sixteen or seventeen, enduring misery and drudgery at Ludwell — an unimportant and despised bottom cog in the hospital hierarchy. But the old dying businessman, accommodated in superior quarters in a side ward, had taken a fancy to me, always cracked a joke, had a kindly word as I polished his bedside locker or carried away his wash-water. Seasmith, he used to call me, on account of my name badge, C. SMITH encased in plastic on my starched bib; “And how is my jokey little Seasmith today?” he would inquire fondly as I wheeled in all the paraphernalia. He had had a successful heart bypass operation some years earlier and was now due for another. The general opinion, not transmitted to him of course, was that this time the chance of success was far lower; only one in five. And so it proved.

  He was a nice old man. To me anyway. What was his name?

  The accustomed sight of death. Where does that line come from? Sometimes — often — I regret my lost education; I wish I had read English literature properly, instead of by random gulps, read Plato and Catullus, knew the meaning of names like Goethe and Heidegger. Masha, even in her years of agony, had masses of mental resources to fall back on, and made good use of them; she was reading The Golden Bowl on the day she died in hideous pain.

  What was that old man’s name? I see him lying dead, the colour of grey wax, with his eyes closed, the folds in his cheeks gone rigid, like a frosted rutted path. His eyebrows — extraordinary eyebrows — thrust out in front, sharp as snails’ horns, in white points, three-quarters of an inch ahead of his face. And the eyes, in deep triangular sockets below, sparkled, when he was alive, with shrewdness and acquisitiveness. He had been a tough old character in his day; got a knighthood for some crafty piece of dealing — connected with building? with educational supplies? with North Sea gas? What was his name?

  Here comes my jokey little Seasmith.

  Jokey I certainly wasn’t, except in his room. The Matron only tolerated my presence in the hospital because of Papa’s bygone reputation, the Sisters rated me lower than an intestinal worm; the mere sight of me caused Charge Nurses to narrow their eyes and tighten their mouths. I felt frozen — outcast — an object of disgust, utterly without value. Yet one molecule of me knew that was not quite true, because on what I earned depended the welfare of the people at home. Papa by now was drifting out of reach. That thought, like a small central core of warmth, kept me alive.

  Here comes my jokey little Seasmith.

  He had huge strong-knuckled hands. The game of bowls had been his hobby: “like Francis Drake” he told me grandly. I could imagine those massive hands grasping the polished heavy sphere.

  On the day of his operation I took the old man a big bunch of primroses and a good luck card. (In those bygone days, primroses grew plentifully on the banks of every road — in Dorset, at least; farmers weren’t so free then with their weedkiller sprays.) In a bowl on the locker by his bed they breathed out their delicate mysterious fragrance. “Thank you, my dear. I expect they’ll bring me luck. They take me back to my days as a young ‘un. All over Jersey, they grew. You could smell ‘em like nutmeg as you walked along the road.”

  He’d come from the Channel Islands originally; that was why he used that curious expression, may the Chichevache get you.

  I wish I could remember his name. It has lodged halfway up my brain, like a snippet of apple peel in the throat.

  I have him connected with a portrait — the card I took him, a man in grey, skating, with his arms folded. It was one of Masha’s, that she stuck up all over the house, wherever they could please her eye as she worked. Once, in the Louvre, I burst out crying at the sight of a still-life, by Cézanne I think it was, all blue and green with some oranges and a triangle of crumpled tea-towel hanging down. That took me, straight as a dagger, back to Masha. So I begged the skater postcard from her, when I went home on my free afternoon, and gave it to the old boy. There was something of his calm dignity ab
out this poker-faced character gliding along the ice in a black hat against a wintry background. “Don’t you think it looks just like you, Sir Ostin?” I said to him. He chuckled. “Never did learn to skate. Not much ice in Jersey. Nice picture, though. Kind of you to bring it. I like a picture that tells you something. My daughter, now, Lilias, she’s all for this conceptural stuff — putting a pink bedroom chair in the middle of a hazel copse. Stuff and nonsense! This, I like. Leave it there against the water glass. I’ll think about that old boy slipping along while they are putting me under. What’s the painter’s name?” He turned over the card. “Raeburn. Rhymes with mine. Never heard of him, but he’s good.”

  “You’ll look after Lilias, won’t you, Jimmy?” he asked, when the transfusions hadn’t helped, and it was plain that he was going fast. “Marry her — look after her — see she doesn’t come to grief?”

  “Of course I will, sir. You needn’t have asked,” responded that other character, that far-away long-ago person whom I now know to have been Ty. But how different he was then! with a heavy black moustache, his thick black hair brushed sideways and covered with Brylcreem, his face (what one could see of it behind the moustache) young, unformed, not yet settled into the lines of authority and decision it has since acquired. The only familiar details were the huge, unusual ears and handsome curved nose. “Of course I’ll look after her,” he repeated.

  “I’m leaving the money to you, not to her. Leaving it to her would be like throwing it in the sea.” The old man moved fretfully. “You’ll have to dish it out to her in small quantities — stop it getting into the hands of some ghastly guru, make sure she doesn’t spend it on dope. It’s a big responsibility.”

  “It’s a lot of money,” said Ty respectfully. Yes, his voice had not changed. It was the same, lighter, younger, but his all right. I had slipped in to perform some menial task.

  “Good lad. You’ll do it, I know.” And then the old man had used that odd phrase.

  I slipped out again; I was so lowly a bit of furniture, Ty had probably never noticed my presence. He must have had a lot on his mind. This was a charged moment for him. Making a promise to a dying person. How many of us have to do such a thing? Poor Dodo does in the TV serial — but luckily her grisly old husband dies before finally exacting it.

  Had Ty kept the promise?

  That day had been important in my life, not only because of the old man’s death, but because, later on, I met for the first time Andrei Baradin, a young homesick Russian doctor, over in England on a six-month course. His grandfather was a farfetched cousin of Masha’s mother, and so he telephoned the Rectory, and Masha told him that I worked in the hospital and would give him directions how to find his way to Yetford. Family-minded Masha was enchanted, of course, at the chance to meet a new relation, however distant. She became very fond of him. He used to go out there as often as he could. He loved Masha. Yetford was like a second home to him, he said.

  And I fell in love with him.

  For two days after Ty had gone to England I stayed in my room. I felt fairly shattered. In part, because I was getting quite severe pain from my wrist and ankle; but mostly because of Ty.

  I had not, I thought, nourished unreasonable expectations of our union. I am basically cagey and pessimistic about relationships, having been rejected so unequivocally, once and for all, by Papa. But then, Ty’s pursuit of me had been so violently obsessional, he had appeared to put such a huge value on me, that, lulled into a false sense of security, I had been taken offguard. After all, we had seemed to get along so well together during those early weeks of courtship. One tiny childish fragment of my mind still wistfully suggested that perhaps we would do so again, perhaps this severance was just a temporary thing: he had been excited and preoccupied over the acceptance by the Companions of Roland, he was not good at responding or being supportive to other people’s illness — why should he be, he never had to deal with such a situation before? Matters would right themselves, surely, when I got back to London?

  But the rest of me knew this was total delusion. I had, in some way, given him a mortal shock and his view of me had changed so much that, quite possibly, he wished never to set eyes on me again. And — observed yet another part of me, the down-to-earth puritanical part which comes from Masha’s Welsh ancestry — you really have no right to complain about that, for your motives in marrying him were impure and self-centred; you thought that life as Lady Fortuneswell would be a cushy billet, that you would be looked after for the rest of your days. However few.

  Hah!

  So what has happened just serves you gladly, as Mrs Eppy used to say.

  After a couple of days Randolph Grove called me from London.

  Joel was still in Venice. Taking a few pictures of Sta Giacometta was his ostensible reason but concern for me was, I thought, the real one. He had been round to the hotel each day, leaving books, tapes and a headset, but since I was rather low-spirited and in pain, had not stayed long either time. On the day when Randolph called, he had gone off to Torcello, leaving word that he would drop in that evening.

  “Cat? Is that you?” said Randolph in London. “I really hate to disturb you on your honeymoon, but something very unfortunate and distressing has happened.”

  It was instructive to observe the changes in people’s manner towards me since I had become Lady Fortuneswell. Some, like Joel, were completely unaffected; but Randolph’s tone today was the one of plummy devotion that he used with Ty.

  “I’m sorry, very sorry to have to tear you away from your good time,” he went on — plainly he had not heard of my accident, or Ty’s departure — “but we’re going to have to reshoot all the scenes with Jerry Faber —”

  “Oh, no!” I said, aghast, “don’t tell me —”

  “Yes,” he said, “yes, I’m afraid so. He died this week. And some of his scenes were still outstanding —”

  “Oh, how dreadful. How dreadful.”

  Jerry Faber was a youngish actor who specialized in old-man parts. In our serial he had the role of Peter Featherstone, a foxy old character who, at death’s door, takes delight in plaguing all his hopeful, greedy relatives by not letting them know who is going to inherit his fortune. They come daily, camp in his house, clamour their claims, and get nowhere. It makes very good television. And the old man’s favourite nephew, one of the story’s heroes, nearly has his life ruined through dependence on expectations which come to nothing because — in a very striking scene — one of the heroines will not burn a Last Will and Testament at the dying old man’s request.

  The really grim irony of Jerry Faber’s taking the part was that he himself was close to death. From Aids. He knew it, everyone else knew it, too, but this didn’t affect his resolve to keep on working as long as he possibly could. He was a very fine actor and, as he said, acting was the only thing that he enjoyed about his life these days — so why not keep on doing it?

  He had been happy and triumphant because everyone agreed that he was playing Featherstone’s part exceptionally well. “It will do as my memorial,” he said to me once. But he spoke too soon, poor wretch. All those scenes of his would now have to go into limbo. Like him.

  “Oh, poor Jerry,” I said again. “I’m so very, very sorry.”

  I was, too. We had all loved Jerry, who never whined or repined but was, on the contrary, cheerful and gallant about his prospects, even contriving to crack jokes, really funny ones. Everybody in the group would miss him. The accustomed face of death, I thought. Here it is again. After somebody you have been fond of dies, what have you left? Only the world.

  On my own account I felt a selfish dismay, because how in heaven’s name could my particular scene with Featherstone be re-made, lumbered as I now was with a wrist and ankle both in bandages and the wrist in a plaster cast? Fortunately there was only one scene, but that an important one. I had to call at his house, arriving on horseback with my brother, tak
e off my hat and veil, sing a couple of ballads to the old man, and then hang around, thus contriving to be seen for the first time by the handsome new young doctor whom, sight unseen, I have already laid my plans to marry. It had been one of my favourite scenes in the whole serial, I had given it my very best, and felt uncertain, just now, that I would be able to repeat that best.

  I explained my plight to Randolph Grove, who listened with equal dismay.

  “Oh well,” he said at length, “We’ll have to fudge it somehow. Separate shots — head only with you and we’ll splice in bits from the first batch. Shawn Kyle is taking over the part. We’ll do some tailoring, we’ll manage somehow. But I’d like you to come back to Knoyle for a few days. Just to be there. We need extra footage — the accountants are grumbling — to justify the use of Knoyle again. Anyway, if Ty is already back in England I feel better about asking you.”

  No apologies for making me travel in my damaged state, I thought crossly. But then, Randolph never did consider other people’s convenience. And, in fact, I’d be glad enough to leave Venice; this hotel was getting me down; though I’d just as soon have stayed away from Knoyle.

  “The nuisance of it is,” said Randolph’s voice, “that we can’t use the Manor itself. The house has been let for some damned ecologists’ conference. You probably know about that.”

  “But we shan’t need the Manor itself, shall we?” I suggested. “The Featherstone scenes were all shot at one of the farms on the estate.”

  “Yes, that is true. We’ll have to lodge the team in the Trust House at Weymouth. Rig up a green room in a tent or something,” he said fretfully, and went on to more details which he would never have bothered to share with me before I was Lady Fortuneswell. “So when can you come back, Cat? Tonight? And down to Dorset tomorrow? Good, I’ll see you. Call me as soon as you arrive.” And he rang off.

  I summoned Parkson, who had been left behind (with a fairly ill grace) by my husband, to take care of my practical needs, and told him to get me a London flight, pack my things, and organize a wheelchair. How easily, I thought, we acquire the habits of wealth. But I had better prepare to abandon them again.

 

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