by Maurice Gee
‘Will you stay married to her, Noel?’
‘Yes, I will.’ I looked at Irene straight. ‘Anyway,’ I said, and looked away, ‘who else would have me?’ I was a wriggly grub myself.
‘Lots of women.’ Irene mimicked Manifold: ‘Dr Papps is our brightest star.’
‘Silly old fool.’
‘Mrs Verryt wants you.’
‘Enough of that. Play for me, Irene.’
She went to the piano. ‘Anything special?’
‘I’ve had enough excitement. Something soft.’
I don’t know what it was. Nocturne? Lullaby? It moved me to a sadness so deep tears began to leak from my eyes. I squashed them with my fingers and that palping touch followed Irene’s touch on the keys. I believed she had reached out to me. I stood up and walked close behind her, walking into a frame as Royce had done. I stood a half inch from her back and watched her fingers move; and knew that in a moment my hands would stroke her throat, touch her mouth, and she would close her eyes, and my fingers in her hair would feel her shape…
She stopped playing. The silence rang; it hurt my head. ‘Stand where I can see you.’ Her needle-sharpness almost made me yelp. I stepped off to one side and looked at her, and was probably cross-eyed, for she was amused as well as cross.
‘We got that sorted out years ago.’
‘Irene –’
‘Go and finish your whisky. I’ve had enough playing anyway.’ She stood up.
‘Would it…?’ I said.
‘This is the way it is, or no way at all.’
‘Would it have been different – if it hadn’t been for your father?’
Now it was her eyes out of line. ‘My father?’
‘If he hadn’t done things, Irene? If he’d left you alone?’
Irene knew what I meant. She made a long ragged indrawn breath; her face seemed to wrinkle and shrink. Light and sharp, and black and grey, withered, dry, she lifted herself and flew at me and fixed her fingernails in my head. They burned like acid. The cry she made was a burning cry; chemical. I stumbled back but could not get away. She was fastened on me. Her face bobbed and slipped and turned on its side and upside down and her eyes bounced like marbles, black and mad. She had no words to say, but cries and screeches ran like knives on me and cut my flesh. I am overdoing it, you think? I don’t think so. I bled down my cheeks and over my jaw.
But I got away. I tore her off and flung her down, to save my life. And I ran. Down the hall I went, with Irene after me. I heard her scamper, patter, on the lino like dry leaves. Behind the kitchen door Queenie was berserk. Her claws raked the panels and she made a she-wolf howl. I knew exactly what Irene would do; and to Royce, in pyjamas, at the head of the stairs, I yelled, ‘Don’t – ’ Stop her, don’t let her, I meant. Then I was outside, running on the path, with gravel chips leaping from my feet. The gate and picket fence were a mile away and the lawn stretched out. My running was lead-limbed, a nightmare running. Behind me the dog was out of her cage, yelping insanely, making claw shrieks on the floor; then had me in sight and made no sound.
My car, under the street-lamp, was a haven I’d never reach. I might hurdle the fence but Queenie would take it like a gazelle and have me as I opened the door. The distances computed in my brain in a micro-second. I’m pleased now at my clarity. The tree at the gate was my only chance. It was a buddleia, rank and brittle, with branches that might sink me back to ground – but my only chance. One foot on the letterbox, a step and a heave, but the rotten thing collapsed and parts of it hung on my foot as I tried again. I used the bracing strut on the fence; stepped up, made a leap, caught a branch – while in time with me the dog leaped too. I saw her rolled-back lip, teeth sharking up, and screamed and kicked. But she had me. She had me in the crotch. God, how it alarms me to write that. She didn’t have me, had my trousers. In the crotch. Then she danced. Only her back feet touched the ground. She hung there, forked in me, a huge new member, while I dangled on the creaking limb and howled.
Royce came lumbering down the lawn with a chain. Unconscious recall. I see him looming ghostly in the dark, in white pyjamas. At that point the bark turned to dust under my hands and I fell off. Queenie thought she had me. She tugged as though to get me to a lair; believed she had me by a juicy part. I grabbed the fence in one hand and tried to pull away. Royce clipped on the chain and joined the tug-of-war. My trousers tore. A ragged piece the size of a doily came out of the crotch. Queenie murdered it as Royce held her. ‘Go on,’ he yelled.
I needed no telling. I scrambled over the fence in my wooden shoe and head down, hands out, lurched at my car; and was inside. But wasn’t safe. The maniac bitch had broken free. She leaped the gate, and gave a shriek of fury or pain as the chain caught in the palings and spun her like a wheel in the air. She slammed down on the footpath on her back, but was up and squealing, slavering. I fought in my trousers for the key, and found it at length warm on my thigh. Royce, amazing boy, stepped over the fence and came to my window. I saw blood dripping from his palms. But he was measured, he was calm. ‘I think you’d better not come back, Dr Papps.’
‘Yes, yes,’ I cried, and drove away. Was Irene on the lawn? Was that a tree, with white mad flower-face and arms like sickles?
I left another hat there that night, and that one she never gave me back.
32
Three mad females in one night. How I longed to be with my wife.
I put iodine on my scratches and whimpered at the pain but found it restored me to myself. I listened at Doris’ door and heard blubbery snores, and turned the key and locked her in. Four mad females. I’d had enough. Then I lay in my bed and cursed all women – and wanted one badly, right then. Not Rhona. I no longer loved Rhona in that way. Mrs Verryt. I wanted couplings brutal, orgiastic; and I groaned the night away in rage and desire.
Next day, with crescent cuts in my brow, I stayed home. I had a bath, then poured buckets of cold water on my head, and once again I was restored. I threw my ruined trousers in the rubbish and considered sending Irene a bill. I thought I might complain to the police and ask to have Queenie destroyed; and I raided the bin and pulled the trousers out as evidence. But one look was enough. That gaping hole made me feel bitten away and I threw them back and went, stomach sick, into the house. What I would do was scratch the silly bitch (Irene, not Queenie) out of my life.
It wasn’t till halfway through the morning that I considered what I’d said to her, and saw her behaviour as denial, and its extravagance as justified. Almost. I had not deserved that mad she-wolf and I shivered as I saw her wet teeth rising and felt her hanging in my crotch. I hadn’t deserved it. Irene was insane and should be with Rhona at Soddy’s Point.
Manifold rang. I told him I’d walked into a tree and scratched my face and was a wee bit shaken still and not fit for work. Happy with Baxter’s Lung Preserver, he had just the job for an invalid, he said. Verryt wanted to see my apple plots. Would I show him round? Fred Gooch was going too, and later we could look at the research farm.
‘Exactly what I need. An afternoon with a boring Dutchman.’
‘Hee hee, now now,’ Manifold said, and hung up.
So there we were, two o’clock on a fine Jessop day, walking in the trees, Cox’s Orange, Jonathan, Delicious, and I was explaining how these had been sprayed with borax, and these with borax and lime, only last week, and another application would go on in a few days. And these had been top-dressed, half a pound per tree, and what we had to determine was the rate of penetration to the root zone. Over here, now, were injected trees, but we seemed to be getting leaf-scald, and injection wasn’t a method orchardists favoured anyway. Now it was Verryt’s turn to yawn. His wife yawned too. Have I mentioned she was there? She did not cover her mouth but showed white teeth and curled-back tongue. She stretched her little body and worked her fingers like a pianist. Her hands were roly-poly and her feet plump in her shoes, and I imagined breasts white as dumplings, doughy to touch. That was an unexcited thought. I’d had my
way with her in the night. I did not need or want her any more.
‘Of course,’ I said, ‘we’ve got the same experiments in other orchards too, different soil types. But we know the cause – lack of boron. It’s just the methods, penetration, application, we’re still sorting out.’
‘And these over here?’ Verryt asked.
‘Oh, that’s a nitrogen experiment. There’s a dressing of amm. sulphate and dried blood. But you see, we get heavy foliage with too much nitrogen. And then we get woolly aphis infestation. Fred’s department.’
Verryt perked up with insects in the game. He used his height to peer down on leaves. He stooped under branches and uncoiled into tree-tops. I began to think he wasn’t a bad chap. And Fred was taken with him. They strolled, hands behind backs, and talked of parasites and Fred described the release of the Cinnabar moth for ragwort control, and the Chilian saw-fly for bidi-bidi.
‘How do you know these saw-flies won’t grow as big as eagles and carry off the babies from their cradles?’ Mrs Verryt.
‘Ha! My wife makes a joke.’
‘Ha, ha,’ Fred said.
‘I’m not making jokes. This economic entymology – is that how you call it? – everything is guesswork. You assume knowledge of all the forms and factors of Nature. You are aping God.’
‘I do not know why she speaks like this. She does not believe in God.’
‘He’s useful as a concept. He’s an interesting model. You, as scientists, should understand that. Doctor Papps spoke of him last night.’
‘I was joking.’ Dr Papps.
‘Your joke had a point. It made your bishop squeak.’
‘My wife –’
‘Is tired of insects. Dr Gooch will show you where they breed. And you can watch. I will sit in the sun with Dr Papps.’
Verryt said, ‘Ah.’ He looked at her with a beaky smile and then gave a shrug and said to me, ‘Perhaps you will be kind enough, Dr Papps. And Dr Gooch and I…’ He gestured into the distance with his hand.
What could I say? Verryt and Fred Gooch walked off through the trees and left me with her. ‘You were bored with him and he’s bored with you. Tat for tit.’
‘Tit for tat, actually. You don’t seem to approve of your husband’s work?’
‘I do. He is very useful. But I was born to argue. It is necessary.’
We came out of the shade and stood on a slope dropping to the inlet. A high tide was drowning the marsh. We heard a fizz and crackle as it advanced and smelled salt and iodine and decay.
‘Let us sit.’ We made places in the grass, three feet apart. Mrs Verryt kicked off her shoes and lit a cigarette.
‘You have a wife but she is unwell. Dr Manifold tells me.’
‘Yes,’ I said, and pointed across the inlet at Soddy’s Point. ‘She’s in there.’
‘Unwell in her mind?’
‘Yes. No cure.’ I told her about Rhona without emotion, watching the white building over the sea.
‘That is sad. Also happy. She is happy?’
‘Yes.’
‘But not a part of this any more.’ She touched head and breast and I saw she meant struggle and pain, and meant they were necessary. ‘And so you have a wife no good to you. And I a husband. The scratches on your head. That is Miss Lomax?’
‘I said something stupid to her.’
‘It must have been very stupid. You need a new lady to put between you and your wife. So that you can carry on. But not Miss Lomax. Not her, I think.’
‘I’ve got my work.’
‘And I have mine. That is good.’ She lay on her elbow and looked at the orchard. ‘It is the wrong season. I would like to tempt you with an apple.’
‘Come back in the summer.’ It’s a mystery how she made me desire her, this dumpy little woman with her fat hands and feet and froggy eyes. I stalled a bit, asked about her books. She told me she had only written one but would start another when she got home. She was, she said, a medievalist.
‘Great days,’ I said. ‘I’d like to have been alive. A knight in armour.’
‘Ha! The terrible worm in the iron cocoon. That is your knight. And murder and pillage and looting were his trade. Chivalry was a game he played with his own kind. Murdering peasants was another game. Atrocious times. All times are atrocious.’
‘Surely not –’
‘I am not a good historian. I have too many resentments and too much anger. Which increases when I look around me at the world.’
‘That’s too pessimistic –’
‘Another war is coming and it will be worse than the last. Today I will not think of it. Say nothing, Dr Papps. No stupidities or I will scratch. We have warm sun and grass. We will make love.’
I made a show of unwillingness but she laughed. ‘I shall call you Plotinus. Plotinus blushed with shame because he had a body.’
‘It’s not shame. I’m not ashamed.’
‘Then what? Do you think I am too ugly? You would like pretty pink cheeks and blue eyes and legs so long?’ She cupped her hand on her vulva (the right name but wrong word, in the circumstances. What shall I use? Mount of Venus? Is that better?) ‘Ugly face,’ she said, ‘so you think I must be ugly all through. Ugly down here.’
‘No, no, of course not. I’m sure it’s…I’ll bet it’s…’
‘You do not like me to be so bold? You think I should sigh and wait for you?’
‘No, your husband –’
‘He knows. That is why I sent him away. He is a kind man.’
So we made love, there in the grass, in the sun. But first she had to cure me of a cramp in my leg. I used to get them frequently when nervous. I got them in bumpy landings in aeroplanes, and with women, and once had one…but I’ll come to that. Mrs Verryt pushed back my toes and stretched my leg. She kneaded my thigh, then unbuttoned me, and, as I’ve said, we made love.
Irene is music. Mrs Verryt is sexual joy. I mean we reached a kind of pleasure plateau and crossed it together and climbed the little peak at the end, and all this with none of the voraciousness I’d feared, but give and take on a very high level. And a marvellous attentiveness. It’s possible to be solo in these things, but Mrs Verryt made herself remarkably present and kept me remarkably aware – not just of her person but her self. She, we, did nothing out of the ordinary. I have no tale to tell of positions and gymnastics. You’ll get no close-up of busy parts. I have just my tale of the plain Dutch wife who taught me joy.
Later in my life I knew her again. And there’s another tale, but I’ll tell it in its place. We rose from the grass and became Dr Papps and Mrs Verryt. ‘That was fun.’
‘It was risky.’ The road ran by fifty yards away and the orchard manager’s house was round the knoll. I heard his child’s squeaky bike in the yard; and imagined I heard Rhona singing to herself, across the stretch of warm brown shallow sea. We had made a star shape in the grass, magnified. But I did not think Rhona would feel betrayed. Her eyes kept their bright incurious stare.
‘Love is more fun out of doors. In Holland it is hard to find a place.’
‘Holland,’ I said, ‘is a little puddle.’
She laughed.
‘Full of tulips and windmills and smelly cheese.’
She laughed again. I seemed to please her.
We climbed down to the water and paddled in the brine. That hour stands to one side of my life and has no part in its forward rush, or forward creep. It seems like yesterday afternoon. It seems like tomorrow. And sometimes it’s a dusty picture hanging in a room in an old old house. Those are occasions when my body affronts me, when my bones creak and belly snores. But I carry that picture to the window, hold it in the sun, dust it off; and feel I can run a hand through my hair and spring up and find her again.
By the way, Mrs Verryt kept her spectacles on.
33
There’s a marvellous fellow down south calling for the death penalty for adulterers. A statute of limitations won’t apply. He wants homosexuals executed too, and rebellious children.
I’m sure he’d make a longer list if invited to. Sabbath-breakers, thieves, pornographers, atheists, abortionists, militant feminists, sex educators, blasphemers, communists, divorce lawyers, prison reformers. I could fill this page up if I tried. Disobedient wives, radical teachers, poets, punk-rockers, over-stayers. Novel-readers, librarians. Quakers, Catholics, Hari Krishnas. Cat-lovers, humanists. He’s got a fat face and a burning eye and looks so closely shaven, so squeaky clean, I imagine him drinking Lysol with his meals. Armageddon is coming, he proclaims, and let us rejoice and welcome it. The executioner, evidently, is God.
I approve of this fellow. He makes me pleased with my sins. ‘You and Shane will be on his list,’ I said to Kate. ‘He’s on mine,’ Kate replied. Every ideology has its hit list.
But Kate is less angry than she was. I notice it in all sorts of ways. When she sets the table she makes sure the knives and forks are straight. She doesn’t drop bombs of mashed potato but makes smooth eggs with a tablespoon and lays them in clutches on the plate. She chews her food more slowly and compliments herself on the taste. Let me see. Instead of crumpling waste paper and firing it at the basket she walks across and drops it in. We no longer have balled-up envelopes on the kitchen floor. She used to lean on the sundeck rail and spit at the ducks in the river. (Phil, as a boy, could spit twenty feet but Kate can do better than that.) Now she takes out slices of bread and flies them down like frisbees, and claps her hands when they drop in gardens on the other side. She doesn’t butt my ankles with the vacuum cleaner but lifts my feet and cleans under them.
It’s unnatural. There’s no solid under-pinning for her happiness. It’s as if she’s practising levitation. Sooner or later she’ll tumble down.
Shane is painting the outbuildings on Phil Dockery’s stud farm. He’s off at seven o’clock in the morning and not back till half past six at night. Kate cuts him a lunch of brown bread sandwiches. Now and then she bakes him a bacon and egg pie. His thermos flask holds four cups of coffee. That much coffee acts as a poison, she believes, but it keeps him warm out there at Long Tom’s so she doesn’t argue. It’s only for a little while, she says.