by Maurice Gee
‘They’ve both got pretty hair.’ A strange thing about that womanizer, he knows how to make a certain type of woman feel safe. He sends a message of neutrality, part matiness, part complicity, and they know it’s not them he’s after. Some even elbow him or punch him in relief and they screech at his jokes. Irene used her elbow. She didn’t screech but whispered catty things about poor Bagley. Phil was my equal with Irene. No other man was. (Royce is a special case.) Bagley, Pauli, later on a violinist fellow, then a flautist, all had music in common with her, but none knew Irene Lomax, little Reen. I thought until the swarry Phil had forgotten her. But he had simply put her on one side and that night he picked her up again. The ease between them made me sulky at first, then began to please me. It worked to increase Irene and there seemed more of her for me to know.
I knew without being told that she had dressed her brother up. Grey flannel slacks, a blue blazer, and round his neck the first postwar cravat I’d seen. He spent most of his night at the window, looking out, and Irene went to him and they stood there privately; and it made me blush, the memories. She turned from him and caught my eye and smiled, and through the back of my head I felt Phil and Kitty watching too. The four of us. We were the orb within the orb, turning counter-clockwise. Even Ruth was part of an outer shell. I heard the muted purr and click of our machinery and felt us brush those others as we went by. Well, metaphor. How beautifully it works, like catalyst, or like an equals sign. It came to me as knowledge, for my need.
‘When will she play?’ Ruth asked.
‘Soon.’ Pauli had played and Bagley sung.
‘Pack of phonies,’ Kitty said.
‘Someone should play boogie,’ Phil agreed.
I wandered from the room and through the house. A dog smell in one passage turned me back. Nonogenarian Queenie snoozed her life out there, blunt in tooth, blind in eye; but she would know me. Sweat sprang in my armpits at the thought. I climbed stairs. Narrow bedroom, khaki blanket, bed unmade. Royce’s cell. It instructed me, it was dogma: Royce and Irene had no further carnal need of each other. Then followed – no step in logic – their connection was a summer, coming on them in its natural time. I could have no quarrel with that; and I’ve never questioned it since.
Someone started playing Handel – no mean pianist – but I kept on with my exploring for I knew Irene’s touch. Her room was a corner room with moulded ceiling and glass chandelier. Bay windows looked across Jessop to the cathedral. Moonlight showed a bed with a blue counterpane. Her slippers peeped out, inclining me to sadness for a moment. Women’s footwear often makes me sad. Very strange. Why should it suggest mortality?
I turned on a standard lamp by the bed and made a yellow pool as deep as my chest. Not enough to show the pictures well, but I saw they were Royce’s, hills and beaches, creeks and trees, and I didn’t feel I was missing much. As far as I could see he’d made no progress. He’d made changes. Here and there a large object lay, or seemed to float, in the foreground: a shell, a stone, a bone. They made the balance wrong and interfered with the perspective, but it did not surprise me to find him awkward still. I thought it kind of Irene to hang so many.
One I took to be by someone else. Then I saw its likeness to the rest. The medium was different, that was all. Oil had increased his clumsiness. Hills like bits of green glass. Clouds like puff-balls, white. A yellow beach, a yellow smile, with reefs, or was it teeth? Oh dear, I thought. Blue sea, of course. But was that a shadow in the sea? Big fish, deep down? And this thing here, this shape, or no-shape, floating in the foreground, was it a cloud, pitch black? Or a head? Was it – whose was the question? – was it Irene?
Just for a moment I was afraid. Then I restored myself by criticism. He did not need the head and fish-shape both. Or teeth-like reef and glass-sharp hills with either. It was cluttered up, too full of stuff, and too much threat meant no threat at all. But in the end I came to think the whole thing accidental. I turned out the lamp and left the room and followed Irene’s music down the stairs. She was on, had used Leon Pauli, or perhaps the Dean, as curtain-raiser. Kitty and Phil stood together in not-quite amity. I saw a pointed elbow in them both, but they relaxed and Kitty put her hand on his arm. Irene, I thought, created innocence. Ruth was at the window with Royce. He had a silly grin, as though perhaps she’d poked her tongue at him, and she a lumpy hardness on her face, aimed at Irene. She was surprised and unaccepting. I saw when the slump of defeat came on her and she softened to enjoy.
Sacrarium. I’m silly, sentimental. I want to use that word for the space Irene made about herself at the end of the room. It comes to me, but I hesitate. Piano as an altar. Music-making as an act of worship. That’s all nonsense – and I reject it not because I might be thought to blaspheme (I’m no believer) but out of respect for Irene’s toughness. When she sat at her piano there was not an ounce of silliness in her. Yet in me, that night, many nights, a feeling I claim validity for. There is, of course, no such thing as ideal beauty. It’s all subjective. Yet I’m real. And in my hard centre I’m a fact. And that’s where Irene penetrates, and strikes me with her fingers and makes me sound. I’ll not try to name the note. I have, as I’ve said, a passion for naming, and so for bringing things in my control. But this thing, and several others, I cannot name.
When she was finished silliness came back. We clapped, we exclaimed, Leon Pauli led her out by the hand and she made a curtsey. And not long afterwards Bagley and Sylvia Dockery sang, sticky song. How they warbled, how they intertwined. Irene watched them with delight (I’m not sure she listened), and Ruth, at my side, gave a whimper of glee. Kitty caught my eye and questioned me with a little downturn of her mouth, dabbing at Phil. What mischief was he up to? I couldn’t guess, but I watched him, apprehensive, as he moved along the side of the room, making two or three steps each time the singers paused. He came to Bagley’s side as they finished, and seemed to beam on them with pride. His teeth flashed yellow-white and his friendly arm embraced Bagley’s shoulders. Sylvia made her little ducking bow, and Bagley his stiff-hipped dive at the floor. He left his hair-piece in Phil’s hand. He shone his white bald head at the audience, while Phil held the thing two-fingered, like a dead rat, for us to see. I laughed behind clamped teeth. I could not help it. Irene laughed. She screeched.
Sylvia (‘Who is Sylvia, what is she?’ Bagley sang on some other occasion) went white and streamed instant tears down her cheeks. It was not funny. She ran from the room, and Royce, good Royce, followed her, while Bagley, snarling, grabbed his hair and fitted it on. Then he marched out. And Phil, alone, began to look stupid. He sat in a chair and grinned at the floor and sipped his drink and no one approached to talk with him. I did not. Kitty and Irene did not. The sides of our figure flew apart and though we met in pairs and trios many times after we never made a four again; enclosed that space. There are all sorts of spaces though, all sorts of shapes, in my head.
What did Ruth say? Many things. She was excited. She’d had fun. Irene was not superb as I claimed, but very very good. Excellent. Kitty too was excellent, full of strength. But Phil, he was a monster, rudimentary. ‘It is the brother,’ Ruth said, ‘who is remarkable.’
‘Royce?’
‘What do you say when you want to talk but cannot talk?’
‘Dumb?’
She was impatient. ‘Sprakeloos. Having no words.’
‘Inarticulate?’
‘Yes. He has things in him. Things he must say.’
‘Paint. That’s what he does.’
‘Paint them then. He will do it. Wait and see. Now, no more talking. After all that music, into bed. Time for love.’
Ruth, it seems to me, was remarkable.
38
She did not live with me. The times were not right. I was very careful and she made a game of keeping people just short of certainty about us. Prune-faced looks I got but no one accused us.
She did not live with me. She did not want to. I would become husband, she said, and one was enough. I would impris
on her and give her looks of do this, do that, and quickly now, and make a baby-face and small-boy face instead of man. Was she right? Probably. I did not think so at the time; but thought us correct for other reasons. I loved it when she climbed the fence to me. Having a wife in the kitchen would not have made up for loss of that.
There was a day, summer of ’48, when I sat in my sea-grass chair in the dappled shade, a glass of beer on the table beside me, a fantail doing aerobatics under the grapevine, my antique gramophone at my feet, with Mimi and Rodolfo in love, and it seemed no bad thing to be alone, a widower. Feet and torso bare, shorts turned up, legs in the sun. Comfortable, released from all that. Good for you, I told the lovers, and: Make the most of it. I knew how their story ended.
My backyard, with lemon trees, with lawn half cut, and tea-tree for my winter fire stacked in a watertank on its side, and underpants and tea-towels on the line, and butterflies and bees and mint and parsley, wooden fence on three sides, tangy with creosote – my backyard was an island outside connections, entanglements, with Mimi and Rodolfo five-minute guests, and fantail, (insect legs like whiskers in its beak) a killer I was not at all disturbed by. Beer delicious. Ham and lettuce salad digesting. No woman in my skull. Peace in my skull. My blood as slow as treacle, cool as wine.
Then she rose. Sun or moon, she rose above my fence. Sun, I think. Yes, she was warm and she beamed on me. But I’ll not play sun/moon gender games – or games with her. She beamed on me but I’ll keep cool and offer the precision she admired even when she was passionate. So – she had climbed a peach tree on her side of the fence until she could see into my yard, and she cried, ‘Dr Papps? Noel?’ I heard it as Mimi and Rodolfo drew breath, and I lifted the arm and silenced them. ‘Mrs Verryt? Ruth?’ I said. I stood up, beer in hand, and walked, paused, walked, and came to the fence. ‘It is you, isn’t it? Mrs Verryt?’
‘Oh yes, it’s me. I’m stuck. Help me, Noel. I want to come over.’ Her rosy frog-face beamed and her eyes were huge behind her glasses. Eight white fingers with pink nails gripped the top of the fence. She was like that thing children drew at the time, or later:
What’s its name?
‘Wait,’ I said, ‘I’ll get my step-ladder.’ I turned and she gave a cry. ‘Noel. Your back.’
‘Ah. Marks. From my chair.’ She told me later they were like the scars from a whipping. I set the ladder up. I sent a nervous glance at the house next door but my grapevine hid us. Balancing on top, one foot on the fence, I helped her climb; and she, with a hand on my thigh, with a rubber-ball bounciness, hopped across to join me, north to south; oceans and continents disposed of.
I’d given her no more than five minutes of my time since she had gone from Jessop ten years before; and she confessed I’d never crossed her mind. That’s very healthy. That made conditions ideal for a second start. I helped her down and led her by the hand across my lawn. It was like bringing home a bride. She sat in my chair, I poured her beer, and, ‘Well, well, Ruth. A miracle’; and she, ‘Noel, how lovely. How peaceful it is here. How well you look.’
‘And you do too. You’ve lost some weight.’ She looked more than ten years older. Have I said she was twenty-eight when she came to Jessop the first time? Now she was thirty-eight and looked forty-five – but had gained in beauty. The petulance, impatience, the greed, were gone from her face, those things that had made little puffy lumps of white muscle in her cheeks, about her mouth; and now she was thinner, she was harder, and somehow all her dross was burned away. A plain woman still, ugly perhaps; but very pleasing to me, beautiful. And I knew – no, I discovered – that she was full of pain, and not dismayed by it, had found herself (that’s a cliché) and was inviolable, though all the bad things were not done.
‘Ruth, how? Tell me.’
‘I heard the music. I thought there was no music in this country. So I climbed the tree to look. And it was you.’
‘But…?’ I meant the house backing on to mine, how had she come there, why was she not ten thousand miles away in Holland?
‘We live there. Piet and I. We have come to Jessop. Piet has come. It was hard. We pulled some strings. Is that how you say it? I have come to help him. Then I will go back. I cannot live in a place so beautiful.’
I put that away to think about later. The husband, Dr Verryt, was over there. I watched nervously, expecting to see his top three feet unfold above the fence and turn towards me like a Martian machine. Ruth laughed. ‘He is inside arranging his books. You must walk around and visit him. Do not climb the fence. That is the way I will visit you.’ Suddenly she said, ‘You are not married?’
‘No.’
‘Your wife…’
‘She died.’
‘And you? In the war?’
‘I didn’t go. I worked for the government. Soil research.’
‘Ah. Ah. Good. I had forgotten such things. That was good.’
‘I wanted to go –’
She stopped me. She put her hand towards my mouth.
‘Do not. No things that are stupid. Let me hold your hand, Noel. Let me be in New Zealand. Do you make any cheese yet I can eat?’
I brought another chair and another bottle of beer and ham and pickled onions and cheddar cheese. The sun stayed out for us. The fantail made another visit, bringing its mate, and Mimi and Rodolfo fell in love again. Later we had Mozart and Beethoven, and I promised to take her to Irene’s where she would hear piano-playing as good as any in Holland.
‘The lady who scratched your face? She cannot play. Does she scratch you still?’
‘No, that’s all over.’
‘And no ladies, Noel? No lady friends?’
‘No lady friends. I think it wouldn’t matter anyway.’
‘You are not so frightened now. How frightened you were that day.’
‘I guess you were a bit too much for me.’
‘Not now?’
‘No, not now.’
‘All the same, today, I think I will sit and enjoy the sun. It is enough good luck for now.’
We held hands, and we embraced as we said goodbye, and that was enough. As we crossed the lawn she worked out the field of fire from neighbours’ eyes. Very serious. ‘I will buy a ladder, Noel, like yours, and put it in the corner by that tree. And you put yours there, see? I will step across.’
‘I could take a board out of the fence.’
‘No. More fun to climb. And be invisible. And quick. I am good at it.’
I had to say, ‘What about Piet?’
‘He does not care. He will not see, or want to see – or not see. Piet has his bees. I hear them singing in his head.’
She told – a little of it then, and other bits at other times – how he had suffered. But not about her own sufferings. It was bad for him. He could not understand. She understood. It was a thing she had expected; she recognized the hideous face. But it was not a face he was able to look at. ‘And now I think he is not alive. Not properly. He is alive only in the part that thinks of bees.’
And for the rest of his life Piet Verryt wrote his giant book that will never be published. He writes it still, or perhaps just lives with his bees – curled up on a bed in a nursing home, blind now, deaf, ninety-five I think, and with a smile on his mouth. I visited him once and seemed to hear a humming sound. But his story is another story, one I don’t know, one I can’t tell. I can tell a little about Ruth, and about me.
I helped her up the ladder, though she needed no help, and handed her into the peach tree; and in the night helped her climb back, and Ruth Verryt became my wife. I’ll say no four-letter words, though wife is one and love another. I’ll use no terms like coition, climax. Orgasm? I thought it once a fine grown-up word. Don’t like it now. Orgy, chasm. Words are doing funny things these days. Coition won’t do, and fuck won’t do, even love-making, for our close joinings and achievings, our plain arithmetic of one plus one.
She rose on my life like a sun yet I try to contain her. I try to put her down in dry small words. I measur
e Ruth out in micrograms and try to find her weight and her dimensions. She escapes me. She won’t stay still, and I hear her laugh.
‘Ah Noel, Noel, you are a funny man.’
‘Just tell me. A simple yes or no. Do you love me?’
‘I do now. And will tomorrow. And next year when I am gone. But in between I promise nothing.’
‘Now though? Now?’
‘Oh yes, now. You are nice. I love you now. But in five minutes I will stop. Unless you stop.’
I made that mistake, and was careful not to make it again. And I’m not going to make it now. Does it matter what we felt? I’ll do better to say what we did and what we were.
We were lovers. We conjoined in many ways. I see that as I take us to bits, but in that year was one way, body/mind. Reciprocal properties, we presented those, and simultaneity, we had that. In chemistry we’d be a compound radical. But enough of that. Easier to say that we held hands and we agreed. Ruth climbed to me over the fence. I shifted my ladder into the corner where it was hidden by a loquat tree (evergreen) and set its feet on bricks to keep it steady. On her side she was hidden by a garden shed and a pepper tree. She crushed leaves in her hands and held them to my face. The hot smell became a part of our love-making. Her naked body seemed to release smells of acid and fresh hay. She seemed to be entirely in my armpit or my groin, in my chest, my head, my throat. Ruth specialized in attentiveness, being there, and I came to like presence as much as ecstasy. I could not get enough of her, and I mean all of her. But there were times when we got away and could not keep track of ourselves. She was speaking with my tongue and I with hers. I could not tell whether it was her I held or me, and when we lay apart, with two points touching, hand on hand and ankle over shin, our blood was common blood, through our connections. Words were common too. Who spoke that? Who spoke this? ‘Happy?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Feel my heart.’ ‘It’s alive. It’s trying to get out.’