The lane was narrow, winding between broad-trunked trees, splashed and speckled with sunlight filtering through shifting leaves. He had a swift glimpse of the river, a clear sandy bed with sweet water dancing over yellow stones, and then they were driving up the other side of the hill.
‘Right here,’ she said. ‘At the little signpost.’
He could hardly see it. It was a fingerpost grey with lichen, leaning drunkenly backwards. It said ‘Woodman Row’ in letters which were half-eroded by time and weather.
‘That’s us,’ she said as if she were coming home. She put a hand on his arm to tell him to slow down and he realised that she was half-expecting a curly-headed reckless youth to sprint from the trees and fling himself at the car.
‘He’s a grown man now,’ he said gently. ‘Pushing forty.’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Silly of me. I keep forgetting. Everything else is the same, you see.’
He drove slowly down the little track and stopped at the first cottage. She opened the car door and stepped out. There were four cottages. The end two had been knocked into one, which was marred by the bulbous lump of a white aluminium and glass conservatory stuck on the side. He saw her wince and then look down the road to the last cottage.
‘Why didn’t she leave it to you?’ he asked. All the rest of the wealthy estate, the London flat, the paintings, the car, the exotic and expensive jewellery, had been left to her daughter.
‘She left it to Jacky Daws,’ she said quietly. ‘That’s how I know he’s still here. The lawyers gave him the deeds. I just assumed he’d be here, living here. That’s why I thought everything would be the same.’
He slammed the driver’s door, and locked it. ‘I thought we were driving out into the country for a picnic. I thought we were just having a look at the outside of your old home. You never said anything about meeting him.’
For once, she was not listening to him. She had opened the sagging garden gate and was walking up the path to the cottage. The front door stood open with sprays of honeysuckle peering curiously inside.
‘Now just wait a minute …’ he said.
She tapped on the open door and then stepped over the threshold into the cool dim interior.
The door opened directly into the kitchen. A man was seated at the kitchen table: a stocky small man, with iron-grey curly hair. He had a sheet of newspaper spread on the kitchen table and parts of some machine spread out in their own little pools of dark oil. He looked up as she came in and then slowly rose to his feet, wiping his hands on a piece of rag.
‘Why, Imogen,’ he said gently.
‘Jackdaw.’
They stood in silence, scanning each other’s face and then he smiled a broad easy smile and waved her into a chair. ‘If I’d known you were coming I’d have had something ready,’ he said. He moved to the sink and filled a kettle and switched it on.
‘This is my fiancé, Philip,’ she said.
He nodded with a smile. ‘I can’t shake hands. I’m dirty.’
‘I knew you’d be here,’ Midge said. In the dimness of the cottage her face was luminous. She was smiling, her eyes were bright. ‘I knew you would be here.’
He nodded. ‘I guessed you’d come sooner or later. But I’d have had tea ready if I’d known it was today.’
‘You always had tea ready for Mother and me,’ Midge said.
He nodded. ‘She liked it so.’
Philip cleared his throat, interrupted the slow rhythm of their speech. ‘Why did she leave you the cottage? It’s a very valuable asset, isn’t it?’
The man shot a swift warning look at him. ‘She had no use for it herself,’ he said gently.
‘She could have left it to Midge. Or given it to a charity.’
‘She liked Jackdaw,’ the girl interrupted. ‘I expect she wanted him to have it.’
The man nodded. ‘She was generous.’
‘Very generous,’ Philip said rudely. ‘The place must be worth something like £80,000. Rather a big tip for a gardener, isn’t it?’
The man flushed, his pride stung. ‘I wasn’t just the gardener,’ he said. ‘I kept everything nice for her, I kept things safe for her. It was always ready for her to come back. I waited for her.’
‘You waited?’ Imogen asked.
‘She never said she was not coming.’ They could hear the hurt of the seventeen-year-old youth in his low voice. ‘Every spring it was ready for her, in case she came. Every spring it was ready for her to come home. The garden, the house, and me – waiting for her to come back.’ He paused. ‘She asked me to wait for her.’
The kettle boiled and the automatic switch clicked abruptly off.
‘You loved her!’ Philip accused. He could not tolerate the thought of their intimacy, of their cooing like wood pigeons at night, of her asking him to wait for her. She had never asked anything of Philip, except to take Imogen to dinner. By the time he had met her she had gone far beyond him, far beyond all possibility of desire. He knew she had never looked twice at him. He faced the man as if they were rivals, knowing, in his sudden enmity, that they had both loved her. He found himself shifting his feet, squaring up to the older man as if the woman they had both loved was still alive. As if she might ever have been won by either of them. John Daws looked quickly from Philip to Imogen as if he wanted to understand where this sudden rush of aggression had come from, then he looked away, his face guarded.
There was a long silence. Outside a jay scolded abruptly and then went quiet. John Daws said nothing. He turned back to Philip as if he understood, as if he recognised a mutual pain.
‘She was a good employer,’ he said.
Imogen rose slowly from her seat, her eyes fixed on John Daws. ‘Did you love her?’ she asked. ‘Did you? Was it her, all the time?’ She scanned his face as if she could see the bright seventeen-year-old who waited at the corner for the sound of his mistress’s car, who waited, and waited, although she had forgotten him altogether. Imogen was staring as if she could see the only happy days of her childhood breaking and reshaping into a new pattern, a pattern of betrayal. Days in which she had not been the centre of love but had been a diversion, or even worse than that … an alibi. An innocent chaperone whose presence made an adultery possible.
Imogen gave a quick painful gasp. ‘Why,’ she cried in the thin voice of a shocked child. ‘Jacky Daws – you were not my friend, you were never my friend! You were her lover! You were her lover and never my friend at all.’
He said nothing. He bowed his head to her as if to confess to the betrayal. Then he raised his eyes and scanned her hurt face.
And both men waited with fear for her to look towards Philip when she finally understood.
Going Downriver
August 10
I started this diary with a view to publishing it alongside my thesis. I thought I would call it something like ‘Living with the People – a year with the Nloko’ and that there would be a picture of me on the front with Shasta and one on the back of me on my own outside the hut they gave me. My diary was, in those early days, rather self-conscious, perhaps a little self-satisfied – I’d accept that as a criticism.
I had in mind a woman reader: a rather bright anthropology student in her first year, say. I addressed her frankly – as an expert – and I charmed her. I showed her my commitment to understanding a native people, and the stripping away of my western values. I showed myself in bad lights too: the meal of the maggots eggs, and the time they took me swimming; but there is a sort of golden glow over it all. It reads, I suppose, as the account of an adventure by an adventurer who knows he will make it safely home. Behind it all was the awareness of my apartment in New York, and my hopes of publication, my ambitions in the university, and my certainty that among all those young women readers would be one – or indeed more than one – who would be so impressed by my diary (and the pictures on the back and the front) that I would be ‘set up’ when I got back to NY after my year in the back of beyond. This may sound crude; but i
n all fairness when a man has been away from home comforts for three hundred and three days he starts to be a little edgy and to long for a darkened bar, a Budweiser, and a woman with long legs sitting on a bar stool.
Not that I am celibate. Far (very far!) from it. I live in the best hut in the village, re-thatched especially for me, with Shasta: a stunning beautiful bare-breasted Nloko woman. Her nose is too flat for Caucasian taste and her hips are broad and plump, which the Nloko in their natural wisdom admire; and we do not. But she is a princess of this people, which makes her choice of me rather flattering.
We went through some kind of ceremony. Unfortunately I was not at all fluent in Nlokoese and much of it was beyond me. But I think we were, in their terms, married. How to explain to her when I have to leave is a problem that I shall worry about when I go. One of the charming aspects of the Nloko people is that they have no sense of distance or time. They have no words to describe time beyond weather descriptions such as sunrise, sunset, or, at the most distant future, the next rains. They cannot plan long-term. So to explain to Shasta that marrying me was a mistake because in a year I would leave her and never return was quite beyond my command of the language, and her concept of time.
To be honest, she was very pressing, and very seductive. What with the ceremonial drink, and Shasta perfumed, oiled and painted, I was pretty much of a goner. When I woke up and the ceremony was done I was in my hut, oiled, painted and perfumed myself, with the brown and beautiful Shasta spilled across my bed. It was too late to argue, and besides she awoke with a smile so gentle and trusting that I could not resist the temptation of holding her, and stroking her smooth brown legs and waist, and then I couldn’t resist making love to her again.
To be fair to them, the whole ceremony – as well as everything else they do – is based on consent. No-one may coerce any other person. Every decision of the community has to have the willing and verbal consent of every individual. This sounds idyllic. Actually it’s incredibly time-consuming and inefficient! It’s only because they have such a small community – about fifty people in this village – and because they do things by tradition that things ever get agreed and performed.
At the ‘wedding’ the rule of consent applied. And they did ask me, very slowly and clearly, if I consented to being her husband. And I must say, in fairness to them, that before I passed out from the drink I said, ‘Yeah. OK. Why not?’
I don’t regret it. It could not have worked out better. Shasta’s status as Princess has given me unique access to the Nloko people, who trust me and confide in me and actually come to me for advice. It has made the thesis as easy as writing this diary. I am investigating puberty and coming of age among the Nloko, and I have been besieged with their beliefs, taboos, and individual experiences. Nothing has been hidden from me. I know every secret. I could have wrapped up the thesis a couple of weeks ago. But the boat only comes upriver every four months, so I have to wait until my appointed departure time two months or so from now – fifty days to be precise, allowing ten days to travel downriver by canoe to meet the government launch.
I have not exploited Shasta, it’s a relationship of feeling. I’ve never seen anyone light up in the way that Shasta does when I come near her. I’ve never had a woman wash me from head to toe for the sheer joy of touching every part of my body. I’ve never had a woman sit still, like a rock, for three hours just because I fell asleep one lazy afternoon with my head in her lap and she would never disturb my rest. It’s heady stuff! I’ve even had thoughts of sending the manuscript home by the launch and staying here, and letting the career and the apartment (and even the willing female anthropology students) go hang. But to be honest I’m too ambitious, and too intelligent, to get stuck here.
It palls after a time. In the first few months I was awestruck by their relationship with their world. They eat well and live well in this wonderfully constructed and organised village, without leaving a mark on the forest around them. When you see them hunting they almost become trees and shrubs. When you see the children playing at the river edge they are as much a part of nature as the fish in the water and the parakeets shrieking in the trees overhead. Their whole world revolves around the hierarchy of the village in which women and the women’s religion is totally dominant. This produces a wonderful serenity about the place. The women are the keepers of the wisdom and the health of the people. The men support them, respect them, obey them – and they have their own sub-culture of brotherhood and comradeship. I haven’t cracked that, to be honest. But it doesn’t bother me. At home I’m not really a guy’s sort of guy. It’s too competitive for me. I like the company of women, I like the admiration of women. The Nlokoese women treat me with a respect bordering on awe – I’m lapping it up!
I imagine I shall miss Shasta like hell. I don’t think even the most liberated anthropology student will be as abandoned as Shasta is with me. She makes love as if it were some glorious ceremony which builds slowly and elegantly from one smooth sinuous movement to another. And then finally, when you can hardly bear the controlled beauty of it any more, she throws her dignity away and she is an animal, a beautiful animal, in her passion.
It doesn’t take a PhD to know that this kind of experience is rare. I shall break my heart without her, I know it already. I expect when I take the launch downriver I shall feel like throwing myself overboard rather than leave her. And I’m concerned for her too. I have tried to discover what happens when a wife of the Nloko is left by her husband. Shasta’s beauty, her passion, her wonderful grace in everything she does will not last for long. You only have to look at her mother, pot-bellied, round-faced with twinkling sarcastic eyes, to see where my lovely girl is headed. She should have married one of her own kind who would have stayed with her and grown fat and sarcastic with her. Instead she chose me, who has adored her, and been adored by her: a year of absolute passion, instead of a lifetime of conventional comfort. I know what I’d choose.
But I don’t know what she would choose since she cannot imagine our parting. I told the whole tribe when I arrived that I would be leaving in a year – when the rains come again. And they all smiled and nodded reassuringly. ‘Ralende,’ they said softly. Which means, as far as I can translate, ‘of course’, or ‘naturally’, or ‘it has been ordained’. So she ought to know that I am going, even if she never mentions it and always behaves as if we will be together forever.
I am, of course, taking sensible precautions. I use contraceptives both to protect her against pregnancy and to protect us both from diseases to which we might not be naturally immune. I would ruin my academic reputation if I left behind any major damage to the Nloko tribe. A western disease, or a half-caste child would be professional death for me. Also, I think that Shasta could remarry if she has no child. Something one of the women said suggested that she had been married before. I asked the woman, one of Shasta’s aunts, what she meant by the word I understood as ‘the previous husband’. Shasta snapped at her, and the other women seemed appalled at some kind of lapse of taste. I said nothing more, but that night I asked Shasta if she had been married before. She laughed. ‘Many, many times,’ she said. And then she sat on my lap and kissed me. ‘But you are the best of all.’
August 18
I was disturbed this morning to find that my chest of personal goods has been touched. More importantly, the supplies of contraceptives have been stolen. Theft is practically unknown among the Nloko so I am hoping that one of the children has taken them for playthings and that Shasta will get them back for me, despite her dislike of them. She complains that they are against nature – the nearest translation would be ‘blasphemous’. I think she would like to conceive my child. But no, lovely seductive Shasta. No chance. Whatever your feelings we will use western contraception, and until I get the packet back I shall sleep cautiously beside my princess, refusing to touch her, even though she cried last night for a caress.
I have finished the final interviews for my thesis and much of it is already written.
I experimented with a new introduction today, but I shall leave the conclusion until I get back to New York and feel settled enough to look back, to ‘recollect in tranquillity’. They could not have helped me more. I think every day one of the boys or girls of my research sample – eleven- to fourteen-year-olds – has come to the hut door and squatted outside to be my companion for the day. Rarely has any anthropologist had the honour of being a prince among his research group! They call me Prince Rainbringer, and I am thinking of that as a title for the diary. I have no idea how much travelogue-type books can earn, but I am spending the imaginary royalty cheques in my head! I must have a big gas-guzzler car, and get a better apartment.
Indeed, as the time comes for me to leave, I am longing for my homecoming. I long for a properly cooked steak. My mouth just fills with water at the thought of donuts, coffee, chocolate, a Big Mac. I am going to pour junk food down my throat when I get home. All we have been eating here for the last few days is river fish and cassava bread, for breakfast, lunch and dinner, as preparation for the great feast to celebrate the coming of the rains.
I shall be sorry to miss it. It had taken place just before I arrived, and it will happen again just after I leave. It’s obviously central to their religion, which is typical primitive Pantheism. They believe that all growing things have a spirit life, and that the seasons change as they wish. The big transition from the dry period to the rains has to be assisted with a ceremony and a major sacrifice. Shasta will be officiating. I asked her, rather frivolously, if they had a special rain dance, but she smiled and told me it was ‘sere’, which means a mystery. She is particularly attractive these days, withdrawn and thoughtful. It is costing me a good deal in self-control not to make love with her, especially as I am going away so soon. I want a farewell fling. Last night she begged me to kiss her, just to kiss her and nothing else. I really thought I had better not.
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