Father Geoghan is astonished, outraged, silent for a moment, then glares at her as if betrayed. As if she has led him on to believe she had decided upon the right thing and all was concluded. That only the details remained.
‘So you have no shame?’
‘The only shame would be abandoning the child to the likes of you.’ Maryanne pauses for breath. ‘You come into my home as if it were your own, and casually announce that you propose to steal my child for the child’s good, and expect me to agree as if the whole matter were beyond question. And then, then you have the nerve to talk of shame!’
‘You are beyond prayers, child, but your baby is not!’
‘I’m not your child, and the baby will be mine. And will grow to be whatever it wants to be, beyond your grasping reach.’ She rises. ‘It will go to any school it wants to go to: state or church. Go to church, or not. Believe in God, or not. The child will decide! And you …’ here her anger is such that she can barely speak, ‘you will never get your hands on my child. Never! Now get out of my house!’
At what point did her voice rise with such rage? Her last words ring about the room as the priest struggles from his chair.
‘God will deal with you.’
Maryanne strides into the hallway and opens the front door for him. ‘God won’t have anything to do with it. Nor will you,’ she adds, eyeballing the priest as he steps onto the footpath.
And as he departs into the windy, disagreeable time of year, he stares back at her as if, indeed, looking upon a witch and longing for the days, his stare says, when we drowned the likes of you.
Then he is gone and Katherine emerges from the kitchen where she has been waiting and stands by Maryanne’s side, watching the disappearing figure of the priest.
‘I don’t think we’ll be seeing Father Geoghan again,’ she observes.
Maryanne catches the hint of approval in her sister’s voice, for although she was not in the room, she clearly heard most of what was said. Or enough, at least. And Maryanne recalls just how important that hint of approval in her sister’s voice has always been. It’s still there, the thrill of having done well in Katherine’s eyes. Katherine might be the believer, nodding with the priests on this or that point, humming hymns about the house, whispering her prayers like a child before bed, but Maryanne notes, with a swelling pride, that she’s still there when it matters. All the same, she’s not convinced they’ve seen the last of Father Geoghan.
‘I wouldn’t be too sure of that,’ she says, warily eyeing the street, as if he might reappear.
‘I would,’ Katherine says, with a certainty that Maryanne would dearly love to accept as the last word on the matter.
They linger in the doorway, the wind tossing leaves left over from winter and discarded scraps of paper and pamphlets into the air, the Yes and No of the day, the giant headlines of the hour, GUILTY and MILHAUS and DEATH, carried away on invisible currents down the street and over the footpaths, fences and yards of the suburb and beyond.
Out beyond the rooftops, unobserved in a distant patch of dark sky, a silver jet hovers before landing in another time – inside, Michael pondering the Yes and the No of the day, the trial of a traitor in time of war, a single mother shielding her child with the tenacity of a tigress, in the way a storyteller looks back upon history: a mixture of what we know and what we can’t know and so have to invent. The whole thing a mixture of what, if and why not. Figures that are recorded in documents and family photographs, and figures that never existed, like the priest currently disappearing into the night.
14.
Maryanne has arrived in a quiet, green, expensive suburb just outside the city. A lumbering bus departs, continuing on its way behind her. She didn’t have to come. She could have torn the note up and nobody would have known. But now she’s standing beside the road, staring at the wide, curved driveway of a mansion on a hill.
She’s never been here before, for there are suburbs in this city that are as foreign as distant countries and which nobody goes to except the citizens of these foreign places. And she wouldn’t be here now, would not have made the journey, if it weren’t for the note, which she wished, from the start, had never been given to her. And it’s not true to say that she could have torn it up and nobody would have known. She would have.
The house and its grounds occupy an entire section of land between two streets. A long red-brick wall runs the length of the frontage, and, she guesses, all around the block itself. It is almost impossible to see inside. The outside world is not meant to. Only a tower is visible above the hedge, a tower, she imagines, from a ghost story: the kind of tower from which the spirits of lost children might cry out to the living.
The best view of the house is from the locked front gate where she is now standing, looking up the driveway to the front door, where a large black car sits waiting. Just to her right she can see the edge of a lake. With ducks, and is that a swan? Yes, a black swan. And heaven knows what else. A diving board and boats, perhaps. Even a boatshed. A private lake, a private country. And as she stares at the estate, at this private duchy, she finds it difficult to comprehend that only one family lives here, for there is room on these grounds for a hundred houses. And that sensation that this may as well be a foreign country as a distant suburb grows on her. There may even be a train station in there; it wouldn’t surprise her. And she wonders what language they speak here. For it would be a language dotted with foreign phrases the likes of ‘Tell the maid to clean this’, ‘What’s cook doing?’ and ‘Where’s that gardener?’ The sort of language nobody uses, unless they live in a place like this. What language do they speak, indeed; what customs do they observe, what games do they play, what god do they worship?
She stands outside the gate, feeling a little like Tess at the gate of the d’Urbervilles: a waif with a likely tale. Except it’s not a likely tale she’s come to tell. She brings something else, and she’s not sure what it is. And a feeling that she’d really rather not be here comes over her. The note she never asked for has brought her here. She lets out a tired sigh as she glances down at it in her hand. In fact, she is holding two things: a hastily written note and a sealed letter with an address, the one to which she has come, neatly printed on the envelope. She has read only the instruction: ‘Please, deliver this by hand to the lady. J Milhaus.’ That is all it says.
She has no knowledge of what is in the letter, which Milhaus clearly wrote before arriving at the court, possibly intending to give it to the lawyer he didn’t trust, to deliver or post it. But perhaps the sight of her in the courtroom gave him other ideas. Whatever the case, she has ended up with it, and she didn’t want it from the moment she got it. And all she knows of the letter is what is on the envelope: a woman’s name. It is printed neatly. A married woman’s name. And not a mere ‘Mrs’. She is titled. She is a ‘Lady’. Furthermore, Maryanne knows her. Knows the name. She is a society figure. Married to one of those businessmen who are always standing beside prime ministers and governors in newspapers and magazine photographs. One of those, she suspects, with all sorts of political connections; one of those who live in a world in which somebody or other always owes someone else something. A world in which favours are always being chalked up or called in. The long arms of the law, she muses, smiling to herself, are nothing compared to the long arms of the rich.
And his wife, the lady whose name is on the envelope, is one of those women who are always mentioned in society pages, and although Maryanne rarely reads these things, even she is familiar with the name. A lady, a wife, a mother of three. Their life a sort of fairytale for the city to look up to. And the city does. A fairytale lived out in a castle and a kingdom hidden behind walls from the street.
She hates standing around like some miserable little domestic on an errand. Some witless little go-between. She sees a distant, silent gardener and an inevitable wheelbarrow. The house almost glows in the sun. The edge of the lake sparkles. The swan is still, floating upon the water in black myste
ry. She doesn’t want to, but she finds herself admiring the place. Against her will, for why should she admire it just because it’s big and imposing and sits on the hill as if it was always there and will remain there, unchanged, forever. But she finds herself admiring it all the same. It’s like gazing upon an etching of antiquity. Still and perfect in itself, something timeless that renders the outside world irrelevant. Except for the note in her hand: a message from the outside world for the still and timeless one behind those walls. An intrusion, bound to be. Why on earth has Milhaus asked her to do this? Why should the story lead here? And does she really want to be the one to hand the letter over and disrupt the perfect stillness? For, whatever it says, she is certain it will be a disruption. And unwanted.
And just how does she hand it over, anyway? This is not a common, everyday house. There is no door in reach to knock on. She cannot open the gate. She can barely see the front door, at the end of the wide, sweeping driveway. It’s mid-morning, plenty of the day left. The car could sit at the front door for hours. She could be standing here all afternoon.
The gardener is cutting back the spring growth, the wheelbarrow quickly filling. The car, glinting in the sun, is as imposing as the house. She could call to the gardener and give him the letter. But would he hear her? And should he receive it, anyway? Her instructions are to deliver it by hand. To the lady in question. She is here because Milhaus decided to trust her. And how desperate is that? How mad must your world be to trust someone you don’t even know? She tells herself she has no obligation. Nobody would know if she turned and walked away. She’s got herself involved in something that she doesn’t understand. But she can’t walk away, not Maryanne. She invited Milhaus’s trust, its burden of responsibility. She chose, after all, to enter his world, to let him know he was not alone, and he has responded by trusting her. And this letter, whatever it may say, is the measure of his trust. But, and she’s asking herself this for the first time, does she trust him? For she’s feeling used and Milhaus’s world is starting to look like a murky one into which she’s blundered. One of those worlds in which somebody always owes someone else something. Just rip the thing up and go, the solid sensible voice of Katherine tells her, while another tells her that she owes Milhaus this much. She approached him. He chose to trust her and that trust must be returned.
Damn the letter! It is while she is weighing this up that her head begins to swim, her legs go all wobbly. Her face is cold and she reaches out to the wall to steady herself. Head down, she waits, counting from ten to one and back again. And, slowly, it passes. Her legs come back, the chill leaves her face and neck. Her breathing steadies. She lets the wall go and stands free of it. The wobbles gone. A cold sweat on her face and neck.
And she is on the point of giving up for the day when she looks down the driveway and notices activity at the front of the house. The car doors are open. A chauffeur is standing by. Children are climbing in, and the lady herself is talking to the chauffeur. Possibly issuing instructions; it looks like that sort of conversation. The chauffeur is nodding. The lady looks imposing. At this moment, to Maryanne, as imposing as the shining black car and the mansion itself.
Soon the car is moving at a stately pace towards the front gate. Towards Maryanne. Like an event approaching her, some sudden turn in her life that could amount to anything. And although she is seized with an impulse to turn and leave, something keeps her there as the car slowly approaches, a silver figure becoming visible above the grille, glinting in the morning sun. The gardener materialises. The car stops in front of her at the gate, its engine thrumming. The gardener opens the gate, eyeing her.
As the car eases forward, Maryanne waves at the chauffeur, letter in hand. The car stops. The chauffeur winds his window down and asks what she wants. A letter, Maryanne says. A letter for the lady. And straightaway the back window winds down, and a kind face, the very type of face that the age calls beautiful, the face of an English rose, is gazing at her with a slight, practised smile. And it seems to Maryanne that there’s something royal in that smile: that she is one of those who are used to smiling at strangers at public events. And this woman at her gate, the lady no doubt imagines, is holding a letter of admiration or gratitude for a contribution to some charity or other.
She reaches out for the letter Maryanne is holding, a graceful hand, beautifully formed like her face, eyes bright like the morning, and Maryanne passes it to her.
‘A letter from Mr Milhaus.’
From the moment Maryanne says this the woman’s face darkens; the light in her eyes shuts down. The air of kind consideration deserts her and she looks frightened, as if the letter she now holds signifies some dreaded event, a sentence that has been hanging over her, a verdict long feared. And she stares at Maryanne as if to say, who are you?
A child asks, ‘What’s that, Mummy?’ The window is wound up, shutting out the world. Nothing further is said. The car moves on, out of the driveway and onto the road leading into the city. Maryanne watches it leave, lifting her hand as if to wave or somehow take back the thing she has just given. But she knows full well she was never not going to pass the note on. For she knows that if she were now watching the lady’s car disappear with the note still in her hand, she would not forgive herself. In the end we can only ever do one thing, and as much as we might weigh up other possibilities, it always comes down to one thing. And we can only hope it’s the right thing.
The car disappears. The estate is all but deserted, apart from the gardener in the grounds and Maryanne at the gate. Her job done, the go-between walks across the road to the bus stop, with no idea still of what the letter may contain, but with the deeply troubled feeling that she has set something in motion. The baby wriggles inside her, and she feels exhausted. Wrung out. The lumbering bus that brought her here approaches in the distance. It stops, she mounts the steps. Legs heavy. Barely enough energy to find a seat. The bus pulls away from the red-brick wall, the hedge, the tower suspended above it all, and as she looks back, the whole estate – the house, the lake, the gardens like the forest of a foreign country – takes on the appearance of a dark forbidding wood, as dark and shady as the world of Milhaus, the lord, the lady and the whole fairytale life they lead is now beginning to look.
15.
It all happened very quickly. One moment she was standing in the kitchen, tired from the journey, the next she was curled up on the floor. When the table tilted, or seemed to, and the floor rose to meet her, she reached out to steady herself by grasping the table, but her hands found only the tablecloth: the tea-pot, cups and a small vase of flowers clattering to the floor as she fell. She heard the thud more than felt it, heard the crack of the back of her head hitting the floor, as if it were somebody else’s head. And it was only later, sitting up in bed, that she felt the pain.
She’s not sure how long she lay there, but she was still on the floor when Katherine returned from shopping. She remembers the shopping bag falling to the floor, onions and apples spilling onto the bare boards, arranging themselves like a still life. Odd how the mind works at these times, for as Katherine smoothed her forehead and spoke gently to her, she was noting how pleasingly the onions and apples had arranged themselves. What a silly business, falling about like that, but no great matter.
Katherine continued to soothe her with gentle words. She’d had a fall. Ups-a-daisy. Come on, up you get. Let’s get you to bed. Somehow she rose, legs all wobbly, and stepped over the tea-pot and cups and shopping. Her arm around Katherine’s waist and Katherine’s around hers, they made their way up the hallway to her bedroom.
That was two days ago. The doctor came, the doctor went. All is well. She’s had a fall. Bit of a knock on the head. No damage. She’s been doing too much. She must rest and sleep. And sleep she has, the time between falling and sitting up now in bed feeling like no time at all. The back of her head is sore, her hip is sore. When she moves, the pain in her hip rises. A dull thud in her head returns from time to time. She sits up, drained as if
recovering from an illness, but also calm. Almost at peace, like those delicious childhood days off school when sick. All is well, she tells herself. She is lucky. The pain will go. The lingering sick feeling will go. But all the same, as she looks through the lace curtain of the window onto the dull sideway of the house, she’s asking herself, again and again, just what did she think she was doing? Running errands for strangers. And at the same time, she’s wondering if she went a little mad for a while. For the whole city is mad, and why shouldn’t its madness rub off on her?
***
Katherine comes, Katherine goes, bringing trays of breakfast, lunch and dinner: toast, soups, biscuits and occasionally cake. And, all the time, the newspapers, with their stories of protests and brawls, of rallies and arrests. All out there, in the far-away world of the beast. Maryanne now removed from it all. And she begins to like it. Bed: reading, dozing, eating, sleeping. This being waited on.
She doesn’t go to the world any more. No loss. It’s not hers, anyway. Never really was. But word of it comes to her as regularly as breakfast, lunch and dinner and the daily newspapers. And so it goes, for a week. A week lived in a half-world of wakefulness and sleep: night-time succeeding afternoon; afternoon, night. One day after another, until the pain is gone and she is strong again. Strong enough for two people, as she must be. And she’s beginning to feel like two people, and is certain that the baby, safe inside the universe of her belly, is watching everything, registering everything, like – and here she smiles to herself at the image – a faithful, anxious dog watching over its keeper. We’re in this together, this baby seems to say, you and me; now don’t you forget that. And one day, when I finally leave the liquid heavens of your belly, I will remind you of this. But for now just remember that we’re in this together, so hold on to me tight. And don’t do anything foolish again.
Year of the Beast Page 14