Fig and the Flute Player

by Christine Harrison

  Rose wasn’t listening. She was asking the woman at the counter for more coffee.

  ‘Thèk is an existentialist,’ she said. ‘I think that is what I shall be. It is what I am.’

  Maisie was thinking about Michael’s letter and his words were at the back of her mind all the time. What he had said in the letter ran parallel to her own thoughts and silently counterpointed her conversation.

  ‘Yes, it’s the best thing to be.’ She felt in her pocket for the other letters she remembered putting there.

  ‘I was talking to Thèk before you came down,’ said Rose. ‘We sat up most of the night – you know, when it happened. At least, he was doing most of the talking. About everything – it was later he went so quiet. You’re not listening, Mummy.’

  ‘Yes, I am, you were saying you were going to be an existentialist.’

  ‘Saying I am an existentialist.’

  ‘I think it is a very intelligent viewpoint – an impregnable position.’ She gave Rose a small smile and said slowly, opening Werner’s letter, ‘All life is flux, once you have accepted that, perhaps you can start to live in the present. The difficulty is keeping it in mind.’

  She began reading the letter in an abstracted way as she drank her coffee, but soon became absorbed.

  Dear Dr Shergold,

  We met at the Kiev conference, and sat next to each other at the luncheon. At once I liked you. Now I have summoned my great courage to write this letter.

  I have lately been oppressed by guilt. Perhaps this is due to my age, I do not know. Everything that one has done in life rises up to confront one – there is no escape. It seems after all that there is a strange pattern to one’s life, things come together in an inexorable way. But this thing which I would put away and put out of my mind will not depart.

  Dr Shergold, this concerns the Ikon of the Steppes, in which you have some interest.

  I did not tell you all I knew. There is a part of its history which only I know of.

  Now I will tell you.

  Rose took the roll from her mother’s plate. ‘Aren’t you going to eat this?’

  Maisie shook her head. ‘No, you go ahead. The jam looks delicious.’

  ‘Loganberry,’ said Rose, spooning some on to her plate. She gave her mother a piece. ‘Eat,’ she said. Maisie put a piece into her mouth, noticing the sharply sweet, subtle taste of loganberries. She returned to her letter, which had acquired a magnetic pull, the words leaping out to her in Werner’s small, finicky writing.

  It goes back to my father, a colonel in the German army. During the bombardment of Kiev he acquired as booty, either looted or more likely taken as a bribe, or by way of hostage, the work of art known as the Ikon of the Mother of God of the Steppes. Exactly how he came by it is unclear to me, or how much the monk who restored the Ikon was involved in some deal, my father told the story differently at different times, but I grew up with this Ikon as a familiar part of my life – it hung in the dining hall.

  I hated my father, and I feared him, and as I grew up I had not the courage to stand against his tyranny. I grew up with that – and with the Ikon.

  One day as we sat at our food my father began to choke on a piece of meat. I sat and watched him choke and did not try to help or summon help. I wished his death. The only witness to this was the Ikon.

  I got rid of that witness. I sold the Ikon for a small sum to a dealer in such things.

  Why do I tell you all of these events? I have chosen to confess to you now that this burden weighs so heavily on me, because of your interest and research into this Ikon. If you should discover its whereabouts, I should like to see it once again.

  Do you believe, as some do, Dr Shergold, that this Ikon is an instrument of salvation?

  Conrad Werner

  ‘Anything interesting?’ Rose asked her.

  ‘How would you like to come to a rather grand ball?’ Maisie gave Rose the invitation.

  ‘Why is it in Bath? You’d think the Royal Pavilion in Brighton would be the place – Brighton is where your monarchists hang out, isn’t it?’

  ‘I don’t know why. A trip to Bath might be a good thing.’ She could not think why this should be so.

  ‘Well, isn’t it a bit soon? After Grandma?’

  ‘Grandma wouldn’t mind at all.’

  ‘No, I know. But I don’t feel like going.’

  ‘All right, we won’t go. I don’t feel like it either.’

  But Rose was looking better. Maisie was glad to be with her at this time. She felt useful and less despairing. In a way her mother’s death had released something in her and she felt able to draw closer to her daughter, closing the gap that had been left by death. She would be able to help Rose, perhaps.

  She was feeling stronger too in that she had rejected within herself both Leo’s and Michael’s flawed offer. Her role now was to protect her unborn child and Rose, her adult child. It was a momentary rush of brave optimism. The clamour inside her head stilled for the time.

  ‘Let’s go and open your shop,’ she said. ‘Let’s go and play shops. We have to do something.’

  Rose hesitated, and Maisie drew back. ‘Only if you want,’ she added.

  But they ended up there. It was only the second time Maisie had ever been inside the tiny shop, she felt as if everything might fall on top of her, all the boxes and pictures and old vases, and stifle her.

  ‘We need not stay long,’ she said.

  ‘Look at this,’ said Rose.

  It was a wooden egg, a Russian Easter egg painted deep vermilion with a picture of Grandfather Frost on it. Maisie stared at it, passing it from one hand to the other. It was probably the same period as her Russian fairy-story book.

  ‘A nice thing,’ she said as she handed it back. ‘I’m going to do some shopping and then I’ll call back for you.’

  She managed to find a delicatessen among the boutiques and antique shops. Thus, thought Maisie as she bought pasta and olive oil, they would get through the days; living, breathing, eating, working, they would traverse this portion of time. But she was experiencing some form of spiritual vertigo as she picked her way.

  5

  HE APPEARED in dreams. Before she slept Maisie bequeathed her bitter griefs to the soft darkness which subdued her pain for a while. She now loved the blackness of night in which she could lie, broken-hearted, without any pain; it was something like death. Sleep brought dreams which filled up her emptiness with brilliant consoling images.

  He came to her in dreams. The flute-player, the wanderer who chanced by her empty house, her prison-house, and played sweetly. When she woke, these bright dreams left trails like the tail of a comet, left a silence like that after birdsong. And for a short while she was happy and still free from pain, but the fragile aftermath of such consoling dreams did not last.

  Then one morning she woke up to a bed soaked in blood. She had felt nothing, the haemorrhage had started silently, painlessly, in her sleep. For a moment she lay bleeding, scarcely awake, wondering what to do, or whether to do anything. She flung back the duvet and watched the dark blood coursing down her legs, trickling down to her feet and running between her toes. The fine hairs on her legs were sticky with it. She stared, fascinated, and watched the dark dribble of blood for several minutes, waiting for it to stop, but it did not stop. She telephoned Quentin Freeman at his home. While she waited for Quentin, Rose knocked at the door – she had got into the way of coming up to have a cup of coffee with her mother before she left for work.

  ‘It’s all right,’ said Maisie. ‘But stay with me until Quentin gets here.’ She was shaking a little from shock, and asked Rose to make her a cup of sweet tea.

  ‘I can’t find any sugar,’ said Rose, frantically looking through the cupboard.

  ‘Give me a spoonful of honey, then,’ said Maisie, ‘and please don’t look so worried.’

  Rose spooned honey into her mother’s mouth, and put pillows under her feet. ‘I’ll come with you to the clinic,’ she said.
<
br />   ‘No need,’ said Maisie, ‘call in after you have shut up shop and see if I’m still there.’

  ‘I’m not going to work,’ said Rose.

  ‘Please go,’ said her mother. ‘Let’s try to keep things as normal as we can. Go to work.’ Everything was breaking down around her.

  When Quentin arrived and made reassuring noises, Rose calmed down and went off to work. After that everything for Maisie started to go from bad to worse. It wasn’t going to be very straightforward. She would lose the baby, and it ended up being a general-anaesthetic job. Under the anaesthetic Maisie, floating somewhere near the door, saw Quentin put the baby aside, as if it were something of no account. She tried to get to it to help its struggle for life. But she saw it taken off to be disposed of. She felt rage and helpless panic, seeing its toes and fingers perfectly formed. When she had fought her way out of the anaesthetic she questioned the nurse frantically about its fate, but knew it was already sealed.

  Quentin came and soothed her with his common sense and matter-of-fact professional manner. ‘It’ll all be forgotten with time,’ he said. Maisie knew there was no point in saying anything, or trying to explain why she would not forget it. It was something he could not be expected to understand, something outside his world picture, which had hard boundaries.

  A nurse brought her a cup of weak tea and a tranquilliser and she slept until the late afternoon, waking to find Rose and Leo sitting by her bed with a bunch of anemones.

  Leo took her hand. ‘We can take you home,’ he said. ‘You’re fine.’

  ‘Oh, yes, I’m fine,’ said Maisie.

  ‘It’s so extraordinary,’ said Leo. ‘Irene is in here too. She has had her baby.’ Maisie closed her eyes and lay back on the pillow. ‘I’m really quite tired,’ she said.

  ‘I’ve called it Clare,’ said Leo, ‘it’s a rather nice baby as babies go. I think it smiled at me. It’s got all its fingers and toes, anyway.’ He looked rather smug. For the first time in her life Rose saw him objectively, with new eyes. She was appalled by his tactlessness. She was surprised that she was able to feel this anger towards her father.

  ‘You had better go and be with Irene,’ said Maisie, her eyes still closed against this place where such things had happened to her, all beyond her control.

  ‘Oh, it’s all right,’ said Leo, ‘she’s got the coven with her. Her coven of women friends – you know – they all wanted to be with her at the birth, a sort of communal effort. Quentin got really icy, he managed to chuck them out, but they’re back now, all suggesting the most ridiculous names for my child. Rainbow and such-like. I’ve called the baby Clare – after my favourite aunt.’

  Maisie could not help laughing a little at this, though she wept as she laughed. She sat up, and Leo made the pillows comfortable. ‘To tell you the truth,’ he said, ‘I feel a little bit out of it. I’d rather sit here with you.’ He placed the flowers on the bed.

  ‘They’re lovely,’ said Maisie.

  ‘It’s perhaps turned out for the best,’ said Rose.

  ‘Has it?’ said Maisie, but managed a little smile. Rose had been through a lot too. She looked older. Poor Rose, her father with a fresh little new daughter; her grandmother who had seemed indestructible gone; her mother in a physical and emotional accident.

  ‘I’m glad you brought me something to read,’ Maisie told her.

  ‘There’s an article about women artists you may be interested in,’ said Rose.

  Maisie made up her mind that when she got home she would try to be different with Rose. There was something about her daughter that worried her, something different around the eyes – they had lost some brave, foolhardy, ingenuous quality.

  When she did get home the next day things got off on the wrong foot. Rose had altered her mother’s room, she had taken down the bed-curtains and sent them to the laundry, and cleared the table of everything. The wicker chair stood by an open window and the cold air blew across the room – the weather had turned almost wintry, threatening snow even though it was nearly May. The room looked as if it had been fumigated, it looked cold and tidy and empty.

  ‘I tidied up for you,’ said Rose.

  Maisie went across to close the windows, feeling on the verge of weak tears.

  ‘And I made you a quiche – asparagus quiche. There’s some new potatoes, they’re all ready.’ Rose went into the kitchen to put the potatoes on.

  ‘It’s nice of you to do all this,’ said Maisie, touched at the thought of Rose making pastry, wishing she felt hungry, wishing she did not feel like putting her head down on the table and wailing. She looked around the room, finding no consolation anywhere.

  ‘Where is the letter rack?’ she asked.

  ‘Letter rack?’

  ‘Yes, you know, the bronze letter rack, it’s always on the table. With everything else.’

  ‘Oh, I’ll find it for you, just a minute.’ Rose came out of the kitchen and found the letter rack in a cupboard Maisie used for storing files.

  ‘Why did you hide it in there?’

  ‘I was just tidying up. I wasn’t hiding it.’

  There were two letters from Ireland amongst the batch of mail, but Maisie seemed not to see them, only turning a little whiter.

  ‘Where’s the typewriter?’ she asked.

  ‘I’ll put everything back as it was,’ said Rose in a loud, definite voice.

  Please, we must not quarrel, thought Maisie, I’m being a bitch.

  ‘There’s no hurry,’ she said, ‘let’s have our meal first. Open a bottle of wine – there’s a bottle of something in the fridge.’ They gave each other small, relieved smiles. Rose put the quiche on the table. ‘Let’s watch the film,’ she said, ‘while we eat.’

  Rose was in fact being exceptionally sweet, thought Maisie. She even seemed happy as she organised the plates, the salad, sprinkled parsley on the potatoes. She switched on the television.

  ‘It’s one of those old black and white films,’ she said, ‘they’re brilliant.’

  It was Odd Man Out, with James Mason. There was a definite likeness there, only Michael’s eyes were light-coloured and his jaw not so heavy. But there was something, a dark, charismatic quality. The film had started, it was the bit in the air-raid shelter, the hero, Johnny was injured and hunted. The black and white images more desperately real and true than colour could ever be.

  ‘Why do black and white films have so much more emotional impact?’ Rose wondered.

  With one part of her mind Maisie was watching Johnny, only it was Michael, his dark head leaning back against the wall, speaking with that slightly accented Irish voice. In this case it was an actor’s Irish, but it was very like Michael’s voice.

  With another part of her brain she answered Rose. ‘There’s less to distract the eye, it’s more dreamlike in a way, less like reality, but more like it in that it’s more poetic.’

  ‘They seemed to use lighting so much better,’ said Rose, ‘to create mood.’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Maisie.

  Running, limping brokenly now from one place to another, finding no safe place, the hero inhabited Maisie’s imagination. There was something about him. Rose took her plate.

  ‘Would you like some more quiche?’

  ‘No, thanks – it was very good, though.’

  ‘Have you seen this film before?’

  ‘Years ago.’

  ‘He looks like Michael,’ said Rose.

  ‘Do you think so?’

  ‘Yes, a bit.’ Rose got up to refill her glass. ‘He persists in writing to you. You’ll have to tell him about losing the baby.’

  ‘I don’t have to tell him anything at all,’ said Maisie. ‘Switch this off, please, Rose, I want to rest.’

  ‘Shall I put your clutter back on the table now?’

  ‘Yes, please, and the anemones.’

  Rose put the typewriter, books and flowers back on the table. It’s not that Rose just likes to be in charge, thought Maisie, that is making her happier
. She does love me, as I love her.

  ‘When I’m feeling better,’ she said, ‘we’ll do something nice. Have a holiday, perhaps. What about this monarchist ball thing, when is that – shall we go to that?’ She looked through the letter rack to find the invitation. ‘It’s on Friday – I’ll be all right by then. We’ll go to it, shall we?’

  ‘What larks!’ said Rose sarcastically.

  ‘Oh, stop being so world-weary, Rose, it will probably be splendid, interesting.’

  ‘All right. If you’re well we’ll go. I’ll dress up as Elizabeth the First. What will you be? Don’t we all have to go as monarchs? All wearing our crowns?’

  Maisie laughed. It was lovely to laugh, it just came out. A proper laugh.

  ‘Let me have a rest now,’ she said.

  When Rose had gone, Maisie took Michael’s letters to bed with her.

  She looked at the date stamps. One stamp was very faint, the other black and smeary. Both letters had been posted in Dublin, one the day before the other. Which letter should she open first? Perhaps it would be for the best not to open either. Never know what he said, for nothing that he said now could ever make it right, take them back to before it had happened, undo it. His words, any words he could possibly come by were like snowflakes falling in a fire.

  She was very tired and his writing was hard to read, a little chaotic.

  Dearest Maisie,

  I am in Dublin. This address will find me.

  I am afraid to telephone you though I attempt it several times a day. Do you know, Maisie, my hand shakes – I think, I’ll do it in an hour, later in the evening, tomorrow. Did you think I could be such a coward? I wonder if you read my letters.

  I met Philomena. She said you stayed the night with her. How did I ever think her beautiful?

  She is a poisonous woman. One of those intellectual women who use their brains as a weapon chiefly – a very potent weapon. Men don’t do this on the whole, they use their brains for things not to do with relationships. In relationships they are stupid. Like me.