Pagan and her parents

by Michael Arditti

‘It seems sacrilegious.’

  ‘It isn’t St Paul’s! It’s a fake, a folly. It’s dedicated to Aphrodite … it was made for us.’

  ‘Lead on then,’ I say with a smile … ‘Don’t worry,’ I turn quickly to Pagan; ‘I’ve thought of the perfect place … the Temple of Love.’

  Robin darts down the path, while Pagan and I remain at the cottage, along with My Naughty Little Sister. At half-past six, she pronounces herself starving, and I prepare a meal. Unwilling to set up the stove, I open tins of cold ham, coleslaw and pineapple chunks … I promise you that, once we reach Spain, we will live on nothing but fresh fruit and vegetables … After eating, we return to the car, where she complains about the seats, her stomach and boredom, before falling fast asleep. At eleven o’clock, I decide to risk the drive. I wish that I knew Lady Standish’s habits. Does she lie awake, nursing her grievances and measuring the nights with cheap thrillers? Or is she lulled to sleep by Lydia’s snores? What will I do if she hears us? … So far, there is no need to answer. I give thanks for the lack of gravel and park at the front of the house.

  ‘Is it still an adventure?’ Pagan asks, as she stumbles into the night.

  ‘The adventure’s barely begun.’

  Taking the torch and tent in one hand and Pagan in the other, I make my way to the back of the house. Across the courtyard, I see the caravan and the cold flickers of a black and white TV. Creeping across the cobbles, I am conscious of a world of wild noises: burrs and buzzes and hums and twitters and whoops. We make our way past the walled garden and into the copse. I find the path instinctively; I have trodden it so often in my mind that my feet follow suit. All at once, we see the temple. I am strangely reluctant to walk up the steps.

  ‘It’s teeny,’ Pagan says.

  ‘Do you remember it from last time?’

  ‘I thought a temple was big like a church.’

  ‘This is a temple just for us.’

  I touch the balustrade. I half-expect to find evidence of my former visit … perhaps our conjoined initials scratched into the stone, like the graffiti on the Acropolis. But I have evidence enough welling in my eyes.

  ‘Why are you crying?’

  ‘This is a very special place for me.’

  ‘Are they happy tears?’

  ‘Oh yes.’

  ‘I don’t want to be a grown-up; you cry when you’re happy as well as when you’re sad … Where are we going to sleep?’

  ‘Here, under the stars.’

  ‘I can’t see any stars.’

  ‘It’s what it’s called.’

  ‘That’s silly.’

  ‘Look!’ As if on cue from a celestial stage-manager, a star shoots across the sky. ‘Who’s silly now?’ She snuggles against my arm.

  ‘Why can’t we go inside?’

  ‘It’s locked.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘It always is. Still, we’ll be warm enough in the tent.’ I begin to unfold it. Pagan moves to the door. She turns the handle, which opens. Amazement defers to triumph. ‘Who’s silly now?’ she asks.

  The interior is clean and fresh and empty. I am seized by the spirit of Dionysus … or, more prosaically, the urge to dance. As though reading my thoughts, Pagan enacts them, pirouetting across the floor. In the semi-darkness, I catch the gleam of marble and shine the torch on Aphrodite, Zeus and several other immortals gazing down in Olympian disdain.

  ‘Is it Jesus?’ Pagan inquires of a beard.

  ‘These are pagan gods.’

  ‘You mustn’t say that,’ she says intently, as though I were implicating her.

  ‘I suggest we pitch camp here. We’ll soon have you tucked up.’

  ‘Aah!’ She screams with a cry so feral that I do not fear disclosure.

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘Something touched my leg. Look.’ She kneels beside the carcass of a bird. ‘Is it deaded?’

  ‘Don’t touch it.’ The temple turns into a tomb, as I picture its frantic last flight, flapping itself to death in a doomed bid for freedom.

  ‘What sort is it?’ she asks. I look and shudder.

  ‘A blackbird,’ I say, gently cupping its blood-red breast.

  She refuses to remain alone in the temple, so I take her to fetch supplies. But bleary eyes and dragging feet only make my task harder, and, after two trips, I insist that she stay in the car. She agrees, on condition that I lock the doors. I return to work. It is a long haul, but the moon lights – and memories lighten – it. All goes well, until I spot a figure leaving the caravan and crossing the courtyard. I freeze and a butane-canister rolls out of its box. Fear amplifies the clatter and I anticipate discovery. But, after a momentary hesitation, she proceeds on her way. From this distance, it is impossible to know whether to credit Lydia’s myopia or her mother’s age.

  With everything transferred, I think about hiding the car. It is too metallic to trust to the trees and there are no handy piles of autumn leaves. I am struck by a sudden whim to drive it into the lake … Then I see that I am standing beside the stables. I heave open a rotting door. The stalls offer the perfect hiding-place, and I steer it slowly round. In a corner, I spot a heap of tattered horse-blankets (which put me in mind of Robin’s Aunt Waverley). I fling them over the chassis. ‘That’s it then,’ I say to Pagan, ‘time for bed.’

  ‘Lift! Lift!’ She holds her arms outstretched.

  ‘Lift what?’

  ‘Lift me.’ Too tired to press for a ‘please’, I pick her up and carry her down the path.

  ‘You didn’t buy me any boy’s pyjamas!’

  ‘Never mind. You can be a boy during the day and a girl at night, when it doesn’t matter.’

  ‘No, that’s wrong. Night’s when it matters most of all.’ She slumps, and I tuck her into her sleeping bag. I lay out the mattresses, which are self-inflating. I only wish that the tent worked on a similar principle … after grappling with it for an hour, I gain new respect for the truth of situation comedy. I decide to leave it until morning and bag down. Sleep keeps a watchful distance, and I lie awake, dreaming of dawn.

  In the morning, I realise that I have also forgotten to buy loo paper. We are left to improvise with ferns and dock leaves. While wiping Pagan, I come across the sores on her anus. I ask if they hurt; she pretends not to hear. ‘Would you like to rub on some ointment?’ She pulls up her pants. Then I remember the form. ‘Does Patience’s bottom hurt? Would she like some ointment?’ She looks at me sharply. ‘You said I’m called Paul.’

  My third omission – and a deliberate one – is a camera. Given my beard and Pagan’s hair, I felt that a mirror would be ample record. But, as we settle in the temple in our drum-tight tent (to my MA [Cantab], I shall now add my DIY [Crierley]), explore territory, cook meals, read, relax, and generally enjoy each other’s company, I realise that I want to preserve every moment, and not merely for myself in memory but for posterity on film. I need an independent witness … but it is stuck in a drawer in my study, so I develop a series of snapshots in my mind.

  The first shows us by the lake … don’t worry, as long as we keep behind the reeds, we are well concealed. That is me bathing and beckoning Pagan to enter. Although the chill knocks me back like whisky, I pronounce it warm. Nevertheless, nothing will induce her to set foot on the mud. So, there I am, picking her up and pretending to throw her in. And there she is back on dry land … which is not out of sequence; I have to put her down fast when she forgets herself and starts to scream. The next is one of my favourites; I am lifting her in the air and dunking her. That way, she can enjoy the splash without the squelch. Incidentally, this one is not out of focus; it is lost in a cloud of spray as I fall in.

  It is as hard to persuade her to drink from the lake as to swim in it, especially once we have used it to wash.

  ‘You wouldn’t drink the bath.’

  ‘This is different. There are organisms …’ (or in my mother’s telling phrase ‘orgasms’) ‘plants and little fish that clean the water.’


  ‘I don’t want to drink little fish.’

  ‘Besides, where do you think the water at home comes from?’

  ‘Taps.’

  ‘Which lead back here. Do you know that the water that flows from every London tap has passed through seven and a half people?’

  ‘That they spit out?’

  ‘No, that they pee.’ That picture of her with her tongue out perfectly captures her reaction.

  ‘I’m never going to have another drink in my whole life.’ The next one with the orange squash is to remind her not to make such rash claims.

  ‘Anyway, how can it pass through half a people?’

  We have now been here three days, and I continue to record our daily routine in order to rebut any future suggestion that we must have been bored. There I am with Clarissa … well she is boring, I have to admit; but, as you see, I soon find a far more congenial companion in Anaïs Nin. This one shows Pagan declaring that I have read quite enough grown-up books and must now turn to hers. With the title hidden, I cannot tell if it is The Wind in the Willows or The Worst Witch All at Sea … although I plump for the former, since there we are, an hour later, scouring the lakeside for role models. Look at Pagan, in every sense a portrait of delight, as I point out a potential Toad.

  If the colouring in the next batch of shots looks different, it is not due to the light or to inferior film, but rather because, after a week of blue skies, gentle breezes, bare skin and purging sun, we are turning a golden brown. My beard is growing fast and, even without dye, appears several shades darker than my hair. Every morning Pagan examines it, as though she were cultivating watercress for school.

  ‘It’ll soon be ready,’ she says. ‘You don’t look like you at all.’

  I agree, as I gaze with a stranger’s eyes at the stranger’s reflection. In many ways, I will be reluctant to leave. I have gained a deep sense of peace here: with Pagan; with myself; and, if it is not too fanciful, with Nature. No longer Mr Metropolis, I feel like the American businessmen who strip off their suits, enter the forest and find their souls. I am learning to appreciate solitude, for its own sake and not just as a break between engagements. I can finally understand Robin’s identification with the landscape … and yet that only makes his absence harder to explain. I presume that it holds too many memories, which would also account for his mother’s and sister’s avoidance of the lake … although not for their neglect of the rest of the grounds. I have not caught a glimpse of either of them since the first night.

  Even in the wild, we cannot escape the television. Pagan reserves her broadest smile not for the discovery of a bird’s nest or a badger but for my present of the Sony Watchman. To my Desert Island books are added her lakeside programmes. Then, one evening, she runs to me, not with her usual glum face at the close of children’s broadcasting, but the picture of excitement as she catches our appearance on the six o’clock news. I borrow the set. The story leads on every channel: I have abducted my former ward; we are believed to be still in the country; we may be travelling in a silver-grey BMW, registration number J473 ELF; and, while the police have no reason to fear for our safety, they are very anxious to speak to me or, indeed, to anyone with information regarding our whereabouts.

  The next day, all the bulletins carry a tearful interview with your parents. ‘If you’re watching this, Patience,’ your mother says, ‘we just want to tell you that we miss you and want you home.’ I note that, even in the glare of the cameras, there is no mention of love. As she sees them, Pagan starts to shake, first her fists and then the set.

  ‘Look out, or you’ll break it!’

  ‘I don’t care! I won’t ever go back. Never, never, never. I want to stay here for ever, like Mole.’

  ‘You won’t have to go back. One evening very soon, I’ll walk down to the village, find a telephone box and call Aunt Imogen’ … I have decided to enlist Imogen’s help, less for her experience with the dogs than for her love of conspiracy. It will appeal to her for all the wrong reasons as well as the right.

  So that is my Crierley album … or, at least, the captions; the pictures have to be taken on trust … No, I refuse to look at any more. I ought to tear those up. They are so grey and grim, which is the fault of the weather. After two days of driving rain, the romance of the landscape is shattered. The foliage wilts under the weight of moisture; the purples of the foxgloves darken into decay. The fairy ring becomes a clump of toadstools and the magic glade a tangled scrub. Deprived of our morning swim and evening stroll, we are confined to the Temple, with as little to occupy our minds as to keep us warm. Boredom is now Pagan’s constant complaint. ‘You said we’re on an adventure. Things are supposed to happen on adventures.’

  ‘They will. Shall I teach you a new game of cards called rummy?’

  ‘I hate cards. Why won’t your stupid beard come quicker? I’m going to pull it so hard that it grows this big.’ At a stroke, she wills me into Bernard Shaw.

  ‘You’ll just pull it out. Then we’ll have to wait for it to grow all over again.’

  ‘I’m bored. I want to go home.’

  I hold depression at bay as if it were an assailant; I talk it down like a suicide off a ledge. It is time to make plans for our departure. The radio confirms that, although we are no longer headline news, we have not been forgotten … one report suggests that we may be in Germany (my remarks at the bank are paying dividends). And yet I refuse to become complacent. We need to stay here for at least another week. It is essential that Pagan should not lose heart. And I think that I have found the answer … Do you remember when Robin took us to the top of the house for a tour of the nursery, with the rocking horse and the doll’s house and the dressing-up box which licensed his illicit fantasies? In the museum that his mother has made of her life, they are bound to be prime exhibits. I propose to Pagan that we should take some of them out on loan.

  ‘Will there be a video?’

  ‘There were no videos when Robin and Lydia were little.’

  ‘But you said they were rich.’

  Having broached the subject at breakfast, I am forced to spend the rest of the day curbing her enthusiasm. Although I am confident of negotiating the house, I am wary of the caravan, and I refuse to make a move before nine o’clock. At which point, she insists on accompanying me, ‘so as you know what to bring’.

  ‘Don’t you trust me any more?’ I ask. She pretends not to hear.

  As we approach the house, I am filled with a dull dread like the dawn of a Colwyn Bay Sunday. I stroke my beard and determine that, no matter what, I will ring Imogen tomorrow. She must know dozens of Cornish fishermen … the association makes me laugh; Pagan presses an admonitory finger to her lips. We creep around the walls. When I urge her to keep to the shadows, she responds by walking on tiptoe and toppling onto me.

  I move to a side door, which is, as I expected, unlocked … no doubt Lady Standish believes that even burglars have abandoned them. Walking down a short corridor, we find ourselves in the trophy room. The furniture is covered with sheets, as if all that the house requires is a coat of paint. I shine my torch onto walls packed with family portraits and animal pelts. Pagan screams as the beam picks up a polar bear’s grin.

  ‘Don’t worry; it’s stuffed.’

  ‘It’s a zoo.’

  We proceed to the hall and the staircase, where she grips my hand at the sight of a suit of armour.

  ‘It’s scary.’

  ‘Think of the Tin Man in The Wizard of Oz.’

  My light is reflected in the richness of the panelling, where centuries of polish hold out against years of neglect. I aim the torch up to the ceiling; crumbling plaster and missing timbers attest to the gallery’s collapse. I wonder whether it is safe to proceed.

  ‘Why have we stopped?’ Pagan asks. ‘Where are the toys?’

  We climb the stairs. The first-floor landing is blocked by a row of chairs, on which stands a crudely written notice ‘Unsafe! Keep out!’ I do not allow my beam to linger. We continue
to climb. Pagan takes exception to Robin’s great- (or is it great-great-?) grandfather’s kelims, which brush her head as she follows the wall. ‘Carpets should stay on floors,’ she says severely, adding with equal stricture, ‘these stairs are too steep for children.’

  ‘Hold on to the rail,’ I suggest, ignoring the implicit plea to be carried. Instead, she grabs the fringe of a kelim. ‘Take care,’ I warn, ‘it may not be very secure.’ My fears are justified as the rug rips off the wall. I hear a scream and a thud, followed by a gut-wrenching groan, as the dead weight crashes down on her. I swing the torch through varying degrees of darkness. I try three steps and then six, by when it is clear that she has rolled to the bottom of the flight. I run down to her; I tug at the cloth, raising a miasma of dust. ‘Don’t worry, darling; I’m here.’ I scramble to reach the source of the moan.

  She lies very still at the centre of the rug, like a princess smuggled from a harem. ‘It’s alright, you haven’t hurt yourself,’ I assert, as though she had fallen out of bed. ‘Come on, we must go up to the nursery. I’ll carry you. Would you like a piggyback or a fireman’s lift?’ She mewls. ‘You can’t have hurt yourself. You were wrapped in the carpet; it broke the fall. You can’t have broken anything.’ She whimpers. ‘Oh my darling, tell me where it hurts.’

  ‘I hurt.’

  ‘Yes, but where? Can you walk? Shall I try to help you up?’ I put my hands under her body and lift; she screams. I lower her gently. ‘Is it your back that hurts?’ She does not answer. ‘I’ll carry you downstairs.’ It is immediately clear that my slightest touch induces agony. My brain pounds. I am racked by a vision of her lying in bed as immobile as you, the victim not of creeping but permanent paralysis. I see the same console and collar and the stair-lift no longer a game and … and I can hardly breathe. ‘Pagan, darling, I’m going to fetch a doctor … an ambulance.’

  ‘Don’t leave me.’

  ‘I have to. I’ll come straight back. I’ll call the lady in the caravan.’

  ‘Don’t leave me without the light.’

  After wedging the torch in the crook of her arm, I run down the stairs and feel my way through the house. I bang on the caravan door. Lydia opens it, all pink and teeth and glasses. Her hands flutter between her bosom and her face.