The Anderson Question

by Bel Mooney

  ‘Done?’ Daphne echoed, foolishly.

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake, why shouldn’t he do what he likes, to himself?’ shouted Paul. ‘He didn’t have to ask your permission.’

  ‘Oh yes!’ Eleanor gave a half-laugh. ‘To himself. That’s perfectly all right. He did what he liked to himself, but that’s not what I’m talking about. It’s me. I can’t forgive him for what he’s done to me.’ She was jabbing at her own chest with her thin forefinger.

  ‘That’s just typical,’ Paul said bitterly. ‘You don’t give a damn about Dad. All you care about is what people think of you! You think he’s made a fool of you. You think everybody will be pointing at you and saying “That’s the woman who drove him to it.” Well, I’ll tell you something – they’re probably right!’

  The door slammed behind him; they heard his feet thumping up the stairs, another door banging, then silence. Daphne thought it impossible that Eleanor should not hear the thudding of her heart; certainly, the grating swish of nylon as she crossed and recrossed her legs. It was as if each pore in her flesh, each hair as it grew gave out a high, singing note of distress … and Eleanor must hear, must turn and ask what was the matter. But the cries remained unheard. Eleanor sat with her arms tightly folded again; implacable. She reminded Daphne of a Lady Macbeth she had seen once in Bristol, who, from the beginning of the play, had harboured a great sense of wrong – neglected by her husband, and driving him to evil for the sake of revenge, not ambition. The interpretation did not receive good notices; now, confronted by Eleanor’s bitter face and lank hair, Daphne understood it for the first time. For some women, she thought, the knowledge of being loved is as potent as loving itself, and when that knowledge has gone, taking with it all self-esteem, only hatred can fill the vacuum. Destruction too; deliberately setting out to destroy. Yet what is there for Eleanor to destroy? It has all gone already; David did it at a stroke. Daphne shuddered, valuing, in that second, her own independence. She had always wished that perhaps, one day … and had even, years ago, cast fond eyes on Alex Cater. But there was Enid, who could not live alone, and Daphne had quailed at the thought of facing Enid and Alex over supper, night after night. ‘I may be alone, but at least no one has the power to hurt me like she has been hurt,’ she thought, looking with pity at Eleanor’s set face.

  ‘Don’t make any hasty decisions, Eleanor.’

  ‘It’s all right, Daphne. They’ve been made; David made them.’ She turned to look at Daphne’s face, and attempted a rueful smile which twisted painfully on her face. ‘He won in the end, you see.’

  ‘Won?’

  ‘Oh yes. People always said that I was the one who took all the decisions, I know they did. David went along with everything I suggested; that was why we moved here in the first place. Oddly enough, the one thing he wouldn’t do for me was perform in the village conceit. Odd, with that lovely baritone.’

  ‘I remember,’ Daphne said sadly. ‘A lovely voice.’

  ‘But with most things, there I was, running my committees and doing all the things I knew he hated … he saw it as a cliché, you know.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Oh, the doctor’s wife running the Red Cross and the WI. He once told me it brought out the worst in me, but he was only joking. An affectionate little joke.’

  ‘Oh, dear, I don’t think he …’ Daphne began, but Eleanor needed no response. She carried on as if Daphne were not there, gazing ahead, scarcely conscious of her own voice. Limbless, weightless, Eleanor Anderson’s senses were concentrated on the burning, gnawing wrong that was growing like a parasite within her. ‘He was affectionate, David. He kissed me that morning, you know. He wouldn’t take his raincoat; he hung it on the hallstand after I had handed it to him, then he kissed me on the cheek as he always did. Affectionate, but never passionate, not even when we were first married. But always affectionate. Even in bed.’ Daphne blushed, but Eleanor did not see. ‘Can you imagine that, though? A regulation kiss on the cheek, off to morning surgery and goodbye. That man – he knew. He knew when he kissed me, and yet he kissed me. Here – on this cheek.’ She dug a forefinger viciously into her own flesh. ‘To know, to know and to say nothing. Just like Judas. It was such a monstrous, wicked lie.’

  ‘Perhaps it wasn’t like that at all, Eleanor. Perhaps it was just a sudden impulse he had … to go.’

  ‘Oh Daphne, do you know something?’ said Eleanor, glancing quickly at her, then away again, ‘I was jealous when David paid so much attention to that Ainslie child. I knew it was absurd, but I couldn’t help it. I could see it on his face when he’d been there, at their cottage. Not sadness really, except in the obvious sense. But there was a kind of … gleam too; I couldn’t understand it and I knew that it was something he couldn’t share with me. It shut me out. And now he’s shut me out forever.’

  Daphne said quietly, ‘David was really wonderful with little Todd.’

  ‘So wonderful, so wonderful! If I hear anybody else tell me about my wonderful husband I shall hit them.’ Her fists were clenched. ‘I can tell you this: I don’t think David’s wonderful now, I don’t even think of him as my husband any more.’

  ‘Eleanor-don’t!’

  ‘Would you? Would you – if he had done this to you?’

  Daphne said nothing, trying to imagine what it would be like, not to be Eleanor, but to be like most women she knew, married with all the assumptions of the state. What happened? Did you merge so closely with the other that it became impossible to view him clearly, and to know? ‘There must have been tensions between David and Eleanor none of us dreamt of,’ Enid had said at breakfast. ‘Otherwise, it would have been impossible for him to let her down so.’ Daphne had frowned, chasing the doubt at the back of her mind, which rebelled against the obviousness of this judgement. She had not dared to contradict her sister, but thought that Eleanor could not be to blame. Perhaps if David Anderson had married someone else (and her imagination was too shy to supply her own name, even before its own gaze) then who was to say his actions might not have been exactly the same, his role written for him long ago?

  ‘Maybe, Eleanor,’ she said slowly, ‘it was nothing to do with you. Nothing at all.’

  Eleanor looked at her angrily, then got up and walked out of the room, pausing in the doorway to say, ‘Yes, that’s right, defend him. All I can say is that if it was nothing to do with me, then it should have been me he thought of, after twenty-four years.’

  Daphne was left alone with the dregs of weak coffee in mugs, and the unwashed dishes. She heard the bedroom door close above. Paul was in his room too; the house was silent. ‘Oh, why can’t you help each other?’ she asked aloud, but it was as if dust fell as she sat there, coating the china, the glasses, the shiny pans in their corner stand, the copper fish mould and the silver biscuit barrel, with a dull, even film, which no amount of human effort could ever remove. Daphne swung her head from side to side without knowing what she was doing, in an effort to control her panic. ‘Oh dear God,’ she murmured, ‘why did you have to let this happen? Why?’ But she was speaking to the dust all around her, and it could make no reply.

  She picked up her mug and stared into it, noticing how the unpleasant liquid still clung in strands to the side, slimy and persistent. Light from the window caught one side of the pool in the bottom, illuminating it in a crescent shape: shiny blue-white on the sluggish brown. Dimly she could discern her own features there too, squat and distorted by foreshortening like the head of a toad: ugly, yet caught within the gleaming crescent of light. As she looked something eased inside her chest, the turmoil subsiding. ‘Eleanor’s blaming David, and Paul’s blaming her, and I’m sitting here blaming God, but none of it does any good,’ she said to herself, shaking her hand so that the crescent of light and her own reflection shattered into swirling muddiness. ‘God couldn’t have stopped it, any more than Eleanor could, or any of us, for that matter. I don’t know how I know that, but I do. It’s the why … Yes, that’s the only thing left. But
how can we ever know?’

  Margaret Ainslie could not find Jack. She looked in their own garden, then walked slowly up the High Street. Not in Conrad Hartley’s garden, nor in Brigadier Dean’s, nor tending the Ryans’ lawns; and it was not his day for taking the bus to Newtonstowe for his two jobs there. Clutching her shopping bag (always carried in case of need) Margaret paused by the entrance to Church Lane. There was no need to consider any more, for she knew where he must be; the pause was to give herself strength.

  He was there with his trowel, kneeling. He poked away at earth so well-tended it seemed not to need further attention. Candytuft bordered the small plot like small pink and mauve cushions; the delicate blues of larkspur, saxifrage and cornflower intensified the mauves, whilst the pink warmed the white of the small stone; Margaret felt pleased when she saw it. It did Jack proud.

  The trowel continued to make its comforting, rhythmical noises; Jack did not look up, nor did she say anything, but stood beside him looking down and listening to the soft sound. ‘I thought we might plant a little rose, Mags, just a small one in the middle,’ he said at last.

  She pursed her lips, narrowing her eyes and looking dubiously at the place indicated by the pointing trowel. ‘But wouldn’t it grow too tall, Jack? And hide the stone?’

  ‘Maybe. But it’ud be a good splash of colour too.’

  ‘A red rose?’

  ‘That’s what I’d thought.’

  ‘Maybe. One with a nice smell.’

  ‘Perhaps we should think about it a while longer.’

  ‘Yes, Jack.’

  ‘Looks a treat for him, don’t it Mags?’

  ‘It really does. I was just thinking.’

  Jack sat back on his heels, and she looked down at him, noticing the faint line of white skin at his hairline, oddly naked and vulnerable in contrast with the warm brown of his face and hair, yet echoing the threads of silver-grey there too. He let his dirty hands fall loosely between his legs, the trowel dangling. The thumb of one hand was swathed in a grubby bandage, held in place by a pink fingerstall.

  ‘How’s the thumb?’ she asked.

  ‘Still throbbing. I don’t notice it now.’

  ‘I thought I’d find you here, Jack.’

  ‘Well, it seemed like a good time to do a bit of work on it. Not much else to do, what with all the comings and goings.’ She sighed. ‘Me, I can’t stop thinking about it. All the time, going round and round in my head. I keep wondering.’

  He nodded slowly, and brought up one grimy fingernail to scratch his cheek. ‘I’m the same, Mags. I been thinking, and though it seems a terrible bad thing, like, I think I can understand it. I been turning it over and over inside me, and trying to put meself in his place.’

  ‘That’s what you have to do. It’s the only way to look at it. I mean, none of us would do such a thing, would we? But the doctor was special; he was different from us.’

  Jack said nothing for a few seconds, but jabbed his trowel aimlessly into the grass in front of him. Then he coughed. ‘Something I’ve never told you, love. But … when we, when we lost our Todd, I wanted to. I stayed awake one night, thinking about it.’

  ‘Did you, Jack? Why didn’t you say?’ She looked surprised, and rested a hand lightly on his shoulder.

  ‘Not the kind of thing you do say, is it? That’s the whole point of it, I’m sure. You can’t say. You’ve just got this black thing inside you, growing every day like roots in the soil, spreading out. Then one day it sort of, bursts out, and you can’t control it any more.’

  She hesitated, then asked in a small voice, ‘Well, why didn’t you?’

  ‘Hard to say. You, I s’pose. And this. I didn’t think you’d be very good at doing this.’ He grinned and patted a mound of candytuft with his enormous gentle hand.

  She smiled too, nodding, then said slowly, ‘It must be hard though, if someone doesn’t feel there’s anything for them to go on doing. Or they’ve done enough. He must have felt that, mustn’t he?’

  Jack did not reply, but stared at the flowers, frowning. He put up his hand to scratch his face again, then dropped it. She looked at him anxiously.

  ‘It’s all to do with us, Mags, I’m sure of it. I think it’s our fault in a way.’

  ‘But why? Why do you say that, Jack?’

  ‘Because of … how he was, really. Always round, and getting so upset when he had to tell us, and all that terrible time. You know. You remember how he was, Margaret!’ His voice rose slightly, husky, almost angry.

  ‘He was kind,’ was all she said.

  ‘Of course he was, and that’s what I mean. He was so kind to us, and he was so sad at the end, and it doesn’t seem to me as he’s been the same since.’

  He got up, bending to brush the knees of his old brown corduroy trousers, then stuffed the trowel in the pocket of his worn jacket. There were beads of sweat on his forehead. ‘You don’t need that jacket on, it’s too warm,’ she said quietly.

  ‘All this, it’s getting me down,’ he said faintly, then added in a louder voice, ‘I think I’ll go along to Mrs Anderson’s this afternoon to see if she wants any jobs done. How did she seem to you this morning?’

  ‘Jack, I didn’t go.’

  He flushed and looked at her. ‘You didn’t go and let her down? Not turning up at work, Margaret? That’s not right.’

  She dropped her head, and he heard her voice wobble, ‘I couldn’t go there, not today. I didn’t know what to say to her.’

  But it’s no different! Just because he did that … Well, it’s all the more reason to feel sorry, the way I look at it.’

  She nodded, and sighed. ‘I know you’re right, Jack. Will you tell her this afternoon, that I didn’t feel well? A white lie won’t harm. Shall we go now? I’ve got a pork chop for your dinner, and I put the potatoes on low before I came out.’

  He glanced at his watch, then at the church tower. ‘Then we’d better put our skates on, love. They’ll be boiled dry!’

  Margaret put her arm in his, tucking her hand deep into his pocket where the trowel lay, cold and damp. They had always walked like that when they were engaged, especially in winter, swapping sides so that she could warm first one hand then the other. She never minded the bits of soil and grass, even the occasional crocus bulb, pebble or snail, that she encountered. He always had to adjust his pace to hers, as he did now without noticing or thinking: so that they walked in perfect rhythm, with no need to talk anymore.

  The sun shone on the poster outside the school, in the pubs and shops, and on one or two lampposts; everyone agreed that it was right and proper for the village concert to go ahead, despite Daphne Ryan’s unwillingness. The news that Eleanor Anderson had cancelled the memorial service and was refusing to see the Rector to discuss a ‘decent burial’ (‘Is it allowed anyway?’ people asked, half-remembered taboos surfacing in their minds) met with sympathy from most of those who heard. They were on Eleanor’s side now, shocked by the doctor’s perfidy. Suddenly the idea of the annual concert, which had seemed an act of jovial disrespect in the face of death as a sad accident, could now be a gesture of defiance against death as an act of choice. Just because Dr Anderson had been miserable enough to kill himself there was no reason for the whole village to be miserable too; ‘life must go on’ they said, in tones which transformed the cliché into a positive rejection of David’s action – and even more, of the state of mind that caused it. Winterstoke rejected his death; people confided to one another that they would have found it impossible to sit in the church remembering with gratitude the life of one who clearly cherished no such grateful remembrance of them.

  Even Sheila Simmonds joined the chorus of quiet indignation. For the first time she was able to smile at the locum. ‘Bit of a shifty thing to do,’ her husband had said, and for once she had not bridled. ‘Think he had some skeleton in his cupboard then?’ he had grinned. She clamped her mouth shut, remembering that evening surgery, and all the people waiting, looking at her expectantly. He would have
known it would be like that, yet he still went ahead and left her to cope. ‘I don’t know what I ever did to him to deserve that,’ she muttered to herself, slamming the iron down hard in clouds of steam. And she joined her neighbours in headshaking and tutting and watching with keen interest events the other end of the village.

  A police car arriving then departing, local reporters waiting at the closed gate then going away, Paul Anderson walking arm in arm with Daphne Ryan along the High Street: there was nothing much else to see, and people were disappointed. The silence annoyed them; explanations, they felt, were due. They knew when the inquest took place in Newtonstowe, and heard that Eleanor had not gone, pleading illness and sending a doctor’s note to excuse her absence. Brian Simmonds found that funny; he joked that if Dr Anderson had left a doctor’s note it would have excused his absence. The time and place of the inquest were common knowledge, but nobody was curious enough to go. One or two women, shopping in the High Street, saw Paul’s battered car pass, then turn into the Ryans’ house, then emerge with Daphne in the passenger seat, and they nodded to each other that Miss Ryan was trying to take the place of his mother, poor thing.

  Familiar faces were there in the panelled room: WPC Dix and PC Jennings, looking hot in their uniforms, the Coroner’s officer, solid and recogriisably a policeman even in his tweed jacket, the coroner himself in a dark suit, four journalists in the press box who had failed to find their story at the house. Paul moved in a dream, made a statement without knowing what he was saying, and he heard Daphne as a family friend bearing witness to the shock, without taking in a single word of what she said. Their ‘circumstances’ were discussed openly, and he flushed crimson, not at what was said, but at the idea of it. He was ashamed of it: the ordinariness of the account (no debt, no clinical depression, no illness, no unusual associations) gave no justification at all for what his father had done. Mrs Anderson’s illness was accepted as perfectly understandable. The coroner looked at Paul with a sympathy that made him cringe inside, and said that in the circumstances he did not feel it necessary to put her through the additional strain of appearing as a witness. Paul’s mouth tasted rancid and he felt sick. He bore the image of her white and bitter face, and tangled hair, and wanted to shout aloud to all of them that it was a lie, she was not ill. ‘She should have come,’ he whispered to Daphne, who sniffed into an absurdly small handkerchief. On the other side of her, Eleanor’s solicitor coughed, stiff with awkward sadness. He gave Paul a warning look.