The Anderson Question

by Bel Mooney

  ‘How terrible, not just to be dead, but to contemplate eternal life. How tiring to go on and on, reliving the battles and the pain, still wanting, or looking back, on and on, into eternity. Yet David might have expected that; he might have believed it. I don’t know.’ Her eyes grow wet suddenly, taking her by surprise and blurring the names before her, stained with bird droppings. ‘I don’t know what you believed or what you wanted, David. I don’t know anything about you, any more than I know about all these men. I don’t know if you’re with them, or where you are, or what you thought about me. Oh there I go again … Me, me, David, I wish I knew what you thought … what you thought about yourself. And do you still think it, in this dreadful eternal life? That’s the last thing I’d wish for you, all that endless exhaustion. Not that. Let it be … What? Nothingness, for that’s what you must have wanted. Blackness and vacancy and peace.’

  Eleanor folds her arms, and stands there, perfectly still, looking at the War Memorial in such an intent manner, that the women by the shop stare at her and start to whisper. ‘Must be a relative … I wonder who she is? … maybe she was a local once, maybe her father came from round here … Well, our dad’s written on there … and my grandad …It’s sad, when you think of it, isn’t it?

  ‘How typical,’ Eleanor thinks, ‘that I couldn’t even find the place you chose, David. I suppose I didn’t try very hard. I could go and ask those women over there, and go back, and find it, but there’s no point. It would be sentimental; I’d be trying to wring some emotion from the bushes and the trees, and it would be beautiful in this light, and I’d end up by wondering how on earth you were so self-absorbed as to close your eyes to the world around you, and cut yourself loose from it forever. Imagine! You must have been able to see half the county from up there, a wonderful view. Yet you were blind, too.’

  ‘She looks really sad.’ The women nod at each other, realising that their conversation is over. There are separate homes to go to, children to be put to bed, meals to be cooked, husbands to sit with in front of the television. ‘Bye, then,’ they call to each other. ‘See you tomorrow!’

  ‘I’m going back, Mum.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Will you be OK, now?’

  ‘Yes, I will. I think I will.’

  Paul looked at her carefully, surprised by that note of doubt. Eleanor was wandering around the garden, carrying secateurs with an air of purpose, yet touching no stalks or twigs with their blades.

  ‘When are you going?’

  ‘In the morning. I thought I’d go along tonight to say goodbye to the Ryans and to Conrad. He asked me to have a meal with him one night but I never did. So I feel a bit guilty.’

  ‘Oh, don’t feel guilty, Paul,’ she said with sudden emphasis, turning towards him. ‘It’s a waste of time, always feeling guilty. You can do it next time.’

  ‘Yes … But we can’t help it, can we?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Feeling guilty, of course.’

  ‘No. I suppose not.’

  They walked a few paces along the path in silence, then stopped, both looking up at the same time. ‘The copper beech is wonderful,’ she said. ‘So many colours in it.’

  ‘Very hard to paint. You’d need reds and browns and ochre and greens too. I tried once, do you remember?’

  ‘You lost your temper with it. You didn’t like oils, did you? David was a bit disappointed, because he’d given you the set.’

  ‘Don’t remind me.’

  ‘Oh, it’s all right, Paul. You have to be able to remember properly.’

  ‘I did him that still life, anyway, didn’t I? Onions, a lemon and one of your casseroles. It’s still up there – bit embarrassing now. One of the onions looks like a tennis ball!’

  ‘David said it was a bit like Gauguin. You know, primitive.’

  They both laughed. Then Eleanor started to snip aimlessly at the heads of newly-frothing cow parsley, watching them fall to the ground. Paul glanced at her shyly; her actions had a childlike quality of vagueness that was strange in her, yet pleased him.

  ‘Jack says these are weeds, but I like them.’

  ‘So do I.’

  ‘When will you come again, Paul?’

  ‘In a week or so. For a weekend, maybe. Have you decided what you’re going to do?’

  ‘Well, this place is too big, really. I think I’ll look for a cottage somewhere around. I thought of moving into Newtonstowe and doing, you know, voluntary work or something, but I think I’ll stay round here.’

  ‘Daphne would miss you, and so would everyone.’

  ‘I wonder. I’m not sure that people don’t get used to being without you. That’s what I feel about David, now. Not that I’m used to the idea of being without him, but that I’m used to the idea of him being dead now, and that’s the first stage, after all.’

  ‘I can’t get used to it,’ Paul said, half to himself, and added, in a tentative but louder voice, ‘Are you still angry with him, Mum?’

  Eleanor hesitated. In her mind she wandered back through the empty, sunlit rooms of a strange mansion, along corridors, through panelled doors, and up staircases hung with shadowy portraits of people she half-recognised, yet who changed as she passed. She was looking for something, so that the splendour of the surroundings went unnoticed, and she knew that she had been deceived by them in the past, cut off by comforting curtains from the truth. But each room held certainty as well, painted like a mural on its walls: a meeting, a couple walking in Battersea Park, a wedding, a birth, and the quiet assurance of years spent in a pattern of domesticity, the same things in the same place … There the stains began, the pigment damaged and flaking, leaving ugly patches of emptiness for her to see quite clearly now, and speculate over as well as grieve, as art historians wince at the ignorance which led a fifteenth-century master to neglect technique, so that his work is ruined.

  There was absolute silence in that building now, not even the infinitesimal sound of a mouse’s breath or a sliver of paint falling or the whisper of a draught under a door. But she knew that if she continued she would, sooner or later, come to the room he had inhabited, and that there would be nothing in it except the fact of what he did. There, in the barest cell of all, the prison from which he made his escape, there would be no ornament, no furniture on which to rest, no recognisable portrait of mature confidence (his hair, his shoulders, his eyes … those she could still see), only a movement behind the curtain. And she would approach the corner with fear, dazzled by the light from the window, and reach out a hand, trembling, to pull aside the fabric and reveal it there at last: the small and shapeless object, grovelling and hiding from its own hideousness, which would lift up its unspeakable eyes to her face and open its mouth finally in a cry of anguish, of most pitiable despair, that would echo in those corridors, inhabiting them forever.

  Paul was waiting, looking at her. She tilted her chin and looked up at the house. ‘He had very little, you know.’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘Not much of his own. Oh, that’s the trouble …’ She turned to him with sudden passion, ‘I can’t find anything, only a few books. I thought there might be a diary, or something. But the police would have found it anyway. Or letters. If only he’d … You see, we can’t ask him, can we?’ She broke off and turned to him, looking confused. ‘What was it you asked me?’

  ‘If you were still angry with him.’

  ‘I wish I could say No, but it wouldn’t be true. I’ll always be angry with him. I’m angry with him for having a secret from me, and for letting me into that secret when really I don’t want to know it. I was ashamed at first because it was clear that I had failed to make him happy, otherwise how could he want so much to die? But now I’m ashamed because in loving him I loved his willingness to die as well, unknowingly; and I’m jealous too – that it had the power to take him away from me. It’s just as bad as if he’d disappeared with a mistress, or killed himself because of an unhappy love; the jealousy is just as har
d. So yes, I am angry still. I can’t help it.’

  She stood there, looking at him defiantly, yet with none of the bitterness she had shown before. She described those things with acceptance now, he realised; staring at her as though seeing her for the first time – the tailored dress, the firm profile, the hair in its knot, the tall and angular body: his mother. ‘She might have staggered and fallen under the weight of that insult to her,’ he thought, ‘and yet she stands there, with her secateurs, and makes her plans, taking what happened along with her, like luggage.’ It seemed marvellous to him that she should have survived the destruction of all her convictions, yet sad too, for perhaps it was due to a lack of imagination, not bravery. ‘Mmm. I can understand that,’ was all he said. ‘I think that I’m only just beginning to see what it must have been like for Dad.’

  ‘What?’ she said, with sharp suspicion.

  ‘Oh, I just mean it must have taken him an awful lot of courage. I don’t think I’ll ever guess exactly why, but it’s a bit easier now that I think that he had the right.’

  ‘Do you?’ she murmured, dubiously, ‘I don’t. At least, I don’t think so. I still cling to the old-fashioned idea that it’s not for us to decide, it’s for God. But look, that’s enough of all that. We could go on forever, and you must go and see the old people.’

  They walked back towards the house, and for a second Paul was tempted to put his arm around her shoulders. Then he changed his mind. ‘I’ll miss this house,’ he said, looking up at the red-brick chimneys that protruded from each end of the gabled roof. ‘Don’t get somewhere too small, will you?’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ she smiled, ‘I must have room for my grandchildren, when they come.’

  He flushed. ‘I won’t ever get married.’

  ‘Of course you will, Paul. Not for a long time, but one day.’

  ‘No, I won’t ever have children. You’ll see.’

  ‘Come on dear, you can’t possibly know. But it’s a sad thought, if true.’

  ‘No sadder than the rest.’

  He stuffed his hands in his pockets and wheeled away, leaving her standing alone in the middle of the path. ‘Paul!’ she called after him, ‘do you want me to pack for you?’

  ‘I can do it myself.’

  ‘Now, you know you always bundle things up. Let me do it for you. I can have it done by the time you get back.’

  ‘Oh, for goodness’ sake, Mum, don’t fuss. I’d rather do it myself.’ Eleanor compressed her lips in the old way, and he knew that when he got back from his courtesy calls, his hold-all would be on the bed, already packed, despite his wishes. ‘Oh Jesus,’ Paul muttered to himself as he closed the gate behind him, and set off in the direction of the High Street, then he grinned. It was a relief, after all, that some things never change.

  Conrad had planned his journey with meticulous care, booking an early taxi to take him to Newtonstowe, working out the Bristol connexion, and taking sandwiches in his old briefcase. But he had not bargained for the taxi queue on Paddington station, and felt hot and tired, appalled suddenly by the noises of the city. ‘I’m too old for this,’ he thought, clutching his briefcase to his chest, and looking with terror at the crowds.

  It was almost one-thirty when he alighted at last outside the British Museum, and walked slowly towards the great, pillared building. Inside the Reading Room itself he hesitated, forgetting (in the years since he had been there) what to do. Then he shuffled towards the centre of the magnificent, circular room, along one of the readers’ desks which radiate from the hub of the central catalogue like the spokes of a wheel. He walked along the volumes of the catalogue, stopping at last at the one he needed. But the volumes were enormous, and again he faltered, looking around helplessly. A tall young man, with spectacles, stopped, searching amongst the ‘R’ volumes too. Conrad whispered his request and the man frowned to be interrupted. ‘Oh, sure,’ he grunted in an American accent, heaving it from its place.

  Conrad’s fingers were shaking as he turned the pages, and found the place. ‘RANSLAVIA Rudolph Henri. “Flowers of Bohemia” London: John. W. Parker, West Strand 1849’. He found a desk, filled in the application ticket, and waited for the book to be brought. All around him people were bent over their books and papers, writing or earnestly turning over pages, but Conrad sat doing nothing. Yellow light from the dome and the tall arched windows around its sides poured down on his head; he saw the gold pillars of the dome, beautiful against the cool blue paint, as carnival ribbons billowing from their centre. ‘And the catalogue at the centre too,’ he thought, ‘like the key to all mysteries.’ But the book might not come. Nervously he turned over his flimsy copy of the application and studied the reasons for non-arrival, with the empty boxes ready to be ticked in the right place:

  ‘It is regretted that:

  this work was destroyed by bombing in the war; we have

  not been able to acquire a replacement

  his work has been mislaid

  this work has been missing since—’

  The fear was terrible, and he prayed silently: please let them find it, please let that book still be here. He sat unmoving still, but let his eyes travel slowly around the majestic curved sides of that vast room, covered with the red, gold and brown spines of thousands of books. With hearing tuned to a pitch of unfamiliar tension he listened to the curious hushed noises: the deadened coughs, rustlings of paper, whispers, and little echoing thuds of heavy books being put down, or closed with relief. It awed him, all those people working so diligently, perusing countless volumes, making notes, researching other men’s lives, working out their theories, guessing, seeking, and adding to the store of human knowledge, perhaps. His own quest seemed so tiny in comparison.

  After another seven or eight minutes he was startled by the book being abruptly put on the blue writing surface before him. It was a small volume, bound in dark cloth, with a curious coat of arms, unfamiliar even to him, embossed on the front cover. The spine was worn away in parts, but the title page showed that it was the correct volume; ‘Flowers of Bohemia Ancient and Modern’ by R. H. Ranslavia MA. He held it reverently, and smiled to see the dedication on the reverse of the title page: ‘to the memory of my dear wife’.

  Ranslavia’s introduction explained that he felt it his ‘sacred duty’ to offer to the country of his adoption translations from the poets of Bohemia, ‘to which renderings into English verse from the original Slavonic the humble author has appended some original lyrics’. There followed a lengthy analysis of Bohemian literary history which soon lost Conrad, so great was his impatience to discover what this man, Alice’s ancestor, had achieved. At first he was disappointed; the poems had titles like ‘The Soldier and the Maid’, ‘The Rose’, ‘Song’, ‘The Linnet’ and ‘The Wreath’, and were, even to the untrained, unliterary eye, insipid and undistinguished: slight lyrics whose only interest might have been philological, to a Slavonic scholar in possession of the original versions. Conrad sighed, feeling for a moment that his journey had been wasted. Yet he still could not explain to himself, or to that long-dead writer, what it was he had hoped for. Evidence of genius? It was absurd, he thought, to travel one hundred and fifty miles to look up a book in the hope of finding in its yellowed pages, something upon which to pin his affections, or to justify them.

  The second, thinner section of the book was called, ‘Original Songs’, with the epigraph, ‘Men do not perish, as long as language lives’. Mr Ranslavia’s own efforts were, if anything, slightly worse than his translations: sentimental lyrics full of popular archaisms, and dying falls. Conrad smiled wryly; this was his punishment for hoping secretly that Alice’s great-great-grandfather may have been a Keats or, at least, a Thompson. Yet the pride of that epigraph touched him; it was true, after all, and the fact that he was sitting there, Ranslavia’s book in his hands, was proof enough of the schoolmaster’s wisdom. He turned the pages over slowly, reading odd lines at random, and pleased, after all, that he had ended it here, in the shrine to langua
ge. He could go no further with the male line; this would do. At home he could write in the last details, and hang the family tree on his bedroom wall, finished …

  He stopped his idle turning of the pages, and bent sharply over the book. He had come to the end, the last poem, but it was not its title ‘The Forget-Me-Not’ which made him catch his breath. It was its dedication: ‘For Alice’. He blinked, and looked again, but the words remained unaltered. He remembered the illegible name of Ranslavia’s wife, she who had probably died in childbirth … and yes, was not the initial ‘A’? A common enough name in the nineteenth century, no reason to feel that this discovery was uncanny, and yet Conrad found himself trembling. Through narrowed eyes he read the short poem at last, and it was as if all the dust in his own house far away had followed him here, not letting go, pinning him within the decaying present yet linking him at once, indissolubly, with that past, and the woman who had inhabited it; dust falling and sifting all around him in the golden light, gentling him into peace and stillness at last.

  ‘O weave me a garland of flowerets blue,

  A wreath still of hope for the heart,

  For death cannot darken my memory’s hue,

  So thou, love, from me shall not part.

  This blue is the colour of streams and of skies

  Which heal the heart-wearying pang.

  In the hearts of these flow’rs see the summer arise,

  As my hopes on her memories hang.

  A prayer for myself is a prayer for my love;

  That this garland may stay ever new,