The Anderson Question

by Bel Mooney

  People moved their chairs and shuffled their feet; the children started to whisper, but were silenced by Eleanor’s furious ‘Ssshh’. That, in its turn, was drowned by the rush of notes. Conrad knew the piece was drawing near its close. Enid seemed to be ripping the chords from the keyboard in an angry protest, and then, a few seconds later, crying out forlornly through her fingertips, with the pathos of a small creature, overwhelmed. Conrad heard the repetitions, the dissonances and distortions, and the violent interruptions of quiet passages so that no relief from tension was possible, and he wanted to jump to his feet and shout to the whole room. ‘This represents all I believe in, thanks to sublime, heroic, suffering Mozart, whose enigmatic spirit we are listening to, beating forever on the bars of its cage. Here, in the little church hall in Winterstoke, he exists, as long as Enid is playing – immortal. Just like Ranslavia, just like Alice, just like me,’ he thought with a great surge of joy.

  Eleanor was glad when it finished. Disturbed by what she heard, she decided that Enid Ryan was selfish to choose something like that, rather than last year’s Chopin, because it was too difficult for her audience. She heard relief in their clapping, and could not know that the music had been heard with instinctive understanding by very many people in that room, who would never hear it again, and who complained to each other afterwards that the piano music went on for too long for such a mixed audience, as though wanting to disown their awe before it, and their personal interpretation of its tragic intensity. As Enid moved slowly from the piano stool, and the lights went on, the clapping dying away, Brian Simmonds made a face at his friends, and Eleanor sat back in her seat with a sigh, wishing she were at home. ‘Oh Lord, now we have to endure the raffle,’ she whispered to Conrad. ‘Have you got a ticket? I’ll go up for you if you win.’

  He winced. Was that all she could say, after such music? The rector was holding out a hat, people were grabbing cups and peering at the coloured bits of paper in their hands, and the patrician-looking woman in the beige suit was plunging her hand into the hat and calling out the numbers. The audience cheered each time someone jumped up eagerly, and ran to the back of the hall to receive a prize from Daphne. Enid was watching all this from her seat in the front row, looking pleased, not minding that the music was silenced now in that hall and forgotten too, as if it had never been. Eleanor was nudging him, ‘Conrad, look, blue ticket, two hundred and two, it’s yours! Shall I …’

  He would not be treated like an ancient invalid, but seized the ticket from her and rose. Faces were smiling at him on both sides, and hands were clapping; carried along on the wave Conrad walked to the back, where Daphne waited, holding out a hand to him in welcome. ‘They all like me,’ he thought suddenly, bewildered by the warmth he sensed in the atmosphere of that room. Daphne was handing him an object; it was the ashtray in a box with ‘A Present from Paignton’ printed in gold above the scenic picture, and moulded shells with a pearly finish around the edge. ‘I’ve never won a raffle prize before,’ he whispered to Daphne, absurdly pleased by the object in his hand, which would soon take its place in Winter House, beside the Staffordshire pieces and the first editions, to gather dust and become a playground for spiders. ‘Oh, and by the way, I went to London yesterday, and found …’ But the next person was at his elbow, a teenage boy who blushed to be handed a pair of tights.

  ‘What have they given you, let me see? … Oh help. Conrad, you must give it to me for the WI jumble sale,’ Eleanor smiled, as the noise in the hall died down, young Mr Osmond staggered back to his seat with the basket of fruit (smiling with delight, as fresh fruit was hard on a farm worker’s wage, and his wife needed building up after the baby) and the rector stood up once more, pink with the heat of the hall.

  ‘Flick’ was very popular, and most of the audience clapped in time to the loud rock music, shouting for encores when the youths finished their third number. But the rector would not allow it, and held up a hand: ‘And now, ladies and gentlemen, it is time for our humorous interlude. You all know him, you’ve all met him, he’s the man who asked me the other day when is it that a bishop sometimes keeps doubtful company. And do you know when that is? When he walks around with a crook! So, please give a big welcome to that jolly japing joker, Jack Ainslie.’

  Eleanor groaned aloud, knowing that her small sound of protest would be drowned. Indeed, she was washed by waves of raucous laughter, as Jack walked quickly to the centre of the stage and spread out his hands in a gesture of mock-modest acceptance. ‘Thank you, thank you, thank-you … Now, have you heard the one about the man who needed plastic surgery? The only way the doctors could repair the damage was to graft on a piece of skin from his, you know, posterior. When he was asked how he felt he said, fine, except for one thing – when I get tired my face wants to sit down! Face? See? Oh, never mind … You know, I haven’t got much faith in hospitals; surgeon goes up to my friend, asks him how he feels after his heart operation. My friend says, OK, doctor, but I’ve got two heartbeats. Oh, says the surgeon, that explains it … I wondered where my watch had gone! So afterwards that friend, he goes to a psychiatrist and tells him he’s got a dual personality. Well, says the psychiatrist, since this is a very confidential interview one of you had better wait outside. (Jack’s patter was punctuated by loud guffaws, so that he gained confidence, and planted his feet wide, settling on the stage.) Anyway, when he was in there, he said to the psych, Can I lie on the floor instead of the couch? Yes, says the psychiatrist, but why? Because I want to talk to you about why my wife treats me like a doormat. Marriage now, I’ve got nothing against marriage. Just take my wife … PLEASE! (Margaret rocked in her chair). My socks are full of holes because she doesn’t give a darn. She said to me. We’ve got to go to the same place next year for our holidays. When I asked why, she said she wants to see if the landlady has changed the tablecloth. Mean? I won’t say she’s mean but every time she opens her purse the Queen blinks at the light. She went to the garage, y’know, and said to the man, I’ve had this car three months. What sort of service will it be needing? And he said, Judging by the way you’re driving it’ll be a burial service. But I’m nice to her, I really am. I told her the other day, You’re a smasher, a real smasher. That’s because we haven’t got any cups left. Aaah, yes, marriage. Two men were discussing their wedding day experiences. One said, Oh, I’ll never forget mine. I got a terrible fright. What happened? asked the other. Nothing, said the first one, I just married her! And have you heard the one about Mrs Jones? She didn’t get on with her husband, he gave her a terrible time he did, awful it were. So her friend says, Why don’t you try giving him the soft soap treatment? And Mrs Jones says, Oh, I have, but he spotted it at the top of the stairs!…’

  Eleanor thought, ‘I can’t stand this,’ as the laughter grew louder, beating at her. She looked with hatred at the man on stage, familiar yet transformed into a buffoon, a multi-coloured thing hitting her about the ears with his puffed-up piece of intestine: disgusting and terrifying. In the row in front of her she saw Mrs Osmond’s baby, uncomfortable on its mother’s shoulder, twist its mouth in a wild expression of alarm and despair, and clench its tiny fists, all unnoticed by the mother who leaned towards her husband, giggling helplessly.

  ‘… I take an interest in foreign matters too, y’know. In fact, I read a notice in the Cannibal Courier the other day. It said, “After the wedding the assembled guests toasted the bride and groom. They were delicious!” … You know what the cannibal mother said to her son? Just because your father was tough when he was alive, that’s no reason to leave him on the side of your plate …’

  ‘Oh God, please let him finish, please let it be over,’ she prayed, glancing sideways at Conrad as if for help. But he sat with his arms folded, a benign expression on his face, as if he were about to slip into a slightly drunken sleep.

  ‘Talking of foreigners, do you know what happened when the Frenchman jumped off a bridge in Paris? He went insane … In Seine? … oh well, never mind …’

 
; At last it was over. Jack bowed deeply, grinning at the volume of applause. ‘Yet you never see him smile, usually,’ Eleanor thought, wonderingly, as he waved with ironic jauntiness at them, and disappeared off the side of the stage. ‘So he must need this. It must be like putting on one of those blank comic masks, and hiding behind it. He’s like two people, yet I have never noticed it before …’ Eleanor imagined Jack kneeling at one of her flowerbeds, with the look of reverence he usually wore, especially when he thought he was unobserved, and her sense of the inexplicable drove out the horror. She sighed, and slid down in her chair, cutting off from the bellowing nightclub voice of Jean Orton, who prowled about the stage in a scarlet evening dress, carrying the microphone close to her mouth, so that the words were twice distorted, her strained American accent making them almost unintelligible: ‘Aaaah didid maah waaay …’

  When Daphne worked out the programme she deliberately left the children until the end. It was because she was conscious that it was a church hall, after all, and most of the money would go towards the church roof, and the rector was being a great sport to officiate with such uncharacteristic gusto; so after Jack Ainslie and Jean Orton the village people would become uncomfortably boisterous, she thought, unless brought back to quietness by sentiment. So Sally Wright stood alone, and the hall was still, and people wore smiles of gentle indulgence to see the child whom all of them had seen in her pram, stand for her first public performance. Even the children were totally silent, as if under a spell, as the haunting sound of their school-friend’s flute drifted over their heads with a hollow sweetness that was almost (Eleanor thought) unbearable. The publican sat with his feet sprawled across the aisle, hands folded across his paunchy stomach, and his face wore a look of naked, utterly vulnerable pride. By his side, Mrs Wright leaned forward, listening acutely, mouth open in an expression of fond foolishness, as the delicate piping sound of the simple little piece, drew all of them along, beckoning, mesmerising, luring them back into half-remembered simplicities of childhood, as the children of Hamelin were enticed – gently, magically, irresistibly – into the green side of the mountain that shut behind them forever.

  With her grave, pursed face, long single plait pulling the hair off her face, and curious sideways-turning flautist’s stance, the child looked like an image from Sienese art: the shallow ‘S’ curve of her body, drawing from itself those swirling tendrils of sound, was a testimony to beauty, to fragile permanence, not reality. ‘So lovely,’ Conrad thought, as all of them were thinking; united by the grave enchantment of the flute, brought together by the child from The King’s Head who was still praying with all her faith (and she took the confirmation classes very seriously) that there would be no squeaky notes.

  As they clapped, and turned to each other saying ‘Wasn’t she good? … wasn’t she pretty? … really nice …’ Sally Wright remained on stage, and was joined by other children, rising from the front benches and taking their places around her in rows, to form the Winterstoke school choir. Some of them giggled and nudged each other, giving shy waves to parents in the audience, others stared straight ahead, arms clamped to their sides, overcome by the seriousness of the occasion. A nod to the pianist, a sharp downward movement of finger and thumb raised ready … and their teacher led them off into ‘This Little Light of Mine’, exaggerating the staccato, conducting jerkily, knowing that otherwise they would slacken the pace.

  ‘This is the kind of thing I like at village concerts,’ whispered Eleanor in Conrad’s ear, and he nodded, sensing the contented mood in the hall, and struck once again by the capacity of his neighbours to enjoy themselves with a profound uniformity of purpose, so that the dramatic monologue, the jokes, the nightclub songs, the flute were all accepted equally, as something given. Even the loutish youths who had deafened him had not caused disappointment by leaving too early, but lounged easily against the walls at the side, watching the choir with an air of proprietorial patronage that was not unpleasant.

  ‘Well sung too,’ Eleanor said, raising her hands to clap, and glad, after all, that she had come. But the piano had started a different tune, and she hit back the comment she had been about to add, arrested by the sounds, slow and sad, that now came from the stage.

  ‘Alas, my love, you do me wrong

  To cast me off discourteously,

  And I have loved you so long,

  Delighting in your company.

  Greensleeves was all my joy,

  Greensleeves was my delight,

  Greensleeves was my heart of gold,

  And who but my lady Greensleeves.’

  She stopped listening to the chorus, so familiar that it rang in the blood. Cast me off discourteously … and was that not it, cast off in the sight of all men, especially in my own? And I have loved you so long … and yet that did not matter in the end, it had no power.

  ‘I have been ready at your hand,

  To grant what ever you would crave;

  I have both waged life and land,

  Your love and goodwill for to have …’

  The plaintive list went on, the lament of the rejected one who had thought to buy his love with fine clothes, and glittering trinkets, only to find that the more he spent the more she disdained him. And Eleanor thought of her empty house, with its well-polished pieces of mahogany, pleasing prints, and copper and brass hung about the walls. On the table in the kitchen lay her notebook with the calculations of how she was to live, the surgery and house sold, some money invested for an income, all spread out in neat columns, the cost of the life to come. Of course it mattered. You do me wrong. She felt as if she had walked alone down a long black tunnel, running the cruel gauntlet of the nameless creatures who lived in the dark within it, and stepped out again into the daylight on the far side, knowing the place, yet seeing it for the first time. To cast me off discourteously. What was there to see? A land of opposites perhaps, where she was not cast off, no. It was David who was abandoned now, cast off by her into those sums and their conclusions, the past denied. But I have to, I must, you left me no choice. Alas, my love. And after all, it has always been like this for us, as it is for most people: an exchange of obligations, with the deep, selfish resentment nursed every day like a baby, the sense of shortcomings in the Other, debts not paid. And was that why he made himself an outcast? Eleanor felt indignation swell in her as the sad chorus was repeated. And who but … Who but, indeed? Nobody but you, always, since the day we met, and you repay me for that by ceasing to love me, and by leaving me no word. Even I that am rejected here. She shifted in her chair, as though the energy within her might make her leap up over all the heads around, and Conrad knew it. He was listening too, and he, without realising what he was doing, reached out and clumsily patted her knee, as though she were a little girl. The touch embarrassed Eleanor, who flinched from it; yet was grateful, as the voices reached the last verse, and sang it to her:

  ‘Well, I will pray to God on high,

  That thou my constancy may’st see:

  For I am still thy lover true:

  Come once again, and love me.

  Greensleeves was all my joy …’

  They rose, and people smiled at her, asking if she had enjoyed the evening. ‘It was lovely,’ she smiled, again and again, seeing quite clearly their relief that now at last the pattern might be remade. ‘Good to see you, Eleanor,’ said Mrs Hughes-Haven. ‘By the way, I’ve been meaning to write, we’re setting up a committee to raise money for the hospice in Newtonstowe. Very good cause, you know. Are you interested?’

  ‘Mmm, yes. I’ll ring you, Anne.’

  ‘Good! Thought you might, you know, be ready to get back in the swing of things again.’

  Daphne descended on them, like a yacht with a pale blue sail. It pleased her to see them together, evidence of normality; pleased her still more when Eleanor said loudly to Conrad that she had enjoyed herself. ‘It just takes simple things you see,’ thought Daphne, wiping her forehead with her lace handkerchief and nodding at the dep
arting audience, some of whom actually thanked her for the evening. Thanked her: all irritation forgotten, she was full of sentiment, grateful for the chance to be useful.

  ‘Oh Eleanor, it was a success, wasn’t it? And after all the …’ Daphne flushed and bit her lip, stopping.

  ‘Yes, it went very well. You should be pleased,’ Eleanor said gently, pitying the other woman’s confusion.

  ‘I didn’t mean …’

  ‘It’s all right.’

  ‘Well, I’d better get Enid home. She played jolly well, didn’t she?’

  ‘Beautifully.’

  Daphne lowered her voice. ‘Between you and me, dear, I thought that Sonata a touch on the long side, didn’t you?’

  ‘Just a bit.’ They were together again; Daphne smiled with relief.

  Conrad was waiting quietly by her side, and Eleanor turned to him automatically as she walked from the hall, as a wife does to a husband, to make sure he is there. People had drifted away quickly, some to the pub, some to put children to bed, and the little path that led up to the hall was already empty. Someone was calling goodbye, the sound clear in the chill May night, and Eleanor shivered. She looked up at the thin sliver of moon, like a slit in the sky, and dreaded going home. Conrad was humming ‘Greensleeves’ under his breath. Suddenly he turned, as though he had been following her thoughts. ‘Sad little song, isn’t it?’

  ‘You’re telling me,’ she said grimly, turning up her jacket collar.

  He looked at her quizzically as they reached the road, and stopped opposite The King’s Head. They stood in silence for a few seconds; Eleanor could not work out what his face was saying, but thought that she could bear no more sympathy.