So Mrs Chalmers-Robinson listened, and heard herself distantly vibrate. She had fastened on her face the fixed, blue, misty expression, which of all the disguises in her possession, had won her most acclaim, and which she would have labelled Radiance.
She said:
“I was confirmed at St Mark’s. I can remember the veins on the backs of the Bishop’s hands. I knelt on the wrong step. I was so nervous, so intense. I think I expected some kind of miracle.”
“I am told they can happen!” Mrs Colquhoun laughed, and looked over her shoulder at the emptying room.
“My little girl was interested in miracles when she was younger,” Mrs Wolfson remarked.
Her companions waited for the worst.
“She had a nervous breakdown,” the mother informed. “Ach, yes, beginning and ending is difficult for women! But my Rosie is working for a florist now. Not because she has to, of course. (There is her own father’s business, which the boy is managing very competently. And Louis – the soul of generosity.) But a florist is so clean. And Mr Wolfson – Louis – thought it might have some therapeutic value.”
All three ladies had ordered ice-cream, with fruit salad, and marshmallow sauce. They were pleased they were agreed on that.
“Then, you know St Mark’s.” Mrs Wolfson harked back, and smiled.
It was comforting to return to a subject. She would have liked to feel at home.
“I have not been for years. Except, of course, to weddings. You see, I became interested in Science,” Mrs Chalmers-Robinson said.
“In Science!”
Now Mrs Wolfson could not believe.
“Christian Science, Jinny means,” Mrs Colquhoun explained.
Everyone listened to the word drop. Mrs Wolfson might by this time have called out: All right, all right, it dogs you like your shadow, but you get used to it at last, and a shadow cannot harm.
Instead, she said:
“You don’t say!”
And noted down Science in her mind, to investigate at a future date.
“You should try it,” suggested Mrs Colquhoun, and laughed, but it became a yawn, and she had to turn her head.
“I do not believe Science ever really took on with Europeans,” Mrs Chalmers-Robinson earnestly remarked.
“I adore Europeans,” said Mrs Colquhoun, looking at the almost empty room.
She did, too. She collected consuls, excepting those who were really black.
It bewildered Mrs Wolfson. First she had learnt not to be, and now she must learn what she had forgot. But she would remember. Life, for her too, had been a series of disguises, which she had whisked on, and off, whether Sheila Wolfson, or Shirl Rosetree, or Shulamith Rosenbaum, as circumstances demanded.
So the black, matted girl settled herself inside the perm, behind the powdered cleavage, under the mutation mink. She was reassured.
“Speaking of miracles,” Mrs Chalmers-Robinson said, “Mrs Colquhoun lived for some years at Sarsaparilla.”
The informant advanced her face over the table to the point at which confidences are afterwards exchanged.
“Sarsaparilla!” exclaimed Mrs Colquhoun with some disgust. “One could not continue living at Sarsaparilla. Nobody lives at Sarsaparilla now.”
“But the miracle?” Mrs Wolfson dared, in spite of her foreboding.
“There was no miracle.” Mrs Colquhoun frowned.
She was most annoyed. Her mouth, her chin had almost disappeared.
“I understood,” Mrs Chalmers-Robinson murmured, her smile conveying disbelief, “something of a supernatural kind.”
She was too old, too charming, to allow that indiscretion on her part was indiscretion.
“No question of any miracle,” Mrs Colquhoun was repeating.
A stream of melted ice-cream threatened to spill from one corner of what had been her mouth.
“Certainly,” she admitted, “there was an unpleasant incident, I am told, at Barranugli. Certain drunken thugs, and ignorant, not to say hysterical, women were involved. Both there, and later at Sarsaparilla. Only, there was no miracle. Definitely no miracle!”
Mrs Colquhoun was almost shouting.
“It is much too unpleasant to discuss.”
“But the Jew they crucified,” Mrs Chalmers-Robinson insisted in a voice she had divested deliberately of all charm; she might have been taking off her rings at night.
“Oÿ-yoÿ-yoÿ!” cried Mrs Wolfson.
The latter was frowning, or wrinkling up black, through all that beige powder. She was played upon again. She was rocked by those discords on bleeding catgut, which she did, did wish, and not wish, to hear.
“You know about it?” Mrs Chalmers-Robinson asked.
But Mrs Wolfson was racked and rocked. The ’cello in her groaned audibly.
“Oh, no!” she moaned. “That is,” she said, “I did hear somethink. Oh, yes! There was somethink!”
Did she know! In herself, it seemed, she knew everything. Each of her several lives carried its burden of similar knowledge.
“I warned you!” shouted Mrs Colquhoun.
Although it was never established which, fortunately one of the three upset a cup of coffee into the powder-blue lap of Mrs Chalmers-Robinson. For the moment everyone was mopping and talking.
“Darling, darling Jinny! How absolutely ghastly!’
“Waj geschrien! The good dress! All quite spoiled! No, it is too much, Mrs Chalmers-Robinson!”
Mrs Wolfson decided to absolve herself of any possible guilt by sending some fine present, something that would last, some little trinket of a semi-precious nature. She had found that such gestures paid.
But a young Italian waiter had got down on his knees, and was sponging the lap of Mrs Chalmers-Robinson with fascinating hands. As she watched the movements of the hands, she knew the damage was as good as repaired. Only she could not reconcile the indestructible shape of the young waiter’s perfect head with the life that was slipping from her in daily, almost hourly driblets.
“Thank you,” she said at last, when he stood before her, and she was looking up into his face, with that radiance of which she had once been completely mistress, but which was growing flickery.
“So much for miracles!” She laughed.
“I told you!” said Mrs Colquhoun.
Even though Mrs Wolfson was still being tossed on her ugly wave, it was fast receding. All three began to feel guiltless, though empty.
The women no longer made any effort. They were sitting with their legs apart at their table in the darkened restaurant – for the waiters were turning out the lights, between lunch and dinner, and rolling the used napkins into balls.
“I used to have a maid, who married some man, and went, I believe, to live at Sarsaparilla,” Mrs Chalmers-Robinson recollected.
The ingenious smoke-making contrivance concealed in the crown of the little hat produced a last, desperate feather.
“Not actually a maid!” Mrs Colquhoun had begun again to mutter and hate.
“An excellent girl, although she would breathe down the guest’s neck while handing the vegetables at luncheon. I forget her name, but have often wondered what became of such a person. She was – how shall I put it?” Mrs Chalmers-Robinson asked herself, or more, she appeared to be reaching out through the dark plain in which they were sitting. “Yes,” she said, at last convinced. “You will laugh, Esmé, I know. She was a kind of saint.”
“A saint? My poor Jinny! A saint in the pantry! How perfectly ghastly for you!”
Mrs Colquhoun had gone off into uncontrollable giggles, not to say hysterics, to which the lolling claw of the crab-shell on her head beat a hollow time.
“How interesting my little girl would have found this conversation. Before the nervous breakdown,” Mrs Wolfson said. “In what way, Mrs Robinson, did this maid of yours show she was a saint?”
Mrs Chalmers-Robinson was groping in the darkness. Her face had developed a tic, but she was determined to reach a conclusion.
; “It is difficult to explain – exactly,” she began. “By being, I suppose. She was so stupid, so trusting. But her trustfulness could have been her strength,” the visionary pursued drunkenly. ‘She was a rock to which we clung.”
Then she added, without any shame at all, perhaps sensing that ultimately she would come no closer to understanding:
“She was the rock of love.”
“On which we have all foundered!” cried Mrs Colquhoun, biting on her lipstick.
“Oh, I do wish I could see her,” Mrs Chalmers-Robinson murmured, craning in hopes that saving grace might just become visible in the depths of the obscure purgatory in which they sat. “If only I could find that good woman, who knows, who knew even then, I am sure, what we may expect!”
The old thing had exhausted herself, Mrs Wolfson saw. At her age, it was unwise.
Indeed, Mrs Chalmers-Robinson’s crater was by now extinct. She continued to sit for a little, however, together with her companions, while each of the three tried to remember where she should go next.
When Xanadu had been shaved right down to a bald, red, rudimentary hill, they began to erect the fibro homes. Two or three days, or so it seemed, and there were the combs of homes clinging to the bare earth. The rotary clothes-lines had risen, together with the Iceland poppies, and after them the glads. The privies were never so private that it was not possible to listen to the drone of someone else’s blowflies. The wafer-walls of the new homes would rub together at night, and sleepers might have been encouraged to enter into one another’s dreams, if these had not been similar. Sometimes the rats of anxiety could be heard gnawing already at bakelite, or plastic, or recalcitrant maidenhead. So that, in the circumstances, it was not unusual for people to run outside and jump into their cars. All of Sunday they would visit, or be visited, though sometimes they would cross one another, midway, while remaining unaware of it. Then, on finding nothing at the end, they would drive around, or around. They would drive and look for something to look at. Until motion became an expression of truth, the only true permanence – certainly more convincing than the sugar-cubes of homes. If the latter were not melted down by the action of time or weather, then they could only be reserved for some more terrifying catalysis, by hate, or even love. So the owners of the homes drove. They drove around.
Mrs Godbold could not have counted how many years it was since the razing of Xanadu, when the fancy suddenly took her to put on her hat and go down. It was a Tuesday in June, the sky watering with cold, but fair. Mrs Godbold had not changed, not in appearance anyway, for life had dealt her an early blow, then forgotten her for other victims. All around her, change was creeping, though that side of the hill where she lived, was still choked with blackberry bushes, still strewn with jagged bottles and rusty springs. It was, in fact, a crying shame but people had stopped crying about it, since the ulterior motives of a speculator seemed in accord with some more obscure, possibly divine, plan. So, there Mrs Godbold continued to live, and had worn several tracks, to suit her habits and her needs, amongst the enamelled blackberry bushes.
Now she chose the appropriate track into Montebello Avenue, and was followed, as usual, a little of the way, by that same, or perhaps another cat.
“Shoo!” she cried. “Silly thing! It is too far. For once!” She laughed. “This will be a proper journey!”
So that her cat was persuaded to turn, and wove its way back, velvety amongst the thorns.
The cold rushed at Mrs Godbold, but her vision remained clear. She broke off a twig, and sucked it for company.
“Who are you?” she asked at one of the gates along the road. “Eh?” she asked. “Who are you?”
It was a joke, of course. It was her grandchild. Even better than her voice, he knew the drowsy smell of soap, and was now made silent, or reverent, by recollections of intimacy.
She touched the little boy’s cheek once. He submitted, but without raising his eyes.
“And who is this?” Mrs Godbold asked of a second little boy, who came down the path munching, his face full of crumbs.
“Bob Tanner,” the elder little boy answered straight.
She could have eaten him.
“And you are Ruth Joyner,” he shouted.
“Ah,” she laughed, “you are the same cheeky boy who never gets smacked by his mother!”
The little boy kicked the ground. His younger brother pushed him, and showed the liveliest approval of the joke.
“Well,” said the grandmother, her lips trembling, such was her own approval of all her children, “give my regards to your mum, then.”
“Arr, nan!” cried the elder boy. “Come on in! There’s cornflour cakes!”
“Not today,” said the grandmother. “I am going on a journey.”
And almost laughed again, but coughed.
“Take me with you,” begged the boy.
“It is too far,” she answered.
“Arr, no!” he cried. “I can walk good!”
But she was already slowly on her way, making the little noises of deprecation and love, which disappointment would prevent the boy from interpreting at once.
Mrs Godbold continued along a road which progress had left rather neglected.
Two of her girls had been given by now, and two others were promised, and the youngest pair practically in shoes. The six Godbold girls would sometimes foregather still on the trodden ground outside the shed, together with the little, strange, toy children of the eldest sisters. The girls would weave garlands in the green light – any old common flowers, morning-glory, say, and sarsaparilla, and the crumpled wild freesias. They would wear their flowers, and clown amongst themselves, and sing as one:
“I will slap
Any chap
Who’s bold enough
To cheek me.
The one that matters
Never flatters,
But hangs around
When he’s found.
He’s the one
I’ll kiss,
And kiss, and kiss, and kiss!”
Although Poppy Godbold would exclaim:
“I am not gunna kiss any feller! Never, never, never!”
Then she might modify her vow, and swoop, and cry:
“Without I kiss young Bob Tanner!”
And the little boy would shout, and protect himself from the onslaught by his silly, youngest, clumsy aunt, who was burning red above him.
So Mrs Godbold had her children. She had her girls. But for how long? With two already gone. Sometimes she would continue to sit in front of the shed after all those straight girls had slipped from her into the evening, leaving in her lap their necklaces of wilted flowers. Then it would seem as though she had shot her last arrow, and was used and empty. She would feel the touch of darkness. She would sit, and attempt to rub the rheumatism out of her knuckles. Often she would recall the night her friend the Jew died, in the shed behind her. Even the youngest children, who had been sleeping at the time, remembered that night, for sleep did not seem to have prevented them participating in the event. So their eyes saw farther than those of other girls. Tempered on that night, their metal was tougher. Finally the woman sitting alone in front of the deserted shed would sense how she had shot her six arrows at the face of darkness, and halted it. And wherever her arrows struck, she saw other arrows breed. And out of those arrows, others still would split off, from the straight white shafts.
So her arrows would continue to be aimed at the forms of darkness, and she herself was, in fact, the infinite quiver.
“Multiplication!” Mrs Godbold loudly declared, and blushed, for the nonsense it must have sounded, there on the road to Xanadu.
She looked back once more, however, at the two little boys, who were swinging the gate enough to break it.
Mrs Godbold meandered along past the raggedy wattles. She remembered the winter Miss Hare had been laid up, how she had gone down to nurse the poor thing, and how they had been together in the silent house, and spoken of the Chariot. Well, e
verybody saw things different. There was Miss Hare, who, they said, was mad. For that reason. Miss Hare had seen the chariot of fire. Mrs Godbold, who would never have contradicted her superior in any of her opinions, especially when the latter was sick, knew different too. She had her own vision of the Chariot. Even now, at the thought of it, her very centre was touched by the wings of love and charity. So that she closed her eyes for a moment as she walked, and put her arms around her own body, tight, for fear that the melting marrow might spill out of it.
When she opened her eyes again, there, already, was the new settlement of Xanadu, which they had built on the land Mr Cleugh, the relative, had sold. Mrs Godbold could not help admiring the houses for their signs of life: for the children coming home from school, for a row of young cauliflowers, for a convalescent woman, who had stepped outside in her dressing gown to gather a late rose.
“It is too cold, though! Too cold!” Mrs Godbold called, wrapping up her own throat, to illustrate.
“Eh?” mumbled the woman, as she stood tearing at the stalk of the resistant rose.
“You will catch cold!” Mrs Godbold insisted.
She could have offered more love than was acceptable.
The woman in the dressing gown stood, apparently not wishing to hear, and went inside presently, after she had succeeded in twisting off the rose.
Children stared at the stranger in passing, and decided she was probably a loop.
“You will be glad to be home at last,” she said.
“Nah,” the boys answered.
Some of the girls snickered.
But Mrs Godbold was satisfied simply to stand and observe Xanadu. On subsequent occasions people got to know her, and would look for her again, not only those whom she had healed of some anxiety, but those who suspected her of possessing an enviable secret; they would watch for the unchanging woman in her black prototype of a hat.
Riders In the Chariot Page 61