by A. S. Byatt
“Whipping things, in rather orderly wheel-shapes. Going into hard shapes. Ammonites mebbe. Light whizzing round ’n round ’n solidifying into ammonites. Lots of little … lots of little … little … Can I stop?”
“Marcus. Hush. Marcus.”
“Wool, oh, white wool, yellow wool, red wool …” She shook him.
“Soft,” he said and woke, staring at her without recognising her, sliding down a step.
“Get up, Marcus. Or Daddy …”
Galvanised, he pulled up his legs, staggered again and came up the stairs. She followed him into his bedroom.
“Marcus – is anything badly wrong? Can I do anything?” His cheeks were all muddy and grubby like those of a small boy who had wept and rubbed his eyes. He stared at her without answering.
“Something is wrong,” she said. He gathered himself, wrinkled his brow with effort, leaned forward on clenched fists as he had been used to do with the asthma, and informed her in a voice of gentle despair that she knew not the day nor the hour. Then he turned his face away and pitched into a sleep from which she judged it wisest not to wake him.
17. Pastoral
Stephanie went round to the Vicarage. She went straight up the stairs and knocked on Daniel’s door before it struck her that a man so busy was unlikely to be in. However, he came and opened the door. He was wearing a huge fisherman’s sweater in natural wool over green cord trousers. He looked ruffled, both in appearance and in expression.
“Oh. You, is it? What can I do for you?”
“I wanted your advice. About a religious problem. At least, I think that’s what it is.”
“You don’t have religious problems,” he said roughly.
“It isn’t my problem. But I think I have to deal with it. And I think something terrible may be going to happen.”
“O.K.,” said Daniel. “Come in.”
His room in daylight was sadder than in the dark, the bleak clutter emphasized, the mystery of heat and shadow gone. He offered her a chair and sat opposite her, his hands on his knees.
“Right,” he said. “Tell me.”
“It’s about my brother. I saw – when I came to church that time, I saw – he was there with that man, Simmonds, from Blesford Ride, the biology man. He was talking about God’s work. I thought you might know what was going on.”
“What do you think is going on?”
“I don’t know. I think it’s some sort of religious … religious … I don’t know. I mean, obviously, I wouldn’t mind that, in itself …”
“You would. But you’d not interfere. Go on.”
“Anyway, whatever it is is having a terrible effect on Marcus. He’s losing weight, and in his sleep he cries continually; I’ve gone in and watched him. He goes out at night, I’m sure with Simmonds, I’ve seen him waiting in the dark like a dog, like Lady Chatterley’s lover … well, I wouldn’t mind that, either, necessarily, but …”
“You wouldn’t mind anything on principle. But.”
“No, if you’d seen him, you’d not mock me for ineffective liberal views or whatever. He’s terrible, and ill. I wouldn’t really mind if it was just a homosexual phase – I even thought that might be good for him –”
“Or even not a phase?”
“Don’t jeer at me. He’s never had a friend, Daniel, he’s never had a friend, nor anyone. I came to you because I thought you might know something.”
“You put me in a very difficult position …”
“Please, forget about you and me. This is too awful.”
“I wasn’t thinking about that. Don’t put words in my mouth. I’m in a difficult position because Lucas Simmonds has already discussed – well – tried to discuss – this matter with me. And I don’t feel able to break a confidence.”
He watched her blush: and noticed that she looked desperately tired herself: and felt the old, steady, violent, useless love.
“Can’t you – in that case – indicate something I could do or say? I can’t let him go on like this –”
“No. I didn’t know how he was. Nothing was said about how he was.”
He thought back to the curious confession or statement or prophetic utterance of Lucas Simmonds, who had sat where she was sitting now, talking very fast, not, as she did, looking with puzzled eyes into his own, but babbling and chattering to ceiling and window, hand in trembling hand in his crotch.
He said, “Also, of course, there are people who come to tell you things, who want to have told someone a certain thing, to have talked about it – but can’t actually bring themselves to say what the real matter is. Some people are very oblique – partly because they daren’t say – partly because they’re not prepared to trust anyone who can’t guess what they only hint at – partly because they don’t know what they are on about, and hope if they go on talking it’ll become clear to them. They don’t care so much if it’s clear to me. So in a sense – not being a mind-reader – I’m not as knowledgeable as Mr Simmonds maybe thinks – or hopes – I might be, by now. And I don’t know what of what I did gather I’ve got any right to pass on to you.”
“It all sounds sinister.”
“I don’t know. I don’t think it’s sex. Or at least – he went out of his way to tell me it wasn’t. To tell me he didn’t approve of sex. He seems to believe in celibacy. He talked a lot about Purity. He didn’t actually name your brother. Only about Others. I mean, he said he had to ensure no harm came to Others. What sort of harm wasn’t clear, either.”
“Marcus hates you – hates anyone – to touch him. Even as a baby, you couldn’t cuddle him. He got asthma.”
There was an awkward silence. Daniel remembered Simmonds’s garbled discourse, which had touched on dangers to Others from spiritual forces unleashed by invocation, or by impurity, which had asserted plaintively that the Church had the forms to contain such forces, and had complained sullenly that the Church had abandoned living religious Power, for dead shells and empty echoing buildings. There had been digressions on chastity, science, Steps Forward in consciousness, the superior powers of Others, Simmonds’s own known inadequacies. To Daniel’s attempts to question he had answered always querulously that Daniel knew already all he needed to know, didn’t he, he was well-informed, he must watch and pray. At the end, after a good three quarters of an hour of this recurrent, recapitulating speech, he had suddenly thanked Daniel for his wisdom and counsel and left in a hurry. It was possible that his thanks were ironic. It was equally possible that he supposed he had successfully unburdened himself to Daniel.
What to say to Stephanie was another matter.
“I got the impression it was to do with religious exercises – prayers and visions and things. But it seemed to be scientific experiments too. He seemed to be afraid of the effects of the experiments on Others. I honestly don’t know if he meant Marcus. I could ask, if you’d like me to. I don’t like meddling.”
“There seems to be so much scope for unintentional damage. I can’t understand it – Marcus has never, never shown any sign of interest in religion and all that. I can’t see what’s got into him.”
“Maybe as you said, he needed a friend. Maybe he always did need religion and didn’t know it, not with his upbringing, until it was brought to his notice, like. That’s been known. It seems odd to me. But I’m not very religious myself.”
“What?”
“I’m not very –” Daniel said. Then he smiled sheepishly. “Well I’m not, not religious in that way, the real way. I don’t see signs or hear voices or experience great peace or all that, nor I shan’t.”
“I’ve never met anyone more religious.”
“Nay, but you’ve no idea, if you don’t mind me saying so, no idea at all of what the word means, let alone the thing itself.”
She bridled, “I was trained to deal with words.”
“Words,” said Daniel, and laughed. “I’m a glorified social worker, only I don’t do it for society, which I’m not that bothered about as an entity. I just wa
nt to work, flat out. T’ Yorkshire work ethic confuses that wi’ religion, but it’s not, and you know better, and so does Simmonds, for all his guff.”
She laughed nervously. “So I came with my religious problem to an irreligious religious man. That’s a joke.”
“Not really. Th’ problem’s still there. Can I make you a cup of coffee? Will you stay? I like talking to you.”
“I should love coffee. I like talking to you too. If only you weren’t so formidable.”
He busied himself with powered coffee. “Formidable?”
“How old are you?”
“Twenty-two,” said Daniel, a believer in truth. That particular truth left him peculiarly exposed. He was accustomed to be treated, to treat himself, as a man well over thirty.
“Nobody behaves as though you were only that.”
“It’s my weight. In both senses. Fat and representative function.”
He could feel her attention on him: she was thinking that he was young and saw everything, pain, illness, terror of death, horror of bereavement, feeble-mindedness, raving madness, loneliness and metaphysical anguish, all the things most people successfully avoid, much of the time, or suffer, unprepared, on their own account, once or twice. Well, so did doctors. So did Mr Ellenby. So, professionally, must Mr Ellenby. He only seemed, he seemed only, concerned with parish politics, precedence and prettiness of altar-piece and bazaar. Mrs Haydock had been there before Daniel came and no one had badgered herself, or anyone, into sitting with Malcolm.
“Why did you go into the Church, Daniel?”
“Because I can’t do wi’ half-measures. I’m scared of sitting on my backside and doing nothing. I’m scared of relaxing. I need a good shove, I need it to be required of me that I don’t stop for a minute. I need unthinking discipline.”
“You’re a born rebel –”
“Doesn’t exclude the other, does it? I need forcing. The Church forces you. Do you see?”
“Partly,” she said, imaginatively caught by the combination of terror of lassitude and inexhaustible forced energy. She had never seen the church as anything other than a centre of drowsiness, an ossified exo-skeleton containing an organism almost inert, pleasantly ruminating sustenance long champed dry of its vital juices. “But I feel the church isn’t the best place, not the liveliest place …”
“We’ll not go into that again, or you’ll be having me in the Town Hall behind a pigeonhole.”
He could not see what she objected to, not truly. He knew as well as she did that Mr Ellenby was a lazy snob, and he knew that she knew that charity was enjoined but he could not see how she did not see how the strength of the Church did not lie there. He could not imagine the whole force of her simple disbelief of the Christian stories themselves, though he had been trained to deal with Bill’s peremptory theological opposition. Bill would, and could, dispute the who, how, and why of the rolling away of the stone in the garden. Stephanie was simply not prepared to be interested in it, so clear was it to her that the truth of events was not as the New Testament declared it to be. Psychologically acute, Daniel was doctrinally simple: he needed to be: and to him Stephanie’s obvious virtues were Christian virtues, her scrupulousness, her gentleness, part of what he valued in Christ, and were derived from Christ, and that was that. You could have good Christians who thought they weren’t, and into that category she indisputably and tiresomely came. He had an inkling, nowhere near the full force of distaste she would in fact feel, that she would find this concept distasteful.
“Were you always in the Church, Daniel?”
“Well, no. It began when I was a boy, the only time I’ve ever been part of a body of people that was moved as one. Terrifying, that, actually. Hitler or the Mirfield Father.”
“Tell me.”
He told her. As near as he could remember, conscious that the story was, unlike parts of his life, something she would find sympathetic. She did. She was moved. She said so.
“That was what I call religion, too,” he said. “That man’d’ve known by intuition whether this Simmonds was a prophet or a crank, or a vision was a delusion, which is something I’ve no skill in, it comes natural to me to advise people not to mess in such. So I’m not much use wi’ Marcus. I can’t say more than keep an eye on him and by all means send him to me if it’ll do any good, in your view.”
“Thank you,” she said. Nothing was changed, but she had the impression that it was, just because Daniel’s energies were loose in the field of Marcus’s anguish.
“Look here – I’ve a day to myself – Wednesday next week – all day. I’ve kept it clear, I’m getting out of here. To be truthful I wanted to go away somewhere – think what to do about – what we’ve kept off. I thought I’d go for a long seaside walk. I’d like it if you’d come wi’ me. Not to argue, you understand, just to walk. We didn’t do badly, today.”
“No, we didn’t.”
“Then you’ll come.”
“I like the sea.”
“So you’ll come.”
She never said no, he reflected. It possibly followed that she never meant yes. She liked to please. She liked him. It was exasperating.
“Yes,” she said. “I’ll come.”
18. Anadyomene
They went to Filey because Daniel had spent childhood holidays there. Proposing this place, he explained that he usually didn’t go back to places, but then he usually didn’t have a private life, so had thought he might. It took them some time to get there: bus to Calverley, train from Calverley to Scarborough, another train from Scarborough to Filey. Most of this journey was sufficiently beset by engine-noise and wheel-rattle for them not to need to speak to each other. Daniel was without his uniform, in the fisherman’s sweater and a vast shapeless black duffel coat, hooded and toggled, that he had bought at an army surplus store. It made him look, the enormous man, something like a Brueghel peasant, Stephanie thought, as though he should have had a hod, or an axe, to complete him.
They were almost the only people to get out at the station, which was bright with sunshine and bitterly cold. Daniel had planned the day. They would walk down into the town and out along the sands to the Brigg. They could take a pork pie and a bottle of beer and eat out there. Stephanie, in sensible shoes, but without hat or gloves, shivered. Daniel took notice.
“Ay, there’ll be a wind up,” he said with satisfaction. “It’ll be blowing the sea up, I hope. You should have a hat. I’ll buy you one.”
She demurred.
“No. I’d like to give you something. I’d like you to be wrapped up well before we get going, so I don’t have to worry about getting you back.”
They walked into the town past pebble-dashed bungalows, and colour-washed holiday homes, winter-bleached and dormant. They found a dark brown Victorian drapers, with bosomy russet and oatmeal dresses tucked and tied like matronly scarecrows on chrome T shaped stands, behind felt basins and tulle drums, royal blue, petunia pink, greener than any apple.
Inside a beige woman in a beige knitted dress with a crocheted front opened for them cracked shiny white boxes of gloves, wool, leather, “fabric”. Stephanie, looking for cheapness and warmth, chose pale blue fair-isle mitts, with pale stars or sunbursts spangled on them. Daniel then insisted on the matching beret, which had a large pale yellow bobble. She pulled it on obediently over brow and ears; the neat roll of yellow hair curved out at the back, shining on her coat collar. How sweet, Daniel thought with overwhelming sentiment, and made a discovery. Behind the cliché was something old and fierce and absolute, a primeval passion of taste, Biblical honey. Ezekiel had eaten up the rolls of writing and called them sweet. It was the same, Daniel thought ferociously, with this clean round face under the childlike wool, the shining hair, the gentle, doubtful gaze.
They came into Cargate Hill, which was steep and cobbled and had hand-rails, the land giving a last uncompromising lurch, out and down. Ahead was the grey water, heavy and dark, with narrow lakes of glossy light lying where sunlight struck
through racing clouds. His father had always roared out, there it is, there it is, seeing it for the first time, had hurtled towards it roaring, with Daniel on his shoulders, who had at first cried out shrilly with him, and had later felt exposed to inhabitants and settled visitors who might guess he had only just come. Though why that had mattered, at times when he had only just come, he was now at a loss to know.
“There it is,” he said to Stephanie Potter, and took her arm.
You came out onto the beach through a huge stone arch under the promenade, a cavernous tunnel where the wind rushed and died. Sand piled in dry drifts, heaped against its walls, had its own irregular tide-line on the cobbles. He had plunged down daily through its cold shadow, kicking off rubber beach shoes, a fat boy wriggling fat toes in its cool, and then warmer siftings, coming out onto the sunny shores.
“You could ride ponies up here,” he said. “When I was little, you could come right up into’t town on your own horse, like, to your own door.” He had been a fat baby in a basket seat with leather pommels on a wobbling donkey. He had been a fat boy in long grey shorts with fat calves pinched by stirrup-leathers, half-worried, half-jubilant, as the thin piebald pony strained slowly up, its rough mane jiggling under his eyes. Some of the flesh on him now was the same flesh and some was gone forever. His dad had walked beside him, slapping his behind, saying straighten your back, son, look lively, don’t sag. The summer after the accident he had come up once or twice on his own: his mum didn’t walk up, and indeed only paid for him to go up, twice. He used to think if his dad would leave him to get on with it he could talk to the horseboys who hung onto his reins. But in the event he never did.
Stephanie wondered why this thought made him look so grim. They came under the arch.
“And the wind like a whetted knife. Me Dad always said that, every time we came through here. Invariably. I think it was the only line of poetry he knew.”
“It’s a very good line,” said Stephanie.