‘A Sir Richard Weston was the man behind it, a local man from Guildford. He’d travelled on the Continent and seen the locks and sluices on the Dutch canals, introduced them here. It’s quite a story, actually—endless quarrels and double-dealing, which went on for years and years, long after Sir Richard himself had died.’
Morna wove in a few more names and facts before driving on again. Best not to delay too obviously. There was still half a mile to go, and if they took it slowly …
There was a rhythmic rumble in the distance as they reached the station car park. The noise crescendoed, rattled through their voices.
‘That’s it!’ David shouted, leaping out.
She followed, jumping down the few stone steps which short-circuited the path, and dashing into the station after him. ‘Got your ticket?’
‘Yes!’
He flashed it at the ticket collector, took the stairs three at a time.
‘Goodbye, Morna. I’ll phone …’
He was almost on the platform now. She could no longer see him, only hear his voice. ‘Goodbye!’ she shouted back.
She heard the train pulling out, gathering speed, stopped halfway down the stairs. She couldn’t wave goodbye, let him see how stupidly upset she was. She trailed back to the top, stood looking out at the track where she could see the train cutting through the darkness in a blaze of lighted windows, a shower of sparks; watched it grow smaller, smaller, until it was swallowed up and the night closed in again. She glanced at her watch. What an irony! That train was seven minutes late.
He should have missed it.
Chapter Seven
‘I missed it!’
‘What?’ Morna swung round, came face to face with David—a David out of breath and panting, puffing up the last stair.
‘I got to the platform just as it was pulling out. I dashed across and tried to grab a door-handle, but the damn thing must have been jammed or locked or something. It wouldn’t open, anyway. Just my luck! By the time I’d tried the next one, the train was moving so fast, I …’
‘You’re not hurt, are you, David?’
‘No. I just feel a bit of a fool, besides having stitch …’
Morna touched the lucky coin in her pocket. A delightful fool—tie awry, one hand smudged with oil, the other clutching at his side. ‘I’d drive you to London, David, but I don’t really think … I mean, if I lose my licence …’
‘Of course not. I wouldn’t hear of it.’ David was attacking the oil with a hankie and some spittle. ‘It’s just my cousin … He was decent enough to offer me his sofa for the night and if I don’t show up, he might start dragging the river or something.’ He gave an awkward laugh.
‘Can’t you phone him? Tell him you’re okay?’
‘It’s midnight, though. He could well have gone to bed.’
‘David, honestly …’ Morna gave an exasperated shrug. ‘If he’s sound asleep, he’ll hardly be dragging rivers.’
‘No, I s’pose not. I think I’d better phone him all the same, though.’
‘There’s a call-box over there. Got some change?’
‘Yes, thanks.’ David jingled the coins in his pocket, returned with most of them unused. ‘That was short and sweet. He was asleep and he wasn’t worried. In fact he couldn’t wait to get back to bed. Well, now we’ve settled that, perhaps you’d show me Weybridge.’
‘What, in the dark?’
‘Why not? We’ve got the streetlamps. I’d like a proper look at that canal. You seem to know quite a bit about it.’
Morna paused at the station entrance. Not enough to fill a night, she thought. He was obviously reluctant to return to her house, face those five free beds. Yet she was surprised how cheerful he appeared now he had made his phone call. She had expected irritation, resentment even; feared he would blame her for making him miss the train. Or was he glad to miss it, preferred her company to some nervy cousin’s? She watched him stride out of the station, gaze around.
‘All right,’ she said, catching up with him. ‘Walk or drive?’
‘Oh, walk, I think. It’s a lovely night.’
‘It’s quite some way, though. Weybridge sort of wanders.’
‘We can wander too, then, and you show me all the sights. We’ve got the time. The next train’s at 4.22, the porter said.’
‘There aren’t many sights. This isn’t Paris, you know.’ Morna giggled suddenly. More than four whole hours’ reprieve and the night and Weybridge to themselves. The road was deserted, the heath deserted, the trees dark shapes in the gloom; the moon thin and near-transparent like the last sliver of a well-sucked sherbet-lemon. She looked up, serenaded it.
‘‘‘With how sad steps, O Moon, thou climb’st the skies!
How silently, and with how wan a face!’’’
David chimed in, word-perfect:
‘‘‘What! may it be that even in heavenly place.
That busy archer his sharp arrows tries?’’
That’s thirty-one, isn’t it? I used to know them all, once, off by heart.
‘‘Come, sleep, the certain knot of peace,
The baiting-place of wit, the balm of woe,
The poor man’s wealth, the …’’
No, I’d better not start on that one or I’ll have you running for your bed.’
‘Let’s stick to the moon, then.’ Morna smiled up at it again. ‘I know—we’ll play a game. I start a verse and you continue it. If you know how the lines go on, then you begin another one and I have to take it up. If not, then it’s my turn again. Okay?’
‘Okay. Is it only Sidney, or anyone we like?’
‘Oh, anyone. Right, I’ll start again.’ Morna struck an attitude, spoke in a false baritone.
‘‘‘By heaven methinks it were an easy leap
To pluck bright honour from the pale-fac’d moon …’’’
David hardly let her finish:
‘‘‘Or dive into the bottom of the deep,
Where fathom-line could never …’’’
‘You’re good at this, David. Your turn now.’
‘Still the moon?’
‘Why not?’
He paused a moment, grinned.
‘‘‘O the moon shone bright on Mrs Porter and on her daughter …’’’
‘‘‘They wash their feet in soda water,’’’ Morna shouted. ‘Easy! Chris was doing that for A level. My turn again.’
Fifteen minutes later, she was flummoxed for the first time.
‘Say it again—slower.’
‘‘‘The moon on the one hand, the dawn on the other:
The moon is my sister, the dawn is my brother.’’ You ought to know it, Morna—with your Catholic school and everything.’
‘No, I’m really stuck.’
‘It’s Hilaire Belloc—‘‘The Early Morning …’’’
‘Oh, him. We never did him, actually.’
‘What, a good orthodox Catholic writer like that! We were brought up on him—and Chesterton.’
‘I suspect he was too frivolous for our Reverend Mother—all those Cautionary Tales and Bad Child’s Books of Beasts and things. Reverend preferred the real solemn Catholics—Gerard Manley Hopkins and George Herbert and …’
‘We had those as well, and a lot of other much less defensible ones. It’s funny, isn’t it, how they push the Catholic writers? Our school library was packed with third-rate books by first-rate Catholics, but lacked half the first-rate books by unbelievers.’
‘So did ours. We even had bits snipped out of books. The tiniest hint of anything—well—risqué, landed up in the waste-bin.’ Morna laughed, longed to take his arm. They were sister and brother, weren’t they, pooling childhood memories? David seemed to have opened up, relaxed. She turned round suddenly, heard a soft pattering behind them. ‘Oh, look—a dog! I wonder where he came from.’
‘It’s a she.’ David stooped down, stroked the squat brown head. ‘Without a collar. Must be a stray.’
‘You don’t get strays in Weyb
ridge—nor blacks, nor unemployed. All forbidden.’ Morna giggled again. Nice to be just slightly tiddly, legs floating under her, showing off her poetic repertoire. ‘Get off home, there’s a good boy.’
‘Girl.’
‘Girl, then. Drat! It seems to have attached itself to us. Go on—shoo!’
‘Oh, let her stay. She’s rather sweet.’
‘Sweet! With a face like that?’
‘I’ve always had a weakness for ugly dogs—you know, bull terriers and pugs and …’
‘She looks a quarter pug and a quarter sort of beagle, with a large chunk of dachshund thrown in, too, judging by those sawn-off legs.’ Bea had had a dachshund once, with the same waddling gait, the same black-treacle eyes. She didn’t want to be reminded of her mother—not now—didn’t need a chaperone, was reluctant to share David with anyone at all. She turned her back on the dog.
They had reached the junction with Church Street and Bridge Road. The streets were deserted, the day’s heat and grime quenched in the cold stare of the moon; the softer light of the lampposts flattering ugly shopfronts, pointing silver fingers at their own distorted shadows. The place looked almost exotic without the usual press of shoppers, purr of cars. Or was it simply that she had David with her, was seeing it through his eyes? She felt strangely light and free, as if by divesting herself of house and car, she had changed her status, become young again and footloose, without the weight of Neil’s possessions; playing truant with a man who was still a student, who had never set up house, never tied himself down with children, chattels, vows.
‘The shops start here,’ she told him. ‘The High Street’s just ahead. And that’s the parish church. Not one of ours, as my mother would say.’
‘They stole them from us, those Protestants—that’s my mother’s line.’
Morna laughed. ‘Isn’t it crazy—all that fighting for religion—sects and schisms and bloody wars and things.’ She stared at the poster in the churchyard, ‘JESUS SAVES’, shivered suddenly. ‘I’d better own up now, David. I’ve left it all. You know, the classic lapsed Catholic thing, except I’ve always thought that ‘‘lapsed’’ is completely the wrong word. It’s too passive—a sort of sliding, drifting, gradual word, whereas what I felt was a sudden shattering fall, like Lucifer’s out of Heaven.’ She was being grandiose, expressive, and enjoying it.
David nodded.
‘Are you still a Catholic?’ she asked him. ‘I know you said you believed in God, but that’s not the same, is it?’
He paused to check on the dog, seemed unwilling to commit himself. ‘I’m … er … still redefining all my terms. That can take a lifetime.’
They had stopped outside a boutique—Neil’s type of shop, chichi and expensive, everything matched and toned, beads and ostrich feathers strewn between designer clothes. Morna pressed her nose to the glass.
‘It’s funny, though, how one’s Catholic training sticks. I mean, is that chiffon dress there a vain and worldly bauble or something to be saved and slaved for?’
‘Oh, a vain and worldly bauble, definitely.’
They both laughed this time. ‘It was even worse at school,’ Morna went on. ‘I remember coming home in the Christmas holidays and feeling a real aversion to all the loaded shops and fancy decorations, seeing them through the nuns’ eyes, I suppose. Then, just when I’d softened up a bit and was actually enjoying things, I’d be dragged back to school and have to change attitudes again.’
‘I know exactly what you mean. Our form master told us we should try and squeeze a penance in, even on Christmas Day, so when I was thirteen, I went the whole hog and refused to touch the turkey at all or even try a mouthful of mince pie. My mother was dreadfully upset and thought I was sickening for something. It ruined the whole Christmas.’
Morna said nothing. It still seemed amazing that they had shared a similar sort of childhood, an identical type of school, that David understood conflicts which Neil had laughed to scorn. She shouldn’t be disloyal, though. Neil had saved her, in a sense.
‘Actually, I … I think I only married Neil because I’d … lost my faith.’ They had crossed the road to the churchyard, were wandering among the graves, feeling the chill of clammy marble, moss-encrusted stone; watching their shadows dart before them and seem to bring the tombs to life. It was easier to talk there, in the gloom, with a sheltering wall around them, guardian trees. She longed to pour out everything, felt David would understand as no one ever had yet. He had turned towards her, as if to fix his whole attention on her words.
‘It was like … like marrying on the rebound—you know, leaving God and finding someone else. Neil made quite a decent substitute, in fact. He had tremendous energy—was very ambitious, very much a presence. That sort of man’s easy to worship, especially when you’re young. I replaced the old Catholic sacraments with new ones—rituals like home-making and cooking, service to a provider instead of to a Creator. It gave life point again and a sort of axis. Neil was always there, like God had been—if not actually in the house, then in my thoughts or phoning me or planning our lives or shoring up the universe. That was important. On my own, I didn’t feel quite … real, hardly seemed to exist—not without a religion. If God had created me in the first place, then when He disappeared, so did I. I felt this sort of … terror, that I was shut up in myself, and so infinitely small, I was like one of those microbes which live on your eyelashes and can’t even be seen without a microscope.’ She paused, peered down to read the inscription on a tombstone, ‘beloved husband of …’ David was still silent, frowning in total concentration, seemed to be encouraging her to continue.
‘When Neil left, those feelings all returned, got so bad sometimes I’d wake screaming in my sleep. And yet it seemed ridiculous, out of all proportion. I had friends who were divorced and separated. They weren’t exactly over the moon, but they groused about the simple things—lack of cash or having to move to a smaller place or … I was lucky.’ Morna stooped to avoid a trailing cedar branch. That word again. ‘I kept telling myself how much worse it would be crammed into a bedsit on Social Security, but it somehow seemed irrelevant. The terror was so …’ She broke off. ‘D’ you know what I’m even talking about?’
David nodded, called the dog to heel.
‘I’m sorry, I’m boring you. Other people’s divorces are a pain. I learnt that soon enough. Actually, I’ve hardly ever mentioned this before. Yet it astonishes me sometimes that more people don’t feel fear—fear of being here at all, when everything is so fragile and mysterious and we don’t know where we come from or where we’re going and we’ve only scratched the surface of any knowledge and we’re going to die and after that … God! It all sounds so adolescent—what Chris should be feeling at seventeen. I did feel it at her age, but I haven’t grown out of it. Retarded, I suppose!’ She laughed. She would regret it in the morning, letting out that secret tortured teenager whom she had always kept strictly caged before, strictly private. Damn the morning! It was still night-time, time for indiscretion, mead-talk.
‘Yet how can people be so … so happy-go-lucky, David—even people with no beliefs or philosophy at all? It’s different for you. You’ve still got a faith—even if you’ve had to redefine it.’
He stopped by the cedar, ran his hand across its scaly bark. ‘I … I know what you mean by the terror, though.’
‘Do you?’
‘Mm. The trick is to move beyond it, accept the terror as part of the whole scheme of things, part of God, if you like.’
‘Isn’t that a bit … heretical?’
‘Yes, probably. You can’t avoid heresy. Things are too damned complex to get all our answers right.’ He leant against the tree trunk, face shadowed by its foliage. ‘One of the problems is that we try and stuff fear and evil out of sight, pretend they don’t exist. Those dark forces need facing and propitiating. Abban understood that. So did the pagans. Perhaps they weren’t so wrong in seeing evil spirits in storms or draughts, or waiting to snatch their children a
way or punish them with plagues. There is evil in the world and we have to deal with it.’
Morna jumped as he snapped off a twig, broke it in half again before continuing. ‘There’s a bit in Abban’s life when they’d had a terrible summer on the island with all the harvest ruined and boats wrecked, and Abban stayed up all night and did battle with the demons. It was an inward battle, of course, with Abban using prayer and penance, but in the morning, the sea was like a village pond and the sun was shining and all the islanders knew that Abban’s God had vanquished the demons. We need rituals like that. Even if they’re not true in the literal sense, they’re still psychologically valuable. We have to slay our dragons and see them slain.’
‘Well, at least we’re staying up all night. That’s a start.’ Morna was suddenly reluctant to get too intense again. She had started it herself, but now she wanted to change the mood, return to the games. She led him out of the graveyard, along the narrow path which skirted the church, the dog still following, their footsteps echoing in the silence. The stars looked weak and very far away. A faint scent of honeysuckle smoked from the hedge beside them, though it was too dark to make out any flowers.
‘Oh, look!’ said David. ‘A recreation ground—and with a really decent slide.’
‘Want to go in?’
‘Yes, please.’
He was suddenly running, heading for the slide, the dog bounding after him, yapping at his heels. He clambered up the metal steps, settled himself on the chute, seemed to stick there.
‘Damn! My shoes are catching.’
‘Pick your feet up then,’ Morna shouted from the ground, dodged as a worn brown shoe came bouncing down the slide, followed closely by the other, then by David himself. She stared at him, astonished. He was running in his socks towards the steps again, had reached the top and was manoeuvring on to his stomach, shooting down head first this time. She could hardly recognise the David of the retreat, the Father Anthony, as he crawled up from the ground, rushed back for another go.
‘Come on, Morna. Your turn!’
The Stillness the Dancing Page 13