Poor Angus

by Robin Jenkins

  She and her sister were amused by the minister’s naivety. It didn’t matter if God knew your secrets. He could be trusted not to clype.

  7

  Nell would never forget the shock when she looked out of the kitchen window and saw a tall woman in a blue coat and white skirt and a girl of about ten wearing a white coat, just as Janet had described them in her vision, step out of the car. She had been so utterly convinced that they would not come that when she saw them there she could not believe it. She must be having hallucinations. Janet had infected her. But she was not only seeing them, she was hearing them too. They were talking in a strange language, the woman earnestly, the child peevishly. Nell’s own children, tired after a long journey, had been peevish just like this.

  She rushed to Angus’s studio and banged on the door. ‘For God’s sake, they’ve come. She was right after all. She’s a bloody witch.’

  The door opened. There was a small blob of red paint on Angus’s beard, which meant that he must have been painting. She felt glad about that but moments later realised that he was about to receive another severe setback, though perhaps it should have been an inspiration.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ he asked, peevish himself.

  ‘They’ve come. God help us, they’re out there.’

  ‘Who have come?’

  ‘That woman in your painting upstairs. Though she’s got clothes on. A blue coat. There’s a kid with her.’

  ‘Fidelia?’ He did not know whether to look overjoyed or horrified. What, thought Nell, would make up his mind for him?

  They heard the outside door opening and Janet crying joyously. God help her, thought Nell, she thinks he’ll be delighted. Where’s her second sight now?

  They came in, Janet, then Fidelia, and last the little girl.

  What Nell noticed first was how the child, though among strangers, did not, as most children would have done, cling to her mother. She kept apart from everyone. Though she held her doll tightly, she was not looking for support from it either. She was on her own. The doll had fair hair and blue eyes, which struck Nell as odd, for its owner’s hair was jet-black and her eyes brown.

  Throwing away all her reservations, Nell bent down and embraced the little girl. She felt her grow stiff and quickly released her.

  Angus and Fidelia were staring at each other.

  It seemed to Nell that she was thinner than when Angus had painted her, if, that was, he hadn’t in the painting deliberately added on some fat since it had been sexuality he had been after and, like Rubens before him, had not thought it could be done through skinniness.

  Not that Fidelia was skinny. For a woman of 36 or so she had a fine figure. In a bikini bottom she would have been whistled at on Bondi Beach, and she would certainly have had the best tan. Her hair was magnificent, jet-black and lustrous. She had the white clean teeth of a fruit-eater.

  Nell looked for faults. Were her feet just a bit too big? Her lips too red and thick? Her skin blemished, as if she had had smallpox when a child? Her eyes too meek?

  It was her eyes that fascinated Nell most. In their meekness lurked desperation. That was natural, considering the plight she was in. You would see it in a sheep if its lambs were threatened. Yes, but all the sheep could do was stamp its foot and bleat. This tall woman with the blood-red finger nails had savagery stored up in her, for hundreds of years.

  ‘Khabar baik, Angus,’ she said, in a soft tired voice.

  Whatever the greeting meant, Angus responded more like a host than a lover. ‘You should have let me know you were coming. I would have met you at the airport.’

  You would have made arrangements to be elsewhere. thought Nell. But why the hell am I taking her part against him. I should leave that to Janet.

  The child, Nell saw, was beginning to have some trust in Janet, but not yet in Nell, and certainly not in Angus. She made no attempt to hide her dislike of him.

  Janet it was who set about making them at home. She took them upstairs, carrying one of their suitcases, and showed them their room. Nell carried up the other suitcase, the heavier one, belonging to Fidelia. They were told where the bathroom was and then left to themselves. Lunch, said Janet, would be in an hour.

  As she and Nell went downstairs, Nell grumbled that she had made preparations for three and also that there would be competition for the bathroom, with five people queuing up to use it.

  Janet’s reply was curt. She would take charge of lunch. Angus could use the monks’ privy.

  Nell didn’t know whether to laugh or be angry. There was no one to tell her either. Thank God she was leaving on Monday.

  Janet was taking charge of more than lunch. In the living-room she scolded Angus for his cold reception of Fidelia. ‘She’s probably breaking her heart.’

  Nell doubted it, but did not say so. She remembered Fidelia’s eyes.

  ‘What am I to do?’ Angus said it twice, once, it seemed, to Buddha.

  From the kitchen, where with her sleeves rolled up Janet was already busy, she answered him: ‘First of all, we’ll have to show her Patel’s letter. Then we’ll have to persuade her that it wouldn’t be safe for her to stay here. Gomez knows about you being here on Flodday.’

  ‘If you think that’s what we should do, Janet.’

  That whimper Nell interpreted as meaning: ‘Nothing would please me more than to get rid of them.’ She despised him a bit for his duplicity and cowardice but pitied him too. He just did not have a big enough heart to take on somebody else’s troubles and make them his own.

  ‘They’ll have to go with Douglas and me on Monday,’ said Janet.

  Which would leave Angus on his own again. It seemed to Nell he cheered up at the prospect. Probably he saw himself able to return to his painting, with joy and zest.

  ‘Won’t Douglas have something to say about that?’ asked Nell. ‘Pardon me, but you haven’t given me the impression that he would welcome into his home strangers with a load of trouble. Few men would.’ All the same she knew of one: her Bruce. He would have adopted Angus’s child as his own. He would have defied Gomez, for Letty’s sake. He had always loved children. No wonder Bruce Junior and Madge had always preferred him. Yes, they had. But she had been a fat slob then, never without a glass in her hand or a fag in her mouth.

  ‘They can stay with us for as long as is necessary,’ said Janet.

  ‘How long is that?’ asked Nell. ‘A month? A year? The rest of their lives? You’re not being realistic, Janet.’

  ‘Later I could take them to Skye.’

  Nell had to put a brake on her, for all their sakes. ‘You’ve really got nothing to do with it, Janet. Neither have I. It’s Angus’s business.’

  Crouched on the green divan, Angus was staring blankly at Buddha, who was staring blankly back. ‘How is it my business?’ he whined.

  ‘Maybe it isn’t. You didn’t ask her to come. What was between you is dead and gone. Isn’t it?’

  ‘No, it isn’t,’ said Janet.

  ‘Did they say anything to you in the car?’

  ‘No, they didn’t, and I said nothing to them. I thought it better to wait till we were all present.’

  ‘I don’t particularly want to be present.’

  ‘But you’re sorry for them, aren’t you?’

  ‘Sure, I’m sorry for them. I’m sorry for millions of people. But, since I can’t help them I don’t pretend I can.’

  ‘You can help Fidelia and Letty. Tell them they’d be safer with me in Glasgow.’

  ‘Would they, though? There would be lots of difficulties you haven’t thought of. It might be better if they stayed here with Angus.’

  That produced a piteous groan from Angus. He didn’t want Fidelia and Letty there but hadn’t the guts to say it. He would be ashamed of himself when they were gone, but he would also be very relieved.

  Nell gave in. ‘All right. I’ll say my piece, for what it’ll be worth.’

  An hour later she volunteered to go upstairs and tell the newcomers that
lunch was ready.

  She knocked on the door. Little Letty opened it. Beyond her Nell saw Fidelia on her knees in front of the dressing-table which had been turned into a little Catholic shrine. There were little plaster saints, a Madonna in blue, and a picture of Christ with His bleeding heart.

  My God, thought Nell, more upset than she had a right to be. If the poor woman thinks praying to these little idols will help, good luck to her.

  Letty was gazing up at her. Children were supposed to be more credulous than adults, easily made to believe in angels that protected those who were good and in devils that punished the wicked. Well, here was a ten-year-old face that resolutely rejected all that nonsense. Letty knew that it depended only on people, and in her short life she had learned not to trust many of them.

  8

  It soon became clear that Letty was not going to be left out of any discussion about her future, and that she would go to bed only when her mother did. So it was decided, by Janet, that Patel’s letter should be shown to Fidelia with the child present.

  Fidelia read it seated on the green divan, with Letty beside her.

  Nell sat on the red divan, though she hated it, for its colour, its lowness, and its inadequate back.

  Janet sat on a cushion on the floor, with her legs crossed and her arms folded.

  Angus was standing beside Buddha. He seemed to be trying to achieve the same inscrutable smirk.

  Nell heard sheep bleating and birds screaming outside. She shut her eyes and remembered Madge when she was ten like Letty. If anyone had tried to take her from her, she would have killed him first.

  Letty was now poring over the letter.

  Janet broke the silence. ‘Do you think you husband will come here?’ she asked.

  Fidelia nodded. She was in a state of terror.

  Letty wasn’t, though. She looked pleased. Could she, at her age, understand such a letter? Nell wondered.

  ‘Then you mustn’t be here when he comes,’ said Janet. ‘We don’t know if the Scottish courts would recognise his warrants. We’ll have to find that out. In the meantime it would be safer if he didn’t know where you were.’

  Fidelia managed another nod, but Letty shook her head.

  Perhaps the kid wants her father to have her, thought Nell. He’s rich, isn’t he? He’s got a house in Forbes Park. God forgive me for thinking that.

  ‘I think,’ said Janet, ‘and Angus thinks, and Nell too, that you should come to Clarkston with me.’

  Janet’s in her element, managing other people’s lives, thought Nell, and was at once contrite. Never sneer at anyone doing good or trying to do good when you yourself are doing damn-all. The eleventh commandment.

  ‘Tell me what I should do, Angus,’ whispered Fidelia.

  ‘I’m afraid Janet’s right. If Gomez came here, you’d give in to him, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘He is my husband.’

  Nell realised then how deep a mess the woman was in. Even God was against her. If Gomez came, God would have brought him and he would have to be obeyed. That she thought she was permitted to try to escape from Gomez, with God’s connivance, was contradictory all right, but religion was full of contradictions.

  ‘I understand that,’ said Janet. ‘If you met him face to face, you’d have to do what he wanted. Yes, I understand that.’

  Do you, Janet? asked Nell, inwardly. When you met Douglas face to face, you hit him with a putter. Yet all he’d been doing was a little adultery. A trifle, compared to having your kid grabbed from you.

  ‘But, if you weren’t here, that couldn’t happen,’ said Janet. ‘So it’s important he doesn’t know where you are.’

  Nell could have pointed out that if Gomez and his lawyers came to Flodday they would soon find people to sell them information as they had done in Basah. It would be well known in Kildonan that Mrs Gomez and her daughter had left on the Glasgow plane with Mrs Maxwell. After that it would be easy enough to find out where Mrs Maxwell lived.

  ‘On Monday,’ said Janet. ‘We’ll go on Monday.’

  Today was Thursday. There was time for Gomez to arrive before Monday.

  ‘It’s very kind of you,’ said Fidelia.

  Was it kindness? Nell supposed so. It would be mean to deny it. But it was also something else. As a child, Janet must have loved to boss her playmates. Here she was at it again. It was a kind of game to her.

  Nell wished that she could say something sensible, helpful, and comforting. She couldn’t, so she said nothing.

  ‘Letty and I will discuss it,’ said Fidelia. ‘We will go to bed now. We are very tired. Please excuse us.’

  She took Letty’s hand, or rather, made to take it. Letty wasn’t willing to give it.

  When they had gone, there was silence in the living-room.

  At last Nell felt she could speak. ‘What we haven’t taken into consideration is that the kid might want her father.’

  ‘After he’s neglected her all her life?’ said Janet. ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Nell.’

  ‘It’s not ridiculous.’ The voice came from the direction of Buddha. It might have been the god’s, so strange it sounded. ‘In Basah she told me once that one day she would go to her father.’

  ‘What age was she when she said that?’ asked Nell.

  ‘About six or seven. She knew what she was saying. She knows he’s rich.’

  ‘That’s a disgraceful thing to say, Angus,’ said Janet.

  ‘So it is,’ said Nell,’ but that doesn’t mean it’s not true. You could see she doesn’t want to go to Glasgow with you. She wants to stay here till Gomez comes, till her father comes.’

  ‘Are you saying that she would be prepared to abandon her mother?’

  ‘I expect she’s hoping that they’ll all be together. Maybe she’s got reason for hoping that. We don’t know what’s passed between Gomez and Fidelia. He may have offered a reconciliation and she turned it down.’

  ‘Good for her. According to Angus, he’s an evil person, a racketeer. He owns brothels.’

  ‘In Manila that’s considered a respectable occupation. Anyway, Angus could be exaggerating. You haven’t met him, have you, Angus?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘Well, let’s give it a rest for tonight. Even Buddha looks as if he’s had enough.’

  Next day Fidelia spent a good part of it in her room, praying, Nell was sure, and arguing with Letty or rather being argued with by Letty, in their native language: Tagalog, said Angus. Downstairs they heard Letty screaming. ‘She needs her arse spanked,’ muttered Nell. Yet all the kid was doing was fighting for her place in the world. Was it possible that in Basah Gomez’s lawyers had spoken to the child behind her mother’s back? They would have promised glittering bribes. It wasn’t that she was a crafty little Filipina. If her skin had been white and her eyes Occidentally blue she would still, in a world she did not trust, have had to show the same stubborn self-interest.

  Nell would have liked to speak privately to the child, to try to find out what her hopes and feelings were, and also to show her that people could be trusted. She could not bring herself to do it, though there were opportunities: Letty went for walks by herself, in sight of the house.

  Janet had no qualms about interfering. Nell saw her and Letty on the beach. Janet was doing most of the talking.

  Later Nell asked her how she had got on with Letty.

  ‘She doesn’t say much.’

  ‘Not to us.’

  ‘But I’m sure she wants to do what’s best for her mother.’

  And for herself, thought Nell. But why expect a child often to show them all an example of self-denial?

  In Janet’s case, whatever it was, it was not self-denial. She was enjoying herself too much. To be fair, she was also greatly relieved. She believed in demons. Every night she asked Angus if he had put out food for them. Nell herself knew that a disaster could be waiting round every corner, but Janet did not just know it, she saw it before it happened, or so she claimed. Had she foreseen
one in this house which could only be prevented if Fidelia and Letty were taken away? But if it had been foreseen, surely it must happen.

  Angus kept himself locked in his studio, sulking, Nell thought, not painting. She saw him once sneaking back from the monks’ privy and waylaid him.

  ‘What do you really want, Angus?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Outside his own house he looked homeless. Poor Angus.

  ‘What do you want them to do?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘That’s not good enough.’

  ‘All right. I think they should go back to Basah.’

  ‘But wouldn’t that mean her having to give up Letty?’

  ‘It will come to that in any case.’

  ‘And it doesn’t bother you?’

  ‘What bothers me is that I have had to give up my painting.’

  ‘You really are a shit, Angus.’

  Yet if Rembrandt, say, had been asked to choose between giving up his painting or betraying a woman he loved, and he had chosen the latter he would have proved himself a good man but the world would have lost many masterpieces. To say that Angus was hardly a Rembrandt would be unfair. There had been a time when Rembrandt was unrecognised.

  ‘You’re only giving it up temporarily.’

  ‘I hope so. Otherwise I’ll have nothing to live for.’

  ‘Bullshit.’

  ‘What’s your own opinion, Nell? You’ve said very little.’

  ‘They’re nothing to me. I’m leaving on Monday, whatever anyone else does. You knew them. You were once in love with Fidelia. You know, I think Janet’s right and you’re still in love with her. You don’t want to be, you hate it as you would a cancer, but it’s there, incurable.’

  He shook his head.

  ‘All right. I’ll tell you what I think. I think you should offer to spend every penny you’ve got to help her keep her kid. You could also help her to get a divorce and then you could marry her.’

  ‘She doesn’t believe in divorce.’

  ‘You said that as if you were glad. I always knew you were no hero, Angus, but I didn’t know you were such a shit.’ Then she added what afterwards she regretted. ‘I’m beginning to think Bruce was right about you.’