A Petrol Scented Spring

by Ajay Close

  When they take their pew, Billy whispers ‘Splendiferous, eh?’ and Hilda can only agree. The resiny scent from the evergreen branches framing the door, the pillars wound with holly and ivy, the rood screen crowned with pine cone and mistletoe and hellebore, the guests glowing in shades of amethyst, sapphire, emerald, ruby. A murmur ripples through the nave and every head turns to the back of the church. The bride drifts down the aisle in her white Guinevere dress, a winter sacrifice. The Doc’s eyes shine like a child’s on Christmas Eve. He’s quite the mythic hero, with that dagger down his sock and his barbarian’s exposed knees. Uncle George seems nervous before the titled congregation, but rises to the occasion like the old limelight-hogger he is, and the choir sing the Exultate Deo like angels, and when the groom places his ring on the bride’s white hand, even Hilda’s sharp eyes blur with a tear.

  Then the newlyweds are out on the pavement, being pelted with white rose petals as they climb into the car, where they’re strangely silent but grinning like Cheshires. The guests toddle back to Earls Court Square for speeches and toasts and a spread that would feed five thousand. The next hour or two are lost on Hilda, she and Billy are in a world of their own, until Mama brings Grandmother Kate across and she has to submit to being quizzed about her beaux, with Billy raising a knowing eyebrow, so it’s all she can do not to burst out laughing. And then – gawd blimey, Billy – the Doc crosses the room to shake her hand and call her sister, and it would be too rude not to introduce Argemone ffarington Bellairs, though it’s obvious he disapproves. You can practically hear him thinking ‘invert’. Billy’s rather tickled, and drops her voice another octave as she clasps his hand and tells him he’s a lucky chap, Do’s a delightful gel, known her for years. So he’s a doctor, is he? She has the very greatest respect for the members of his profession she has met at the Front: so tireless and resourceful and, well, courageous. The Doc half-suspects he’s being ragged, but can’t quite believe Billy would do it at his wedding. Then Grandmother Kate comes to the rescue, asking him to chum her back to her chair. And they all – well, all except the Doc – drink a lot of ’poo, and say how d’ye do to everyone they haven’t seen since the last wedding, and at least ten people tell Hilda you’ll be next, and Billy cocks her wicked eyebrow as Hilda replies that she might yet surprise them, and suddenly they’re on their feet because the happy couple are about to depart for the hotel where Dodo will finally, irreversibly, become Mrs Hugh Ferguson Watson.

  EIGHTEEN

  I thought about Hugh every minute of the ten weeks we were apart before our wedding. How handsome he was, how decisive, how brusquely masculine sometimes. I liked to see him angry, knowing his fierceness turned mild with me. When Mama told him I’d been ill, and he took my pulse, I felt the desire he fought down. Banking the fire till we were wed only made it more exciting. I liked to tease him, biting my lip when I looked at him, breathing in his ear when he stooped to kiss my cheek. Thinking my shameless thoughts, waiting for him to read my mind. When his eyes burned at me from across the room it was all I could do not to groan. I wanted to offer myself like a goblet, or a banquet, have him taste all my flavours. As I longed to taste his. I couldn’t understand all those Shakespearean lovers lamenting the torments, when love was all pleasure and enchantment. The songs he played, the letters he wrote, the smell of the rain that day we walked up Kinnoull hill, the rabbits we surprised, the sunset flashing gold off the monastery weathervane, the bats flickering over the river at dusk . . .

  When the day comes, I think I will die from happiness. Mama forces me to swallow my porridge, unless I want to spend the first hour of married life dizzy with champagne and the next four being sick in the lavatory. She dismisses the girl and dresses me herself, as she used to when I was a baby. No one fit to hire as a nursery maid in that godforsaken country. Besides, she wanted me to know I had a living, breathing mother. Unlike her own bleak start. We’re both close to tears when Mrs Curtice knocks to tell us the car is waiting. ‘There now,’ Mama says, giving my veil a final tweak and moving away from the long glass. I hardly know myself. Every bride is beautiful, Hilda will say to me after the ceremony, so where do all the ugly old wives come from?

  I know from all the hours of planning that the church is dark with evergreen and glittering with candle flame, but I see nothing and no one but Hugh, standing at the altar. The most beautiful man in London. Out-dazzling Uncle George in his gold-embroidered cope. When he turns and looks at me with his blazing eyes, my heart bursts in my chest.

  Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it.

  Twelve months ago I was an old maid with fifty empty years to fill. I would develop a passion for gardening or appliqué work or visiting neolithic sites. Everyone would say how marvellous I was. Today I too can pity old maids, and compliment them on their pointless hobbies. I am married to Hugh. He is here at my side, his hand’s pressure on my waist, his lips soft on my ear as he murmurs How long before we can leave? ‘Not yet,’ I smile, nestling my head into his shoulder. There are the speeches to be got through, and the toast to our life together, at which he tilts my chin and kisses me on the lips. When the hubbub resumes I send him across to Hilda, she has been monopolising Bill Bellairs for long enough. She and Hugh are brother and sister now, and must make their peace before they can progress to the sort of spiky badinage Hilda inflicts on everyone she loves. The next time I look he’s in earnest conversation with Grandmother Kate, which is good of him, because she’s eighty and half-deaf these days. And then he’s gone. Five, ten, fifteen minutes later he is still not back. Gordon finds him on the pavement, in the dark, and I don’t know what is said but my brother’s face is flushed when he returns. He shakes his head. I can’t go out there, everyone would look, so I beckon to Bill and, a few minutes later, she re-enters the party with a man who wears my husband’s clothes but is otherwise quite unrecognisable. When I lean into him, his chest feels like stone.

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘Can you not guess?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Have a wee think about it.’

  Bill is back beside Hilda, the two of them laughing. What a tremendous jest. I ask Hugh for a private word in the next room. He snorts. I’m ready to weep, to fall on my knees and plead for his forgiveness, but how can I in front of three hundred and fifty guests? He says the time for explaining was before we were married, and how can I deny it, but the truth is I’m still intacta: I thought he’d never find out. The last hour of the wedding celebration is as miserable as the previous three have been joyous, but I have to pretend I’ve never been happier, smiling and raising my glass when I would like to smash it on the table and drag the jagged edge across my wrists. If that’s what it would take to make him pity me. When at last we’re alone in the privacy of the car, after the throwing of the bouquet and our grim-faced dash through the smiling guests, I blurt out:

  ‘It was just girlish curiosity. I’m not like Bill Bellairs.’

  For one terrible moment he looks bewildered. And then everything becomes so much worse.

  What Mama reads in my tear-bloated face when I burst into her room next morning is the shocked discovery of human biology. She assures me it gets better. Perhaps she should have warned me, but she didn’t want to put me off. It might all have gone swimmingly. I am twenty-six years old. I have known the ins and outs of sex for so long I have forgotten who told me. It takes a while to convince her that her fears are groundless. That their very groundlessness is what is amiss. She laughs in relief: many men suffer first-night nerves. It’s understandable, even honourable, a good omen for our future happiness. I look into her generous, loving face and understand that, among the many transformations of the past twenty-four hours, I have moved beyond reach of maternal comfort.

  The plan is to honeymoon in London, showing him the Tower and the ingenious bridge next door; St Paul’s and Wren’s smaller, prettier churches; all the famous squares. A couple of landmarks a day, a concert and a Barrie play, and many p
rivate evenings back at the hotel. We stick to the sightseeing. Out on the busy streets, our civility seems appropriate. Surrounded by strangers, we are even affable. It is those long hours cooped up in a room together that expose the essential coldness of our marriage.

  But he will not speak of his feelings. Not a word. And so I keep smiling, keep touching him and watching his face freeze, telling myself it will pass, it’s as my mother said, he has lived a celibate life for so long, he respects me too much, I just have to wait until he gets used to me. Until he can accept that a single sapphic indiscretion does not mean he has married a tart.

  The Strand, Pall Mall, Piccadilly: these famous streets. He says he can think of a dozen thoroughfares in Edinburgh and Glasgow their equal in grandeur, but secretly he is thrilled. Like stepping into the pages of a book. Everything more vivid: sounds, sights, smells, the rich women’s clothes, the brown leaves big as dinner plates shed by the plane trees. He searches the faces walking towards him, as if the thing he has longed for is about to happen. Now. Or now. A tall woman with luminous skin, a mass of dark hair, those succulent lips. Their eyes will lock. And then she will notice the woman at his side.

  Every night he retires to the daybed in our dressing room. Every morning I try to greet him with a kiss. The way he looks at me will never leave me. The bitterness in his silence. What’s the matter with me, do I want to force him to the needless cruelty of spelling it out? He will honour his obligations, support me, live under the same roof, but we will never share a bed. Why can I not accept it? Why must I smile at him like this, and stand so close, and touch his clothes? If it is not stupidity – and I am not a stupid lassie – then it is stubbornness, wilful misunderstanding. I have tricked him into marriage – what else? I have only myself to blame, but still he might find it in himself to pity me, if only I would submit.

  On the third morning I take him into the fenced gardens across the street, slipping my arm through his. No one else in sight. He is trapped by our seclusion, and his simultaneous awareness of being overlooked by at least a hundred windows. I pass some innocuous remark about the day – cold, leafless, with that ceaseless train and traffic noise he hears even in his sleep – then, after a few seconds punctuated by the clip of my heels on the path, I say his name. Sensing his impulse to draw away, my arm tightens on his. I want to know if there’s anything I can do to make amends. I realise the triviality of my fault is not the point. I hid it from him, and I am so, so sorry. I know I must work to regain his trust. I understand that he feels estranged from me. I respect his refusal to make light of what has happened. However painful this is to me, I see it as an investment in our marriage. And a lesson. I will never lie to him again, even by omission. We will emerge from our present difficulties with a strengthened affection and, on that day, we will know the happiness my foolishness presently denies us. A wave of heat comes off him. He wrenches out of my grasp. In a trembling voice, I ask where he is going? Back to Scotland, he says. The honeymoon is over.

  NINETEEN

  Perth in December. Day has hardly dawned before the light is ebbing. I’m out of doors by ten, whatever the weather. ‘Getting to know the town.’ A mostly profitless trip to the butcher’s. Assuaging my loneliness by smiling at mothers out with their children, who stare back at me with wondering eyes. I could gain some acknowledgement on the North Inch, but word would soon spread that the doctor’s new wife is making eyes at soldiers, so I make do with patting dogs and stroking cats, if I find them; watching blackbirds pulling worms from the vegetable beds. Walking for miles. I’ll need new shoes before long. An excuse to visit the shops and talk to a saleswoman. By half past four I’m feeling my way along walls in the blackout. Home to the prison.

  Aunt Nellie says I must get involved with a charitable committee or two. I agree, before changing the subject. How can I enter a room, discuss the welfare of the needy, when I’m drowning in self-pity, when it’s all I can do not to burst into tears? And sometimes it is fury that keeps out the cold when I’m walking. How dare he pretend he loved me? I would not treat my worst enemy as he treats me now, so coldly polite. I have tried to broach the subject, steeling myself against humiliation, asking him if he would rather I had loved a man, if it is giving my body to a woman that so revolts him? He turns and leaves the room. When I follow him he asks, have I no self-respect?

  I can’t stand another silent meal. The tick of the clock. The clink of cutlery on plate. The hurricane roar of my own breath in my ears. Is this it, for the next fifty years? Yet it is worse having to smile and chatter and pretend on Christmas Day. Uncle George admires Hugh. They have been to concerts together at the City Hall. They retire into Uncle’s study to discuss the war. Before lunch, Aunt Nellie drew him aside to ask his advice about the Sick Poor Nursing Society. They know nothing of our troubles, but still I feel my own relatives have turned against me.

  With January comes the snow. A thaw, then a long hard freeze. The streets are like glass. Impassable. Through the window I glimpse Mrs Grant, the Governor’s wife, collecting a pail of snow. My own taps are still running. Although never formally introduced, we have nodded to each other in passing. Her maid-of-all-work is laid up in Luncarty with a broken ankle. She won’t hear of borrowing Mrs Hendry, but consents to a cup of tea, so long as we agree not to tell our husbands. She gives me a conspiratorial grin I am sorry to be too clueless to return. A nice woman, even if she smells of Parma violets. Over the next two years, she will prove a good friend to me. And a mine of information.

  February brings two developments. A Peterhead prisoner, John Maclean, is transferred to the gaol, and my husband starts talking to me.

  The new convict is a Glaswegian firebrand, a self-styled revolutionary Socialist sentenced for making speeches against conscription. He has many followers, and not just in Scotland. Convinced the prison is drugging his food, he refuses to eat. The government is anxious that he remain in good health. It seems Hugh is a specialist in treating those who starve themselves. Without the intelligence passed on by my secret friend Mrs Grant, I might have suspected him of infidelity. His colour is better, his eyes bright. One morning, passing the bathroom door, I hear him whistling in there.

  *

  Maclean is a potato-faced fellow with a shrewdly-assessing gaze. Highland stock. Thirty-seven years old, five years the doctor’s junior, quite apart from his status as convict and his ignorance of medicine, and yet he shows no deference. He addresses everyone – doctor, warders, Prison Commission officials – as his equal, socially and intellectually. The warders don’t like it.

  ‘You know why you’re here?’ the doctor asks him.

  ‘A police officer lied.’

  ‘Why you’re here in Perth.’

  ‘I caught them tampering with my food in Peterhead.’

  ‘Why should they do that?’

  ‘To discredit me.’

  ‘So the police lie about you, and the warders contaminate your food?’

  ‘And you will certify me mad.’

  ‘For what reason?’

  ‘Because your imperial masters don’t like me speaking against their war.’

  ‘I thought the police lied.’

  ‘They lied in the particulars. The law requires exactitude to masquerade as just. I oppose the war, like anyone with a head on his shoulders.’

  ‘You don’t think we should honour our treaties and alliances?’

  ‘Use your brains, man. Who is this we? Not you, not me. If the workers withdraw their labour in protest, they’re forced to work as soldiers. What does that tell you?’

  ‘That resistance is futile.’

  ‘The game’s rigged against us. Capitalism is rotten to its foundations. I see it. They see it. That’s why they put alcohol in my food.’

  ‘And I’m a part of this conspiracy?’

  ‘They don’t have to take you into their confidence. You do their bidding, no questions asked.’

  ‘You’re very sure of me, on less than an hour’s acquaintance.’r />
  ‘I know you inside out. A yeoman with an education. A class traitor who thinks he’s bettered himself. They’re laughing at you, man.’

  ‘They tell me you lost your job as a teacher.’

  ‘I’m a teacher with or without their job.’

  ‘You made allegations against your headmaster. An enquiry found them baseless.’

  ‘He’s bedding her. An infant teacher sharing the duties of a dominie? It’s wrong, and they know it. So they cover it up, like every other abuse of power in the system.’

  ‘The warders say you masturbate several times a day.’

  ‘Tell your peeping toms to mind their own business.’

  ‘It’s making you irritable, suspicious, prone to delusions.’

  ‘So that’s to be your diagnosis, is it: I’m a sex maniac?’

  ‘You’d be happier if you abstained.’

  ‘Would I?’

  ‘You lost a stone in Peterhead, you can’t afford to lose more.’

  ‘I can’t afford to let this place turn me into a gelding—’

  So far the prisoner’s gaze has been fixed on the doctor’s face. Now it loses focus. He is thinking.

  ‘—It’s a fair question: why turn inwards, to your own pleasure? Are the women the same? Don’t tell me you don’t know. It’s natural to dwell on what you’re deprived of, I suppose. But there’s more to it. Power. One will forced on another. Disgusting – but exciting too, eh: refusing every decent human impulse? Oh aye, the Devil has some good tunes. Not so good for me, on the other end of it. My body’s no choice in the matter, but my mind’s still free. I can put myself in your skin, the same as you can put yourself in mine.’ An amused breath. ‘Aye. I see it in your face. Oh you’re ashamed, but you know what I’m talking about. We’re two sides of the one coin, you and I. What do you do with it, take it home to your wife?’