by Angela Huth
‘My father.’
‘He must be richer than my father. I’ll pay you back, gradually.’
‘No, it’s a present.’
‘Oh. Thanks. Look, here.’ They stepped nearer the hedge to avoid a passing car. Wolf began to take out the various blades, examining each one slowly with his finger. They flashed in the sun. Emily, close to him, resisted touching them. Then he snapped all the blades back and put the knife in his pocket. He kept his hand in his pocket to cover the knife: Emily could see by the shape of the bulge.
‘I was going to go up the church tower. Thought if I could get up there before they start ringing the church bells, I could measure the vibrations.’
‘Measure the vibrations?’
‘Well, see if the tower shook, anyway. Coming?’
Emily nodded. They walked through the churchyard. Emily noticed bald patches in the moss on some of the gravestones-Wolf’s doing. It reminded her of the day they had met, and she couldn’t contain a kind of bounce in her walk: it’s all right, he hasn’t gone, he hasn’t gone.
Wolf gently opened the studded oak door. Inside, the church smelt of old prayer books, old prayers. Hundreds of years of praying under the same roof were bound to cause a dusty smell. Maybe all the thousands of words of saying please and thank you had filtered up to the arched beams, and clung there, invisible, eating into them like woodworm. On the altar there were two copper urns of evergreen, unlit by flowers. The verger, with the trance-like movements of one who believes he is alone, was placing song sheets on the choir stalls.
Unobserved, Wolf and Emily crept to the small door that led to the spiral stone staircase. They ran up the stairs without panting, used to the climb, the merest bit dizzy when they reached the trap door. The top of the tower was a square fortress with a slatted wooden floor. Its walls, chest-high, were level with the tree tops. Among lower branches of these trees they could see the broken lines of village roofs.
Wolf sat on the floor, leaning against one of the stone walls. He took out his penknife again and began to reexamine the blades. Emily sat beside him. It was uncomfortable, but they were sheltered from the breeze. As the stiffness of the various blades became familiar to Wolf, so his absorption in the knife grew. Emily sighed.
‘What would you say,’ she said, ‘if I told you my mother and father were going to get divorced ?’
Wolf tested the corkscrew in the palm of his hand, turning it just hard enough to dent the skin.
‘Why? Are they?’
‘They might.’
‘What makes you think that?’
‘I heard them talking about it last night.’
‘About divorce?’
‘Not really divorce. Just jabbering on about love and all that sort of thing. They both sounded sad.’
‘I bloody well wish my father would divorce Coral. He’s been with her quite enough.’ Wolf speared the largest blade into a soft wooden slat in the floor.
‘Perhaps we could make a plan to get your father to divorce Coral, and my parents to stay together.’
‘Those sort of plans never work. Coral’d never let him go. Do you really think your parents’ll bust up?’
‘Don’t know.’
‘They’d easily find other husbands and wives if they did, I bet.’
‘I wouldn’t want them to.’
‘It might be all right.’
‘Sandra Buckle, a girl at school, she’s got masses of stepparents and step-brothers and sisters and things. She says it’s very muddling. She never knows who to call her family.’
‘It must be a bit muddling, but I don’t suppose it matters all that much. People marry and divorce, marry and divorce. You know.’
‘Well, I wouldn’t mind so much if once they’d had their new husbands and wives they got divorced from them and married each other again. So they were still married when they died.’
‘Then they could all be in the same grave.’
‘That’s what I mean.’ In truth, she hadn’t thought of that.
‘Coral says she wants to be in the same grave as my father, but my mother’s already in there. I hope there won’t be any room. But she keeps on saying it. She nags on in case my father might forget. ‘When we’re laid to rest,’ she keeps saying, when she’s drunk. I hope she dies first then my father can put her where he likes. Miles away, I hope.’
Emily giggled.
‘In R.K. at school -’
‘ – What’s R.K.?’
‘Religious Knowledge.’
‘We call it Scripture.’
‘Well, in R.K. at school they said something about being married in heaven. So your father could remarry your mother in heaven, and not ask Coral to the wedding.’
‘Fat lot of good that would do.’
They were both quiet for a while, imagining the heavenly weddings. Wolf, with the smallest blade of the knife, began to dig at a scab on his ankle.
‘What I think you ought to do,’ he said, ‘is to ask your mother what’s going on.’
‘What would I ask her?’
‘Just if she’s going to get divorced.’
‘What if I’d got it all wrong?’
‘Then at least you’d know. Once you know for positive, we could make a plan.’ Wolf was so wise, sometimes. Emily could have bought him a hundred penknives.
‘What sort of plan could we make?’
Wolf thought.
‘Simple, really. Tell your mother your father said she looked smashing behind her back. If they start to have a row, do something to take their minds off it-spill the pudding or find a dog to chase the bantams or something. Things like that’
‘Do you think that’d really work? Where could I find a dog?’
‘I could lend you Stover.’
‘He’d have to be there all the time, waiting for the row.’
‘Well, anyway, I could think up lots of other things if you wanted.’
‘That’d be good, just in case.’
‘Okay. Leave it to me.’
Wolf got up and at that moment the first bell began to ring. Up here, it was a deep, resonant sound, very close. Three other bells joined it, four different notes. They pealed out their monotonous scale, the first two notes full of cheer, always to be followed by two more dispirited sounds. Wolf was standing at the edge of the tower, leaning over the wall. He called to Emily to join him. They watched the first few members of what would be inevitably a scanty congregation walk up the church path. Old people mostly, wearing velour hats in dusky shades, some moulded into ridges and pleats, blancmange-like. They still wore winter coats, and carried Prayer Books in their gloved hands.
Suddenly Wolf gave a shout. Emily looked to where he pointed. Coral and Wolf’s father were walking up the path. Coral’s suit was a colour of green that Nature had wisely rejected, and she wore a hat of pink feathers that waved around her blob of hair. She clung to her husband’s arm, in step with him. Although side by side, she gave the impression of being the guide. For his part, Wolf’s father moved with the appropriate solemnity of one whose next duty is to read the lesson.
‘Wish I had my water pistol,’ said Wolf. ‘Those bloody feathers could do with a drenching.’
‘What on earth’s she come for?’ Emily shouted against the uproarious bells.
‘Communion wine, course.’ Emily laughed.
The crashing of the four notes beneath them, persistent, remorseless as they were, gave her a perilous feeling. It was as if she and Wolf were abandoned in a square sky-boat, battered by waves of noise, churning in the sea of sky. The nearby trees, heaving in the breeze, gave her the illusion that it was the tower, not the leaves, that moved. She found herself gripping the stone wall, excited, her head and ears almost numb from the huge bell sounds.
Gradually, they slowed, decreased. Three notes evaporated. The deepest and most solemn was left tolling by itself. When that, too, stopped, for a moment the silence was almost overwhelming. Then, with the renewed rustle of leaves, the day settled b
ack into a tranquil Sunday. From far below them came a thin chant, irregular in its progress.
Glorious things of thee are spoken
Zion, City of our God…
‘Better be getting back,’ said Wolf. But he seemed reluctant to move, and to put off the moment he pulled out all the blades of his penknife once again and brandished it, starlike, above his head.
‘There’s one person we know who’s never going to get her hands on this,’ he said. ‘On the other hand, you can borrow it when you like.’
They descended the spiral stairs and waited for the hymn to end. Wolf pushed the door a little, and peered through. Members of the congregation had heads safely hidden in praying hands. Wolf and Emily crept out, unobserved, once more.
In the orchard, Idle, in a silk London shirt, sleeves rolled up, was pulling viperous ivy from the trunk of an apple tree. Fen made motions of helping him, but her arms, as she raised and lowered them, seemed without vitality. Her hands were slow. She wore an old pair of jeans and as she stood, pelvis thrust forward, leg apart, Emily noticed how suddenly thin she was. Beneath the denim her hip bones made two sharp points. Under the long voluminous skirts she usually wore her loss of weight had not been so apparent.
Even from some way off, the length of the garden, Emily was aware of an apartness between her parents, for all their physical closeness. She recognised at once this intangible distance: she had felt it herself, earlier this morning, when she first met Wolf. It was confirmed by their faces-set, unspeaking faces, concentrating on the tree. Between them on the ground, dividing them, was a rising pile of ivy, dark starry leaves against the pale orchard grass.
Wolf and Emily walked towards them. Idle, glad for an excuse to rest, wiped his brow with the back of his arm. His whole face glistened with sweat, as if he had been working very hard. He smiled at Wolf.
‘Hello, old man. You all right?’
‘Thank you, Mr Harris.’
‘Mama, can Wolf stay all day?’
‘Course. Anything you like.’
Fen, too, stopped pulling at the ivy. Idle looked at his watch.
‘I’d better go and fetch Marcia.’
‘Is she coming?’ asked Emily, who had forgotten the plan.
‘For a few days. So that I don’t have to go to London.’ Idle smiled.
‘Oh, honestly.’ Emily couldn’t understand her own irritation. When she thought about it, she quite liked Marcia. Felt sorry for her.
‘Incredible train fever,’ said Fen.
‘I don’t want to be late.’ Idle began to roll down his sleeves. ‘You and Wolf want to come with me, Em?’ Emily nodded.
‘I don’t mind, if you want to sit at the station for ten minutes.’ Fen was scathing, twisting two strands of ivy in her hands. ‘Do what you like.’
That was, as Emily came to learn, to be the pattern of things. Idle was encouraged to do what he liked. Fen seemed not to care. She was to do the same.
Marcia Burrows asked permission to abandon her typing to go to Evensong. As Wolf had gone home, Emily walked with her to the church. The one bell was ringing again, forlorn, less stern. Marcia Burrows wore a hat of canvas marigolds. They were packed so closely together that, had they been real, the life would have been quite squeezed out of them.
‘When I was a girl,’ ventured Miss Burrows, who feared silences and wanted to take her mind off the bells, ‘I was taught that God was all about us.’ She glanced around at the parked cars, the box of empty milk bottles by the gate, a sweet paper that blew close to her feet. Then she let her eyes rise to the trees, swaying against the nebulous sky. In looking up she tripped on a stone and stumbled. Emily caught her arm. ‘Thank you, dear. I suppose He probably is, if you think about it.’
Emily was not much interested in God, and was little aware of Him about her. He wasn’t often referred to by her parents, excepts when they swore, and on the occasions she did go to church she found the reciting bits and the sermon very boring. Sometimes, when things were difficult or went wrong, she tried to pray, but on the whole she had found prayer to be ineffectual. Please God, help me with this sum, and no help came. She supposed that, quite reasonably, He gave priority to those who called upon Him more often. Meantime, she had considerable belief in her mascot, a china ladybird. Last year in exams she had put him on her desk and come top in English and Picture Study. All the same, those people who talked about God as if He were a friend, or a dog even, temporarily out of the room, interested her. They all seemed to have a characteristic in common: when they mentioned Him, something funny happened to their eyes. They filmed over with a far-off glaze, indicating they could focus on some greater vision to which more ordinary people, who didn’t belong to the God club, were denied access. At this moment Marcia Burrows had near-to-God eyes. They cast about high in the trees, as if perhaps He was playing a private game of hide-and-seek with her, and any moment she would spy Him.
‘Oh dear, I should have my eyes on the ground, shouldn’t I ? All these rough stones.’
‘What I don’t understand,’ answered Emily, who was willing to talk about God for the last hundred yards to the church if that would please Marcia Burrows, ‘is that in R.K. they told us something about being married to God. I don’t see what they mean. I asked the vicar, actually, and all he said was that he was married to God. We all thought he might marry Miss Curtis, but I suppose he can’t if he’s already got a husband. That seems funny, doesn’t it? A vicar having a husband. Anyway, Miss Curtis is so deaf she wouldn’t be able to hear his sermons.’
‘Ah,’ said Miss Burrows, confused.
‘But what I think is, if you’re not married to God already, you should look around for a proper man. Derek can’t have been the only man to want you,’ she added.
‘Perhaps not, dear. It’s hard to tell sometimes, just who wants what, when it comes to men.’
They had arrived at the gate of the churchyard-a Victorian gate sheltered by a Gothic arch. Miss Burrows paused, took off a glove, and touched its dark wood with her hand.
‘One of my sisters was married in a church much like this,’ she said, ‘a little country church with a porch over the gate. It was a lovely wedding, but a terrible thing happened. They were just coming through the gate, Janet and Jack, towards the car, in a cloud of confetti. Everybody throwing it for all their worth. Well, one of those paper petals got stuck in Janet’s eye. She tried to get it out-Jack tried to get it out, but it was no good. There was a terrible confusion. She began to cry, she was in awful pain. In the end the wedding car had to go via the hospital. I went with them - sat there in Casualties for half an hour, we did, before anyone attended to us, Janet trying to keep her train off the floor, feeling an awful fool, knowing everybody at the reception was waiting for her … Terrible way to start a marriage. Particularly when you’ve waited so long. She got him by waiting, you know. Not a bad method. – Still, they’re happy enough now.’ She and Emily began to walk up the church path, Marcia taking Emily’s arm. The memory of the story seemed to have shaken her. ‘Ever since then, I’ve never believed in confetti,’ she added. ‘It’s a dangerous thing, though every Saturday of the year you’ll find it thrown at brides all round the country.’
At the church door she tried to persuade Emily to come in with her. But Emily refused. She’d had enough of God for one day. With the patient sigh of one who is used to failing to convert, Marcia clamped her marigold hat closer to her head and gave a reverent push to the studded door.
‘Very well, then. I shall look forward to seeing you later.’
Emily turned away. She couldn’t think why she had been so against Marcia Burrows’ visit. Really, she wasn’t at all a bad old thing, for all her funny ways, and if having her to stay meant that Papa could be at home, then that was worth it.
Emily decided to take Wolf’s advice and question Fen about what was going on. She felt a natural reluctance to do so, but worry and curiosity were stronger than that reluctance. During the three days that Marcia Burrows
was staying with them she was disinclined to ask anything, and indeed on the face of it there seemed no reason for questions. Normality was assumed. Idle and Miss Burrows spent many hours in the study each day, Fen was preoccupied with a patchwork quilt which she would work at hard and often but never for long. When the grown-ups were together, at mealtimes, they appeared cheerful enough, though Emily noticed, long before Idle drew attention to the fact, that Fen’s appetite seemed to diminish daily.
Her chance came soon after Idle and Marcia Burrows had left for London. Emily was at the kitchen table doing her homework. The telephone rang. As Fen had her hands in a bowl of flour, Emily went to answer it. Kevin. At the news, Fen’s pale face flushed scarlet. She rubbed at her forehead, leaving a trail of flour on her hair. Then she banged her hands on the side of her long purple skirt, marking it with white streaks, not caring, and ran from the room. Emily closed her books.
When Fen returned she seemed calmer.
‘You’ve been ages,’ said Emily. ‘You talk on the telephone to Kevin as long as you used to talk to people when we were in London.’
‘Do I?’ Fen smiled and plunged her hands back into the flour. ‘I never know why you mind my talking on the telephone. Go on, get on with your prep.’
Emily remained immobile, thinking. She decided first to try a roundabout way.
‘Do you think we could have a dog?’ she asked at last.
‘A dog? From the way you talk about Gran’s dog, and Aunt Tab’s, you hate the things. Besides, it would chase the bantams.’
‘That would be quite funny.’
‘I don’t think it would be very funny.’
‘Well, I’d like one for my birthday, please.’
‘I’m sorry, but you can’t have one.’ Fen’s tone of voice indicated she would never change her mind.
‘All right then, I’ll borrow Stover. Wolf says I can.’
‘I don’t want Stover here, whatever Wolf says. You certainly can’t borrow him. He’s got a mass of fleas and practically no charm.’
‘Oh, stew,’ said Emily. Aware that this plan had utterly failed, was not worth pursuing, she tried again. A more straightforward approach. ‘Are you and Papa going to get divorced?’ she asked, in the flattest tone she could manage.