by André Alexis
In some ways, the best outcome would have been a real set-to, a shouting match such as the one there’d been between Rose Cornwell and Nelly Carr when Nelly, the ‘older woman,’ had seduced Rose’s son: a legendary confrontation that everyone still talked about, though it had taken place ten years previously and Nelly, poor woman, had since died of leukemia. It was good to have these things out in the open, good to argue about right and wrong every so often, but it looked as if Elizabeth and Jane were not going to make their dispute public. Jane sat still as her hair was cut, then she sat beneath the pink beehive that was Mrs. Atkinson’s best dryer. Elizabeth waited patiently. Then, as Jane paid and thanked Mrs. Atkinson, Elizabeth rose, said goodbye to everyone and waited for Jane outside the salon.
When both women had gone, someone said
– Finally! Nice to get rid of the smell of home wrecker.
– Don’t you say anything bad about Jane, said Mrs. Atkinson. I’ve known that girl since she was a baby. Never hurt a fly.
Elizabeth and Jane walked for a block or so, awkward in each other’s presence, before Elizabeth said
– It’s no use being subtle about all this. We both know what’s going on. I want to know why you’re sleeping with my fiancé.
– I’m not sleeping with your fiancé. He’s sleeping with me.
They passed Barrow Park. The statue of Richmond Barrow was pointing to the sky: a light, washed-out blue, the clouds elongated wisps, the wind a persistent breeze that brought a whiff of gasoline, of freshly cut grass and of the dirt that lightly flayed the streets and buildings. Though waves of hatred hit her, Elizabeth kept her temper. Jane lit a cigarette.
– Whether you’re sleeping with him or he’s sleeping with you, it’s the same thing, said Elizabeth. You knew we were engaged.
– I thought you were engaged, but engaged men don’t usually sleep with anyone except their fiancées, do they? So how was I to know what was going on between you two?
The sound of Jane’s voice made her so upset, Elizabeth stopped walking. To cover her emotion, she asked for a cigarette, though she did not smoke, and she was further annoyed when Jane gave her one and then put a hand on hers – to keep it from shaking – as she lit it. Elizabeth drew in the smoke without inhaling. As for Jane: this was now an interesting game, sophisticated even. Here she was talking calmly to Robbie’s fiancée. She allowed herself to wonder what Robbie saw in Elizabeth and then wondered, fleetingly, what it would be like to sleep with Elizabeth, what it would be like for her to sleep with Elizabeth.
– I don’t want to keep walking away from work, said Jane. If you have something to say to me, say it now.
– You know what I want. I want you to leave Robbie alone.
– Why? Why should I stop seeing him? He loves me as much as he loves you.
– No, said Elizabeth, he doesn’t.
– It’s no use arguing. He would’ve left me if he didn’t.
After considering this, Elizabeth said
– Fine. Then you should help me make him choose.
– What, choose me or you? I don’t see why. I don’t mind if he marries you. I think things are going well the way they are. What’s the problem, except everybody in this stupid town expects it to be one man, one woman?
– I don’t want it to go on like this, said Elizabeth. I want my husband to be with me, not some woman he’s addicted to. I’d leave him but I don’t believe he loves you as much as he loves me. You’re just a phase. But he should make a choice now. That’s why I’m talking to you at all. I think if you can get Robbie to do something he wouldn’t do for me, it’ll prove he loves you more. And that’ll be enough for me.
How interesting, thought Jane. Their conversation had gone from something unpleasant and vaguely threatening to something that intrigued her: a wager of some sort. Whatever she felt for Robbie, she was certain of his loyalty and she was even more certain she could convince him to do anything short of poisoning his father’s cows. Of course, the prize, if you could call a man a prize, was Robbie, and she was not certain she wanted Robbie for herself. Perhaps, and the thought crossed her mind as she looked at Elizabeth, she would not find Robbie attractive without Elizabeth there to be his wife. Really, what was there in him, when you thought about all this objectively? What was there that one would want to have exclusively? And yet, the proposition was appealing. Jane said
– And I get to choose what to make him do?
– No, answered Elizabeth. I get to choose the thing. It wouldn’t be fair otherwise.
– All right. Have you decided what it is?
– Yes. I want him to walk naked into Atkinson’s Beauty Parlour and ask Agnes for a haircut.
Elizabeth had thought this through. She knew how shy Robbie was, how much he disliked people seeing his feet, which, she had to admit, were not his best feature. Also, he had a red birthmark beneath his left nipple, like a paint-wet hand had slapped him, then dragged itself around to his back. He did not even like her to touch it. So, it was difficult to believe anyone could get him to walk about naked. On the other hand, if Jane did convince him to go into Atkinson’s without his clothes, the moment would be a lasting humiliation for Robbie, a humiliation very like the humiliation he had put her through. So, either way, she could not really lose.
– Is that all? asked Jane. I wonder if you know Robbie as well as you think you do. I feel like this is too easy. Is there something really difficult you’d like me to get him to do?
Jane Richardson’s confidence – or was it insolence? – was unexpected. If she knew Robbie as deeply as she claimed, she should have understood how difficult it was going to be to convince Robbie to go around naked. Elizabeth could not begin to imagine Robbie unclothed in Atkinson’s.
– I don’t have anything else in mind, she said.
But then, slightly unnerved, she added
– He can’t do Atkinson’s on Barrow Day, you know. That wouldn’t be fair.
– No, getting him to go naked on Barrow Day wouldn’t be hard. But, anyway, Atkinson’s is closed on Barrow Day. So …
Jane looked at her watch.
– I’ve got to go, she said. But it’s a deal.
They had got as far as St. Mary’s church. The afternoon sunlight touched the windows devoted to Zenobius and Zeno. Jane turned away and walked off. Elizabeth stood by herself awhile, looking up at the illuminated blue lake beside which St. Zeno stood. She reminded herself that she had thought things through. She did know Robbie, knew him better than Jane did. (She wondered if Robbie and Jane did the same things she did with Robbie or was Jane ‘better at it’ than she was? The picture of Jane and Robbie in bed together – an image she could not ward off – almost made her sick, it was so upsetting.) Yes, anyone betting on who should know Robbie best would, almost certainly, put their money on her, on Elizabeth. And yet, Jane’s confidence was disconcerting. So much so that Elizabeth began to regret what she’d set in motion.
As she returned to the bakery, Elizabeth considered how far from herself she had been dragged. Though she’d always been thoughtful, she had never been manipulative or underhanded. Jane Richardson had called manipulation and connivance out of her. In fact, Jane, a different kind of woman, was perhaps more gifted at deceiving, more used to deception. In which case, Jane could get Robbie to do whatever she wanted him to do. But then again, no, she had thought things through. Even if it were possible to convince Robbie to expose himself to the women in Atkinson’s, the exposure would humiliate him and, humiliated, he would hold the incident against Jane. All of this seemed to her to be true and irrefutable. Life was unpredictable, yes, but Robbie was not, and she knew him well. She would not have agreed to marry him otherwise, would she?
The afternoon was bright. She heard birdsong. The town of Barrow, which she knew as well as she knew her lover’s body, was vivid in the sunlight, like a bauble of itself.
Though they had arranged to see Petersen’s gravel pit together, somewhere near the last minute Lowt
her apologized for having forgotten a prior engagement – that is, a lunch with Heath he’d neglected to write in his calendar. He’d left Father Pennant to explore Petersen’s on his own, dropping him off some way from the pit so he could enjoy the afternoon sunlight. That is why, at around the time Barrow was vivid for Elizabeth Denny, Lowther and Heath were at Heath’s kitchen table talking about the distant past. In particular, they were talking of Lowther’s father, a man who’d left his son little save fleeting memories and a defaced book of prayers.
The prayer book was leather-bound. Its endpapers were red and marbled. But the most obvious feature of the book, now, was that all of its two hundred prayers had been blacked out, save one. Old Mr. Williams – that is, Lowther’s father – had been eccentric, and the prayer book, which Heath held in his hand, reminded Heath of the old man himself. Though fervently religious, Mr. Williams had reduced the majority of the prayer book’s pages to black lines, beneath which one could still read the occasional ‘Amen’ or ‘Lord.’ The only prayer left untouched was the final one, a prayer to be said by those whose suffering was unendurable:
Lord grant me death and let me know
At last the last of Earth.
Time has done its work, now let it rest.
Come darkness and night,
Set this poor shadow free.
Heath said
– He was a strange man, your father.
– I know, said Lowther, but I’ve begun to understand him lately.
– You Williamses think too much.
– Yes, but these days it’s different. These days I accept that I’m an ignorant man, whatever I learn or take in. And I think that’s what my father was trying to tell me when he gave me his prayer book. Out of all these prayers there’s only one essential prayer.
– But it’s a prayer for death.
– I’m not sure that’s the important point. Dad spent his life reading philosophy and, in the end, there’s only one prayer he passed on. A handful of words. His way of saying life doesn’t amount to much.
– Do you want more coffee? I’m going to have a cup.
Heath took down a white cup and blew in it to remove what looked like an insect leg.
– Listen, he said. Do you know how long it took me to clear those moths out of that room? I’m still finding bits of them.
– Thank you for that, said Lowther. I’m really grateful.
– Did you get what you were looking for?
– I’m not sure what I was looking for, said Lowther.
– Well, what do you think of him now?
– He’s young, but I trust him.
– You do? Strange he didn’t actually tell us he saw the moths. Your young priest keeps secrets.
– Maybe, or maybe he’s discreet. The first thing most people would have done is tell the world about the miracle they’d witnessed.
– True. If I saw a bunch of gypsy moths doing strange things, I’d assume the rest of the world should know about it. I mean, why not? You’ve got to let people know their pests are going loco, you know? I spent hours creating that illusion, but that story about insect psychology was almost as hard. Nearly made myself sick trying to keep a straight face. I should hope you got something out of it. Anyway, what are you going to do now?
– I don’t know. But my time’s coming. I can feel it. I’ve got to make myself ready. That’s what all this is about, remember? I want to know the man who’s going to be travelling along that last road with me.
– I still think you’re being pessimistic.
– Heath, my father died at sixty-three, as did his father, as did his father before him. Ten generations of Williams men have died within weeks of turning sixty-three. I’ve had a good life. I’m not unhappy and I haven’t left anyone behind me to die like this.
– I know all that, said Heath. But maybe death isn’t as predictable as you think.
– Every year winter comes and every year we’re shocked when it snows and people forget to put on their snow tires and someone falls through the ice. No one knows the exact hour of winter, but it always comes somewhere round the same time.
– Hmm, said Heath.
They had been having this same argument for years. Lowther was convinced he could feel death’s approach, while Heath was dubious anything clear could be known where death was concerned. Each had been influenced by the other’s position, but only a little. There was now in Lowther’s mind a small doubt, a niggling sense that, after all, humans cannot know about these things. So, how could he be certain when his end would come? Meanwhile, over time, Heath had begun almost to accept that Lowther knew what he was talking about. He had begun to accept that the collection of atoms called Lowther Williams would dissipate and decay in Lowther’s sixty-fourth year. In fact, it was for this reason Heath hadn’t minded deceiving Father Pennant. Though the holographic moths and their trip switches had cost him a fortune, it had been something for the two friends to do together, something very like the pranks they had pulled when they were twelve but with a higher purpose: Lowther, convinced he would die soon, wanted to know – to truly know – the man who would administer his last rites, who would pray over him, who would shepherd him into the next world. Heath didn’t understand why this was important. He himself didn’t care who or what was around when his own spirit left its casing. He didn’t believe in a ‘next world.’ But it mattered to Lowther – his closest friend – and so it mattered to him.
The day outside Heath’s kitchen window hemmed and hawed: a lawn mower here, a passing car there, barely a moment’s silence. There were wispy clouds and the air was warm. For a moment, the outside smelled of toast and honey, while inside there was the odour of bleach and coffee.
Lowther too was thinking of the days spent with Heath when they were boys, of the things they had done as children. Hard to believe Heath’s mother had ever forgiven them for the time when they’d caused her hair to fall out. But she had forgiven them and had spoken of it with amusement until her dying day. But that is the kind of woman Mrs. Lambert was. She could no more have held such a thing against them than they could have done anything but regret it afterwards. And that is what he wanted to know about Father Pennant: what kind of man was he? The incident with the moths had been a success. It had brought something out of Father Pennant: his discretion and tact. Good qualities, both. But Lowther wanted to know a little more. He wanted to catch a glimpse of something more deeply hidden. He wanted to know the far corners of Father Pennant’s being because, in the end, he needed to know that Father Pennant was the right shepherd for him.
In Lowther’s imagining, his own death – for which he was wholly prepared – took place in a room with an accommodating bed, a sun-brightened window, the sky blue, the last voice heard that of a good man who appreciated the accomplishment of death. As he listened to the clinkety-clink the cup made as Heath put it down on a saucer, Lowther tried to imagine Father Pennant at Petersen’s gravel pit. Would Father Pennant catch Mayor Fox at the right time? And what would the priest make of it if he did? Lowther remembered the first time he had seen Fox walk on water. It had been disconcerting, a little frightening even. If it was the same for Father Pennant, why then, he – that is, Lowther – had his man.
The gravel pit just outside Barrow was a jewel or a danger, depending. The pit itself was hidden from view behind a bank of trees and some way along a sandy road. It was nearly circular and some sixty feet in diameter. It had been a long time since there’d been any digging and the water in the pit was deep. In fact, its depths had been exactly sounded: thirty feet and seven inches deep at its deepest point and every once in a while a young man or young woman, drunk or disoriented, fell into the water and drowned.
Lowther had left him about a mile from the pit, but Father Pennant happily walked there on his own. He walked by the side of the road, trampling on young thistles, dandelions, chicory and tall grasses. The smell of the weeds clung to his walking shoes and rose up so that, although he was by
the side of a highway, it smelled as if he were in an endless field. The laneway that led to the pit was not hidden exactly, but there were no obvious signs that this particular path led somewhere interesting rather than to one of the many hidden properties, abandoned farms or private houses with their snarling dogs. The only hint of the pit’s existence was near the locked metal gate before the trees. There, on the ground, was a rotted but still legible wooden sign that read Petersen’s Gravel.
Feeling slightly foolish and vulnerable, Father Pennant climbed over the fence, as Lowther had advised him to do, and walked the sandy road to the pit. The trees were tall and they partially blocked out the sun, so there was a darkened hush until he came to the clearing. Then: the return of day. The sun shone on a landscape that had been sheared of trees. Before him were hills of reddish sand around which the path snaked. He had rounded a second hill and could see a part of the pit when Father Pennant realized he was not alone. He heard a voice and then, when he rounded another hill, he saw a man, back facing him, standing beside the water.
The man was almost fully dressed: light-coloured suit jacket, matching pants. But he held his shoes and socks in his hands. Not wishing to disturb the man or frighten him, Father Pennant waited quietly at a polite distance, intending to let him finish what sounded like prayers. But the prayers, which began to sound like a strange song, continued for a while. Then, suddenly, the man stepped into the pit and began to walk on water. Having witnessed the ‘miracle’ of the moths, Father Pennant did not believe what he was seeing. He looked around for something that might explain the lightness of the man or the sturdiness of the water.