*****Passing On*****

by Penelope Lively

  It was surprising how easily the words came, now that she had allowed them. She did not look at Giles at all as she spoke and the sentences piled one upon another, without restraint, like a flow of thought; there was even a low level of enjoyment in the sense of release.

  ‘Another woman would cope with this differently, I daresay.

  You have appeared at a time when things are rather … odd.

  For me, I mean. Maybe that’s partly why I’ve reacted like this.

  I’m conscious of not abiding by rules, in saying all this. You’d much prefer that I didn’t.’ She caught, out of the corner of her eye, his gesture of disagreement. He started to speak but she interrupted. ‘Don’t think, though, that I am dishing out blame.

  The problem is — has been — that what was one thing to you was quite another to me. Probably I misinterpreted, from time to time. Thought you meant things you didn’t mean.’

  She paused, and Giles leapt in at once. ‘I am at fault. The trouble is … my trouble is … Oh dear. I’m susceptible, I suppose. Even now I’m finding your honesty charming. Does this really have to end our friendship? Surely not. As you rightly say, your feelings may change. Oh — will change, certainly.’ Was there an edge of doubt or complacency to his tone?

  ‘I don’t really think,’ said Helen, ‘that either of us would feel very comfortable after this.’

  Giles sighed. ‘You’re so much nicer than I am, Helen. You make me seem insincere. But I’m not, you know. I’m just …

  well, I meet someone like you with whom I feel instant affinity, to whom I’m instantly attracted and … I get carried away, I suppose. It isn’t insincerity. It’s … susceptibility. A weakness, I suppose, but there we are.’ He turned on her a rueful expression — rueful but placating, like a boy caught out in a misdemeanour.

  She was to be wrong-footed, she saw: made to feel ponderous, portentous. ‘I never saw you as insincere. Merely perplexing, at times. At least perplexing to me, but that is probably to do with my own shortcomings. In relationships, that is. That’s what I mean by things being different for you than for me.’

  She was watching the fish again. And now she caught him in another gesture, but a surreptitious one this time — the quick shooting of a cuff to glance at his watch.

  At some other level of consciousness she registered amazement, a flick of anger, and the distant recognition of her own recovery: eventually, she would remember that movement. A pair of collared doves were moaning in the trees overhead; the day was absolutely still — sunless and oppressive.

  Giles laid his hand on her arm. ‘You know, I have this feeling that too much introspection will get us nowhere. Shall we move?

  I’m getting rather tired of these fish.’

  They walked on into the thickening woodland. Giles still had his hand under her elbow; she stopped to adjust the strap of her sandal as a pretext to shake it off. I can get through all this, she thought, so long as he doesn’t touch me. I think I can.

  They were following the concrete channel of the serpentine rill, which emptied itself into a pool of stygian blackness. Giles paused to peer into it. ‘No fish. Really, this place can be extraordinarily melancholy on occasion. Perhaps I shouldn’t have brought you here.’

  ‘I would have said what I have if we’d gone to a fun-fair,’ said Helen.

  He laughed. ‘There! That’s what’s so engaging about you — but of course you’re the one person who can’t see that. I hope I am not to be cast absolutely into the outer darkness, Helen — I should find that very wretched.’

  I see, she thought, he is to be the one who is rejected; that is how it is to be.

  They came out into the open. A little temple presided over a sloping hillside with a prospect of open fields and river lined with reeds and willows. A pair of swans cruised, with cygnets, and swallows were zipping to and fro above the water.

  Giles said, ‘Something’s on fire.’

  ‘Stubble burning.’ Helen realised now that the sky was overcast not by cloud but by hanging palls of smoke. The edges of the landscape fumed. At the far end of the valley, beyond the river and the water-meadows, was a rim of red; they could hear crackling.

  ‘It’s a disgrace,’ said Giles. ‘It’s been allowed to get quite out of hand. There should be new legislation.’

  They walked on, past a classical arcade, past an Apollo and a sequence of nymphs. Waterlilies swung at the edge of the river; willows rained down. The air was now quite acrid; Helen saw that the sleeve of her shirt was covered with dark specks of ash.

  Giles was talking of childhood holidays in Devon; hayfields filled with wild flowers, corn-sheaves, butterflies. A vanished countryside.

  And horse-drawn waggons and smocked farmworkers, I daresay, thought Helen: everything is embroidered by recollection.

  Even today, no doubt. Eventually.

  They reached the car. He drove her back to Greystones, still talking fluently of things that mattered not at all. As he opened the door of the car for her to get out he smiled, a smile that appeared eloquent both of regret and appeal. Then he laid his hand on her shoulder for an instant, got back into the driving seat, and was gone.

  She walked up the path towards the front door. You could smell burning here, too. The sky above the Britches was sepia coloured, as though a storm were imminent. She registered all this, opened the front door and knew also, immediately, that there was something alien about the house. She called ‘Edward?’, and then remembered that he had gone out with the ornithological group. She walked into the kitchen and Phil was sitting at the table.

  He got up. His green crest, she saw, was now tinged with brown at the roots. So it did grow out. He looked extremely unhealthy; the anxious eyes of a child peered at her from a white mask. He said ‘The front door was locked, so I got through the window at the back. Edward wasn’t there either.’

  Helen removed her coat and filled the kettle. She felt an unusual surging lust for a cup of tea. ‘We weren’t expecting you, Phil.’

  ‘I thought I’d come and stay here for a bit. You and Edward don’ min’, do you? I mean, I thought since it’s my house, sort of, it would be all right. But if you don’ wan’ me I’ll go somewhere else. I mean, I don’ care one way or the other. Fact is, I’m a bit pissed off at home.’ He watched her, tensely; his eyes were those of a five-year-old.

  She took two cups and saucers from the dresser and put them on the table; she got the milk from the fridge. ‘That’s all right.

  You can stay if you want to. I’ll find some sheets presently and you can make up a bed in the spare room. But I do think you should tell your parents. Ask your parents,’ she amended.

  ‘That’s fine,’ said Phil. ‘I rung mum. She said it sounds like a good idea, till I get myself together.’

  ‘She did, did she?’ said Helen in a different tone. The kettle spurted. She made the tea, poured two cups.

  ‘Thanks,’ said Phil.

  Helen took a gulp of tea, and felt herself begin to rally. She looked at Phil; he was encased from top to toe in black leather, as always. ‘Don’t you want to take your jacket off — you must be awfully hot?’

  Phil, vaguely, shrugged off the jacket which fell to the floor with a metallic clatter. Beneath it he wore a T-shirt of quite astonishing filthiness.

  ‘The thing is, I’m not getting on with Mum and Dad. I mean, we’re all pissed off with each other.’

  ‘That can happen.’

  ‘spect,’ he continued magnanimously, ‘s’partly my fault too.’

  ‘I daresay,’ said Helen. After a moment she added, with sudden hope ‘What about school? Surely the term starts soon.’

  ‘I can’t remember,’ said Phil evasively. ‘Anyway, that’s not important. The thing is to get myself together. I got problems.’

  Helen refilled both cups. Phil slurped his with one gulp. He seemed restored; his crest stood perkily again. ‘I got to sort myself out, see.’

  ‘Well,’ said Helen. ‘We’ve all got
problems, but you’re welcome to stay here for a bit.’

  Phil looked at her over his cup with kindly reproach. He ignored the first part of her statement. ‘Thanks, Helen.’

  ‘Actually,’ said Louise, ‘it’s the perfect solution. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it myself. I mean, you and Edward aren’t involved emotionally like we are, and he’s not going to get up your nose in the same way and I’ll know where he is and that he’s all right. It’s the obvious arrangement. At least he rang.

  Though of course you would have done anyway. Not that he was what you’d call forthcoming. A series of grunts, which is mainly what I get these days. There are points when I wonder if he actually hates me, or if he’s not yet got beyond the level of contempt and indifference. I look at him — when I can bear to and frankly if you can persuade him to use a clean T-shirt you’ll be doing all of us a favour — I look at him and I remember dear little chubby hands clutching one, and the way their faces used to smell of soap and milk. What happened to all that? Anyway, at least he rang. Maybe it indicates some normal human responses.

  And I’ll know where he is and roughly what he’s up to. Though … is there a drug scene in the village vet? All right, I daresay you don’t — but there’s no need to snap, I have been pretty well at the end of my tether. You don’t know what it’s like — wondering what the hell he’s up to now and where he’s gone and when he’ll be back. And the grunts and the glares and the

  slammed doors and that bloody T-shirt. Do try and get him to eat some decent food. And keep me informed. Unless of course he deigns to ring again himself. You might point out that one has feelings. Anyway… So how are things with you?’

  ‘How long for?’ said Edward.

  It was Helen who made up the spare room bed, in the end. Phil, it appeared, had spent his life under a duvet; the technical problem posed by sheets and blankets defeated him. He dumped himself in the battered armchair and watched her, chatting cosily the while. He seemed to have taken on a new lease of life. ‘I like it here. ‘S’a nice house. S’not smart. I don’ like smart houses.

  Actually, that’s what I like about you and Edward. You’re not smart either. Not like Mum and Dad’s friends. They know some shocking people, really shocking.’

  ‘Mmm. Could you pass me that pillow.’

  ‘All right if I put up some posters? S’a bit boring the way it is, this room.’

  ‘I suppose so. I can’t think quite what you’re going to find to do here, you know, Phil.’

  ‘You don’ need to worry about me,’ said Phil reassuringly. ‘I’ll probably be spending quite a lot of time writing poetry.’

  Oh. I see. What sort of poetry do you write?’

  ‘Protest poetry, mos’ly,’ said Phil in a business-like tone.

  ‘Edward won’ min’ if I borrow his typewriter, will he?’

  She had given tea to Phil. Had drunk tea herself, telephoned Louise, taken Edward aside and explained, made up the spare room bed. And all through this she did not think of Giles. She did not take those hours out and contemplate them; she simply let them lie somewhere in the head, to surface no doubt at some point of low resistance. The small hours of the morning, conventionally.

  From time to time that evening she was visited by the sight of the lake with its gold fretwork of fish; she wondered how many years it would be before she could go to that place with equanimity. And, thinking this, she knew that the thought itself was the first, faint, early signal of recovery. It was as though, at the height of a fever, you experienced a fleeting moment of wellbeing.

  Eventually, she thought, it will all be over. I shan’t care.

  But before then there is a long way to go. Now, tonight, there is nothing to look forward to, no reason to get up in the morning or move from one day into the next. I have been someone else these last few months; now I have to learn to be myself again.

  ‘No thanks,’ said Phil. ‘I’ve had something.’ It was the following evening; he was declining, with all civility, the cottage pie that was on offer for supper.

  ‘Basically, I jus’ eat fish and chips,’ he explained. ‘There’s a van comes to the village at tea-time. I sussed it out yesterday.’

  Edward, impressed, said, ‘I never knew that. It might be useful.’

  ‘Outside the pub. I’ll bring you some tomorrow, if you like.’

  Edward glanced guiltily at Helen. ‘Well, we’ll see . .

  Helen, pushing her way through the day, had forgotten all about Phil for long periods. He had vanished into the village for a while, then had come back and wandered around the garden and even penetrated the Britches, she noted.

  Later, he could be heard clacking away on Edward’s old Remington, which he treated with the reverence usually accorded to rare works of art: ‘S’a lovely job, this. Dad’s only got a stupid Amstrad.’

  Edward, after his initial alarm, appeared to be unaffected by Phil’s arrival. When he came across him, he looked surprised but not especially put out. Helen, through the encompassing distraction of her own feelings, was aware that he too seemed locked into some private anxiety. She found him gazing out of windows.

  When the milkman appeared at the back door he swung round in agitation. Helen found him irritating; she felt as raw as an invalid, stepping cautiously from hour to hour in a daze of self protectiveness. Edward and Phil were impedimenta she would have preferred to be without at this particular time; she would have liked to crawl away somewhere, like an animal, and sit

  things out. As it was there were meals to be provided, interruptions to be faced. When the phone rang her spine crawled. She said to Edward, ‘Could you answer that?’ Edward, as though deaf, continued on his way across the hall and up the stairs.

  Helen picked up the receiver and heard Joyce Babcock’s voice with a curdling mixture of relief and disappointment.

  Did you really think he was going to ring? said her mother.

  After that? You’ve burned your boats now, haven’t you? Didn’t you realise? You’re your own worst enemy, you are, Helen.

  What’s that you’re muttering about? Self-respect? Well, if you want to use language like that you’re welcome, but a fat lot of good it’ll do you.

  Another day passed. And another. Helen went to Spaxton, drove unflinchingly past Giles Carnaby’s office, attended the library and carried out her duties. Back at Greystones, the kitchen drain flooded and Tam discovered one of Helen’s trapped mice and began to eat it before he was noticed. Helen, dealing in succession with both these crises, was surprised to find Phil at her elbow, offering assistance. He rummaged enthusiastically in the drain and then embarked on a brief and vigorous tussle with Tam, from which he emerged triumphant with two-thirds of the mouse. Tam, snarling hideously, slunk out into the garden. Phil disposed of the mouse in the dustbin. ‘That’s an awful dog. I mean, I don’ like dogs anyway but that one’s really disgusting.’

  ‘Edward’s very fond of him.’

  Phil nodded. There was a silence. Helen continued mechanically to prepare the supper (or lunch, was it? or breakfast?) She rather wished Phil would go away but could think of no means of dismissing him and anyway it didn’t matter to her all that much. She had been visited by one of those moments of desolation that struck, out of nowhere, at irregular intervals, crippling both thought and action; she peeled a potato, put it in the kettle, stared at it for several seconds and then took it out again.

  Phil said, ‘Edward’s a nice bloke.’

  ‘Yes, I know.’

  ‘He don’ go on about things. That’s what’s wrong with mos’

  people. They’re so pretentious. I mean, almos’ everybody I know is pretentious. Edward jus’ doesn’t bother.’

  ‘I see what you mean,’ said Helen. The desolation was ebbing a little, like a fever, but she didn’t feel up to a considered review of Edward’s character.

  ‘I don’ mean you’re pretentious,’ Phil continued solicitously. ‘I mean almos’ everybody else excep’ you. You’re pret
ty much like Edward.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear it.’ It was time, she decided, to wrench the conversation in a different direction. ‘Are you … do you feel you’re anywhere nearer … getting yourself together? Since you’ve been here.’

  Phil gave her a look in which injury and dignity combined.

  ‘Takes time, dunnit? I mean, if it’s psychological.’

  ‘I suppose so,’ said Helen meekly.

  Edward was having difficulties with chronology. He slept so badly that he moved around in a continuous grey fog of weariness.

  He never knew where he was within the day. Sometimes he found that he had lost his way within the year also. He would surface from his churning thoughts and look blankly at the world: what date was it? What month? He had to turn his eyes to the window and learn whereabouts he was from the state of the vegetation beyond: high, straggling growth, leaves tinged with yellow — early September. He realised that he was probably unwell in some way, but it did not seem to be a state of ill health about which anything could be done; you could not go to the doctor and say that you didn’t know what season it was. He seldom left the house, except to visit the Britches. The previous week he had been out with the ornithological society; the bird watching had been therapeutic but he had found the company disturbing. It was preferable, on the whole, to be alone. Helen did not count, really. Phil’s arrival had been briefly disconcerting, but he was easily ignored. After a few days Edward ceased to notice him. He was not noticing much except his own grinding needs.

  ‘I thought I’d get a bus to Spaxton,’ said Phil. ‘Get myself some new tapes. All right with you?’

  They were having breakfast. The back door was open on to a golden morning; the garden glowed; the hedge was white-veiled with spiders’ webs; a robin sang piercingly from the apple tree.

  ‘S’a nice day,’ Phil continued breezily. He embarked on his third piece of toast. Helen glanced at him in surprise; one would not have expected sensitivity to the physical world to come high on Phil’s list of responses.