Mrs Caliban and other stories

by Rachel Ingalls

  Raymond had spent all the first morning showing her how the different lifts worked. She’d been strapped in to one mechanical device after another. The most difficult had been the slow one, where you hung on by your arms and had to keep your skis from moving apart as you were pulled along over the ground. But the most terrifying had been the one where you retained the heavy skis, sat on the T-bar, and were lifted so high above the ground that you could look down: on the tops of trees that grew in icy gorges miles below. She’d been so afraid that she hadn’t dared to call out anything to Raymond, who was sitting in the seat ahead of her. He’d remained untroubled by the height, and kept turning around to talk. The skis had pulled downward. She’d thought she could keep her leg muscles fixed but if her hands and arms began to shake, that would be the end. The fir trees underneath their path were the biggest she had ever seen and their surrounding landscape looked as forbidding as a scene out of prehistoric times. Raymond twisted his head around and smiled. When they were free of the tow she told him, ‘I never want to go on that one again. I was afraid I was going to fall out, or maybe even jump out.’

  ‘Do heights make you dizzy?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’ve never been on anything like that before.’

  ‘I was just thinking – when we take the walk over the pass together; I guess Ross can take care of you.’

  She wasn’t sure she’d be going on any walk. She felt stiff all over. She passed the greater part of that first afternoon picking herself up off the ground and trying to keep the skis from sliding in opposite directions. In the end she gave up and went to sit on the observation porch and drink cocoa while she watched the skaters. And she rehearsed what she was going to say to Carter.

  *

  Carter’s village was unspoiled compared to the complex of big hotels, restaurants, discothèques and casinos higher up the mountainside. It was still a real village, with a church, and local people who didn’t speak English. The children slid down the steep main street on sleds, the grown-ups were climbing or leaning from ladders propped against a group of mammoth snow-statues that they were building. The statues portrayed characters and stories from the Bible. The three kings were finished already, while work went on around the ox, the ass, and – the most important – the Virgin holding her child in her arms. The tallest figures stood higher than the housetops nearby; and they seemed to have been shaped according to some principle handed down through the generations, since all had approximately the same look, or style. They reminded Mamie of the faces on playing cards, or of chessmen, or certain kinds of puppet.

  ‘There’s a lot less neon down here,’ Carter said. ‘See all this authentic culture? You don’t get that up in the fleshpots.’

  ‘What do you do in the evenings?’

  ‘There’s a tavern. And the pensions serve beer and liquor.’

  ‘No dancing?’

  ‘Next village.’

  ‘But I guess it costs a lot anyway. How can you afford to be here at all?’

  ‘I sold some stuff. And I borrowed some.’ He pulled her along by the hand, up a set of steps cut into the snow. ‘Come look at the church,’ he said.

  ‘What for?’

  ‘Listen.’

  They stopped outside the doorway and waited while two men moved what looked like part of a wardrobe into the building. Mamie could hear music coming from somewhere ahead of them.

  She stepped forward, through the thick curtains and into the church. Carter followed.

  He put his arm around her, led her into a pew, and began to whisper in her ear. ‘They practise every morning and afternoon. I think it’s just the local schoolkids, but maybe they’re from the whole area. Pretty good, aren’t they?’

  She looked around at the carved wood, the painted plaster lilies and angels, and at the schoolchildren playing their fiddles and flutes. It was the only nice church she’d ever been in. She’d have liked to stay all day.

  He took her to a different village in order to talk. They sat in the corner of a dining-room that belonged to a small hotel. For an hour and a half they talked. He drank three beers, she had four cups of coffee. He wanted her to kill Russell. She said, ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’ He threatened to go to the Chase family with lies, or even with the truth; he started to make her laugh. He told her stories.

  She could see what he was doing; she’d watched it on the stage so many times when they’d played farce, but she’d always gotten it wrong herself because she couldn’t keep the tempo – that was what it depended on: his timing was perfect. He knew how to slow you down and when to accelerate, to make you shape your timing to his. He made you believe from moment to moment that it was all real, that he was telling the truth, that the way he’d put it was right, and that he loved you best.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I’ll get a divorce.’

  ‘I know that bastard. He’ll keep the kid.’

  ‘They wouldn’t allow that.’

  ‘They’d prove you were an unfit mother. An unwholesome moral influence. Under-educated, no money of your own, no background.’

  ‘They can’t. The law wouldn’t let them.’

  ‘Oh, a few dollars in the right places. I told you, I know how these things work.’

  ‘Don’t,’ she said.

  ‘It’s true.’

  ‘They wouldn’t let him. You couldn’t blame him for trying, I guess. He’d have a right to try. He really does love Bobby.’

  ‘Rights over my kid? Mine?’ He sounded just the way he’d sounded when he talked about all the money that was supposed to be his.

  ‘I liked that church,’ she said. ‘The last time I was in church was when I had a headache. I just wanted to sit down and rest.’ She told him about the preacher who believed she’d come into his church to commune with God. Carter was highly amused. And, as always, she felt inordinately pleased at having been able to entertain him. But when she thought back, she remembered that sitting in the church that time hadn’t been so funny.

  He raised his glass of beer. He said, ‘That’s what I love about you, Rhoda. You make me laugh.’

  ‘I guess not many people go into churches at those in-between times unless it’s a kind of emergency.’

  ‘Maybe he thought you were a fallen woman.’

  ‘Especially young people. Church wouldn’t be the first place any young person thinks of. It was fun to see all those schoolkids playing their music.’

  ‘Are you thinking of going religious on me all of a sudden?’

  ‘I never told you much about the birth, did I? You aren’t interested in things like that. There was one point where I was having a pretty bad time. I was sure I was going to die. I really was. I couldn’t kill anybody, Carter.’

  ‘We’ll see.’

  ‘No. I couldn’t.’

  ‘We’ll talk about it tomorrow,’ he said.

  ‘I can’t keep talking about things. I’m worn out.’

  ‘You look all right. All this healthy air. How do you like this part of the world?’

  ‘Oh, it’s very – well, it’s nice, of course. But it’s so different.’

  ‘It looks beautiful, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So white, so clean. But the cold can be without pity. I remember reading about those mountaineering teams when I was growing up; all the famous ones – Everest, and everything. There was one story I remember, about going up the Eiger: one guy was left out there for a long time, and when they got to him, all he could say was, “Cold, hungry”. He’d already eaten up the leather straps on everything he owned and he’d started to eat his lips.’

  ‘Don’t tell me. I hate that kind of thing.’

  ‘I love it. Stories like that tell you what people are really like.’

  ‘That’s only what they’re like when awful things happen.’

  ‘They happen all the time. You can’t say people only behave that way in extremity. All life is extremity. What about right at the beginning of that climb – that man’s decision t
o set out in the first place? Was that a crazy idea?’

  She thought about the snow outside and said, ‘Yes, of course it was.’

  ‘Well, I can see myself doing the same thing.’

  ‘So can I.’

  ‘You’d never get past the ski lift.’

  ‘So can I see you,’ she said. ‘I can see you doing the same thing. I wouldn’t want to.’

  They walked out into the cold again. A girl coming towards them smiled knowingly at Carter and said, ‘Hi, there.’ He said, ‘Hi,’ and kept going.

  ‘Who’s that?’ Mamie asked. She was angry for not being able to stop herself saying anything. What would he tell her, anyway? Just the usual.

  ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘somebody. I don’t know. A snow-bunny.’

  The girl had been wearing a red fox jacket. A girl like that would have plenty of money. And she hadn’t looked too obvious, either. She looked born-rich: she’d have come to the ski resort as a victim, not a predator. With so many women like that around, Carter wouldn’t have to kill for money; he really could many it. He’d reminded her before that he was still free.

  She could sense him preparing to frighten her with the possibility. She’d be too tired to rise to it at the moment, but on another occasion, it might work.

  When they passed by the church and the snow statues, it was already getting dark. There were lights on in front of the inns and hotels. People called to each other, their voices carrying clearly in the cold, pure air. The giant snow figures glowed with their own whiteness; even in the twilight people were still working on them. He pulled her into an alley between two houses, to kiss her before she went back up the mountain.

  She arrived at the hotel in plenty of time to take a shower before dinner. Russell talked to her from the other side of the door. He said, ‘Mother doesn’t want me in the casino. It’s such a bore to be told the same thing over and over.’

  ‘Well, she worries about you,’ Mamie answered. ‘She doesn’t understand why you’d want to keep doing it when you always lose, Like she said: you’re throwing it away.’

  ‘Why don’t you try to stop me?’

  ‘I’m not your mother,’ she said. ‘Besides, you wouldn’t quit until you wanted to, would you?’ She hung up her bathrobe and put on a slip.

  He sat on the stool in front of the dressing table until she came over and moved next to him. He got up, crossed to the windows and stood there, fingering the drawn curtains. He said, ‘I saw Carter down in one of the villages this morning. Were you with him today?’

  She said yes without turning her head. She heard his feet moving. He came into sight in the mirror. He sat down on the bed.

  He asked, ‘Are you still sleeping with him?’

  ‘No,’ she said quickly, ‘I told you all about that.’

  ‘Oh, I know what you told me.’

  ‘Well, it’s true.’

  ‘That day you took the baby to town,’ he said, ‘I followed you. That’s another good thing about a job like mine. But I took a plane. It was easy. You went to the theatre. Yes. To the department store. And then you met him in the park. That’s when I knew: when I saw him playing with the baby. It’s his child, isn’t it?’

  She put her head down in front of the mirror. For months she’d expected him to say something and she’d gone over her answer – lots of different possible answers; and now she could barely get the sound out. She sobbed and said no, Bobby was his child, but Carter wouldn’t let her alone and kept threatening to tell lies about her, and in fact that was just what he’d said he was going to do: ‘He said he’d even go tell you our baby was actually his, unless I did what he wanted.’ She got up from the stool, fell towards the bed and threw herself at him, protesting. She wept noisily, happy to let go. It was making her less afraid. And it dismayed him. Carter was unmoved by tears, but Russell couldn’t deal with them.

  ‘Stop, please,’ he said. ‘Don’t cry like that.’

  ‘But you wouldn’t believe him, would you?’

  ‘OK, I know all about Carter. We’ve been through that. He was after Julie’s money.’

  ‘He said he loved her.’

  ‘Love? Carter doesn’t work that way.’

  She sniffed and stopped crying. She said, ‘Do you think we ought to get a divorce?’

  ‘Of course not. Why?’

  ‘If you’re suspecting things like that, I don’t know. You can’t love me much.’

  He put a finger on the side of her jaw and turned her face towards him, saying, ‘You know, in certain lights you look just like her. Like my first wife. You’re such different types, but it’s there.’

  ‘Do you think about her a lot?’

  ‘No. But here in the mountains, I guess it can’t help but be on our minds.’

  ‘It must have been terrible,’ she said. ‘I’ve wanted to talk to you about it before, but I thought it would bring back painful memories.’

  ‘Yes, it was,’ he said. ‘Terrible.’ He drew in his breath and added, ‘She was a real bitch. Always telling me what to do. Always right about everything. Always knew best.’

  *

  Late in the night she woke up and felt scared. The room was hot and completely dark. She told herself that the dressing-table was in front, the yellow curtains to the left, the bathroom at the right. She grew more and more afraid.

  She thought Carter was lying to her, but she loved him. She didn’t know anything about Russell any longer and suddenly wondered if he liked her at all.

  He liked biology. He liked the subject. She wasn’t sure how much he liked people. He was polite, which made it harder to tell. His own mother wasn’t sure how he felt.

  In spite of all the lies Carter told, maybe it really was possible that Russell had pushed his first wife to her death. If there were some way of knowing for certain whether Russell believed that Bobby wasn’t his – then, Mamie thought, she’d feel safer.

  *

  She wanted to see Carter right away, but he was out. She took her skiing lesson on the slope, went back to the hotel for lunch and played cards with Katherine, Waverley and an old woman they’d run into, who was a friend they hadn’t seen for many years.

  During one hand when she was dummy, Mamie was called to the telephone. It was Carter, saying that he’d found the note she’d left and that they could meet late in the afternoon.

  There was to be a hockey game in one of the valleys that night. Randall and Raymond were planning to go to it, but Russell had said he wanted to see the movie the hotel was showing. Mamie told Katherine that she had to pick up a sweater she’d left down at the ski lodge: she’d go get it, have something to eat, and meet the boys later at the hockey game.

  ‘I’d like to get down there early and watch them working on the snow statues while it’s still light,’ she explained. ‘I can get a snack. I’m already eating too much.’

  No one questioned her about anything. She’d left her partner, the little old lady, to play out a small slam doubled and redoubled; that was a lot more important than the fact that she was going to spend an evening away from her husband and have dinner alone. No one, except perhaps Russell, would notice her absence. And he probably wouldn’t, either. He’d be thinking about going to the casino.

  *

  People were crowding together in the village. She and Carter were swept along down the streets with the others heading for the game.

  They passed an inn where a woman stood with her back to them. Mamie thought for a moment that she looked just like her mother; and then the woman turned around. She still looked like her mother, but younger. And Mamie thought: That’s what she must have been like before I ever saw her.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Carter asked. He had his arm around her. She said she was fine.

  It was almost dark. The lights were already on in the houses. As soon as they started on the road up the hill to the stadium, they had the snow and starlight to see by, nothing else. She was puffing by the time they reached the stands of the open arena. The d
arkening air was deep and freezing.

  Carter bought some sausages and beer. They ate and drank as the seats filled up around them. Mamie kept watch for Randall and Raymond. She noticed that she appeared to be the only woman there, although it was hard to tell when everyone was so bundled up. Nobody near her seemed to be speaking English.

  ‘Can you see Randall?’ she asked. ‘Or Ray?’

  ‘We’re fine,’ Carter said. ‘Now tell me. You’re going on the big walk tomorrow, right?’

  She said yes, and told him the times and where they planned to start, where they’d end up: at the inn on top of the mountain.

  Then she told him what Russell had said about seeing them in the park that day in town.

  ‘Right,’ Carter said. ‘That’s it. There’s no sense in going on with any of it now.’

  ‘That’s what I think. We go to him together and ask for a divorce.’

  ‘And he keeps the kid and the money, too. Nope. You start off on that walk, and make sure you two are the last ones – which you’ll be, anyhow, because he’s going to do to you just what he did to her. Oh yes, he is.’

  ‘I’m not doing anything.’

  ‘I’ll do it,’ he said. ‘I should have known I’d have to. You’d just mess it up.’

  She felt the same sensation that had come over her on the open ski-lift: of steep, quick falling before the fall should begin.

  She reached over and put a hand on his knee. She leaned against him. ‘I don’t want –’ she said.

  ‘It’s all right. We won’t talk about it again. Leave it to me.’

  She tried to say she didn’t want it to happen, she didn’t want to be there, in a foreign country, surrounded by strangers, and talking about murder. She only wanted to be with him, and get their baby back, and forget everything else.

  She stayed clinging to him as the cold grew excruciating. Her feet froze. She couldn’t even get the feeling going by stamping up and down on the wood planks. Despite the low temperature the smell of garlic and red wine was overpowering.

  The players came skating out on to the ice; red and black jerseys, faces livid under the lights. Up above, in the open air, you could see the stars.