In fact, it had been a struggle and a strain for Agnes, and much to her surprise, the most adamant opposition came from her father, not because of any religious sequel to her marriage but simply because it was to Harold Sempie, someone of whom he had never previously expressed an opinion. Her father was usually a tolerant, easily humoured man who openly allowed his daughter to manipulate him in order to get her own way, much to the annoyance of her mother who took an altogether more astringent view of her daughter’s upbringing, but he was totally inflexible over Harold Sempie. He wouldn’t hear of any relationship.
At first he simply denied it, forcefully putting it from his thoughts, insisting to Hazel that if nothing was said the situation would pass. He resorted to deafness. As Hazel tried to reason with him, at least to the point of admitting that Agnes was actually infatuated with the Sempie, he simply refused to hear. When he finally had to admit that deafness wasn’t sufficient to hide the truth he became incensed. He begged and threatened Agnes, even offered to pay for her to go away to work in order to give herself time, though time was something she had never thought about once before in her life. He insisted that the age difference was too great, Harold being twenty-nine, Agnes merely nineteen.
Hazel found herself in the strange, not to say invidious position, of having to champion a Sempie. She pointed out that there was a war on and maybe Agnes was lucky to have any man at all. Aidan countered that Harold Sempie was no soldier, just a stay-at-home thug. Hazel made the case that Harold himself didn’t attempt to boss the area, he was simply Martha’s shadow and couldn’t help being a Sempie. Aidan was quick to point out that Harold wasn’t a Sempie, the reality of which struck Hazel as something of a relief, but for Aidan was virtually infernal.
Neither Hazel nor Agnes could understand why he should be so obdurate. The situation threatened to become a major rupture between father and daughter, maybe one that would prove irreparable, the danger of which Hazel was not slow in pointing out to Aidan, when suddenly he surrendered and gave his consent if not his blessing, making no attempt to mask the fatalism in his voice. If there was any lasting consequence to the crisis it was in the fact that Hazel told Agnes that her father was rather deafer than he had been, and even when she shouted as loudly as she cared he sometimes couldn’t hear her at all.
Not that Martha would have believed the struggle Agnes had endured, considering her hopelessly unequal to such a thing. The very fact she offered no protest when Harold forbade her attending mass – a move certainly inspired by his mother, Harold himself having no religious affiliation – seemed to prove the point. If she could so easily give up a fundamental, then she was fit only for Martha’s firm direction. That the nineteen year old had already rehearsed such a possibility with her own parents and gained their sympathy – evincing the uncharacteristic comment from Hazel that Agnes would always be a Catholic in her heart, as would her children when they came, and the mysterious addendum that it was God’s burden to be acquainted with evil every bit as much as good – would never have entered Martha’s thinking. Agnes was an inconvenience, an embarrassment, an act of stupidity on the part of her plodding son, but easily controlled, easily held in check, in fact so accommodating that if Martha had ever chosen to forget that she was a Shaughnessy, which she certainly did not, she might easily have affected the trick. Her real anger, her most bitter rage, was levelled at Harold, her contrary, offending child, the real culprit in inflicting such a ridiculous marriage on her.
He took all of her abuse, her fits of temper when she became breathless with shouting and her mouth filled with spit, like a large, patient hound, seemingly unperturbed by the attacks, but with a steady, watchful gaze ready to retaliate if the capricious master crossed the line. Not that he ever did retaliate, or even defend himself. He never crossed her and never had, except in the one but amazing choice of wife – which is not to suggest that the courtship was in any way romantic, Harold being a man of too few words for that to be the case. In fact, it is difficult to envisage just how he made any approach towards Agnes at all, but then, the situation should not be overstated. Harold was a man who used language with obvious infrequency, but who certainly was not devoid of confidence. Indeed, on occasion, given the right company and the right amount of drink, Harold could positively gush with words, depicting someone’s misfortune without malice but real comedy. Those occasions were rare though, rarer still as he grew older. No doubt there was an element of convenience in his wanting Agnes. He evidently reached an age when he felt he should have a woman, certainly one additional to his mother, despite what she might think, and Agnes was on hand.
As to what Agnes gained from the match, enough to abandon a religion she loved and was devoted to, and relegate a family she loved – she never claimed for herself anything less than a happy childhood – is difficult to say. Perhaps the simplest explanation, no matter how unlikely, is that she fell in love. Her nature, which was essentially simple, allowed for it, love and obedience, the latter absolute once the match was made. In later years, particularly when Abby was returned to them, the two things, love and obedience, probably coalesced into something entirely new, something that meant Harold had to be right and that all he did was for the best. She grew into that compact with him. It was predicted long before by her absence from mass.
There was the added advantage in accepting Harold that he had his own place. It’s likely he didn’t tender her the possibility of himself, but of property. He probably invited her to walk with him, presented her with the front of his small terraced house and asked her whether she would like it. He may even have hinted at the certainty of gaining his mother’s farmstead one day, but as Martha was still a relatively young, robust woman, perhaps he avoided that. On accepting the property, and therefore accepting she was ready to be woman of her own home, the marriage contract was sealed. No objections from Martha or Aidan would have meant anything after that.
Why Harold had his own place is difficult to fathom. He had left the farmstead some years previously, though he still took his washing there and frequently his meals. From the way they approached each other, Martha and Harold, warily, skilfully, like two predatory beasts, it seemed they recognised that it was dangerous for them to be penned up together. The thing that bound them, and it was certainly strong, – one would have killed on behalf of the other – also burdened them. It was a weight they could only shoulder for so much of each day. For Harold the sheer scale of his mother wore him down. Then, on his twenty-fourth birthday, as she sang to him, he knew he had to get out before one of them killed the other. For Martha there was a certain satisfaction in his leaving, which was evident in the pride with which she explained it to people – though no one would have asked outright – saying forcefully: He is such a Sempie, through and through, thank God.
It turned out to be a fortuitous move given that within weeks the war broke out, by which time Harold was an iron-ore miner, a reserve profession, no longer a pig and hen man – though he had erected pig-sheds and hen-huts in his yard, and taken a piece of the field behind to have somewhere for his sows to run. On paper he was a miner, his animals a pastime. In fact he spent very little time in the mine, which suited him fine as he detested the stain the ore left on his skin, which was becoming increasingly permanent lending his naturally dark features a distinct orange tincture, but was occupied in seeing to the transit of black market meat. Martha was behind it. She became quite the criminal as far as pigs and poultry were concerned. Not only did she have her own to sell, she established a whole network of farmers and smallholders keen to cash in on soaring prices. She didn’t have enough say-so to authorise Harold’s absence from the mine herself, but knew someone who did, someone making far more money than she ever would. If she expected Harold to show her any gratitude she was sadly mistaken.
Still, despite the surliness with which he saw to his task, those years of marketeering were some of the happiest of his life. The thrill of watching for the police as he made his round of th
e fell farms in the hours of dusk was one never to be repeated, and perhaps contributed to the moroseness of his later years. He was also pleasantly impressed by a driver who regularly came up from London, a powerfully built West Indian with a craggy, pockmarked face who went by the name of Nurse. Nurse told him all manner of amazing stories, usually involving near misses with the authorities in his numerous wanderings around the globe, accompanied by peals of screeching laughter. In comparison to this man’s life Harold’s seemed like a prison sentence.
In fact towards the end of the war Harold wasn’t unconvinced that he should have joined up and seen a bit of the world himself. He was particularly taken by news accounts of the gradual taking of Italy, but left it too late. It became a regular refrain when he was bored or irritated that he should have been a soldier and had missed his opportunity. It was never clear whom he was blaming, Martha, Agnes or himself. Agnes was invariably sympathetic, whilst Martha simply scoffed and suggested he was better off with pigs. He always spoke about Nurse with affection and regret.
After the war he took to doing odd jobs, usually farm work, and still had his own sows and porkers, anything in preference to the iron-ore mine, though his skin retained a mild glowing tincture. There was still a great deal of illegal trading, post-war shortages ensured that, but Nurse had disappeared and there was less money about than there had been. Once the fighting was over there was an admission of bankruptcy. Within no time it was as if Harold had never known any other life. He and Agnes settled down to a routine of stasis and boredom. Whether either of them dreamed of anything different is impossible to say. It was an existence outlined by habit; habits formed through lack of money.
Then there was the child, Abigail, my sister, named by Martha, claimed by Martha. She never cried so everyone said she was a good child. We never cried, except Grace, occasionally, so they thought we were all good, and if not good, at least appropriate, children of the age, sharing its bleak realisations, its lack of funds and goods, silent in the teeth of the uncertain future. The miracle is that there were children at all, let alone three, three sisters, born in the same year, with grades of deafness, grades of non-hearing, but nevertheless the same scale of vision, visions that were biblical, apocalyptic, ruined.
Abby always had that sense of seeing, of peering at something sketched across the horizon revealed only to her, which she accepted without enthusiasm or fear, but nor with negligence. There is always that which defies and denies us, that which bars access to the world of inner visions, so that everything is always partial, even her touch, the sign for love, Poppy cradled, the hurt like a light on her face, displaying her but never unmasking her, decoding what the horizon had just given.
*
I left the shore, the horizon having given me Abby, at least a trace of her, her looking, seeing something without enthusiasm or fear, signing a muted declaration of love. I needed that after my encounter with Martha, needed to hear her name, the urging that drew me on, her vowel.
It was growing dark when I climbed from the shingle onto the dunes then re-crossed the river and followed the quarry line back to the village. From the railway bank I could still see the mud-flats spread along the coast, despite the mustering greyness. There were probably waders calling, perhaps the occasional drum of wings, but I left it to silence. I was glutted on Abby’s name. As I’d stepped up the shingle bank, the gathering darkness muffling the sea, bending sound, I’d turned off my aid, leaving only the planet’s bass notes to rumble through me.
A barn owl hunted silently across the plain, etching the twilight with a movement of drifts, stabs and falls, each swoop to the bog floor unsuccessful. I waited, hesitating maybe, watching the bog, the owl, the imagined life below it, merging my thoughts into the shadows, the vanishing contours, wanting to lose definition myself, wanting to assume spectral beauty, my veins frosted, crystal rich, an element amongst those receding but life rich elements, and called to it with an animal intimacy, like a she wolf, baying an understanding beyond reason, because reason had let me down.
The trick could not be effected for long though, because as is always the case we insist on reducing everything to meaning. Besides, I had an appointment to keep, one I had made with myself. So I went on, departing from another of Abby’s spaces, the bound world of the marsh flats, where she looked and signalled no name, no animosity and then love.
And, of course, I had to re-admit sound.
Harold was alone. Agnes had gone to her parents because Hazel wasn’t very well, nothing too serious, he didn’t think, but Agnes was doing their dinner, presumably because Aidan didn’t cook, which he immediately corrected to couldn’t cook. He smiled at the thought, but didn’t say any more. The smile, though, loosened something in him, some stream of thought that amused him, pleased him. He smiled more broadly and invited me in. I was astonished. He was little short of flirting with me, his invitation, the look on his face, signalling his hints.
He remained in the doorway as I stepped inside, forcing me to brush against him and encounter his weight and substance. He slammed the door behind me like a prison door at night, his hand going with it, demonstrating its closure, the absence of an escape route. Despite everything I felt my heart rate wind up. I too felt excitement and distinct pleasure, but of a wholly different nature and order.
He smiled at his achievement, the closed door, the display of himself, then removed his hand from the door and eyed me more coldly, with a revelation of dislike, or perhaps more accurately, disregard.
Speaking with slow, mannered syllables he told me I was looking well, that he would have been hard-pressed to recognise me, except of course he knew it was me. Well, it was obvious, the telltale sign was on display, as always, my hair pulled back into its usual neat bun, the hearing aid exposed.
He stepped up to within inches of me, the aroma of moist earth and stale sweat emanating from him, and uttered that the life must suit me. I met his insistent gaze and shrugged my agreement. Yes, the life did suit me, the life if not life itself, life happening in so many places and times at once, memory and desire overlaid on event, making one, one Judith Salt, twenty-five years of events, currently enjoying the life.
‘‘I fancied London myself at one time, but I don’t think I’d want it now,’’ he said, accusing me of something in saying it. He shrugged, smiled, and then, as if dismissing any further thought of it, quietly demanded: ‘‘Can you hear me?’’ Again it sounded like an accusation, a threat, but I quickly realised that I had yet to speak. I had appeared on his doorstep, accepted his invitation to come inside, but hadn’t said a word. It was a question. He wanted to know if I could hear, but there was no concern, sympathy or embarrassment associated with it, just blandness and bluntness. He was used to it, of course, the query, the doubt, the suspicion: can she hear, can you, can you hear?
‘‘Yes,’’ I said, ‘‘yes, I can hear, sorry.’’
The apology seemed natural, though I hated myself for so easily giving it, but he didn’t pursue it, didn’t want explanations. He had already moved on. ‘‘Well sit down, go on, sit down.’’
It was only then that I took in the room, freed from his attention, his grip. I was surprised. What had been two rooms had been knocked into one, and where there had been flagstones with rugs there was now a wall to wall fitted carpet. The walls were an expanse of red roses. The old grates had been taken out, replaced by coal effect electric heaters lit by light bulbs. – There was no gas in the village.
‘‘It’s very different,’’ I said, without excitement, not wanting to reveal surprise over anything.
He pursed his lips. ‘‘It’s not new.’’
‘‘Your mother’s is exactly the same, exactly as I remember it.’’
‘‘You’ve been there?’’
‘‘Just to say hello, be polite, and I noticed that the house is just the same.’’
‘‘At her age people don’t change.’’
‘‘But she isn’t old. What is she now?’’
‘‘I guess so. I wasn’t sure she even used the supermarket.’’
‘‘Of course, she uses the supermarket. What do you take her for?’’
‘‘There used to be a meat van.’’
‘‘There still is. He sells meat. That isn’t everything.’’
‘‘There used to be a van for everything.’’
‘‘Well, now there isn’t.’’
‘‘But a meat van.’’
‘‘A meat van.’’
‘‘The world used to come to us, but now it doesn’t, except for a meat van, that must be quite a change.’’
He didn’t reply but watched me steadily, alert to what I was saying, searching each word, uncertain of his ability to decipher hidden meanings, annoyances, cleverness. It wasn’t his strength, which was in all ways physical. He was flabbier than he had been, though, his outer coating softer because of it, but that was a new layer, the bulk and heaviness remained, the size, the imposing expression, the constant vigilance, the disappointment.
‘‘I mean,’’ I continued, ‘‘once upon a time there was no need to ever leave this village, this tiny village with its handful of families. You could die here without having seen anything else.’’
‘‘You can die anywhere without seeing anything else.’’
‘‘Don’t you think it’s surprising though? There must have been people who never went anywhere, simply waited for the meat van.’’
‘‘They were all right.’’
My Name is E Page 5