We waited for quite some time, the longer the wait the more perilous it seemed. How could I contact Grace and decide when to make another break? Were they waiting, hunting like scenting dogs? I expected boys called out when they were following a trail, but we were in no fit state to hear. Certainly neither my nor Grace’s hearing, even with a Medresco aid, was up to detecting foraging kids intent on running us to ground. I was scared of shivering, scared of sounds that escaped me.
Eventually I did hear someone call out, heard the faint outline of our names. It grew louder. It was Maria, Maria telling us everything was all right, they’d gone. She called again and again, repeating that everything was all right, the boys had given up; it was all right to come out.
Certainly my first thought was to go to her, there was something so frustrated in her voice, and yet I just couldn’t move. I was stuck in that clump of rhododendron and azalea, scared of sound, the human voice, nature, life. Grace had no hesitation. She was only too relieved to know it was over. I heard her call to Maria. I guessed from the amount I heard that she had stood up, was probably waving her hands, beckoning Maria with that beautiful excitement Grace possessed. It was then that Maria’s voice rose to the tops of the trees saying, over here, they’re over here.
By the time I deserted my sanctuary Grace was sobbing, nursing herself, and Abby was lying on the ground, curled up, but with eyes wide open, staring straight ahead, which must have been a vision of long grasses and clusters of evergreen leaves, though she offered no sign of recognition of any such things.
I thought Grace might chase me away, but she opened her arms and held me, and cried, and I understood without her needing to explain that it was for Abby, because she had been beaten so often, and although this wasn’t much, no more than a few slaps, it was all too much: Grace was her witness and it hurt.
The last straw was when Abby shit on the classroom floor. After that Mr Miller refused to have her back. He was in a particularly foul mood because it was cross-country day, but snowing too hard to attempt it. It was unheard of that the weather stopped the cross-country, but even Mr Miller had to accept that the snow was just too heavy to go ahead. Because it should have been cross-country Abby wasn’t banished to the cupboard, but remained at her desk gazing up at the line of windows which revealed a narrow world of grey snow laden cloud. After lunch Abby began to wriggle. Grace put up her hand and suggested Abby needed the toilet. Mr Miller gazed first at Grace, then Abby, then back at Grace and shook his head. A few minutes later Grace tried again. He slammed his fist down onto the desk and demanded that Grace get on with her work. Grace lowered her head. Ten minutes or so later she tried again, this time causing Mr Miller to thrust back his chair and snatch at his ruler. Before he could take a step towards anyone Abby stood up. She squirmed over her seat for a moment, and then sidled out of her place. As she did she lifted her pinafore. A stream of black faeces trailed down her leg. She danced around for a few seconds, and then rushed from the classroom, leaving behind the smell of her distress and a few splashes of the reason. Mr Miller ordered Grace and me to fetch a bucket and mop from the cleaner’s cupboard and sort out the mess, then he sat back down and gazed into space as he had done on the first day we had entered his school.
At first Abby ran to the toilet at the bottom of the yard, but already it was too late. She stood against a white-washed wall staring up at the metal grills below the ceiling, imagining the snowfall on the other side. Shortly after that, making no attempt to clean herself, she ran home. She stood in the yard for the rest of the afternoon, too afraid or too ashamed to present herself to Agnes, the snow coming down ever more heavily as she waited. She hadn’t moved when Grace and I found her. We took her into one of the pig-sheds and cleaned her as best we could from a water-trough. I think she was hallucinating, seeing whatever fabulous visions she had access to: she was certainly unaware of the water as it ran across her, or the diluted stain, or the smell and sight of pigs. In fact there was a look of strange, careless pleasure on her face. Of course she was ill for a couple of weeks after that, so perhaps it was nothing of the sort, and as so often, I am simply being fanciful.
Grace and I spent another couple of days in the village school, until a letter was sent to our homes stating that it was felt better we attend a special school, arrangements for which would be made soon.
*
The sentence, I am suspicious of light, came into my head, but that is ridiculous. Maybe I am suspicious of the shadows and colour effects of light. I have spent too many days along poorly lit corridors with magnolia walls and insubstantial windows looking out onto grim courtyards, too many days in dingy confinement, for it to be any other way.
Perhaps it would be better to say, I am troubled by light, troubled by its associations, the impression of its being good, troubled, for instance, by the fact that sunlight suddenly flooding a length of sterile corridor is seen as a pouring of joy: but joy, of course, as with everything, is indecipherable from its complement, all opposites being part of the same thing. So, if I am deprived light it is darkness that signals the absence, it is light I perceive. The sustained differentiation of opposites is not about opposition at all but unity. The fight then is always for something, something that exists in absence, not simply against something.
To be simply against something, is to be for nothing.
The real world can drive you mad, though, and sometimes I have the suspicion that that must be the case. I have been locked up for so long, thought about a killing for so long, how could it be otherwise? It drives me to say I am suspicious of light, as if the word suspicious had meaning in such a crazy sentence.
It has to be for something.
I am suspicious of light because it is never an end in itself, but dazzles and therefore obscures its source, so light is in fact dark.
And the world rolls over.
And I try again with my hand-full of signs, wanting to escape my knowledge of narrow corridors, of confinement and killing, but what then am I left with? Just a woman of sixty who takes shallow delight in having her hair washed and dried.
I want to correct myself. I am not suspicious at all, but I relish light, relish sunlight on steel, on glass, on concrete, its tranquil shadow, its unviewable ray, sunlight on faces, on the London crowd, my thoughts fluttering like wings, signing worthwhile pleasure, condign punishment, and I speak, coaxingly and coyly to my efflorescent hairdresser, words to the effect, it is a lovely day.
I am in contact with a human being, with my world.
The trouble is they are surfaces, exterior actions. In my deepest thoughts it is as if only I have an interior life, which is signed by sky, sea and stone, and the other life, in a stubborn limited manner, a way devoid of imagination, or even deep rooted ill-will, collides with it.
Sometimes though, as with the matriarch, when the hate was palpable, as sometimes the hurt was palpable in Abby, there is the utter realisation of another human being, but why that should only exist in hate and pain is incongruous, maybe even inexcusable.
So, I am suspicious of light, of dark, of the air through which we dive believing in flight, however supernatural, magical or physical, a flight which will inevitably dissolve in itself anyway.
Chapter Fourteen
I waited at the end of the street wanting to see Harold alone. It was a dreary overcast evening, with no moonlight, but luckily no rain either, though liable to showers. Certainly it was dark enough to feel hidden, to consider that a mask was in place, the human agent freed up for any possibilities. I knew Agnes was still indoors because I had made a tour of their pig meat estate, their property by seizure, setting a number of dogs yelping, and had seen her through the lighted kitchen window. My mother had told me that Hazel remained unwell, finding trouble catching her breath, her chest tightening and causing her to panic, and Agnes had been spending more and more time there, so I just had to wait for her to go. It was important for me to see them severally, keep them guessing, refuse them any oppor
tunity of ganging up: and besides, Agnes was more formidable than I had ever given her credit for. Before she had been least in my thoughts, but since speaking to her had really come to the fore.
The smell of pig manure stayed with me as I sidled up and down the street, pausing now and again to look at my watch as if I were waiting for someone – which indeed I was – wanting to deflect any unwanted attention. Nobody questions someone who has obviously been stood-up; nobody would want to be involved.
Comic, tragic, sordid, waiting is, and fearful, I signed, speaking in my head, my nerves tangled, visible to me, like strings tied in rows, my mind playing tricks, off on flights of nonsense.
I walked away a few yards, crunching my feet, seeing if I could locate such a remote sound, in an attempt to calm down.
As I was coming back a young girl came towards the houses from the opposite direction, from the village, whereas I was on the lane to St Bridget’s. Inevitably I thought of Abby and, as there can be no separation from her, no point at which she ends and becomes me, or I end and find other, I thought of me; and, naturally, by the same law there could be no separation between the girl and me. So, when she looked along the lane and saw me, she knew, recognised the prediction of herself in the meaning of my being there. I felt a great surge of loyalty flow from me, wanting to bind with her, inform her that the like existed, the possibility, the frankness. I am sure she must have felt it: why else should she have looked so knowingly at me, unperturbed by the unashamed directness of her interest, and so calm?
As she stood on the step, waiting for the door to open, still patiently looking at me, she really was Abby. It was unmistakable. The look was her look, earnest, amused, wicked and a-wing, and I was unmistakably myself, the two of us together in that moment transcending the barriers that break us up into individuals and nations.
At that moment I had the satisfaction of waiting to see Harold, of being his judgement.
A moment later, following a quick frame of yellow light and a momentarily opened door, she was gone, and with her went a certain yearning, the pity ascribed to false peace. Perhaps the shouting, the hair pulling, the beating, the hands where they had no right to be had started already. Peace is the break between what is normal.
Finally Agnes came out and hurried off towards the village. It was time. I wasn’t going to hesitate for a minute. I went straight up to the door, Agnes having only just that second disappeared from view.
Harold answered impatiently, obviously assuming Agnes had forgotten something – presumably a key – then quickly corrected himself on seeing me. They obviously shared a marriage turned habit and irritant, though it was impossible to discount style with them.
He stepped right out into the street before speaking and looked up and down as if my being there might be a joke, a put up job.
He stepped up behind me and uttered close to my ear: ‘‘Did you pass her?’’
I shook my head.
‘‘But you must have,’’ he went on, ‘‘she’s only just gone, just this second, gone.’’
I turned, slightly inclining my head towards him, assuming a playful, mildly impertinent tone. ‘‘I know, I waited, saw her, watched her go. She must have been late, she went off at quite a step.’’
‘‘It’s Hazel.’’
‘‘I know, finds a tightening across her chest when she breathes. It doesn’t sound that good.’’
‘‘It’s nothing, it’ll fix, the way things do. It’s Aidan, Aidan she goes for.’’
‘‘Because Aidan can’t cook.’’
‘‘I don’t know about that, don’t know what he can do.’’
‘‘You don’t know?’’
‘‘No,’’ he replied sharply, ‘‘why the hell should I?’’
‘‘You could ask?’’
He considered for a moment, then relaxed and asked: ‘‘Why would I be interested?’’
‘‘Because it’s your wife’s family.’’
‘‘I didn’t marry them.’’
‘‘She married yours.’’
‘‘What the hell’s that supposed to mean? Anyway, why keep going on about her?’’
‘‘I’m not, I’m going on about you.’’
It was obvious by his failure to reply that my response pleased him. He stepped back up to the top step and looked down at me, a stupid grin shaping itself on his lips.
‘‘What does she go for, if not to cook?’’
‘‘How the hell do I know? Christ are you coming in or not?’’
‘‘Have I been asked?’’ I responded in the same testy tone.
He slammed the door back causing it to smash against the wall, keeping his hand on it to forestall any rebound, then dropped his arm leaving a passage for me to go in. As soon as I crossed the threshold the door slammed behind me and I felt his hands roughly grabbing me around the torso, his mouth searching for mine, in an ugly exercise of passion.
‘‘Not so quick, God, not so quick!’’
He let me go, pushing me away without violence. ‘‘I thought you wanted it,’’ he said, quite matter-of-fact, a business deal he had miscalculated.
‘‘I didn’t say I didn’t.’’
‘‘Look,’’ he said firmly, warning me, ‘‘don’t piss me about.’’
Again I replied like for like: ‘‘No, you look, Agnes might be home any minute.’’
‘‘You watched her go,’’ he mocked.
‘‘And I don’t want to watch her come back.’’
He grimaced and fell away, shuffling into the sitting-room proper, taking up what I assumed was his usual seat by the electric fire. ‘‘She’ll be ages yet,’’ he called back.
‘‘You don’t even know what she does.’’
‘‘Don’t I though,’’ he said, smiling lewdly.
‘‘No, you don’t.’’
‘‘Please yourself.’’
‘‘Have you always been so willing to be unfaithful to her?’’ I asked, sidling into the room behind him, standing behind a three seated settee.
‘‘What do I do now, butter you up?’’
‘‘Please yourself.’’
‘‘You’re no beauty, but you’ll pass.’’
‘‘Thanks.’’
He grinned: ‘‘Straight people, straight,’’ he said, signing it with his right hand. ‘‘Or have you forgotten?’’
‘‘I haven’t forgotten anything. I keep every detail locked up, precious, like china, dainty bits of porcelain, easily broken or snapped, but all there, certainly all there.’’
‘‘Well, take us as we are, or go back to London.’’
‘‘Us?’’
‘‘Whoever,’’ he snapped, confused.
‘‘It’s you who interest me.’’
He looked at me through slightly narrowed eyes, whether distrustful of me per se, or of what I seemed to be promising I couldn’t tell. ‘‘What, what interests you?’’ he asked.
‘‘All sorts.’’
‘‘I said she’ll be ages.’’
‘‘I know, but other things as well.’’
‘‘What other things?’’
‘‘Your kids, for instance.’’
‘‘What about them?’’
‘‘Do you see them?’’
‘‘Of course I do.’’
‘‘All of them.’’
‘‘Of course, all of them.’’
‘‘You never mention them.’’
‘‘To say what?’’
‘‘What they’re up to?’’
‘‘Up to?’’
‘‘What they do?’’
‘‘They do things in the brick factory, hot things, heavy things, make tea, that sort of fashion.’’
‘‘All of them?’’
‘‘Look,’’ he said, standing up, his arm stretched across the top of the mantle-piece, ‘‘whatever way you want to put it, all of them. Joe’s married, one kid, nice kid, should grow up all right; Ruth’s married, no kids, not yet. And Dennis, Dennis is Dennis. Now, I
think I’ve had enough.’’
‘‘All right, not deaf you mean.’’
‘‘Not anything.’’
‘‘But then there was Hilda, your Great Aunt Hilda, Hilda who had to be taken away. So you shouldn’t be too sure. We never know what we have in our families, do we.’’
‘‘I said I’ve had enough of this.’’
‘‘Oh come on, it’s just a little game, we’ll get to the serious stuff.’’
‘‘Don’t piss me off, I’ve said.’’
‘‘I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.’’ He started to come towards me. ‘‘But not here, I said. I’m not doing anything here, is that clear?’’
He grinned again: ‘‘I’ve got the pig-sheds out back.’’
‘‘And have you used them before?’’ The grin evaporated from his face. He was about to speak, but I put up my hand forbidding it, my index-finger raised, in perspective pressed against his bulbous lips. ‘‘What about the old mine tower? I know you’re not comfortable with heights, but it was always cosy there? I presume it’s still there.’’
He eyed me coldly for a moment then slowly nodded, and in a voice full of suspicion said: ‘‘The tower wouldn’t bother me. It’s still there.’’
I smiled, slowly rounded the settee, walked up to him, put my palms against his cheeks one after the other, then kissed him once, on the outside of the lips, then again spreading my tongue along them, then past them, demanding a response. Within seconds we were kissing and panting, his hands groping all over me, across my breasts, around my waist, and then pulling at buttons and zips.
I pulled away, straightening myself as I did, and said: ‘‘I’m sorry, really, I couldn’t do it here, but tomorrow, I’ll wait. When Agnes goes.’’
My Name is E Page 21