by Patrick Gale
Madeleine stopped writing as her eyes caught sight of her name written several times over in his shrunken, academic hand on a scrap of paper that seemed to serve as a bookmark in a small hardback exercise book. Naturally she had no hesitation in pulling the rubber band off the book, just to see if the inscriptions of her name continued all the way up. It was a diary of sorts. Her first, weak, noble impulse was to shut it at once and finish her message. Her second, stronger, base one was to flip back a few pages and see if her name were mentioned.
Not only was she mentioned by name, she was examined, eulogized even, at great length and the text was illustrated here and there with a clever cartoon of what she realized must be her in a dressing gown in a high wind. The cartoon was repeated over and over and was evidently a stereotype which he sought to perfect. The most recent one was marred by a pair of horns and a pointed tail.
For ten minutes the flat was utterly silent except for the hum of the fridge, Madeleine’s occasional deep intakes of breath and the rustle when she turned a page forward or back. The silence was broken by her oath when the cigarette burning uninhaled in her hand singed her fingers. Then she stubbed it out, closed the diary and stuffed both her notes into her dressing gown pocket. She emptied the ashtray into the waste bin in the kitchenette then slipped upstairs to find some clothes.
43
‘Clive?’
‘Mmh?’
‘I can’t bear it.’
Lydia and Clive had arrived early, as she wanted to inspect his flower arrangements in the chantry and felt that if she stayed any longer in the house the temptation to change out of the frock she had made into an old one that she knew to be flattering, might have proved unendurable. They were now pacing anxiously in the entrance to the cloisters. A small black cloud bank was drifting across the sun.
‘I just know Dawn’s going to spill paint,’ she said.
‘What paint? What would she want with paint? She’s cooking.’
‘White paint. That revolting American drunk last night put grafitti on our porch. Didn’t you see it when you left?’
‘No,’ said Clive. ‘There’s going to be another storm,’ he went on.
‘Shut up.’
‘Don’t be so bloody tense. In three hours it’ll all be over.’
‘Three hours can be a very long time.’
‘Well what’s the worst that could happen?’ he asked as she tidied his hair with her comb.
‘They might be shocked. They will be.’
‘What at?’
‘For pity’s sake, Clive, they’re West Indian. Oh, it’s just that I feel so,’ Lydia pulled off her gloves and stuffed them into her handbag, ‘so very …’
‘What?’
‘Will you let me finish?’
‘OK. OK. So very what?’
‘Rich.’
‘Rich?’
‘Yes. Rich and comfortable and smug and, well, white.’
‘If they could afford the flight to Europe, I scarcely think they’ll have come from a shanty town.’ Clive lit a cigarette and thought of Gloire washing pans in a river, wearing nothing but a long, wet, muslin shift.
‘They’ve probably had to sell all their goats or something. Tobit didn’t tell me what they do which is bound to mean that they don’t do very much. He was being considerate in front of Gloire. Oh God. Why did it have to happen so fast?’
‘They told you. It was convenient because the DelMonicas were coming over anyway.’
‘Well I didn’t believe that for a moment, did you?’
‘If they’re so broke, how come their daughter went to Vassar and is now living in London, buying dresses off Tobit and studying medicine at Barts?’
‘Oh darling, she probably got a scholarship. She’s a very, very bright girl.’
‘Brighter than Tobit anyway.’
‘Don’t say that.’
‘Quick. Smile. Geoff Dixon’s coming.’
‘Oh God.’
‘Leave God alone and have a Valium.’
‘Shut up.’ Lydia threw a smile at the school chaplain as he crossed the quadrangle. ‘Hello, Geoff,’ she called out.
Geoff Dixon had sideburns and his hair lay slightly over the top of his dog collar. He had a pretty wife, was tone deaf, quoted Bob Dylan in his sermons and encouraged the boys to call him Geoff to his face. Behind his back they called him the Ark, as in went out with. According to Clive, he had recently applied to work at a youth crisis centre in Liverpool and been turned down. If only Tobit had been content to wait and do the thing in style, Lydia might have been able to secure the services of Mr Gavin Tree.
‘Clive. Lydia. Great to see you,’ said Geoff and shook them warmly by the hand. ‘Groom stood you up has he?’
‘No,’ said Clive, ‘they’re arriving together from London.’
‘Oh right. Great. Nothing like breaking the old rules.’
‘We’re keeping an eye out for Gloire’s parents actually,’ explained Lydia. ‘it’s their first time in England and they may be a bit confused.’ Lydia glanced down and saw that Geoff had brown suede shoes on under his cassock.
‘So she’s French?’ Geoff asked.
‘Half Martiniquaise,’ Clive told him.
‘Ah. And am I right in thinking Tobit wants the King James version?’
‘That’s right,’ said Lydia. ‘Beds and boards.’
‘And with my body I thee worship,’ rejoined Clive, mournfully grinding his cigarette stub into the historic masonry.
‘Clive’s done lovely flowers,’ said Lydia, willing the chaplain to go away.
‘Fantastic,’ said Geoff obediently. ‘Must go and check them out.’ He hushpuppied his way into the chantry.
A horn blared out in Scholar Street and Tobit’s little black Alfa Romeo sped through the gateway and across the cobbles of the quadrangle. The porter ran out of his lodge to stare. The scholars watched less openly, from the battered armchairs and sofas they had dragged into the open air. Gloire sat on the back of her seat and swung her caramel legs over the side of the car. They were bare and had white silk slippers on the end of them. Fully aware of the sensation she was causing, she stalked around to the other side and opened Tobit’s door for him. Her white dress clung almost indecently low before throwing out a skirt that flew out at every turn of her hips. Lydia saw the artfully slashed panel in the back and recognized her son’s handiwork. Clive looked aghast at Tobit’s impeccable morning coat and wished that he had resisted rather more firmly Lydia’s suggestion that he wear ‘just an old suit’ so as to put the DelMonicas at ease.
‘Gloire you look enchanting,’ said Lydia, banging cheeks with her new daughter. ‘That must be a Tobit Hart you’ve got on.’
‘Smile, Dad,’ said Tobit and shook Clive’s hand. ‘Is Geoff in there already?’
‘Yes,’ said Clive.
‘We’ll drift in and say hello, then, ’cause I want him to meet Gloire. Why are you waiting out here?’
‘Well your mother thought that …’
‘I was worried that Gloire’s parents might have trouble finding their way,’ continued Lydia, with a twinkling smile at Gloire.
‘Thank you, Lydia,’ said Gloire. ‘That’s really thoughtful of you,’ and, one hand wound under the tails of Tobit’s coat, she was led to the altar.
‘She smells of vanilla,’ Clive remarked.
‘Have a Valium.’
‘Yes, please.’
Even as they popped pills, they saw the DelMonicas walk gracefully arm in arm under the arch. He was not in a morning coat, but the well-creased charcoal of his suit made Clive feel less prêt-à-porter than off the peg and on to the floor. She had not only the porter, but the porter’s best friend, a clutch of gaping tourists and a slavering black labrador in her wake.
‘Chicken sweetcorn patties,’ murmured Lydia. ‘Green bananas. Stuffed christophine. Royal Grenadan bloody icing.’
‘What are you saying?’
‘Help me.’
‘What did you sa
y they do?’ asked Josephine, buttoning her gloves as they swung off Scholar Street under the arch.
‘He’s an English teacher in this place.’
‘It’s a school or what?’
‘It’s a sort of university for difficult children, I think. She’s the local success story.’
‘She runs a strip joint?’
‘She writes cookery books and runs some faggoty delicatessen; snails in brine, wild boar pâté, stale German bread that kind of thing. Books, too.’
‘Oh good. I was worried I might have overdressed.’
‘That’s them.’
‘Where? No. Doudou, tu me moques.’
‘No. It is. There by the cloisters.’
‘Mais … C’est pas possible!’
‘I bet you.’
‘Sweet Jesus, now I feel gross. You could have told me they were hippies.’
‘Wait till you see the whites of their eyes, Mammee, then smile.’
44
‘Did you have to wear the red dress, cariño?’ Mercy asked as Madeleine and she crossed the High Street to Labels, the new wine bar where her daughter was taking her for lunch.
‘Naturally,’ said Madeleine. ‘I wear my dresses in strict rotation. I came with six, six days ago so it’s time for the red one.’ Her mother sighed heavily. ‘I know it doesn’t suit me now that I’m pregnant …’
‘Ssh!’
‘Now that everyone knows I’m pregnant, but it goes well with my hair and it makes me feel proud to be me.’ She held open the swing doors and Mercy walked in past her. ‘Would you rather we spoke Spanish?’
‘Much.’
So they spoke Spanish.
Labels was a converted cellar. There were stools around a central bar for customers who wanted only to drink and tables tucked into whitewashed, up-lit vaults for those who wished to eat. Mercy chose a table and her daughter fetched a menu then joined her there.
‘If this were in London,’ said Madeleine, ‘it would be the kind of place where married businessmen took their personal assistants after hours, but as it’s in Barrowcester, it’s patronized by mothers and daughters who want somewhere “naicer” than a pub. Who else ever comes here?’
‘Boys and girls from Tatham’s who want to smoke in comfort and drink decent coffee.’ Mercy gestured towards the bar behind her daughter. Madeleine turned and saw that most of the stools were taken up by Tathamites, round shouldered in their effort to pass unnoticed, heads lost in smoke. A small boy standing by one of the stools was lighting up. Madeleine caught his eye and grinned. Confused, he smiled, waved his lit match at her and turned back to his companions.
‘Who’s that?’ asked Mercy.
‘My latest conquest,’ said Madeleine, shifting back to face her. ‘I taught him how to smoke and where babies and puppies come from.’
‘Madoña,’ she muttered. She had thought that if they spoke Spanish, people might mistake them for tourists but already several were staring with amused recognition. Then an attractive, trousered waitress in a white shirt and black tie came to take their order and murmured that the manager said they could have whatever bottle they liked free. Madeleine chose a Montrachet, Mercy’s favourite, and Mercy felt pleasure where she had harboured shame.
She had spent the forty-eight hours since her extraordinary experience in Deirdre’s flat on Thursday in a state of raw nerves. Convinced that, while receiving her revelation about her unorthodox ‘marriage’, she had revealed too much to Deirdre’s eager ears, she had been to Evensong on Thursday and to early Communion, Evensong and a quick lunchtime prayer on Friday. On each visit she had begged Barrowcester’s God to visit discretion upon her friend. She had emerged from each bout of prayer searching the faces she greeted for the one that would find it hard to meet her eye, the one that turned aside in embarrassment, but found only warm good wishes and congratulations on the survival of her ‘ordeal’. Convinced as she was that her exposure was imminent, each friendly glance came as a nerve-twisting stay of execution. The terrific storm which had struck during Friday’s Evensong had made her yet more tense and she had been grateful for the business of the rats and poor Professor Kirby’s manuscript as a brief alternative crisis to occupy her hands if not her mind. She had tidied his room and made him up a clean bed. Then she had gone to bed early, pleading exhaustion, and lain awake half the night plotting her own doom. The telephone had rung during her breakfast this morning and the Bishop had told her of Deirdre’s stroke. She had rushed to her friend’s bedside with a vast bouquet and found her deprived of all but one scarcely incriminating, word.
‘Lovely.’ Deirdre wept on seeing her. ‘Lovely lovely lovely.’
Holding Deirdre’s hand and listening to her repetitive sighs, she had shed a tear for the efficacy of prayer and made a silent vow to devote herself in recompense to her stricken friend’s every future need.
Now the only question that remained was whether to leave Madeleine in ignorance. The details of her parentage could be said to concern any daughter. It might also be claimed that, when her father and grandfather were one and the same, every girl had a right to know. Quite aside from the dues owed her daughter, however, the contents of Mercy’s unblocked memory were extremely difficult to keep bottled up. The mother’s first impulse had been to rush home and tell Madeleine all. It would be difficult to explain to her how she had made her discoveries without being sidetracked into an argument on the ethics and safety of spiritualism. That her discoveries were truthful, she had no doubt. She had tried in vain to explain her experience as a species of vivid daydream; the few brief images and sensations had laid bare a route back into her memory and already, as with childhood photographs too often scrutinized, she could no longer distinguish recollection from subsequent vision. Also, finding that she was now the girl’s sister had made Mercy protective of her daughter’s welfare in a way she never was as plain mother. Now they were allies against Man the Beast.
The wine arrived. Madeleine tasted it, even though it was on the house, then she raised a glass to Mercy.
‘Salud, pesetas and rather less of amor,’ she proposed. They drank, then ordered rare steaks au poivre.
‘Well,’ Mercy said. ‘What are you going to do?’
‘I’m keeping it, I’m afraid.’
‘Why afraid?’
‘Well, you can’t want to be a granny yet, and I’m sure you’d rather you became one through the usual channels.’
‘I’m not so sure.’ Even as she imagined Marge Delaney-Siedentrop reacting in horror, Mercy found herself experimenting with a little liberal delight. ‘I’m so pleased, cariño.’
‘Really?’
‘Really. And after all, it’s not as though it’s a secret any more. I think people would be far more scandalized after all the newspapers and things if they found you walking around baby-less.’
‘And if it takes after you and Edmund it’ll look so distinguished.’
‘You say the sweetest things.’ Mercy bit on a piece of bread from the basket before them and pictured a cross between poor, waistless Madeleine and Jésus’ gross mother. ‘Will you go back to work right away?’ she asked.
‘Fed up with me, already, eh?’
‘Not a bit of it. Don’t be silly. I just wondered. I mean, you’re welcome to stay here as long as you like, but I thought perhaps your professors would be expecting you back.’
‘No. I thought I might take an extended leave of absence and find myself a seaside hovel where I could be at peace.’
‘Impractical as ever.’
‘Well what would you suggest?’
‘I think you should hang on to your flat. It could be so hard to find another one.’
‘And where would you stay when you came down for the sales if baby and I were hiding away in a squalid lean-to in East Anglia?’
‘I wasn’t thinking of that at all,’ said Mercy and wondered why they were being so untruthful with each other. More than anything she would like Madeleine to stay on in Barrowcester
, her home, to have the baby. She could live in the granny flat and even pay her mother rent if she was worried about independence. It would be so nice. ‘Here’s our lunch,’ she said.
Lunch passed quickly. As they ate their steak and salad, drank their wine and chatted amiably enough about babycare and ways of giving up smoking, Mercy felt an encroaching sadness at Madeleine’s departure. There was none of the normal relief that she was about to be left in peace again. Her daughter had been different on this visit. Of course she was physically as hopeless as ever, blowsy and graceless as her paternal grandmother, but there was a new strength about her – one might waver before calling it poise – and Mercy realized that this had evoked something approaching respect. She wanted Madeleine to stay on. She wanted them to become friends. She did not want to be left alone with the awfully crippled Deirdre as sole companion.
After a token fuss, Madeleine insisted on paying the bill. She produced a credit card. Mercy stared at the dangerous piece of plastic and wondered how long her daughter could have been so rash. She was just standing for her coat when Madeleine tugged her suddenly by the cuff and sat her down again.
‘Mum, there’s something I haven’t told you. I was going to run away without telling you and suddenly I know that would have made me feel a silly bitch. Sit.’
‘How much more can there be?’ thought Mercy. ‘What is it?’ she asked. That was it. She had known that there was something being held back. That was what had made her sad; not the departure but the secrecy.