by Patrick Gale
Now Dawn could cry. Curled in a corner, lit but safe from sleeping, neighbourly eyes, she gave herself up to grief. She rocked. She sighed. She was torn by spasms of voiceless sobbing and her drenched face glinted in the kitchen light. How long she stayed there she was unsure; an hour, possibly two. Occasionally she would pause and look up, distracted by the sudden whistle of some night flier over the Bross, then her gaze would drop down to her own, childish face which stared sightlessly up from her lap and she would slide once again into her important sorrow.
When there were no tears left, she laid Sasha to one side, unhooked her spade from the side wall, turned out the kitchen light to give her privacy and went to dig in darkness. She dug the grave near the river, where the soil was softest, but not so near that it might be reached by the waters in winter. She dug in a flower bed so that there would be no trace of disturbed earth. She wrecked her only good shoes in the mud and grazed her legs. Her dress would be filthy. She continued in numb endeavour. By the time she was up to her waist, her body was streaming sweat which the breeze chilled on her skin although she was boiling within. Her palms felt raw. There was a faint pallor in the sky; sunrise was not far off. She carried Sasha into the pit aware, after a last embrace, that her skin now carried the musky scent of her child. She began to shovel soil quickly then stopped, dropping the spade to one side and fetched the black candles from the kitchen. These she buried too. Crazed with exhaustion to the point where she did not care if all the Mrs Parrys in the world were watching her, she stripped off her dress and hurled it with all her might into the darkly shining Bross. The shoes she tossed one two after it. Then she trailed the spade back to its place on the wall. The dew-soaked grass felt good on her hot feet. Upstairs she bathed rapidly, so tired that she was unable to tell whether the water was scalding or icy, then fell into bed and the sleep of the just.
51
The late-morning sunlight was broken up by the countless little white and green glass lozenges that made up the windows of the Lady chapel, and chequered the heads and shoulders of those assembled much as if they had been gathered on a forest floor. As they rose from the last prayer for the soul of their dead sister, the little portable organ stationed near the door played an introduction and they launched somewhat gingerly into ‘God Moves in a Mysterious Way’ aided by the Scottish Masons who had politely downed tools in the Patron’s chapel and come to listen.
‘He plants his footsteps in the sea/And rides upon the storm.
Deep in unfathomable mines/Of never-failing skill …’
Although Lilias Gibson had no relatives at hand beyond her son and was known only by repute to his neighbours, Lydia was happy to see that there was a much better turnout than poor Roger Drinkwater’s funeral had occasioned. She was also happy to see that her cleaning woman and Fergus were not so very close that Dawn could leave her sickbed for his mother’s funeral. She was also glad that she had come early enough to do a little extra zealous ‘holy dusting’. There were a lot of people here to whom she had never spoken and several, presumably clients of Fergus, whom she had never seen. She sang along in her thin, sharp voice, found her eyes filled with a few tears and was glad.
‘Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take:/The clouds ye so much dread …’
The six bearers carried out the tiny coffin with Fergus walking a few paces behind them. The coffin was a most peculiar shape. It had eight sides, as usual, and was of a suitably diminished length for a little old woman, but seemed unnecessarily deep. Grotesquely so, almost. Perhaps this was a new fashion; it would be like Fergus to be style-conscious, even in grief.
Lydia arranged her face into what felt like a sympathetic glow in case Fergus looked to one side and saw her, but his eyes kept firmly ahead. She liked to think he would be happier now. They all knew it had been a merciful release for son as much as mother. When Dawn was up and about again she would sit her down for a long elevenses and ask how he was coping.
‘Are big with mercy, and shall break/In blessings on your head.’
As she started to drift out with the little crowd she saw Mrs Merluza pushing poor Mrs Chattock in her wheelchair. If possible, the Bishop’s mother looked more unwordly than ever; perhaps, thought Lydia, she was on some kind of painkiller.
‘Hello,’ she said.
‘Hello,’ said Mercy. ‘Lovely service, wasn’t it? So peaceful, I thought.’
‘Yes. Lovely,’ said Lydia and bent down to greet Mrs Chattock. ‘Morning,’ she said loudly. ‘I think it’s marvellous the way you’re up and about so quickly!’
‘Lovely,’ said Mrs Chattock sleepily, looking first to one side then the other. ‘Lovely.’
Lydia sighed as she stood upright once more and caught Mercy Merluza’s eye. Mercy shook her head sadly.
‘So frustrating,’ she said quietly then mouthed the words ‘Borrowed time’ and shook her head again. ‘I say …’ she went on.
‘What?’
‘Did you notice something a little … well … odd about Lilias Gibson’s … er?’
‘Well yes. I did rather. Do you have any idea why …?’
‘Well I know Claire Telcott vaguely,’ said Mercy eagerly. ‘You know, she’s the Matron up at Brooklea, where poor Mrs Gibson had just been sent to rest herself.’
‘Yes.’
‘Well I met her in the town this morning, looking in the window of Daniella’s, and she said that they’d had a terrible time.’
‘How do you mean?’ Lydia stood on one side to let some more people pass, and Mercy wheeled Mrs Chattock out of the way too.
‘Apparently she had some kind of fit when her, you know, her attack started.’
‘How awful!’
‘Yes and it was in … in the Little Girl’s Room and when they finally got in there to rescue her, there was water everywhere – coming under the door, even, Claire said – and she had actually tugged the pipe off the wall and out of the bottom of the tank. There was a hole in the masonry. Right through to the sunshine!’
‘No!’
‘Yes. And of course that’s why the, you know, why it was such an odd shape.’
‘Sorry,’ Lydia said. ‘I don’t quite see why.’
‘Well, they couldn’t get her hands off the pipe,’ Mercy enthused. ‘They had to get a mason to trim it as best as he could and then leave a great piece of it in her clutches.’
‘Lovely,’ said Mrs Chattock suddenly, then much more loudly, ‘Lovely!’
‘Oh dear,’ said Mrs Merluza. ‘I think she wants a cigarette. I must get her outside quickly or she’ll start to cough. I have to put them in my mouth to light them for her; makes me feel quite sick but what else can one do?’
Alone once more, Lydia walked slowly along the outside of the quire. Through some of the arches she could see a mountainous flower arrangement hung with white toy birds where Saint Boniface of Barrow had his makeshift habitation. Mrs Merluza and the wheelchair receded into the milling throng of tourists. The Scottish Masons, who had been so tactfully unemployed during the service, returned to their noisy work in the Patron’s chapel. Lydia paused in the south transept then decided that, rather than leave by the Glurry as usual, she would walk out along the great nave and through the west end like everybody else. She passed Mrs Moore and Sam the verger carrying a long bench between them and said good morning. She stopped to smile at a crowd of enchanting black children who were being guided round by Canon Wedlake and several of whom beamed back at her instead of attending to him. She had a brief chat with Emma Dyce-Hamilton, who was over to talk to the Dean about arrangements for the choir school’s confirmation service. Emma did not look at all well. They did say she was a little absent-minded. The poor, neglected thing had forgotten to brush her hair. Then Canon de Lisle’s voice came over the loudspeaker system to remind the tourists that this was a house of God and to ask them to join him in a brief prayer. Lydia hurried out. She was no good at praying standing up. Besides, having in her small secret way saved the Cathedral’s reputation
, she felt she could grant herself a few days’ special dispensation.
52
Dawn was in the open air for the first time in four days. The morning after Sasha’s death she had been woken by the telephone. Presumably this was Fergus ringing to ask her to come to admire his new roses. She did not answer it and she lay motionless when it rang again in the afternoon. She lay in bed all day, venturing out only to use the bathroom and to make cups of tea. She did not get up on Monday either, but lay there checking off a missed work appointment in her head at each neglected sounding of the telephone bell. On Tuesday she rang Mrs Merluza and Fergus’ answering machine to explain that she had been forced to rush to the aid of a sick aunt. For Lydia Hart she had summoned up a throaty choke and muttered about highly infectious gastric flu. With a certain irony she decided that the aunt was the same one she had been meant to be visiting during her pregnancy; ‘Auntie June in Leeds’. She was not prostrate with sorrow all this time; she simply felt the need to be alone, undressed, to think things through.
She had lain staring at the bedroom ceiling on the first morning and perceived, with the clarity of one not given to self analysis, that she was utterly at peace. As a child she had played a game where a friend pressed hard on the top of her head for the count of thirty then released her, so inducing the sensation that her skull weighed nothing and that her neck was growing as long as a swan’s. The feeling now was like that. She felt different, new, because something had stopped. It was now that she could say to herself,
‘I had a daughter, but now she is dead’, that she could see how much the worry of Sasha’s welfare and whereabouts had been pressing in on her thoughts. And for how long. Sasha was dead but Dawn had done her grieving. Her daughter had quite clearly been in no state to take a place in Barrowcester society and trying to keep her presence a secret would have proved a crippling strain. Sasha had been more an idea for her than a person and it was difficult to grieve long over so unknown and unknowable a daughter. Dawn was left with an obligation to live in the cottage and to guard its garden from curious shovels until her dying day. She also found herself tending the small but long-rooted satisfaction of having been recognized as a mother, if only on a brief, bestial level.
This morning she had telephoned Fergus from her bed to say that she was back and to ask about the roses and he had told her that in her absence his mother had died.
‘You missed the funeral.’
‘I’m sorry, Fergus.’ Rare for her, she felt a twinge of remorse. Mrs Gibson had been in her wild way curiously likeable. ‘Was it bad?’
‘No. Not really. She had a massive coronary – very quick – and the woman at Brooklea handled everything for me.’
‘She hadn’t been there long.’
‘No. I think they felt they ought to deal with the funeral directors and everything for me to earn the fat profit they’ll have made. I’d paid a non-returnable month’s rent.’
‘Had she started playing up?’
‘Well they were very discreet but I think she might have. She …’ He broke off to laugh.
‘What’s so funny?’
‘She was vandalizing a loo when she went.’
‘Good for her.’
‘How’s your aunt?’
‘Auntie June? Oh fine. Faking as usual, I think, but she looked pretty ropey. I’ve got a neighbour of hers to keep an eye on her.’
‘Oh, Harpy, I’d love to see you. Are you busy this morning?’
‘Well I’m meant to be doing for Lydia Hart but I haven’t let her know I’m back yet. She thinks I’ve got gastric flu.’
‘So I gather. Why didn’t you tell her the truth?’
‘I felt like lying.’
‘Be a devil and skip her.’
‘See you in an hour.’
As she hung up, her eye fell on the copy of Visions of Hell that lay on her bedside table and she remembered her resolution of the night before. When she had dressed, she opened the kitchen drawer and took out the thin, old book Evan Kirby had let her borrow, and a piece of paper.
‘Dear Mr Kirby,’ she wrote. ‘I return the book you lent me. It was very trusting of you and I want to thank you because I got the thing I wanted and no longer need the book. I know you thought I was after a man or money or something but you were wrong. It was a little red-haired girl; my daughter. I can only write this because you aren’t from here. I used the fifth incantation (page 9). Yours sincerely, Dawn Harper.’ Then she wrapped book and letter in brown paper, ready for posting. She would steal the address off Old Merloozy when she went there to clean tomorrow or, failing that, post it to his publishers for forwarding.
Dawn had climbed half way up the High Street when she noticed a small commotion coming her way. At first all she saw were several children rushing headlong down the hill cheering and being pursued by a couple of barking dogs, then she saw that they were chasing a thin stream of water. (Drains were scarce on the hill, the slopes rendering them largely unnecessary, or so some tight-pursed counsellors must once have thought. When it rained heavily the lower parts of town, like Bross Gardens, were awash.) The children hurtled past her, chasing the water and chased by the dogs. Dawn continued upwards, noticing with some amusement the way in which shoppers were pausing on the pavement to watch the dusty flood as intently as if it had been a bicycle rally. She slipped into a cake shop – not Hart’s because she disliked adding to Lydia’s considerable wealth – and bought some doughnuts to share with Fergus. When she emerged she found that people were heading towards the Close. She had to walk the same way before turning off. There was a curiously excited atmosphere. People were laughing and craning their necks. There seemed to be dogs everywhere – none of them on leads and all of them in a near-frenzy. Incurably inquisitive, she decided to approach Tracer Lane by Tower Place and the Close and so catch a glimpse of whatever was causing all the fuss.
Dawn only ever entered the Close to take the short cut to the Bishop’s Palace, and she would not be going there again. In her Christian phase she used to come every day. She looked over the heads at the birds wheeling around the sunlit towers and wondered whether she might not slip into Evensong tonight or tomorrow maybe; for old times’ sake. She pushed to the other side of the pavement and saw that there was even more water here. It was running fast and lay so deep all over the road that the gutters could not drain it all away. There was a woman with a little girl on her shoulders and the girl and Dawn both gasped with surprise at the same time.
The great lime tree, centuries old, that stood yards from the west end, had sunk. The ground seemed to have melted beneath it and the whole trunk had been swallowed. The lowest branches now rested on the grass. There were leaves and twigs scattered everywhere. Four or so policemen were trying in vain to put up a rope to keep the crowds away. Several children and one or two youths who had forgotten to be mature had slipped easily past them and were climbing among the foliage and rudely displaced birds’ nests. One girl who could not have been more than nine had reached the topmost branch, which at dawn had been up near the Cathedral roof, and was excitedly waving what looked like a pair of knickers. The trunk had evidently interrupted the course of one of the underground streams for the water Dawn had seen on the way was gushing up from beneath the incongruous mass of earth-bound boughs. The water was brown with clay but the sun was hot and it looked so inviting that Dawn took her shoes in her hands and jumped into it to paddle. All around her people were doing the same and the ubiquitous dogs were running riot, splashing innocent passers-by and pawing awestruck, mud-dabbling infants. A policeman had taken out an electric loudhailer and was trying to drive people back with threats of further subsidence but his words were lost in the holiday din.
‘Harpy! What the hell are you doing?’
Dawn turned slowly to scan the crowd. She had moved to where the water was deeper and was peacefully rubbing one bare foot against the other and splashing the insides of her calves. She saw Fergus, who was staring at her from the safety of the
pavement a few yards away. Dreamily she beckoned him with the hand that was holding her shoes.
‘Come,’ she called and smiled.
Over pre-Evensong tea and banana loaf later that day, Marge Delaney-Siedentrop told Mercy Merluza that she and her husband had seen the newly motherless bachelor sharing a bag of doughnuts with his and her cleaning lady.
‘Both of them up to their knees in that filthy water,’ she said. ‘He’s quite clearly taking the sad loss of his mother very hard, poor man. Of course, St John and I just happened to be passing.’
53
Evan was sitting in the sunshine working. It had not rained for a fortnight. According to Mrs Rees, the postmistress, this would shortly be recognized as a drought and they would be forbidden to wash cars or water gardens. Every morning, after his coffee and the first cigarette, he took a shower to wake himself then dragged the little kitchen table out on to the grass to start work. The cottage was at the end of half a mile of dirt track and there were fifteen good strides between front door and cliff-top. Being a holiday house, it had no real garden and the salt would have discouraged any but the hardiest plants, but there were tough old lavender and rosemary bushes in heavily fertilized soil under all the landward windows. In the warm evenings, they sat with all the windows and doors open and the air was full, now of sea and peppery gorse, now of sun-baked herb. The cottage was whitewashed on both sides of its thirty-inch walls. The old broad slates had been lovingly reset and the fireplaces in kitchen and bedroom perhaps a little too lovingly reopened. A bathroom had been cleverly tucked into an ex-coal bunker. Hot water and, when necessary, heating was provided by an Aga so that the picturesque old bread oven could be filled with books and covered with cushions to make a kind of snug. A ladder on one side of the kitchen/living room led to a sky-lit hayloft. Madeleine had insisted on sleeping on this as soon as she saw it so Evan was left with the more orthopaedic comforts of the main bed next door.