by Maggie Gee
But the angry crest of fair hair is Dirk’s.
‘I’m his mother,’ she says to the young white woman who opens the door, pointing at Dirk, and the woman frowns, uncertain for a moment, then suddenly beckons her in.
‘Dirk?’ May says, a little bit shy, for everyone’s turned to look at her. Perhaps fifty people are packed in this room. The fluorescent light is bright, after the dim cold landing. Dirk looks at her with his mouth open, and she wants to tell him to shut it again, for it isn’t an expression that makes him look intelligent.
There is a weird-looking man like a priest, at the front, in a kind of long white dress, with a scarf, and his eyes are strange, dark-ringed, scary, as if he hasn’t slept for months, but the iris is paler even than Dirk’s. Eyes as white as glass or ice, fixing on her like a bird of prey’s. Now he’s talking to Dirk, who he calls ‘Brother Dirk’, and motioning him to deal with her. May starts to feel she is intruding on something. There is an atmosphere, tense, electric, not just to do with her bursting in.
Dirk looks older, thinner, than she remembers. He too has a garment like a priest’s surplice, but shorter than the other man’s. It is a physical shock when he comes near. She remembers this; once he was hers. She finds herself thinking, but he’s half my Alfred. She catches her breath; she wants to cry. Something is coming to a close at last, something is happening that had to happen.
Angela clutches at her daughter, but Gerda shakes off her mother’s arm. She is crouching on the bottom step, looking down. Her cheeks are bright red; she’s just starting to cry.
‘Winston jumped in, I told him not to –’
Angela sees the boy, swimming about, a plucky, not very fluent dog-paddle: the hanging branches and leaves look threatening, arms of things that want to trap him.
Anger comes to suppress her fear. ‘What on earth does that boy think he’s doing?’
‘He dropped Bendy Rabbit. But he can’t dive. Winston! Come back, Mum will get your rabbit – you will, won’t you, Mum, say that you will –’
‘But Gerda, we’ll never find it in here. We’ll have to buy him another one –’
‘Stupid Mummy! You don’t understand!’
‘What are you doing?’ Dirk says, grumpy. Suddenly it’s all very ordinary, for how often has May heard him sounding like this. ‘I don’t know why you’ve bothered to come. Matter of fact, I’m very busy.’
She was going to embrace him – all kids loved hugs, but Dirk, as a boy, had been hard to hug – but, hearing his sulky voice, stepped back.
‘I read in the papers you were out of prison,’ she says, very quietly, mouthing the last bit with meaningful gestures of her eyebrows, for no one need know he had been to prison.
‘Fat lot you care,’ he said, and suddenly looked young, he looked like the skinny blond boy she remembered, imagining the other two were loved more than him.
‘I didn’t think you liked it when I visited,’ she said, simply, but she did feel guilty, she was in the wrong, she couldn’t explain why she had just given up on him. (She had got so tired, it was her age, perhaps, but she knew that Alfred would never have allowed it, if he’d been alive they would have gone to see him, no matter what the boy had done.) ‘Your poor nails, Dirk,’ she said suddenly, reaching out and taking his hand, for the quick of the nail was raw and bleeding and the skin on the knuckles was flaky and pale. He snatched it away, with a harsh little breath, then looked at the floor for a second, hunched, then with a violent, unreadable convulsion of emotion, tried to put it back again. She took it, she held it. It felt like wood; wounded, awkward. A limb re-attached after a terrible accident.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know anything. I never did.’ It was there again, that sinking feeling. Her whole life as a mother, her whole life as a wife, she had never known anything, she’d just reacted, just done the next thing as the next day came, and mostly it was wrong. Her whole hurrying life. It was only afterwards you understood things.
(But maybe it had been like that for Dirk. Was it possible? She stared at him. Perhaps it was even like that with … a murder. Perhaps a great bird snatched you up in its claws, perhaps you were muffled in the dark smelly feathers, perhaps the thing happened in blind, deaf panic, and then the cruel feet dropped you again. And then, in the light, you saw you had done it, and everyone was standing staring at you. For a second May felt as if she had murdered. Perhaps she and Dirk had done it together.)
‘Brother Dirk!’ a frightening voice shouted now. May blinked, and returned to the crowded room. Everyone was silent. The light was too bright. Everyone stood there staring at them. May felt very shy. She held Dirk’s hand tighter. The voice was the voice of the priest at the front.
‘We are in process of judgement on Sister Kilda. We require your attention, Brother Dirk.’
‘It’s just my mother,’ Dirk mumbled, looking down (she had tried to teach him not to mumble; had constantly told him to stand up straight, and she nudged him, with her elbow, as she had done so often, but he twitched away as if she had kicked him, and his head went forward, as it often did, into what May used to think of as Dirk’s head-butt position).
‘The court will continue,’ the priest announced. ‘Brother Dirk, you have promised to forsake all others. Is this woman to stay, or go?’
Dirk looked confused. ‘It’s not a woman, Father Bruno,’ he muttered. ‘It’s, you know, my mother. She’s only just got here. I can’t chuck her out, like, straight away.’
For a moment Father Bruno’s face became completely blank, a queer shivering contortion that left it like a mirror, and what May saw in the glass was so frightening that she looked away, for she saw her own death, but it was only a moment, then the image was gone, and the man waved the two of them forward together.
‘Gerda, I never learned to dive.’ Angela is trying not to cry herself. She ought to be able to sort this out, if she were better, if she were stronger. Winston is not responding to her shouts.
‘Zoe taught me, in the diving pool. Because she said I was the best at swimming.’
‘You’re not going!’ Angela shrieks. She manages to scrabble a hold on Gerda’s dress.
Gerda watches Winston splashing about. He keeps pushing his little face down into the water, and comes up choking and coughing out slime.
How long, thinks Angela, can he keep this up? The water on her body feels cold as death.
Outside the glass, there is a deafening droning; it must have been growing louder for ages, but Angela, preoccupied, has hardly heard it. But now she does, and thinks ‘motor-boat’, and she starts to shake, with joy, with relief, for the Gardens staff must have come to save them.
But in another moment she sees she is wrong, it is helicopters, swooping low above them. A yellow drizzle seems to be falling, in the old world, the world they have left.
May gets to the front of the packed gathering and sees a strange woman sitting on an armchair she somehow manages to make like a throne. Facing the crowd as Father Bruno was.
Then May thinks again. Big, but not a woman. She is beautiful. She is just a child. She sits there, tall, grave, heavy, wearing a pale blue dress like a night-gown (and then May realizes, it is a night-gown) and bare feet, and dishevelled red hair, but her face is beautiful, the kind of high forehead that in May’s youth would have been called ‘noble’, her eyes are large, grey, steady, her skin gleams with health and youth; she looks as if she’s fed on milk and apples; she could be a queen, in her long loose dress, a country queen, or Persephone; she has a look of the young Shirley.
But there’s something wrong, May sees at once, for her mouth is swollen, drooping, sulky, almost as if someone has hit her, and her body (with her big legs wound round each other, her heavy arms folded across her chest) says, ‘Do not touch me: do not hurt me.’
‘Who’s that?’ May hisses to her son, but he shakes his head, impatient, shushing her. In any case, May soon finds out, because Father Bruno turns and addresse
s the girl.
‘And so, Sister Kilda, these are the charges.’
‘I still don’t get it,’ Kilda says.
‘SILENCE!’ Bruno yells, in a wire-taut scream that cuts the air and leaves them all still. Only Kilda stays human, stirring, shuffling, but her face quivers, for a second, with fear, and her mouth stays immobile, slightly open.
‘You have left the true path, the One Way. You have prophesied in your own selfish voice, without consulting the One True Book. You were tempted away by money, and frivolity. You were seen at the Gala, consorting with sinners. You tempted others, you led them away, offering them visions of worldly things. This is your crime, your sin of sins. You have defied your Father’s instructions. You have tempted Adam as Eve once did. Sister Kilda, you have abused our trust, you have tried to undermine the One True Faith. Because we are just, infinitely just, you shall have a chance to acknowledge your guilt, to renounce your sin, to come back to us. Acknowledge the Book, and you will be forgiven. God is an angry God, his wrath is infinite, he takes you up and he casts you down, but if you humble yourself, he can also have mercy. Repent, Sister Kilda. Accept the Book.’ He paused, leaning forward towards her like a vulture, his arms extended, casting sharp shadows, strong, wiry arms that could kill or bless.
Gerda is calling across the water. ‘Please, Winston, you’re making me scared. We got to go back now and find Franklin.’
But Winston doesn’t take any notice. He is tiring now. His body is drifting.
Kilda rises to her feet, ungracefully. Standing in the light, she looks more beautiful but no older than she did before. To May, a mother, she is just a child; she looks at her and again sees Shirley, before she was comfortable in her skin, trying to live in her new adult body.
Kilda doesn’t talk at all like the priest. ‘Thing is,’ she says ‘I haven’t done nothing. I hear the voices, I see what I see. It wasn’t my fault that, like, the papers got on to me. First of all, you all, like, go mad about my visions, you’re all, like, “Kilda, this is amazing, oh Kilda tell your visions to me.”’ (There is a flash of mockery as she says this, a flash of the teenager, suddenly, and May feels afraid; she sees Bruno is dangerous; but as quickly as it came, it fades away, and Kilda is just sad and slightly sulky.) ‘Then suddenly it’s all, like, “They’re not the right visions”. But I do see it, now, I see a big wall of water. I do see, like, the end of the world, the thing you’re always going on about. What you don’t get is, there’s lots of different endings. It isn’t, like, One Way, not at all. There are worlds that are all bright, like worlds of light, and a world of darkness, but it all, like, splits, it goes on and on, so there’s lots of worlds, and the pieces get shuffled … It’s doing it now. Every day, every moment. And now you’re all, like, trying to keep me locked up. Like I’m the devil. But I’m not. I’m like you. And my mum will be worried if I’m not home soon.’
Then she turns to Dirk, who is staring at the floor, his head and shoulder twisted slant-wise, crab-like, a creature protecting itself from hurt. ‘And you,’ she complains, ‘what’s up with you? I thought you were, like, a mate of mine. I never did anything against you, Dirk.’ (It may be the first time she’s said his name; actually said his personal name, which his mother chose, and he never liked, but which somehow slipped under his skin, and became him.)
Kilda’s speech, which sounds touching, and truthful, to May, makes that curious blank shiver come over Bruno’s face. ‘She condemns herself,’ he hisses, sudden as a snake, his small head darting from side to side, and all around May, the faces work and shudder. ‘SHE CONDEMNS HERSELF! She is without faith! She has rejected the peoples of the Book! She has rejected the faiths of the Book! This woman is damned for rejecting the Book!’
The hubbub which broke out is stilled again, as his furious mouth issues the condemnation. But Kilda, who at first slumped to her seat as if exhausted by the strain of speaking, is standing again, talking again. ‘It’s not my fault,’ she cries passionately. ‘It’s not my fault. I can’t even read. I can’t read the Book. I CAN’T fucking read it, I can’t, I can’t. It takes me too long. The letters go crooked. And it’s not just me. Loads of you can’t.’
And then they are all howling, mad with anger. May realizes that they will kill her.
Then she looks at Dirk. He has covered his eyes. His fingers, clamped into yellow claws, are kneading, pawing his cheeks and forehead as if he wants to re-make himself. His poor pocked skin looks wet and greasy.
But it can’t be true. Dirk can’t be in tears.
Gerda can’t bear to watch any more. Angela thinks she has a hold on the child, a miser’s grip on her soaked red satin, but suddenly, everything flicks upside down; with a fluid movement like a fish escaping Gerda twists away, stays for one instant poised on the narrow white iron of the step, staring at her mother, is comforted as she looks in her pupils and sees, in their circle, for one split second her own small image, safe in its robe of scarlet satin, queen of the world, but then she dives.
They are fleeing, fleeing; they are falling over; they are dragging trunks and boxes of paper; they are telephoning taxis, airports, heliports, rushing the banks, rifling their storerooms. The rich are trying to leave the city. The rich believe they can always leave, that money will always get them away; but most of the phones aren’t answering, most of the taxis have already gone, and the helicopters hang there, sky-born, swinging dark bellies over the city, droning, droning, deafening.
Frightening the people who do not leave. The poor believe they can never leave. There is no escape; life simply happens, the wheels roll forward, crushing them or sparing them. The helicopters hang there above them.
Gerda and Winston are swimming, swimming.
The rich have choices. What will they save? Jewellery, art, their Slim Jim Shoos, those silvery slender kid-glove stilettos that will surely dance to dry land again, the gliding wheels of their Rollon watches, their Verso shirts, their Parade purses …
Suddenly Lottie changes her mind. She tosses the whole lot on to the floor, runs up to their bedroom, and raids a cupboard. When she toils down the stairs again, her arms are full of photograph albums; pieces of light, pieces of life, Lola and Davey when they were babies, Harold laughing on a sun-blanked beach, Lottie, so young, in a room full of roses. She stands for an endless moment and stares: the past, unshadowed by this future, and yet it was always waiting for her, and then thought fails, because time runs out, Harold is shouting, pleading, desperate, if they don’t leave now they will lose their chance, and she slams the case shut and totters downstairs, toes crammed, at the last, into her Slim Jim Shoos.
Moira Penny is getting ready. She is not in the Towers, with the Sisters and Brothers (though had she but known that today was the day they were going to try Kilda, she would never have missed it). But love; Moira Penny was looking for love; it has never come from her colleagues, or students, and now she has missed it, too, with the Brothers. Father Bruno hurts her with his many favourites, the young, like Kilda, with her empty faith, her Bog Irish ignorance, her brazen beauty, the way she rubs her big breasts in your face.
He has not praised Moira for her radio triumph: the way she brought the One Word to the people. He forgets to consult her about the Book, although he must know she is a doctor, an expert. She has always known about books, always; has spent her life reading, studying, lifting the pages one after another, abstracting the truths, weighing, measuring, telling the less lettered what the books contain, wicker-works of text, immurements of meaning. She has not cheated. She has suffered it all. The aching eyes; the wasted muscles; the long evenings in yellowing libraries; the lunatic strait-jacket of language, crushing her arms against her ribs.
But they don’t value her. They don’t love her. She savours the bitter taste of the truth, the thing they have tried to conceal from her with faint, false fibs of brotherhood: Moira Penny will never be loved. The terrible engines and propellers of judgement that droned above her all afternoon have made her cer
tain it is over for her. She has glimpsed a pale arm, waving goodbye.
Moira has given up almost everything, her teaching position, her salary, her warm office, the respectable house where her dog could play outside in the garden, where Fool and she were almost happy: but till now she could never give up her books; her books and her paper were the things she most needed. At last she sees there is no more need.
She collects them together. From all the thousands she once possessed, using up air and space and life, a mere hundred or so remain, and she makes great towers of them near her window, her attic window, her view of the world, extending over the empty roof-tops, the flooded playgrounds, the useless spires, the tree-tops ringing what was once a park, where she glimpses the movement of an empty boat, and beyond the motorways, more roof-tops, empty, empty, emptiness … But perhaps, and she cranes, she peers through the window, she has opened it to let the cold air in, perhaps in the last dim glimmer of the distance she sees something other, outside the city, something surviving, a blueness, a greenness. Perhaps there is grace, though Fool is desperate, she hears him barking in the kitchen below where she has wedged the door shut with yellow pamphlets, she has to teach him, for he won’t be quiet … Eyes on the hills, Moira Penny waits.