Just Relations

by Rodney Hall

  – No, Vivien convulsed, shaking herself free. No, she gulped, trembling horribly.

  – Miss Lang, whispered the leader and caught her again, meshed her in those strange soft fingers, stroked her, quelling her resistance, and drew her again to the place where she had been, to the untouched glass of beer, to the encircling arm of Mum Collins’s ghost.

  Vivien took up her beer and held it steady. She mastered the spiralling sensation. She was a tourist again among the faces; the lichened man a work of art.

  – That’s Mr Ian McTaggart, Felicia whispered. Tony’s grandfather, one hundred and two last December. Capricorn: ask the girls. Over there, she indicated a beldam in the corner, is Miss Bertha McAloon, was Mrs Bertha Swan but went back to being what she started as, once she and Uncle had their falling out. You’ll meet her. Ssh. The hand was warm on her arm, stroking intense waves. Vivien didn’t care, after all, what was happening or how she might be thought of. (The French windows swung open and there she went, so all and sundry might observe her, out on to the balcony of… is it the Kursaal? yes and she’s recognized. Naturally she’s recognized, and lets her ostrich-feather fan click open so she can hold it up becomingly against her chest, the tortoise-shell handle smooth in her creamy gloved fingers. She’s smiling. They all look up from the foyer… and begin to applaud her. She is, she is smiling. The dyed feathers quiver alive, she feels their tips fluttering at her throat. She has been recognized of course, she expected it. My husband says, she says, there will be no trouble if we all remain calm. They listen. The archduke, she continues in her clear high voice, is regrettably dead. He was held in high honour and we are all deeply shocked but we owe it to the rest of the world to be calm and brave and cool. She remains calm and brave and cool at the stone balustrade with that tremor of crimson at her throat, her aura of discreet Parisian perfume. My husband, she says to them, believes in your courage. As long as there is no panic. We have the diplomatic means to achieve anything. And we want peace, is that not so? The Kursaal foyer once again rings with the clapping of those people she does not know, agents? spies? assassins?, but who know her. She touches her taffeta skirt, the lovely blue fabric shimmers, her fan slaps shut, she bows her pretty head, they love her, they have heard what they longed to hear, now they can go in to the ball with easy minds. The orchestra strikes up a new waltz by Lehar, the rotating doors whirl and flash, the chandelier blossoms bubbles of light against the amber decor, she gazes…) She gazed at it and held its miraculous drifting forms close to her eyes. And took her first sip of beer. Miss Brinsmead had let go of her hand. She was afloat.

  The pub door stood open. Something intentional about it.

  Bill.

  – Can’t you even love? he snarled in front of everyone. I mean, you make me so bloody angry.

  She met his eyes but hardly heard him, not enough to be wounded. He waited in the doorway: a reversal of how they first saw each other the day she came to find help for Mrs Ping. He willed her to come outside and talk. But her supporters were her jailers and held her firm. He willed her because he could see she needed him to be strong. But still she did not move. And did not move even when Felicia Brinsmead relaxed her grip, Mum Collins held on all the tighter. So that while Felicia let go altogether, Mum’s arm locked round Vivien’s waist. Bill found himself collected by Miss Brinsmead and guided outside.

  Mr Ian McTaggart watched, a half-smile cracked the patina of his face, lichens flaked off, his eyes crawled from side to side slow as clusters of parasites. He watched because he ought to recognize this young woman, and perhaps had a duty. Outside, the shopkeeper spoke confidentially to Billy.

  – I’m glad to see you because your gelignite has arrived and I’ve put it away. Come down to the store right now if you please. These are difficult times and I prefer not to hold it.

  His gelignite. Enough to make you laugh. It would be hers again when it blew a hole in her yard filling in the mineshaft. The first priority was to have it in his possession, claim it before anything went wrong. He’d come back for Viv. He concentrated on behaving warily; Brinso had her ways of finding things out by just watching you. He walked with impressive nonchalance and stationed himself outside the closed shop while she let herself in at the back. The building, decayed to this dangerous state, gave the survival of its owners a touch of the heroic. He stood near the monument to the unforgotten fallen of Whitey’s Fall and Wit’s End: the names chiselled on the Roll of Honour were mainly common, McTaggart, McAloon, Buddall, Lang, Collins, Swan. Had ordinary people died then? The improbability of the idea surprised him. How did they come to know about the glorious cause in the first place? And why For God, Queen, and Empire (with King scratched in the stone above Queen by some punctilious historian with a rusty nail)?

  Summer began that moment, the persistent wind warm as a river between dilapidated banks. No new buildings had been put up since 1903, but plenty had fallen down. Young Swan rocked on his heels, waiting for his explosives, trying not to appear suspect. Across at the welder’s shed Tony was still working though it was lunchtime, working overtime out of pity for Mr Ping who hadn’t recovered the full use of his arms, cut into lozenges and strips by the razor… as he, William James Swan knew them to be, the first-hand witness. But these days he no longer waited for Tony as he used to, that lunchtime ritual a token of the past. They went their separate ways and you couldn’t put your finger on the moment of change. Something broken beyond explanation. The last two of their generation to remain in town (already a month had passed since Maggot left and no letter yet), but the link you took for granted had snapped.

  He didn’t want to be seen looking too hard at Ping’s or this might be interpreted. Instead he searched the hall for the faded heart with A.S./A.L., musing whimsically of Uncle as a young daredevil. The School of Arts groaned. And Mr Ping came to his door to watch.

  Billy had been Miss Brinsmead’s agent, her thief, when he went for Mercy’s papers and found himself in the nightmare of that blood-spattered bathroom, and the naked man he lifted on to the bed exhibiting the art of mutilation. Your mouth felt like a hole in your head to think of it. The usual wind bombarded his legs with dust. He could face anything, he hoped. What came to mind was his father’s lecture on Manliness and Uprightness; also his mother’s stupid habit of nodding in agreement. He was freer away from them.

  Miss Brinsmead clacked the side door behind her as she struggled out through the thicket of wistaria that held up that wall. She brought him a parcel hurriedly packed, the cellotape already lifting free of the brownpaper and refusing to be stuck back. So the fateful gelignite changed hands. He felt its power race through him, endangering his plan because she did seem to be looking with her look and guessing something. His treacherous eyes evaded her and focused on the collapsed shed in her back yard where the Golden Fleece was known to be. The gelignite heavy in his hands, he escaped in disarray.

  Miss Brinsmead didn’t even hear the motorcycle fire into life, so preoccupied was she. How neatly she had kept him off the subject of Vivien, Vivien’s new loyalty to herself, how adroitly he’d been diverted and sent about his business leaving her free to finish what she’d begun. She ambled with a lazy swing of her large hairless legs, back up the hill to complete the initiation of her acolyte.

  Rupert Ping made what he could of what he saw: a transaction between hazy figures on the run, a revolution being triggered. The mountain, dull, furry and beastlike, brooded under a storm-cloud almost as dark as itself. The summer air was bringing on the wet season. Bill Swan, nursing a packet of inflammatory leaflets, bent over his motorbike. Mr Ping flexed his fingers, the skin crackling along his forearms. Oh he was tired, at last he was tired. If nothing else, he had achieved tiredness. The barbarians were never tired though. And here was Bill Swan to prove it, blue eyes buttoning him into his red skin, virtually picking up the heavy BSA in his two hands, driving it by force of his own energy. And Felicia, bright star of so long ago, bouncing ridiculously off towards the pub, her whole
figure an indistinct rhythm of careless obesity.

  – Why am I here? Mr Ping murmured.

  The motorcycle machine-gunned away. And out came Tony the ministering giant, smitten with loyalty, with an invitation to sit down and share food. Tony, wiping his black hands on a black rag, finding an excuse to be at the doorway, checking where Bill was going on his bike.

  Seven

  Bill Swan knew where he was going without working out why, he eased the bike along the rutted stony track and let himself in at the Lang gateway. He drove, bouncing gingerly over the grass, right up to Vivien’s house stinking as it was with fresh paint. He needed her help. He might have asked Maggot instead if Maggot had still been around. Or Tony, yes a month ago he would certainly have asked Tony and not even thought of anybody else. But Tony was out of the question and somewhere among his insecurities he knew why. Uncle would be perfect if quicker on his pins and if he didn’t fumble so much… and didn’t always want to be leader himself. The point was that Billy had no choice. This job had to be done. It was Billy’s show. And there wasn’t anybody else to help him do it. Also he needed moral support, which Vivien would give. He’d wait indoors. She would be home from the pub soon, for sure. He took the brownpaper parcel from his saddlebag and sat it on the outdoor table. At that moment he heard somebody inside the house (and thought for a flash of himself intruding at Ping’s). Definitely someone was moving in there. He snatched up his gelignite and went in. But though he stamped across the floor so possessively, master of the establishment, fully within his rights and righteous, the interloper didn’t seem to hear. There was no guilty hush. Billy hurried towards the sounds, right to the door of Viv’s bedroom, his bedroom. And who should be inside but a stooping dotard with his back turned, poking around in the lady’s open wardrobe. It was Billy’s own back in a way, it was himself he saw doing something unspeakable. Intent as only the back of a deaf person can be.

  – Uncle! he shouted, rage and betrayal giving an edge to his voice, the last curtains of respectful pretence ripped aside. He knew instantaneously what his grandfather was about, the old perv. The horrible thought of that decaying flesh still roused, against all probability and decency, to the calls of lust. Those hairfilled nostrils sucking at her perfume, the nicotine-mapped fingers fumbling tenderly among her intimate garments. All seen through the sickening realization that because it was his bad luck to catch the old man out, he would be forced to go through the full confrontation of accusations and, worse, the humbling of his so deeply loved grandfather. Finally the most painful thing to Billy was that he felt really angry, outraged and in the right.

  – Hullo there Billo, said Uncle cheerful as you like and amazingly off-hand.

  – What are you doing here Uncle?

  – Just havin a little feel through her clothes and a little sniff at them.

  Billy gaped: the coolness, the casual, factual complicity.

  – What the bloody hell are you doing? he shouted again making his anger clearer than clear.

  – I’ve been havin bit of a feel and bit of a sniff, his grandfather answered patiently.

  But this was preposterous: the confession being made without trace of guilt, not even a snigger. Suddenly Uncle’s face crinkled into a brownpaper smile, his eyes full of calm and compassion.

  – Settle down mate, he recommended and advanced one walking stick at a time. I found out what I came to find out.

  – What the bloody hell, Bill exploded again pompously. What were you up to?

  – Findin out.

  – You got found out yourself, but! You’ve been acting queer some weeks now. Don’t think I haven’t noticed. And I don’t like it.

  The clothes hung straight and dead in the open wardrobe, all movement in them stilled. The room itself stood round the two men, naively inanimate as if its objects and corners and surfaces had been painted by a folk artist with a superb eye for detail but no sense of implied meanings, no perception of order in the accidental. The room was arbitrary as this misunderstanding.

  – What have you got hidden in there? Uncle demanded reversing their roles and poking his stick at the parcel of gelignite so that Billy withdrew, nervous of the danger, protecting secrets, afraid that his plan might seem too extreme, fearful of being reduced to a comic inept character, a disjointed puppet of Bill Swan’s supposed angry intentions. His tone of voice was exactly that of his grandfather a few moments before.

  – I’ve been buyin a bit of gelignite on the side, he dared say.

  – Gelignite is it? the old man asked rhetorically. Who’s goin to use it?

  But Bill recollected his own function as policeman.

  – Sniffing what? he demanded finding he must consciously whip up moral indignation. If he felt resentful and at a disadvantage it was because of this effort.

  – If I was to use gelignite, Uncle now seemed more than his ninety-one years. I’d want to know what I was doin first. Yes I’ll grant he’s a great puddin of pigshit, your father, but you got Rose your mother to think of too. No good endangerin her for nothin. Pretty as paint she is and better than he deserves.

  Uncle remembered something. His face stricken.

  – I heard, he croaked. I heard about the tree. Haven’t trusted meself to go up there to the End and look. Couldn’t believe what I was hearin. Couldn’t credit the idea at all. As I heard it it didn’t make no sense. Who’d imagine such a thing. Young tree in its prime and valuable. Even him I couldn’t imagine doin it. Couldn’t catch on. There always was that tree there ever since Bertha put it in as a mark of her happiness. I carried her over the threshold of that place and all. Eagles was in that tree when your father was a kid. Always eagles. There was lots of trees about in them days, but they favoured the tallow. And even when more and more trees went, that one stood big as you like and eagles stopped there though everybody said they’d move. All the experts round the place said so, Frank McAloon and old Archie and Miles McTaggart, they all said eagles’d never stop with the forest going. But stop they did. I remember them. Just the two. Always in that tallow. And why did he cut it down? That’s what beats me.

  Billy was caught between two currents. He could find no words for either of his betrayals. This man, this blood relation, spoke like an innocent even while the scent of forbidden clothing must still be on his hands. Yet who knew the homestead and its tree like Uncle and who else could understand what that butchery meant? Then there was this house too, which Uncle knew better than any man living because of Annie Lang, because he’d built it. The four guardian pinetrees outside rustled as witnesses.

  – I was sniffin her clothes, said the elder leaning forward on his sticks so the rubber ferrules squeaked tiny sounds. Because I can’t never come up here again.

  (Mr Swan, Felissy Brindle had said screwing up her mouth like a baby’s fist. You must be blind as well as deaf if you can’t see how Miss Lang hates that senator.)

  – …?

  – I’m handin her over to you, boy. Just for the favour. To keep things in the family you might say. Though what she’ll see in a stump-footed stubborn little runt like you I’m hanged if I know.

  – You’ve got to be bloody joking! Billy checked to his relief that at least she had cleared away the heaps of dirty clothing usually found on the floor.

  – Memories. Memories, the old man mumbled, suddenly vague and introspective. He kicked at his grandson’s shins with one of his walkingsticks. Memories, he shouted in his shaky bass to prevent having to say anything more. Hadn’t he once been the daredevil who shinned up on to the School of Arts roof, stood there, and hadn’t he thrown back his head and bellowed with triumph, hung out over the peak of the building and painted a red heart to frame the initials A.S. and A.L.? By christ I was a troublemaker when I was your age, he confessed.

  – I’m not planning to use this gelignite at home, said Bill eventually.

  – Are you goin for Mr Whatdyacallit Milliner and his road machines?

  – I hadn’t thought of that. />
  Uncle pushed past and lumbered out along the passage.

  – Got to get out of here, he said in a choked voice. You’ll be right, he called back remembering there was a responsibility on him as head of the family and advisor to this young hopeful. You’ll be right, he repeated. Only keep in mind that if you blow up their machines we’ll have to take on the law.

  Something now became urgent for Billy, he needed approval. Only one person could give it, or had the right to give it. In a moment the opportunity might be lost. Yet the words wouldn’t come. He remained tonguetied about the very thing he must ask, and took refuge instead in more conventional matters.

  – What were you sniffing, grandpa?

  – Grandpa! Uncle wheeled round so fast and with such anger his sticks flew out and struck both walls of the passage simultaneously.

  Billy himself felt outraged and excited by his insult too; but at a deeper level was that flush of satisfaction which comes of scoring a tactical advantage. Almost a slip of the tongue had turned out to be an inspired manoeuvre.

  – I was sniffin her clothes, the old man said with sonorous dignity. Because I haven’t sniffed a young woman’s clothes for many a long year. Will that satisfy yer worship? He became thoughtful and at the same time tamer. Annie, he said, smelt different to that if I remember right.

  The moment trembled between them as if one or other might disgrace himself with some show of weakness. They had little experience of this kind of thing.