by Rodney Hall
– I know these, she exclaimed joyfully, it seemed so important that she did. She began, taking her note from the wasps, crooning a phrase here and there as if to prove to herself she could remember.
The humming in Tony’s chest took him unawares. In a flash it ballooned to a great painful lump, he fought back but it throbbed and grew with amazing rapidity, out of his control, he was a vessel, an instrument.
– O God our help in ages past, our hope for years to come, he sang.
Vivien stood transfixed, the heady sound filled the church, every note perfectly pitched.
– Our shelter from the stormy blast, and our eternal home. The ancient hymn young and jubilant. A thousand ages in thy sight are like an evening gone, this was a magnificent voice, a great voice, the power of it verging on the painful, Short as the watch that ends the night, before the rising sun. She felt humbled, ecstatic, in the presence of a talent she’d not suspected, having forgotten that part of Billy’s story about the quest for the Golden Fleece. Yes, and it all meant something to her. Time like an ever-rolling stream bears all its sons away, he was grieving now for the departure of his friends, the exodus from Whitey’s Fall of nearly all but the elders, they fly forgotten as a dream dies at the opening day, the ever-rolling stream, the one thing universally understood, forgotten dreams indeed, the search for security, the heartbreak, the futility, and him standing there, Tony McTaggart, wildly in love with this stranger who had come to stay, not knowing if he was a man or not, at nineteen already haunted by anxiety about himself, his powers and his functions. She was Bill’s woman and this he knew. Even so she had come here with him and shared what had happened. She had received him, and it seemed she even respected him. To touch her would be a climax of intimacy. The hum of wasps worked in him as he wavered between action and accomplishment.
For a few minutes, his singing released Vivien from suffering the vague sinking of the blood which had become part of her life. His singing supported her. He had breathed life into the old church. His voice all the more surprising, not just because such a large man produced a tenor, but because the voice had no trace of the immaturity which still hung its awkward shapes about his person, its tatters of a stubborn boyhood. No, that voice came rich and full, had disarmed and overcome her, in a curious way she had been possessed by it, so when he finished she was the one who felt drained.
Jealousy was what Tony endured, an insane consuming jealousy of Bill Swan. At last it would have to be in the open. Whatever the price, he could no longer live without knowledge of himself. He stepped up to the altar-space where she now stood. He fumbled his arms around her. His warmth overpowered her. She accepted, perhaps. This was happening because there wasn’t any other way. What could she do? She was not repelled. The landscape breathed in through the missing windows. Momentarily this giant man, his arms explorative, possessed her, his chest a hot wall where her head pressed. Yet she was rebelling, yes as his voice ceased to reverberate through her bones she resisted motionlessly, stemming her fascination with strangeness, her legacy from a people perpetually in love with the exotic. Her withdrawal, slight as the gesture was, communicated instantly. He released her. And his mouth which had hovered above her hair, drinking, remained dry and empty and untouched. If this had been all, his fury against Bill Swan would have been intense enough: but worse, he had revealed his weakness, betrayed his life’s secret, the shame now known for the first time … not just to this woman, but inescapably to himself. He loved her, yes, craved her, dared to touch, presumed to take her, but his body showed no sexual interest. When she yielded, too quickly for him, she pressed against his limp parts. Nothing; the miserable absence of purpose in his life. The memory of how stung he’d been by that stupid boast of Maggot’s – You big useless bastards, you’ll see, when you’re married your wives’ll sneak round to my place or Billy’s for a decent fuck! And Billy, his one friend, was doing this to him. You could even want to be like the twins, at least they got it off together. Vivien caught an expression in his eye which she wished she hadn’t seen. He is afraid of me, she knew it. Perhaps it was important that she had seen it. He needs me as Billy doesn’t, for me he has risked everything, he is ashamed of himself. This gave her power, enough to create him for herself, the sort of power Billy never gave her. So she reached across the cold stream flowing between them, across the swiftly deepening crevass. Already an unknown darkness yawned beneath her gesture, she took him by the wrist and drew him, resisting, towards her.
– I admire you so much, she said. She would go through with it, she did not understand why, with a sinking recognition she knew she would not refuse him.
He surrendered. He allowed himself to be drawn, even felt her fingers trespassing, teasing, lifting, creating pools of delicious passive sensation in him. Was she to help him into manhood? Even though she was Billy’s lady, sheila, whore. He wanted her. Now was the time, the test. She was going to do it for him. Hadn’t he prayed? More than anything. Would he give up the rest for this? He would. But. But she. She was failing. The possible peak of surprise waned. She was failing and she guessed as much. Though, sooner and worse, he knew it too. Indeed it was he not she who failed, now more ignominiously than before. Her face still buried in his cushiony blond hairs she knew it. A dreadful unexpected sob tore ragged from his throat, so that he wanted to smash her head. He could murder her so easily and he would. Her impudent fingers withdrew, she was ashamed as she ought to be, recognizing her first implacable enemy, the first person to truly and calmly wish her suffering, dead.
– I admire you, she said.
His eyes were killing her. Hatred sobbed up through him again, his breath pouring hot and moist on her face. So she was determined not to stop till she’d finished him off, Billy’s woman, Billy the boss, the little cock of the gang. Another cry barked out of him. She was working with her mouth, losses were happening, down on her knees on the rotting floorboards, horrified at what she had begun, desperately performing unnameable enticements so that his mind cried out in revulsion while his body still hoped for its own signs, poised ready for salvation despite everything, his anguished eyes turned to the gothic inscription HOLY HOLY HOLY, to the pierced heart Bubbles loves me. Not I love Bubbles, no, so much more cocksure than that. Help, help, he was keening silently, please help o god. The blood-dark walls trapped him, the Church of England suffocated him, stars were peeling from the apse, holes gaped at his feet, he was Thomas a Becket and this was the end, the window still festooned with ribbons and shreds of the dead trousers he might have been able to wear, wasps murderously insistent with their business of fertility. She had stopped. Gone. Run out. Left him with his jeans down round his ankles, his huge loins trembling, colossal legs burdened with lumps and mounds, rustling thick with monkey hairs, lost in the dead church. Nothing more humiliating could have happened, nor more complete, the heart itself squeezed painfully, nothing more pitiable or filthy than this, nothing more inexcusable. He tottered to the window, hobbled by clothes, and driving his fist at the heart on the wall, smashed clean through the red paint and grey timbers, shattering a hole large as a football.
What was left for him but to turn wild, sidle out into the scrub, rage and forage, live as an ogre, a legendary vengeful stealing kidnapping hunting animal?
Two
The occasion called for drastic action and so Miss Bertha McAloon roused herself. Was there to be no rest for the weary? she complained. Was there no respect left in the world for age? Apparently neither, for despite her talent, here she was, an old lady, ninety next birthday with perhaps only another fifteen or twenty years to live, nursing the lovely knowledge of a power inside her, dragged from her livingroom up to Wit’s End, suffering the discomfort of young Peter’s Land Rover with the wooden seats, to find herself being given lip by her only son George Swan and what’s more catching that silly rabbit Rose winking and squinting at her from a hiding place to give some hint or other.
– Peter’s brought me, she piped. Because I had
to see for myself or I wouldn’t credit I would not.
So saying, with the Irish speech still cherished by her family, out she got, down from the vehicle, shuffling through the dirt, she pushed aside George’s fumbling attempts to observe the obligation of kissing her. She advanced determinedly, both hands securing her purse, the eternal mauve dress known to everyone snapping its hem in the wind.
– Keep off keep off, her tiny voice came out hard-edged in the effort to be heard. While I look for myself. Good morning Rose, what are you winking at me for? Speak up, I can’t imagine why you’re making faces behind George’s back. Get out from under my feet George for goodness sake, you can see it’s the old troubles I’m having, not that anybody cares a fig, as I’ve come to realize all too well.
When she stopped by the felled tallow-wood tree, her mauve dress appeared to have ideas of its own about continuing. Miss Bertha McAloon fought it grimly, she was not going to lose her balance in front of these geese, she was yes she was intending to to stop exactly here where that boy’s crime lay for all to see. She also fought sweet memories of her first year married to Uncle all that wasted time ago when this tree was a sapling, which made matters so much the worse.
– And what did you do that for? she said as if to a tiresome child for the umpteenth time proving a disappointment to her hopes. I’d heard, she continued. But I didn’t believe, I did not.
– Goodday George, Peter Buddall greeted his cousin gruffly then turned to his sister. How’s life Rose?
– I’m alright Peter. And Patricia?
– She’s good.
The informalities over, they turned to watch the old lady inspecting the fallen tree, which was her reason for coming.
– That was my tree, she declared. You know this I suppose George? That was my tree, said Miss McAloon who’d once been Mrs Arthur Swan and who now witnessed a further betrayal, an unexpected blow, a senseless insult. She couldn’t bear to face them. Her tiny feet planted securely in the dust she would keep her back to them forever, her little piping voice warding them off with its repetitious plaint – I had that tree from when I was young it’s like watching a finger cut off, it is. Actually she was thinking bitterly of her talent. If she’d been truthful with herself she might have found she didn’t care quite so much about the tree, the thing was that the house had been hers and she’d given it to George. So they ought to keep thanking her and everything they changed or damaged reminded her of those overdue thanks. She had to let him know, then, him and Rose too, that the tree shouldn’t have been cut without consulting her first. And, by a familiar mnemonic this led to the wicked indifference all her relations showed towards her talent. Miss Bertha McAloon was a knitter. Not one of those mortals who produce simple and useful articles like cardigans and socks, but a knitter who would work with twelve needles and produce a seamless horse rug in double cablestitch, who had knitted the stage-curtains for the School of Arts, who had once knitted a red carpet thirty yards long for the ceremonial inauguration of His Royal Highness Prince Henry William Frederick Albert, Duke of Gloucester, Earl of Ulster and Baron Culloden, K.G., K.T., K.P., P.C., G.C.B., G.C., V.O., as Governor-General of Australia; only to have her patriotic gesture spurned, the huge crate returned by departmental lorry with a covering note to the effect that the Commonwealth of Australia and the Australian People already possessed a serviceable red carpet for the reception of the Prince, a carpet manufactured by Messrs Axminster of Axminster, Devonshire, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. This same Miss McAloon it was, too proud to yield to such rebuffs, who then commenced her great work, dedicated her life to a vision, who eventually purchased the Buddalls’ barn which was solid as Ayers Rock and big enough for the carpet to be shown full-length, who divested herself of all impediments to her vocation (husband, son, household duties) and began the real work of knitting; knitting partitions for the barn, rooms of wool; she created knitted ceilings, coffered, domed and pitched ceilings to suspend from the rafters, whole walls she knitted, with ribbing round the doorways and windows. She breathed the air of wool and of the immense weight of naphthalene mothballs she hung among it. She repaired and embellished the rooms, even knitting pictures of the outside world to sew on here and there as reminders, a window, with the exact scene outside rendered in four-ply and glorious full colour; and because of her loneliness in the service of this talent she knitted lifesize bodies of people and sat them on chairs so that she always had company and somebody could watch her progress while space in the building gradually dwindled to cubbyholes in the musty cells of plain and purl. The wool wound once round the little finger of her right hand, her needles flicking and clittering, she was lost to the tragedies and uncertainties of life in the community. Ah yes, she’d go down to the Mountain Hotel for the occasional Remembering, largely for the sake of Jasper and his dear wife Sophie who was her sole friend, her sister-in-law, and certainly the only one to appreciate what she was doing. But Peter Buddall had turned out alright as he grew, and he brought her most things she needed. Peter who she now requested to join her in deploring the murder of a friendly tree and one which, indeed, had been hers and reared by her in a manner of speaking. But he sat where he was in the Land Rover, glumly acknowledging questions put to him by his sister Rose, while he let Old Loony McAloon talk herself silly.
– Why couldn’t you have sent young Billy down to ask me? Miss McAloon returned to the attack on her son. He never comes to visit his grandmother. I could be dead for all he cares. And for all you care too, my boy. You’re not grown so high and mighty you won’t stand for a dressing-down by your own mother. She could hear for herself how shrill her voice sounded away from its woollen home. They contemplated the wreckage of the tallow, even its leaves now shrivelled.
– I felt sorry for that tree, said Rose bravely.
– Shut your silly face, her brother told her from behind the wheel.
Beyond them the mountain had become a frail eggshell, presented itself as discouraging, drawing about it a thinner air than usual. Bertha stroked her moustache and kicked the dust with her tiny boot.
– My father, she mused. My father was a fine figure of a man so he was. I had the brains of the family of course. But he was a fine figure. For a moment she glimpsed, through shutters of understanding, a nightmare of how meaningless the human experience is. There she stood in her nervous mauve, with the things she knew. What a bother the endless everything became once you went out visiting. Yet it couldn’t be denied, looking at it, that the air was somehow simplified with that tree cut down. Miss McAloon felt tired. Tiredness came upon her sudden as cloud-shadow: one moment warm and capable, the next a coldness passed its crescent blade through her and she needed a chair. Home called. Home, with its beautiful easy familiarity, the restful shadows the lovely touch to the fingertips, the fibres seeming to breathe with you as you went.
– Are you going to come home? Peter demanded brusquely of his aunt, having observed a telltale change of mood.
– What could be more delightful? she answered her vision in those mincing tones which had so grated on Uncle’s nerves when they lived together.
– Won’t you have a cup of tea? Rose asked, appearing to her mother-in-law to zoom out of obscurity and whiz past, threatening collision. It was the sort of question that took you a few minutes to cope with. Things happened this way for Bertha McAloon, events like droplets of icy water, her own progress through space appearing endowed with painfully sharp definition; a body responding sensitively to whatever came to her from the immense void out there, a sole figure on the comfortless steppe occasionally assisted by a word, a crow, a chance enemy rushing at her and veering past or, seen on the horizon, some longed-for angel beckoning but gone at her first step in that direction. So although she knew she now stood close enough to touch the fallen tallow-tree, to her own view it lay separated from her by long perspectives. Sometimes when knitting she could believe the horizon itself unravelled to become her wool, that it was being drawn into
her personal web, yes they were the moments when all doubt left her and her talent took her into itself and afterwards she would gaze astounded at what she had done, admiring it, loving it, wistful with the apprehension that she might never do so well again. Did something have to be said to Rose?
– No, no tea, Peter Buddall answered for her and for the demands of his own schedule. He started the motor.
– At least I’ve seen it, what I thought I’d never see, and my own son did it, no need to wonder who’s the guilty one.
She climbed in, a tremble of mauve and a talent. Nobody made anything easy for her.
– Whatever did you do that for George? I can’t imagine what gets into you. It was my tree I suppose you know. Your father robbed me of just about everything else I had. Only the tree.
I wish, she thought, I hadn’t given them the house. She remembered waking on that day Arthur walked out, remembered looking at the mountain and watching it go wrong. With intuitive grief she imagined she could see a ravine no one had ever discovered before. And now, yes, the dead tree also left a gap in her stomach, a reminder of her hunger for thanks, after all whatever Rose and George had she’d given them, and would anything be left now the way that boy of theirs was going?