I wrote and told Mary the plain was more populated, but that things hadn’t improved much, except for the fruit. But it was astringent, I wouldn’t care for it myself.
She wrote back to say she was glad she slept so soundly, she would find such dreams depressing.
I said there was nothing depressing about it. I entered the dream with pleasure, as if listening to a storyteller say: Once upon a time …
But the next was discouraging, I woke depressed. I stood by the old potter in the marketplace, and for once his hands were still, the wheel at rest. His eyes followed the movements of the people buying and selling, and his mouth was bitter. Beside him, his vessels stood in rows on the warm glinting straw. From time to time a woman came picking her way along the rows, bending to narrow her eyes at the pots. Then she chose one, dropped a coin in the potter’s hand, and bore it off over her shoulder.
I was inside the potter’s mind and I knew what he was thinking. He said: ‘Just once, Lord, just once, just once!’ He put his hand down into a patch of hot shade under the wheel and lifted on his palm a small clay rabbit which he held out to the ground. He sat motionless, looking at the sky, then at the rabbit praying: ‘Please, Lord, just once.’ But nothing happened.
I wrote to Mary that the old man was tired with long centuries of making pots whose life was so short: the litter of broken pots under the settlement had raised its level twenty feet by now, and every pot had come off his wheel. He wanted God to breathe life into his clay rabbit. He had hoped to see it lift up its long red-veined ears, to feel its furry feet on his palm, and watch it hop down and off among the great earthenware pots, sniffing at them and twitching its ears – a live thing among the forms of clay.
Mary said the old man was getting above himself. She said further: ‘Why a rabbit? I simply don’t see a rabbit. What use would a rabbit be? Do you realize that apart from goats (you say they have milk), and those vultures overhead, they have no animals at all? Wouldn’t a cow be better than a rabbit?’
I wrote: ‘I can’t do anything about that place when I’m dreaming it, but when I’m awake, why not? Right then, the rabbit hopped off the old man’s hand into the dust. It sat twitching its nose and throbbing all over, the way rabbits do. Then it sprang slowly off and began nibbling at the straw, while the old man wept with happiness. Now what have you to say? If I say there was a rabbit, a rabbit there was. Besides, that poor old man deserves one, after so long. God could have done so much, it wouldn’t have cost Him anything.’
I had no reply to that letter, and I stopped dreaming about the settlement. I knew it was because of my effrontery in creating that rabbit, inserting myself into the story. Very well, then … I wrote to Mary: ‘I’ve been thinking: suppose it had been you who’d dreamed about the potter – all right, all right, just suppose it. Now. Next morning you sat at the breakfast table, your William at one end, and the children between eating cornflakes and drinking milk. You were rather silent. (Of course you usually are.) You looked at your husband and you thought: What on earth would he say if I told him what I’m going to do? You said nothing, presiding at the table; then you sent the children off to school, and your husband to his classes. Then you were alone and when you’d washed the dishes and put them away, you went secretly into the stone-floored room where your wheel and the kiln are, and you took some clay and you made a small rabbit and you set it on a high shelf behind some finished vases to dry. You didn’t want anyone to see that rabbit. One day, a week later, when it was dry, you waited until your family was out of the house, then you put your rabbit on your palm, and you went into a field, and you knelt down and held the rabbit out to the grass, and you waited. You didn’t pray, because you don’t believe in God, but you wouldn’t have been in the least surprised if that rabbit’s nose had started to twitch and its long soft ears stood up …’
Mary wrote: ‘There aren’t any rabbits any more, had you forgotten myxomatosis? Actually I did make some small rabbits recently, for the children, in blue and green glaze, because it occurred to me the two youngest haven’t seen a rabbit out of a picture book. Still, they’re coming back in some parts, I hear. The farmers will be angry.’
I wrote: ‘Yes, I had forgotten. Well then … sometimes at evening, when you walk in the fields, you think: How nice to see a rabbit lift his paws and look at us. You remember the rotting little corpses of a few years back. You think: I’ll try again. Meantime, you’re nervous of what William will say, he’s such a rationalist. Well of course, so are we, but he wouldn’t even play a little. I may be wrong, but I think you’re afraid of William catching you out, and you are careful not to be caught. One sunny morning you take it out on to the field and … all right, all right then, it doesn’t hop away. You can’t decide whether to lay your clay rabbit down among the warm grasses (it’s a sunny day) and let it crumble back into the earth, or whether to bake it in your kiln. You haven’t baked it, it’s even rather damp still: the old potter’s rabbit was wet, just before he held it out into the sun he sprinkled water on it, I saw him.
‘Later you decide to tell your husband. Out of curiosity? The children are in the garden, you can hear their voices, and William sits opposite you reading the newspaper. You have a crazy impulse to say: I’m going to take my rabbit into the field tonight and pray for God to breathe life into it, a field without rabbits is empty. Instead you say: “William, I had a dream last night …” First he frowns, a quick frown, then he turns those small quick sandy-lashed intelligent eyes on you, taking it all in. To your surprise, instead of saying: “I don’t remember your ever dreaming,” he says: “Mary, I didn’t know you disapproved of the farmers killing off their rabbits.” You say: “I didn’t disapprove. I’d have done the same, I suppose.” The fact that he’s not reacted with sarcasm or impatience, as he might very well, makes you feel guilty when you lift the clay rabbit down, take it out to a field and set it in a hedge, its nose pointing out towards some fresh grass. That night William says, casual: “You’ll be glad to hear the rabbits are back. Basil Smith shot one in his field – the first for eight years, he says. Well, I’m glad myself, I’ve missed the little beggars.” You are delighted. You slip secretly into a cold misty moonlight and you run to the hedge and of course the rabbit is gone. You stand, clutching your thick green stole around you, because it’s cold, shivering, but delighted, delighted! Though you know quite well one of your children, or someone else’s child, has slipped along this hedge, seen the rabbit, and taken it off to play with.’
Mary wrote: ‘Oh all right, if you say so, so it is. But I must tell you, if you are interested in facts, that the only thing that has happened is that Dennis (the middle one) put his blue rabbit out in a hedge for a joke near the Smith’s gate, and Basil Smith shot it to smithereens one dusk thinking it was real. He used to lose a small fortune every year to rabbits, he didn’t think it was a funny joke at all. Anyway, why don’t you come down for a weekend?’
The Tawnishes live in an old farmhouse on the edge of the village. There is a great garden, with fruit trees, roses – everything. The big house and the three boys mean a lot of work, but Mary spends all the time she can in the shed that used to be a dairy where she pots. I arrived to find them in the kitchen, having lunch. Mary nodded to me to sit down. William was in conflict with the middle boy, Dennis, who was, as the other two boys kept saying, ‘showing off’. Or rather, he was in that torment of writhing self-consciousness that afflicts small boys sometimes, rolling his eyes while he stuttered and wriggled, his whole sandy freckled person scarlet and miserable.
‘Well I did I did I did I did I did …’ He paused for breath, his eyes popping, and his older brother chanted: ‘No you didn’t, you didn’t, you didn’t.’
‘Yes I did I did I did I did …’
And the father said, brisk but irritated: ‘Now then, Dennis, use your loaf, you couldn’t have, because it is obvious you have not.’
‘But I did I did I did I did …’
‘Well, then, you had bett
er go out of the room until you come to your senses and are fit company for rational people,’ said his father, triumphantly in the right.
The child choked on his battling breath, and ran howling out into the garden. Where, after a minute, the older boy followed, ostensibly to control him.
‘He did what?’ I asked.
‘Who knows?’ said Mary. There she sat, at the head of the table, bright-eyed and smiling, serving apple pie and custard, a dark changeling in the middle of her gingery, freckled family.
Her husband said, brisk: ‘What do you mean, who knows? You know quite well.’
‘It’s his battle with Basil Smith,’ said Mary to me. ‘Ever since Basil Smith shot at his blue rabbit and broke it, there’s been evil feeling on both sides. Dennis claims that he set fire to the Smith farmhouse last night.’
‘What?’
Mary pointed through a low window, where the Smith’s house showed, two fields away, like a picture in a frame.
William said: ‘He’s hysterical and he’s got to stop it.’
‘Well,’ said Mary, ‘if Basil shot my blue rabbit I’d want to burn his house down too. It seems quite reasonable to me.’
William let out an exclamation of rage; checked himself because of my presence, shot fiery glances all round, and went out, taking the youngest boy with him.
‘Well,’ said Mary. ‘Well …’ She smiled. ‘Come into the pottery, I’ve got something to show you.’ She went ahead along a stone passage, a tall, lazy-moving woman, her bright brown hair catching the light. As we passed an open window, there was a fearful row of shrieks, yells, blows; and we saw the three boys rolling and tussling in the grass, while William danced futilely around them shouting: ‘Stop it, stop it at once.’ Their mother proceeded, apparently uninterested, into the potting room.
This held the potting apparatus, and a great many jars, plates, and jugs of all colours and kinds ranged on shelves. She lifted down a creature from a high shelf, and set it before me. Then she left it with me, while she bent to attend to the kiln.
It was yellowish-brown, a sort of rabbit or hare, but with ears like neither – narrower, sharp, short, like the pointed unfolding shoots of a plant. It had a muzzle more like a dog’s than a rabbit’s; it looked as if it did not eat grass – perhaps insects and beetles? Yellowish eyes were set on the front of its head. Its hind legs were less powerful than a rabbit’s, or hare’s; and I saw its talents were for concealment, not for escaping enemies in great pistoning leaps. It rested on short, stubby hind legs, with front paws held up in a queer, twisted, almost affected posture, head turned to one side, and ears furled around each other. It looked as if it had been wound up like a spring, and had half unwound. It looked like a strangely shaped rock, or like the harsh twisted plants that sometimes grow on rocks.
Mary came back and stood by me, her head slightly on one side, with her characteristic small patient smile that nevertheless held a sweet concealed exasperation.
‘Well,’ she said, ‘there it is.’
I hesitated, because it was not the creature I had seen on the old potter’s palm.
‘What was an English rabbit doing there at all?’ she asked.
‘I didn’t say it was an English rabbit.’
But of course, she was right: this animal was far more in keeping with the dried mud houses, the dusty plain, than the pretty furry rabbit I had dreamed.
I smiled at Mary, because she was humouring me, as she humoured her husband and her children. For some reason I thought of her first husband and her lovers, two of whom I had known. At moments of painful crisis, or a parting, had she stood thus – a calm, pretty woman, smiling her sweetly satirical smile, as if to say: ‘Well, make a fuss if you like, it’s got nothing at all to do with me’? If so, I’m surprised that one of them didn’t murder her.
‘Well,’ I said at last, ‘thanks. Can I take this thing, whatever it is?’
‘Of course. I made it for you. You must admit, it may not be pretty, but it’s more likely to be true.’
I accepted this, as I had to; and I said: ‘Well, thanks for coming down to our level long enough to play games with us.’
At which there was a flash of yellow light from her luminous eyes, while her face remained grave, as if amusement, or acknowledgment of the truth, could only be focused in her thus, through a change of light in her irises.
A few minutes later, the three boys and the father came round this part of the house in a whirlwind of quarrelling energy. The aggrieved Dennis was in tears, and the father almost beside himself. Mary, who until now had remained apart from it all, gave an exclamation, slipped on a coat, and said: ‘I can’t stand this. I’m going to talk to Basil Smith.’
She went out, and I watched her cross the fields to the other house.
Meanwhile Dennis, scarlet and suffering, came into the pottery in search of his mother. He whirled about, looking for her, then grabbed my creature, said: ‘Is that for me?’ snatched it posessively to him when I said: ‘No, it’s for me,’ set it down when I told him to, and stood breathing like a furnace, his freckles like tea leaves against his skin.
‘Your mother’s gone to see Mr Smith,’ I said.
‘He shot my rabbit,’ he said.
‘It wasn’t a real rabbit.’
‘But he thought it was a real rabbit.’
‘Yes, but you knew he would think so, and that he’d shoot at it.’
‘He killed it!’
‘You wanted him to!’
At which he let out a scream and danced up and down like a mad boy, shouting: ‘I didn’t I didn’t I didn’t I didn’t …’
His father, entering on this scene, grabbed him by his flailing arms, fought the child into a position of tensed stillness, and held him there, saying, in a frenzy of incredulous common sense: ‘I’ve never-in-my-life-heard-such-lunacy!’
Now Mary came in, accompanied by Mr Smith, a large, fair, youngish man, with a sweet open face, which was uncomfortable now, because of what he had agreed to do.
‘Let that child go,’ said Mary to her husband. Dennis dropped to the floor, rolled over, and lay face down, heaving with sobs.
‘Call the others!’
Resignation itself, William went to the window, and shouted: ‘Harry, John, Harry, John, come here at once, your mother wants you.’ He then stood, with folded arms, a defeated philosopher, grinning angrily while the two other children came in and stood waiting by the door.
‘Now,’ said Mary. ‘Get up, Dennis.’
Dennis got up, his face battered with suffering, and looked with hope towards his mother.
Mary looked at Basil Smith.
Who said, careful to get the words right: ‘I am very sorry that I killed your rabbit.’
The father let out a sharp outraged breath, but kept quiet at a glance from his wife.
The chest of Dennis swelled and sank – in one moment there would be a storm of tears.
‘Dennis,’ said Mary, ‘say after me: Mr Smith, I’m very sorry I set fire to your house.’
Dennis said in a rush, to get it out in time: ‘Mr Smith I’m very sorry I set fire to your … to your … to your …’ He sniffed and heaved, and Mary said firmly: ‘House, Dennis.’
‘House,’ said Dennis, in a wail. He then rushed at his mother, buried his head in her waist, and stood howling and wrestling, while she laid large hands on his ginger head and smiled over it at Mr Basil Smith.
‘Dear God,’ said her husband, letting his folded arms drop dramatically, now the ridiculous play was over. ‘Come and have a drink, Basil.’
The men went off. The two other children stood silent and abashed, because of the force of Dennis’s emotion, for which they clearly felt partly responsible. Then they slipped out to play. The house was tranquil again, save for Dennis’s quietening sobs. Soon Mary took the boy up to his room to sleep it off. I stayed in the great, stone-floored pottery, looking at my stranged twisted animal, and the blues and greens of Mary’s work all around the walls.
>
Supper was early and soon over. The boys were silent, Dennis too limp to eat. Bed was prescribed for everyone. William kept looking at his wife, his mouth set under his ginger moustache, and he could positively be heard thinking: Filling them full of this nonsense while I try to bring them up reasonable human beings! But she avoided his eyes, and sat calm and remote, serving mashed potatoes and brown stew. It was only when we had finished the washing up that she smiled at him – her sweet, amused smile. It was clear they needed to be alone. I said I wanted an early night and left them: he had gone to touch her before I was out of the room.
Next day, a warm summer Sunday, everyone was relaxed, the old house peaceful. I left that evening, with my clay creature, and Mary said smiling, humouring me: ‘Let me know how things go on with your place, wherever it is.’ But I had her beautiful animal in my suitcase, so I did not mind being humoured.
That night, at home, I went into the marketplace, and up to the older potter who stilled his wheel when he saw me coming. The small boy lifted his frowning attentive eyes from the potter’s hand and smiled at me. I held out Mary’s creature. The old man took it, screwed up his eyes to examine it, nodded. He held it in his left hand, scattered water on it with his right, held his palm down towards the littered dust, and the creature jumped off it and away, with quick, jerky movements, not stopping until it was through the huts, clear of the settlement, and against a small outcrop of jagged brown rocks where it raised its front paws and froze in the posture Mary had created for it. Overhead an eagle or a hawk floated by, looked down, but failed to see Mary’s creature, and floated on, up and away into the great blue spaces over the flat dry plain to the mountains. I heard the wheel creak; the old man was back at work. The small boy crouched, watching, and the water flung by the potter’s right hand sprayed the bowl he was making and the child’s face, in a beautiful curving spray of glittering light.
To Room Nineteen Page 36