The Ice Age

by Margaret Drabble

  He was not, of course, at all interested in Anthony. Anthony did not expect him to be, although from time to time he wondered why he accepted this lack of curiosity so naturally. For, after all, there was a sense in which Anthony could be seen in a romantic light: a failed adventurer, alone in his country castle, brooding amongst the rooks and mice over the collapse of his immense aspirations. Maybe, thought Anthony, I will feature, transformed, translated, in Tim’s future fairy stories: “You know Anthony Keating?” Tim would say to future audiences, “you remember Anthony Keating? I stayed with him once, in his country house, High Rook House—a fantastic place it was, you’d never believe it, these beautiful old windows, and an amazing view, and a tower . . . and do you know what Anthony used to spend his time doing?” There Anthony’s own imagination boggled: he could not conceive of the activities that Tim would invent for him. But certainly Tim would not tell the truth, which was that Anthony had spent most of his time listening to Tim’s stories. That would be far too dull.

  From finding Tim a bore, Anthony began, partly through necessity, to find him a very absorbing case. He speculated constantly on how Tim saw himself, and lived with himself. And, most of all, somewhat crudely, on whether or not he saw himself as—or, indeed, was—a homosexual. It was impossible to tell. Anthony knew so many well-adjusted homosexuals that he found it hard to believe that Tim had not yet come to terms with the problem. But it seemed that perhaps he had not. A boy from St. Helen’s, who had run away from school and home at fifteen—maybe he really didn’t know what to do about himself, what he was, at all? Occasionally, when he could get a word in edgeways, Anthony would try to draw the conversation toward Tim’s own sexual experiences, and away from the voyeuristic elaborations that seemed to intrigue him so much, but Tim would not be drawn: a fact which in itself seemed revealing. Anthony found himself thinking from time to time very simple thoughts, such as: he needs a psychiatrist; he needs to join a gay group.

  Tim’s presence forced Anthony into a course of action on which he would not otherwise have embarked. At first to escape from Tim and, later, to give Tim a break and an evening out, Anthony started to go to the village pub. Still committed to a course of nondrinking, he did not find the forced abstinence as painful as he had expected. He did not count half a pint of beer as drink, and as everyone else drank beer too, he did not feel himself as much of an outcast as he would have done in the BBC bar, on Fleet Street, or in the Queen’s Hotel. Nor did he feel himself an outcast in other ways. He had speculated on the villagers’ attitude to their new resident, but in fact they all seemed remarkably incurious about him. The regulars nodded when he entered for the first time, exchanged a few words, even asked him if he played darts. They were, of course, used to visitors: from Easter to October the village was filled with tourists, some in cars, some walkers doing the Pennine way. This was the dead season, but they nevertheless made him welcome. They knew who he was: on his second visit, the manager’s wife asked him how he was getting on with the central heating. Her son-in-law from Blickley had helped to install it, so he was happy to be able to give it a good report. Nobody minded Anthony; he was an inconspicuous, inoffensive man, when he chose, good at taking on protective coloring. A neutral-looking man.

  He even struck up a friendship, in the pub. With the warden of the local Youth Hostel, which was in a village five miles away. The warden was a handsome, weatherbeaten young chap in his late twenties or early thirties, and he had been in Alverwick for five years. He preferred the West Gonnersall pub, he said, because whenever he went to any of the three pubs in Alverwick he had to spend his time listening to complaints about the behavior of delinquent Youth Hostelers. And some of the things they got up to did indeed sound rather alarming. Drinking, gambling, fighting, suicide attempts. “It’s the school parties that cause the trouble,” said Ned Buckton glumly. “They get dead bored in the evenings, and most of them are under age, and the pubs won’t have them, and the teachers forget to organize anything for them, so they just muck about, seeing who can cause most trouble.” The YHA was thinking of banning school parties, he said.

  On their second meeting, Anthony asked Ned what had made him become a warden. Ned found it hard to explain. “I liked the place,” he said, several times. “I walked through this way once, when I was a kid, and I liked it. So when we saw the job advertised, my wife and I applied. And here we are.”

  “And do you like it?”

  “We love it,” said Ned Buckton.

  He had been a teacher of geography. Like Anthony, he liked the limestone scenery. They compared their feelings about it with their feelings about the Lake District. “I like this better,” said Ned. “I know some people find it a bit bleak. And it hasn’t got the variety of colors you get in the Lakes. Nor the real mountains. But I think that’s what I like about it.”

  “It’s more secret,” said Anthony.

  “And I like the stone walls,” said Ned.

  So did Anthony. He liked the way they marched across the contours, and up the steep slopes. He liked their gray whitenesses, their persistence, their human scale, their mathematical parceling out of the infinite. They squared it off and captured it, as his gasometer had caught and enmeshed the sky.

  On their third meeting, Anthony told Ned about Molly. “You should bring her down here for a drink,” said Ned. “I’m good with kids.”

  “She’s under age,” said Anthony. Ned said that Mrs. Bunney wouldn’t mind. So Anthony went off and collected Tim and Molly, and Molly had a pineapple juice, and Tim had a vermouth, and Ned showed Molly the interesting objects in his pockets: a snail shell, some stones, an elaborate penknife, a pheasant’s feather. Then he built her a house from the pub dominoes. She tried to build one herself, but lacked, of course, the manual control. Anthony was afraid that she might cry with rage, but Ned diverted her by taking her to see the goldfish in the public bar. He was, as he had said, good with kids. A harmless man, leading a harmless life. The good shepherd. Sometimes, he said, he and his wife, Sally, had to cook forty suppers in an evening. Mind you, he said, it was only simple stuff, packet soup, eggs, beans, sausages. Anthony reflected with shame on the struggle he had had to cook himself four sausages.

  He reflected, also with shame, that he had disowned Molly. He had told Ned that she was Alison’s child, his stepchild. Why had he not accepted her, introduced her, as his own? It would have cost him nothing.

  Ned and Sally Buckton had two children. They were still at the village school.

  He thought of Alison, as he watched Ned, Molly, and Tim. I have ended up in some strange company, he thought. He thought of Alison, who had owned Molly and disowned Jane. She too had led a hard life. His own had been, was, an indulgence.

  At the end of Molly’s first week, Anthony received a telegram from Alison. It said: ON WAY HOME. WILL BE WITH YOU BOTH SOONEST. LOVE. To his surprise, as he put down the phone after receiving the message, he could feel tears starting up in his nose and eyes. He had not dared to hope that she would come so soon. Then, looking at the words again that he had taken down, he saw that she was coming for Molly, not for him. He did not blame her. And anyway, it was for him, also. For both. Will be with you both.

  He tried to tell Molly. She smiled. One could never tell with Molly. Anthony sat down and cried. He had not cried for years.

  Alison decided to return to England as soon as she heard that Donnell had dumped Molly on Anthony. She heard this from Miss Channing, whom she had rung at school in an unusually acute fit of anxiety. The warmth of feeling for both child and man that invaded her as soon as she heard the news was decisive: she would go back where she was wanted, to those who loved and needed her, instead of hanging around pointlessly in an alien place with an alienated daughter.

  She told the consul. She told the hotel. She booked a flight. Then she went to tell Jane. They let her see Jane alone. She and Jane met in a little office. There sat Jane on a chair, pale, upright, tight, angry. My flesh and blood, thought Alison. Ther
e she is, one hundred and twenty-five pounds of my flesh and blood. There was no need to harden her heart. Her heart had hardened itself.

  “Jane,” she said. “I’m sorry, I’m going back to England.”

  Jane stared at her.

  “There’s nothing more I can do for you here. I’ve done all I can. I’ll come back, as soon as anything happens.”

  Jane stared. Will she ask, thought Alison, will she bring herself to ask me to come back for the trial?

  “Suit yourself,” said Jane. “Not that you don’t always suit yourself.”

  A hardened heart is as painful as a soft one, thought Alison. Intense waves of emotion poured through her. It was the kind of confrontation she had tried, for years, to avoid.

  “I can’t split myself in two,” she said.

  “You never tried,” said Jane, speaking almost reasonably. “You always put her first, didn’t you? You never gave a fuck about me.”

  “Don’t you use bad language to me,” said Alison, stalling; and then suddenly heard herself begin to speak, very fast, very quietly, as though she had been storing it up for years and years. “Yes, I did give a fuck about you,” she said, “yes, I did, I worried myself sick about you, I saw what a raw deal you got, don’t think I didn’t notice, I’m not blind, you know, I saw the whole thing. I saw it happen, and do you know what I think? I think I don’t think much of you. There you are, eighteen years old, with everything going for you, good looks, brains, money, the lot, and what do you do, you sulk and feel sorry for yourself and sleep with halfwits who run away when there’s any trouble, and you’re all eaten up with meanness and jealousy, and Christ, Jane, what do you think you’re jealous of? A poor lump, who doesn’t know what’s happening to her, who hasn’t a hope of a decent life—and she suffers too, you always tried to pretend she didn’t have any feelings, but you know as well as I do that rages like that don’t happen out of nothing, out of unfeeling—and you, you have the weakness, the feebleness, the lack of—the lack of dignity, the lack of proportion, to let yourself—well, it doesn’t bear describing, what you’ve let yourself do. I daresay what you need is a psychoanalyst who will let you think Donnell and I treated you rottenly, but just you remember, child, if ever you get near an analyst or anyone willing to listen to you, and before you try to start their tears jerking, just you remember that you had seven solid years before Molly was born. Seven years. You had all those years. And at the age of seven, you decided you weren’t going to help. You were old enough to know better. There, I’ve said it now. You were old enough to know better. I’m sorry for you, Jane, you’ve got yourself in an awful mess, but just you remember that you got yourself in it. There’s no appeal, you know. There’s no way you can be excused. You have to pay your own penalty. I can’t pay it for you. Do you know what I mean? Are you listening? Do you understand what I mean? I daresay I’m the worst mother in the world, to speak to you like this, in the mess you’re in, but what else can I do? I don’t care. I’ve done what I can. You’re grown up now. You can vote, you can marry, you can kill yourself if you want, I don’t care. All right, so a terrible accident ruined your life. Yes, it was bad luck, we all know that, and my God didn’t you let us know it, make us know it. But just you remember this. Whatever happens to you, it can’t be as bad as what happened before birth to Molly. Have a sense of proportion. Have a little honor. I wash my hands of you.”

  Jane, throughout this, looked at the floor. Her feet were encased in woollen socks and institution shoes. She looked up, as Alison finished. She had a satisfied expression on her face.

  “You see,” she said. “You’ve ruined us both. I don’t know how you can go around thinking yourself such a wonderful mother. Look what you’ve done to us both.”

  Alison stood up. She was shaking.

  “No,” she said. “No. What I am saying is, you look at what you have done to yourself. I will worry about myself. There is no need for you to worry about me.”

  A slight flicker of something like anxiety appeared to enter Jane’s spirit.

  “Are you going, now?” she said.

  “Yes,” said Alison. “I’ll write, I’ll keep in touch. But now, I must go.”

  Jane stood up. She was taller than her mother. “Good-bye, then,” she said. And approached. They stared at one another, a quick screen of many possibilities running no doubt through both their minds: a silence, a kiss, a slap, a collapse, tears, repentance, hardening, turning away. They stared, and Alison could see on Jane’s clear forehead the faint tiny pocks of a bad adolescent bout of spots and blackheads, tiny pores and stars accentuating the otherwise unblemished surface—yet not unblemished, for there, over Jane’s right eye, was the scar of her first bicycle accident, a clean white strike below the eyebrow, a miraculous escape, for at first they had thought she must surely lose the eye. Alison remembered the incident, of which she had not thought for years, the small child tottering in from the street, her face covered in blood, her skin embedded and scraped with grit, her filthy sleeve clamped into her eye, and Alison, faint, sick, scooping her up, rushing her into the bathroom, forcing away the arm, forcing herself to look, looking as it were with her eyes shut, calling to Donnell to get the car out to take her to Emergency, trying hard not to see what she was seeing as she laid the cotton wool on the bleeding eye—and there, after all, was the eye, escaped, preserved, miraculously intact, though the brow and lid were torn. Mopping, soothing, wondering, doctor, hospital, ambulance, the smell of TCP, the child screaming at the stinging antiseptic, not knowing whether or not to pry out with one’s fingers the larger lumps of grit, the relief of arriving at the hospital and finding a clean white-coated calm doctor, smiling, patient, mopping and swabbing, stitching, reassuring, as Jane relapsed—oh yes, then as now—into a shocked and alarmed silence, her tears and terror controlled, her lifted brow stoic. How old had she been? Six? Seven? Before Molly? No, of course not: just after Molly. Seven years old. And the doctor, saying, “Well, well, you are a lucky girl. You’ll have nothing to show for this in a few weeks’ time, I bet.”

  But there was something to show. There was a scar. A permanent white memorial. The flesh, sometimes, graciously consents to record for a lifetime.

  Alison, gazing at her daughter’s face, overcome by recollection, suffered, for she did not know what to do. Let this be taken away from me, she said, in her head. Let it be over. And as though in response, Jane, who had too, it must be said, noted in this brief gaze the tired skin around her mother’s eyes, a skin wrinkled and papery and oddly vulnerable, unresilient, tired and stretched, as she finally guessed, by Alison’s ceaseless watching, by her long sleepless hours of waiting—Jane took a step toward her mother, and politely kissed her tired cheek. A courteous, distant, social kiss. Alison returned the gesture.

  “Good-bye,” said Jane.

  “I’ll be back,” said Alison. “As soon as there’s anything I can do.”

  “Don’t worry about me,” said Jane. And added, with something that almost resembled a smile, however malicious, “And do give my love to Molly and Anthony, won’t you?”

  “Oh, grow up,” said Alison crossly, suddenly too worn out by the drama to bear it a moment longer. “Just grow up, won’t you?” And she turned and left, pausing at the window to look back, wave. Across a safe distance, Jane smiled properly: probably because she’s got rid of me at last, Alison reflected, as she went back to the hotel to pick up her bags.

  As she settled herself on the airplane, she thought of the West, London, shops, Harrods, Kitty Friedmann, familiar faces. It would be good to get back. Or would it? Was England still that dangerous, violent place she had left, where each step could mean death? She could not help hoping that everything would have changed, during her brief absence, for the better. It was too much to hope that all the problems hanging around the neck of the government—Ireland, unemployment, inflation—would have sorted themselves out, but surely things could not be quite as bad as they had been when she had left. She wondered what
would have happened to Anthony’s Riverside scheme. She hoped, for the sake of his pride, that he and Giles would devise some way of justifying their terrible errors to themselves. That, she supposed, was the best one could hope for.

  She felt unbelievably tired. She had slept badly for weeks, had run out of sleeping pills, and was now suffering from a very heavy period, brought on perhaps by anxiety. But perhaps not? Maybe it was fibroids, cancer. Certainly the sight of the dark red clots of blood had been far from reassuring. It would be a kind of poetic justice, if she too, like Anthony, were to contract some serious ailment.

  She had been so scornful, when younger, of those who thought all illnesses psychosomatic, those who talked of “cancer types,” those who believed one could bring on quite clearly definable physical symptoms by either fearing or wishing them. Nowadays, she was not so sure. As one grows older, as one explores, slowly, the responses of mind and body, one learns a respect for their intimate connections.

  There is no such thing as an accident. We are all marked down. We choose what our own ill thoughts chose for us. Jane fell off her bicycle because of Molly, for attention. Or for equality? Had she lost her eye, as she so nearly managed to do, that would indeed have evened the score between Molly and Jane. An eye for an eye. A sacrificial gesture, rather than a gesture of spite.