She did not know how to stop herself. She knew she was doing it, but she could not stop. She sat in a corner, her feet up in a large chair, alone, for Molly and Anthony had made their usual trip to the pub for juice and beer, and smoked, and worried. How could she so nag and sulk at him, and edge away from him in bed, when she had so longed to return, when she felt so tenderly toward him, with such love, such respect? And he put up with it with such patience. He had become so patient, the sight of it almost broke her heart. Mopping up Molly, bringing cups of tea to Alison in bed. I think I’ll start running a rest home, he had begun to joke, from time to time. He was patient with her, as she had always been, until now, with Molly. Does that mean he loves me, or hates me, she wondered? She was too frightened to think about it much: her mind cut out, as at the approach of a sheer drop, whenever she tried. It was as though, in her rejection of Jane, she had wandered into some dangerous territory of the spirit, where any disaster might await her; what had seemed at the time logic, reason, proper dignity, had betrayed and undone her, had lost her, had left her at once hard and helpless and blind. She had hoped that her rejection of Jane (and she had meant it, had been momentarily relieved by it) would have released her for Molly, for Anthony, but bewilderingly the reverse seemed to have happened. There seemed to be nothing left for anyone. She did not really think that Anthony had stolen Molly from her: how could she think such a thing, for why could he have done it but through love of her? There is no end to the meanness of the spirit, to its jealousies.
She had had a card that morning, from her sister, Rosemary. Rosemary had virtuously invited their widowed mother for Christmas, and did not lose the opportunity of making her sense of superiority clear. Alison thought about Rosemary. Rosemary hated her, and she was not at all sure that she did not, by now, hate Rosemary in return. She hated Rosemary for the sheer unreason of having so resented her existence. What could I have done about existing? thought Alison. Could I have undone myself, unmade myself? As a child, when she had tried to gain Rosemary’s affections, it had seemed to her bitterly unfair that she was so persistently and cruelly rejected; as a young woman, she had reasoned, had tried to understand, and had, in large measure, in the absorption of her own career, her own success, her baby, forgotten. Months had gone by during which she had not given Rosemary a thought. But then, with the birth of Molly, things had changed. The old nightmares returned; nightmares of confrontation, of answering back, dreams of slapping, kicking, screaming, from which she would wake shivering with guilt.
And so, then, she had tried to undo herself. She had stripped herself, leaving only her body, a clotheshorse, for that she could not relinquish. It had its own demands. I cannot split myself in two, she said nowadays, frequently. But she had done precisely that.
Maybe, but for Anthony’s disasters, it would never have come to this. But for Jane’s accident. But for Rosemary’s lopped breast.
I don’t know what to do, thought Alison, sitting there in the big chair in the old house, staring at the log fire. (Anthony had started to make a fire of an evening, with wood he chopped himself.) Why is it that when Anthony and Molly return, I won’t be able to get up, to greet them, to be pleasant to them? I am held in some cold grip. Let me out, she prayed, let me go.
In the New Year, Jane Murray’s trial was held. Her boyfriend, who had been picked up in Turkey and extradited to Wallacia, gave evidence. He said that Jane had been driving with proper care, and that the other car had seemed to swerve into their path. It was not very likely that he would say anything else, but in these days, Alison and Anthony felt, even so much was a relief. They had had fears, which neither had dared voice to the other, of a vindictive or brainwashed boy who would be quite willing to help to commit his ex-girlfriend to jail. Though she went to jail anyway. She was given a two-year sentence, a mandatory sentence, against which there was no appeal.
The consul wrote reassuringly to Alison, telling her that although there was no possibility of appeal, sentences were sometimes reduced or canceled on compassionate grounds; the prosecutor had spoken to her in a kindly tone, he said, and had assured her and him that she would be well treated. “She still seems very subdued,” wrote Clyde Barstow, “but that is hardly surprising. She doesn’t speak to me when I visit her, but I gather from the prison officers that she has asked for books from the library, and a grammar, and is trying to learn a little of the language. She looks in good health; the diet is not lavish, but it is perfectly adequate. Indeed, it is the kind of diet we would all be much healthier for, I imagine, though I daresay she finds it monotonous. I do assure you that I will visit her regularly, and pass on any requests she may make. She is young enough, and such an experience, terrible as it is, will not mark her for long, may one dare to hope.”
Neither Alison nor Donnell went out for the trial. Alison did not want to, and Donnell could not obtain a visa. He had too many other visas in his passport, from hostile states.
The press did not give the outcome of the trial much coverage. Alison’s resolute avoidance of publicity had diminished their enthusiasm for Jane’s cause. They tried to get a reaction from her, but she refused to speak on the telephone, and none of them had the energy to drive all the way up to West Gonnersall, on an off chance of a story. Now that they had had time to think, perhaps some of them had decided that a two-year jail sentence for fatal driving was not so shocking after all. One notoriously anti-Communist paper tried to stir up indignation over the way in which the trial had been conducted and Jane represented, but as they knew no facts, they could do little other than cast aspersions; and, as Clyde Barstow assured Alison, the trial had in fact been conducted with every appearance of fairness, Jane had never denied being the cause of the accident. She had simply maintained that it was not her fault, a remark she had refused to substantiate.
Anthony hoped that the outcome of the trial, predictably depressing though it was, would in some way cheer Alison up, or at least settle her thoughts. He still could not feel too sorry for Jane. Two years in prison was not the end of the world, and she might even make use of the time: she could probably learn more there than she would have done in her two years at art school. And, if she was the kind of person he thought she was, she would know how to get the last ounce of profit, sympathy, and publicity from her ordeal on her return. Alison might fight shy of the Daily Express, but Jane would show no such diffidence, if the Daily Express was still there on her release.
Alison, oddly, seemed not to be thinking much about Jane. She rarely spoke of her. She had been talking more about her sister, Rosemary, than about either Jane or Molly in the week since Christmas. “I don’t see that I ever did her any harm," she would say, suddenly, over her breakfast. “After all, I did stop, didn’t I?”
“Stop what?”
“Stop acting.”
“What on earth has your acting got to do with that cow Rosemary?” said Anthony, on one of these occasions, to which she replied, “Well, it’s all mixed up together, isn’t it?”
As, of course, he supposed, it was. None of our decisions is taken in isolation—if decisions we can call them.
He had cause to think of this again when, in the second week of January, Alison’s harping on Rosemary was followed by a telephone call from his mother, telling him that his father had had a stroke. She rang again, before he had packed his bags to drive down, to tell him that he had had another stroke and was dead. You needn’t come, your brothers are coming, said his mother, bravely, over the phone. And indeed, his brothers rang him, one after the other, to confirm the ill news and their own intentions; both advised him that he need not bother to go. Which, of course, so advised, he resolved to do. It was so long since he had seen his mother or his brothers, and now he would never see his father alive again. He had told them nothing—of his heart attack or his business worries; as far as they knew, he was still wickedly prospering and gaily committing adultery. How could one possibly retrace one’s steps so far? He felt he had no emotional capacity left
to deal with this new shock, this new event. He had been bracing himself to go down to London, to have it out with Giles and Rory, to see his solicitor, to try to recapture the lost offer for the house which Babs had let slip through her fingers—in short, to get moving. But even that had presented problems, for he did not feel he ought to leave Alison and Molly alone together, in such isolation, with Alison so low. Perhaps he would not bother to visit his mother and attend his father’s funeral after all. His father, dead or alive, was hardly his first priority.
He rang his mother again, to discuss the matter further. One brother was there already, the other on his way, so don’t you bother, she said, as though their presence would obviate any need for his. At the tone of her voice, and the knowledge that she had informed him last of the family, a deep rage filled Anthony. “I won’t set off now,” he said, “but I’ll be there in the morning,” and he slammed down the phone, and went in search of Alison.
In the short journey from the phone to the kitchen, where Alison was making soup, he was assailed by a large black concrete vision of his two crowlike, pecking, dark-suited barrister brothers: she must have read it in his mind, for as he started to explain, incoherently, that he would have to go, she turned from the sink and the half-peeled onions, and put her arms around him, leaning on him in her damp apron. “Poor love, poor love,” she said, as though all the sorrow had passed from her body to his, all the sorrow and all the anger. Her eyes were red from grief and onions, but she was smiling, as she released him.
“Don’t you let them get you down,” she said to him, sniffing, smiling. “You’re a hundred times better than either of them. You tell them what’s what, my love.”
They agreed that she would stay alone. “I can’t go with you, I’m not your wife,” she said, when he asked her if she would rather accompany him.
“It’s time we got married,” said Anthony.
“Yes, it is, I suppose,” said Alison. They smiled at one another.
He drove down to Crawford the next morning. It was not too far away: a hundred miles or so to the southeast. Around his mind, as he drove, walked three figures. His dead father was not among them. His brother Paul, his brother Matthew, and his old friend Giles walked round and round in his brain. What had he wanted to prove to them, and why? His dead father he absolved. He had put nothing over: he had been neutral, harmless, even helpful. He had given him and Babs two hundred pounds, to marry on.
Two hundred pounds would not go far, these days.
Occasionally, Alison’s sister, Rosemary, joined the sinister trio. She was wearing, whenever he thought of her, a fluffy striped gray and lemon-yellow jersey, which made her look fatter than she was.
And we think we make decisions, choices.
He had not been to his parents’ home for years. He had intended to go, often, but had never got around to it. Now he was returning, the prodigal son, too late. He wondered what his father had thought of his strange career. He would never know.
The cathedral, which dominated the small city, could be seen from many miles away, for it was built on a hill, rising steeply out of a flat plain. It was midafternoon as he approached, and the sky was full of a peculiar radiance: the sun was shining from behind banked clouds, glancing downward in those strange religious rays beloved of landscape painters, and lighting the cathedral’s roof and spire with a golden light. It was a classic scene, and had indeed, in such a light, been much painted, by Turner, by Prout, by Girtin, and by innumerable lesser men. Under this shadow had Anthony Keating been reared, in the circumference of these rays. Well, he had got out. Had built his own cathedrals, bought his own close. His pond, his brook, his trees, his rooks, his house. He would not let them put him down. They had done well, his brothers: one a prosperous Queen’s Counsel on the northeastern circuit, the other an equally prosperous junior in London. He had no wish whatsoever to see either of them ever again. But would, shortly, over tea. He looked at himself in the driving mirror. How did he look? Anxious, ill, hangdog, failed, or prosperous and thriving? On balance, he thought he looked rather well. The abstension from drink and smoking, the fresh air had improved his appearance. I could at least pass, he thought, for a man who is prospering.
When he set eyes on his brothers, over tea, he realized that he had had little cause to worry about his own appearance. Neither of them looked in enviable condition. Both of them had, astonishingly, grown fat, and both of them had grown exceedingly boring. Even his mother did not seem to be able to concentrate on their ponderous sentences. Poor judges, poor juries, poor bloody accused, thought Anthony, as he helped himself to another cup of tea. He recalled Len’s remark that one of the worst trials of his own trial had been listening to the interminably monotonous delivery of the prosecuting counsel: bad enough being put away for four years, Len said, but to have to be bored to death for a fortnight as well, it was really too much. I kept falling asleep. They won’t let you fall asleep in the dock, did you know that? You’ve got to stay awake and listen to everything being said fifty times over by fifty different people, and you’re the only person there who knows the whole story already. I had a job propping my eyes open, I can tell you.
Anthony smiled, remembering Len, added milk to his tea. The thin china cups of childhood, how had they lasted so long? And there sat his mother, not much changed either.
He had always thought his mother beautiful; she was thin, dark, with a touch of the gypsy, which she liked to accentuate with bright scarves, dark dresses, wooden bangles. But since her heart operation ten years earlier, she had worn into an almost translucent thinness: her cheeks were softly hollowed, her legs and arms were so frail that one feared to knock against her, or to shake the floor she stood upon. There was no other word for it: she looked ethereal. Not quite flesh. She had been so near to death, so often, and there she sat, with her heart full of plastic, eating a scone, pertinacious, shadowy, skinnily alive. While his father lay dead. She seemed untroubled. He wondered if it was because her faith was great. She had been more of a Christian than his father, certainly, and had, she had said since her illness, no fear of death. She had always been good to Anthony, the little one. He wondered what she made of him now, how disappointed in him she had been, in the breakdown of his marriage, in the mess of his career. It reassured him, to see her restlessness at the dullness of his brothers’ legal anecdotes. They looked bloated, both of them, he decided, particularly in comparison with his mother’s frailty. And how self-absorbed they were. Almost as self-absorbed as himself.
As she cleared the tea things away, his mother said to him, in the kitchen, as he put down the silver tea pot, “Of course, the real problem is, I shall have to find somewhere else to live. We’d been expecting to look for somewhere, your father and I, when he retired, but now I shall have to look on my own. We must talk about it some time, Anthony. You ought to be able to advise me. You must know so much about that kind of thing, by now.”
The thought of his mother being turned out of her house, like a farm laborer out of a tied cottage, was not very pleasant. They were doing something now about tied cottages: he doubted if anything would be done about boarding-school masters’ widows.
“Now’s a good time to buy,” he said, feebly.
“The pension will be quite comfortable,” his mother said, her back to him, sweeping crumbs off a plate into the wastebin. “You needn’t worry about me, you know. And we had a little put away.” She folded up the napkins, laid them in the drawer. “What a comfort it is to me,” she said, with a distinct note of irony, “to see that you’re all doing so very well.”
In the early evening, just before evensong, Anthony went round to the cathedral next door. He was rather ashamed at the thought that his mother might have thought he was going to pray for his father, or whatever one did on such occasions, and almost started to explain to her that he was not—as he would certainly have done, offensively, punctiliously, in his adolescence. But it did not seem worth bothering. So he said, “I’m just slippin
g out to have a look at the old building, Mum,” choosing a moment when neither of his brothers was listening. She nodded, unquestioning. Slipping into the cathedral, which she indeed used as a short cut on her way back from the shops down the hill, seemed to her a perfectly natural activity which required no explanation.
The cathedral was floodlit, in the cold January night. His mother had had all this view for free, laid on for her every night for the last fifteen years (there had been some talk of discontinuing the floodlighting, because of the energy crisis, but as yet nothing had been done). And now he had an uncomfortable feeling that she would end up in some dull little bungalow on the outskirts of Crawford—very handy it would be, with no stairs to strain her heart, easy to keep clean, he could hear all her justifications of it. Whereas if he was the tycoon he was supposed to be, he could buy her a nice little cottage in the Old Town. A nice little old cottage. With beams and uneven floors and windowboxes. A cottage of outstanding character and charm, amidst all her old clerical friends. He supposed that the church did do something for clergymen’s widows, but it was doubtless not enough to buy a cottage of outstanding character, even in these slumping days.
He had seen the cathedral so often, from so early a date, that he found it impossible to see it as a whole, or as (which it was) a fine example, if not the finest, of eleventh- and twelfth-century architecture in Britain. The carving, the crocketed pinnacles, the great flying buttresses of the chapter house were and always had been too much for him. He paused, stared, then made his way to the door, and pushed through the heavy leathern flap. As a small boy, the leather flap had reminded him of bat wings and death; and did so now.
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