by Terry Griggs
“Not your fault.”
“She could have been killed.”
“Ditto. Blame it on the ants. Or me—I should have done something about them. Meant to.”
“Ants?”
“Carpenter ants. I thought you took an interest in the creepy-crawlies. The floorboards were infested. Look on the bright side: she took a tumble, got burned some, busted her arm, but she did survive. At least she can’t beat the snot out of you now, not for a while, anyway. So . . . I was thinking, since you’re winning this round, why don’t we have a double wedding on Saturday? You two can get remarried. Why not? Forget what you’ve been through—she’s as much at fault as you, remember—and try it again from the beginning. Clean slate. What do you say?”
Grif exhaled what felt like the whole poisonous cloud of smoke he had sucked into his lungs during the time it took to drag a bellowing Avice (he had her by the broken arm) out of the subterranean pit she had tumbled into when the floorboards gave way beneath her. Remarried? What an idea. A picture came into his head of the two of them inflicting fatal damage on any church that dared to join them in the sacrament of matrimony. Two contrary antipathetic elements. He saw pews crashing, statuary tumbling, heads rolling, guests fleeing for their lives.
“Wouldn’t work, Roland. We’re not meant for each other.” He shrugged. “We don’t get along.”
“Have you spoken to her since the fire?”
“No. You think she would even look at me?”
“I can say goodbye without having to look at your sorry mug, can’t I?” Avice said, staring point-blank at his sorry mug.
She had approached them silently, unnoticed, and stood a little apart. Her right arm was in a sling, the side of her face scored with a strange burn that looked as if a three-fingered hand had raked her cheek. She was wearing a wide-brimmed straw hat and a smart walking dress, the hemline fashionably raised several inches above her ankles.
“I heard your good news,” she said to Roland. “I’m sure you’ll be very happy together.”
“Yes, kind of you to say, I know we will. Are you coming to the wedding?”
“I don’t like weddings.” She managed to crack a little smile at this. “Or funerals,” she said, the smile vanishing. She had been the lone attendant at Hugh’s, but had mourned him sincerely, and had left a bottle by his graveside in case the parching winds of temperance had dried even the swampy watering holes of the afterworld.
Grif didn’t know whether he was entitled to take this statement about not liking funerals as encouragement, but ventured, “Your arm, Avice?”
“Mending,” she said curtly. “No thanks to you.” She gave him a warning look, and was clearly not about to budge an inch in his direction. Forgiveness lay that way, and tolerance. It was as if he could hear doors slamming and deadbolts being slapped into place.
“What will you do?” Roland asked. “Return down below?”
She narrowed her eyes.
“To London?” he hastily added.
“No, I can’t see myself attending at-homes, and riding to hounds, and shopping for the rest of my life. I may go west, or I might settle here. It’s so open, you don’t feel hemmed in, I like that. Later this morning I’m going to look at some property outside of town, on the lake. I’ve been thinking about building a tourist lodge.”
A woman operating such a business on her own? Laundry, meals, boats, endless pleasantries and banter with the guests. Grif was sceptical, but figured she had the gumption to manage it. And who was to say how long she would be on her own?
“Goodbye, then,” she said, and that was it. “Be careful,” she advised Roland, “or you’ll end up doing all the cooking.”
For Grif, no further word was on offer. She said nothing, left him nothing—no matter how faint or trivial—to hang on to and remember her more favourably by. He watched miserably as she marched away from him as if it were the easiest and most natural thing in the world to do. He had ashes on his sleeve and in his mouth.
“Grif,” urged Roland.
“Yeah.”
“Go.”
“Where?”
“After her, before she’s gone.”
“What?—she doesn’t want me.”
“Who’s the card player here? She was bluffing. Don’t you know anything about women?”
“What do you know, Roland?”
“A lot, actually. I’ve had a busy week. Look, look what she’s doing.”
Avice, almost at the corner, had stopped and was bending over. Her body was clenched, her free hand grasping her stomach. Grif thought she was going to be sick on the road. That sound she was making, a terrible retching noise. Or was she sobbing? Wait, no, she was laughing. She was laughing so hard that she was staggering, unbalanced. She was killing herself, stung by some mysterious hilarity. Was she suddenly recalling Grif in the burning hotel, shouting I’ll save you, with his pants slung around his ankles and his manly parts hanging out of his long johns? Or was she laughing at herself? Or at the two of them together, at their whole misshapen marriage so far? Perhaps, unburdened, having transcended her fixation, a gust of happiness had simply seized her. A surging uplift, an expansiveness, a guffawing and heavenly breath.
He didn’t know, he just didn’t know. But when she glanced back once, quickly, anointing him with her keen eye before hiking up her skirts and pelting off, he didn’t wait any longer. He saw, flashing on her heels like fiery spurs of light, and snaking up her back, silvering it, that which was most desirable. For the first time in months, and for the first time in his married life, he knew what to do.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Although the iconoclast’s journal as described has been fictionalized somewhat, the excerpts themselves have been taken from an actual journal kept by William Dowsing in 1643–44, during the Civil War period in England. Dowsing was a “professional” iconoclast, whose official title was “Parliamentary visitor appointed under a warrant from the Earl of Manchester for demolishing the superstitious pictures and ornaments of churches within the county of Suffolk.” He was paid six shillings, eight pence for each destructive act.