by Susan Hill
But it also came to her that she might, after all, be simply going out of her mind, and she wondered if grief could become a sort of madness, which did not only cause one to weep and to despair, but to be light-headed, with invisible sights and unheard sounds, imaginary consolations.
She opened her eyes again and saw the flowers and the sun on the walls, and these were real, living and beautiful, she was not imagining them or the joy they gave her, the reassurance; and when the clergy came in and they stood to sing the Easter hymn, she felt for the first time, not since Ben’s death, but since coming here at all, that she truly belonged, that these people were part of her life, as she was of theirs, and there was no need for her suspicion and hostility, her pride and fear, these were dangerous, cancerous, and could, in the end, destroy her. Everything, everything, she saw and believed and understood, that Easter morning. She knelt. She said, ‘I shall never do wrong again. I shall not weep out of pity for myself, or doubt what is true or fail to be grateful. I shall be well. I shall be well.’ And it seemed impossible that it should not be so, she was so full of strength and purpose and assurance, so far away from the nights of bitterness and despair.
Nothing could ever harm her again.
Coming out of the church, so elated and charged with resolution, she found herself separated from Jo, and beside some of the others, those she had smiled at going in to the service; and now she wanted to speak to them, too, to show them how much she had changed, and that she no longer dreaded the sight of them, no longer wanted to cut herself off. But the words would not come, she was shy, and so, waited for one of them to approach her and begin, to make it easier for her; she looked expectantly from face to face.
And she saw that they had not changed, that they still feared her, and the taint of death and grief she carried upon herself, still smarted from the rebuffs she had so violently dealt to their offers of help and sympathy, still resented her pride. They had learned to keep their distance, because that was what she had wanted; why should they recognise any change now?
She saw them turn away, after swift, uneasy glances at her, watched as they went off, in twos and threes down the church path, and felt the full force of their rejection. She wanted to shout after them, make them understand, that it was Easter and a new life, that she wanted to be different, and where was their charity, why were they not ready to take her among them, by saying a few words, to welcome her? How could they ever expect her to make this new start entirely alone?
But she knew, she knew. She was reaping what she had sown. She felt faint with a sudden, overwhelming desire to have Ben with her, shielding her from the rest of this hostile world, for then, she would never want anyone or anything else, they could all go their way.
She looked about her. Everything was the same. Everything had changed. The world was quite empty, although the sun still shone, the birds sang, darting about the flowered churchyard, just as only moments ago and ever since yesterday morning, it had been brimming full; there seemed nothing whatsoever that might comfort her or give her strength and protection. When Jo came out of the church at last, she saw him for what he was, a young boy, vulnerable and with his own needs, his own life to live, not someone she could ultimately depend upon.
But what had happened? And why, why? After she had prayed and been so certain, so confident of herself, after the words of the resurrection had sounded in her ears and meant that she had all power, all possessions? She felt deceived, tricked. The people had excluded her, had not let her make any fresh beginning. Well then, she would do without them still.
‘Jo – listen, if you go home and change out of your suit, I’ll make a picnic, it will be hot all day – we can go right over the ridge, we can walk all the way to the river if you like, we…’
Jo looked at her miserably.
‘Ruth – Ruth, I can’t. I can’t go with you anywhere.’
‘Can’t?’
‘I want to – I’d rather be with you, only … I have to go and see Grandmother Holmes at Dutton Reach, we’re all going, I promised I would when I was walking back home last night – I told my father. I have to go now.’
Yes, of course he had to go. She could not always have Jo, he did not belong to her. However much she might dislike them, his family had some claim upon him, it was right that he should visit his grandmother.
‘Of course – I didn’t realise. Of course you must go.’
‘But you …’
‘Oh Jo, don’t look like that, don’t worry. I can do lots of things. The garden – I ought to do something in the garden, and go and see Miss Clara, too – she might not be well, she wasn’t in the church.’
‘I don’t want you to be by yourself.’
‘I’m all right, Jo. I shall be all right.’
‘It’s just that I do have to go, I promised.’
‘Yes. It’s Easter. Your grandmother will want to see you – all of you.’
‘I’ll come up tomorrow, I won’t leave you for another whole day.’
‘Jo…’
‘Yes?’
She wanted to tell him that he was good and she loved him, that he must never let her take advantage of him, never forsake his own freedom, his own life. But she said nothing, in the end, only put a hand on his shoulder as they walked away from the church.
*
She knew that the fault was not in the world but in herself and so, it was her own self that she hated and wanted to be free of, as she sat outside in the afternoon sun. But she was the same, just as her situation, her widowhood was the same and would not alter. Yesterday had been a delusion, too full of hope and contentment, too soon; yesterday, gathering the flowers and dressing the grave, she thought she had accepted completely that she was alone now, and would not see Ben again on this earth, and could bear it, had enough strength and to spare.
She could not bear it or believe it. And if this was all there ever would be, if she was to be lifted up and then hurled down again upon her face, and never certain of anything, then she could not go on living at all, for neither joy nor mourning, pleasure or pain seemed to have any final meaning.
In the middle of that morning, she had gone down to the village, to Miss Clara’s house, wanting company, now that Jo was away with the Bryces to Dutton Reach. She did not resent that, only missed him, and envied this new closeness in the family from which she had always deliberately excluded herself.
Miss Clara was out, the house was locked up, front and back. So she had friends, after all, or relatives, people Ruth knew nothing about.
And now, the house was empty of him and what lay under the flowered grave diminished with every hour and would soon be nothing. She doubted that Ben had ever existed.
She closed her eyes but that gave her no relief from the turmoil inside her head; rather, it grew worse, it was like dark blood, boiling up and spilling over, confusing her utterly; she saw it behind her eyelids and was giddy, she had to look out again at something, anything, a tree or the donkey or the stone beside her left hand, to steady herself. In the end, she wept with exhaustion, lying on the grass, and rubbing her hands to and fro. ‘Oh God, Oh God… I knew … I don’t, I don’t know anything… Oh God, I am mad.’
She was shocked at the sound of the words, spoken aloud. ‘I am mad.’ She lay still and the earth teemed beneath her. ‘I am mad.’ And she waited for some final, appalling explosion, waited for the light to spin and fall inwards upon her, breaking and smashing open like a wave, to find that she was indeed mad, to hear herself screaming or laughing uncontrollably.
Nothing happened. The world was quiet again. The sun was warm on the back of her head and on her outstretched arms. She dozed, and remembered the flowers in the churchyard, and seemed to be on the brink of some very simple, very great truth which would explain everything about her own life and about Ben’s, about his death and all the life and death of the universe.
She did not know if she had really slept but when she came to herself again, she was rested, there
was no longer any confusion or fear. Somehow, somehow, she might yet save herself.
No.
She stood up slowly. Something else had fallen into place. She had no power at all to save herself. And that was the meaning of Friday, and today. Nothing she herself had thought or done or felt since the day of Ben’s death had any significance, for feelings were not truth.
She went into the house, where it was cool. Two pieces of knowledge. Ben had had to die, and she had no power to save herself. But the rest of her life was still a tunnel through which she could not yet see any way ahead. She wept again, out of tiredness and longing to have Ben back, to be at an end of this terrible journey before it had begun, she said, ‘How can I bear it? How can I go on and on?’
Silence lay upon the air like dust.
Easter passed, the spring flowers withered and were swept off the graves and burned, April went out in a flurry of snow, and in May, the rain began again and Ruth discovered no more truth, only went on, not thinking, not daring to ask for anything at all. And then, at the beginning of July, when she felt that she had lived alone forever and yet could not accept that Ben was dead, the hot, hot days had begun.
PART THREE
10
BUT SHE DID not go to see Potter the following day; it took her a week to summon up the courage, and in that time summer slipped into the beginning of autumn, as a hand into a familiar glove.
She smelled it first of all, going out of the back door that morning, to the hens, smelled autumn in the fine mist, which had condensed and fallen and lay as a heavy dew, though a few minutes later, the sun was shafting through, drying out the grass again.
Ruth took a stool and sat outside, patching the sleeve of a shirt, and heard the first apples thumping down, though the air did not stir with any breeze; looked over to the copse, and saw there a hint of yellow about the edges of the glazed treetops, as though a brush of it had been trailed lightly across. Yesterday, going over to Rydal’s farm, she had seen the last of the harvesting men, the stubble was ugly as a new-shaven head, and straw was caught in the hedgerows. Swifts and swallows gathered and wheeled and turned in drifts about the sky.
Autumn, she thought, cutting the white cotton. And did not want it to come, for it was another change, another season to be faced and lived through without Ben. Last autumn … But she frowned and turned the shirt, roughly, inside out, bent her head, for she would not, would not keep on, going round like a tame mouse on a wheel, remembering.
And so much of the world was green and yellow again, tarnished and dried out, they were not the fresh, sappy colours of spring. There had been so much sun, and the evening brought out clouds of gnats, to dance in a frenzy about her head, and below the branches of the fruit trees.
She did not want autumn, and winter, and the turning of the year. Yet it would be beautiful; the bracken would gradually shrivel and shrink and curl back within itself and yellow would flare up into orange and burn down again, to a darker brown, and the beech woods would change, like the colours of tobacco being slowly, slowly cured.
She thought of the sea, and of a place which might be blue and grey and lavender, of when the woods should be black again and the sun blood-red, and the hills all pillowed out with snow. For this summer had dragged its feet and time had almost stopped and she wanted to be away and knew that she could not.
But she had not thought, this past week, very much about herself. There was no point to it, she had come so far and would carry on, breathe in and out and let her heart beat and that was all. Except for the visit she must make, across the common to where Potter lived, the visit which might confirm or destroy utterly her view of the world.
Her birthday had come and gone, too, she was twenty. And felt a hundred or a thousand years older, all the ages it was possible for a person to be, and also, no age at all, a child damp from the tight, mucoid canal of birth.
Birth and death and resurrection, and one tunnel led into the next.
In the heart of the wood, just before dawn and in the September evenings, a tawny owl called A-hoo, and the voices of blackbird and thrush had dropped a tone, the vigour of spring all gone.
She looked at the neat, closely stitched patch on Rydal’s shirt and perhaps it was something achieved, something to be a little proud of.
For her birthday, Jo had brought her one of his shells, rare and heavy and curled inwards like a lip, spotted mole brown on a silver-pink skin; and a bunch of tansies and a slab of chocolate and a piece of soapstone carved in the shape of a boat. Looking at him, Ruth had known that his head was awash with the sound of a distant sea, his eyes looked upon some inner vision of masts and sails and moving water. Well then, he might go, for in another year he would finish school and he might choose to follow his great-grandfather Holmes, whose sea trunks he opened almost every day, searching among the treasures. He might go. She looked up, and let her hands rest on the shirt. Then, there would be no one, she would be truly alone.
So it might be.
And I am twenty, she said, and what is that, and how long may I have yet to live, so that perhaps in another twenty, or forty or fifty years, I shall not remember or recognise the person I am now? And Ben? What of Ben, how shall I meet him, if I am an old, old woman, how much will he have changed and grown and moved on? ‘Love is not altered by death.’ Yet she thought that now she might prefer it if she could believe that there would not be the terrible responsibility of another life, she might like to be blown away and dispersed like smoke on the wind. She could not choose, for what she knew, she knew. There were only questions and questions, silting up in her brain.
Questions.
She stood and folded the shirt neatly and set it down, for now, she must go, she should not put it off any longer. It was a quarter past six.
*
What she was thinking, crossing the common on the rutted path, was that she was twenty years old and knew nothing. For instance, she said, I never read books, I know nothing of what great writers have to say, as Jo does, and as Ben did. And perhaps they might tell me a great deal, teach me and help me, give me some more of the pieces of the puzzle of truth. Or at least I should be taken out of my own thoughts, the days and nights would not be so long. Though she felt that there was virtue to be had in simply enduring.
She remembered poems, two or three, learned at school, by heart and easily, when she was ten or eleven, and recited to her father, and to her father’s friends, because he had always wanted to display Ruth to them, he had been proud of her, she might be all that he had to show for fifty years of life.
‘Fear no more the heat of the sun,
Or the furious winter’s rages.’
She paused and the words tumbled about like stones confused together in her head, it was an effort to pick them out and lay them in order.
‘Golden lads and girls all must,
Like chimney sweepers, come to dust.’
They had been old poems that she had learned, and sad, they had made her weep, even then, though she had not understood them. She had looked out of the window across the flat fens, at sky and water and reeds, all colourless as bones, and felt close to death.
‘I will wash the ploughman’s clothes,
I will wash them clean, O,
I will wash the ploughman’s clothes,
And dry them on the dyke, O.’
And there had been a tune to that. But she did not know, even now, why it should have made her cry.
Books. But the books were gone, all those which had been Ben’s at least, shovelled into sacks and loaded on to the cart of the travelling man, and sold for money. And where was the money now? Some were left, her Godmother Fry’s books, but only a handful, a prayer book and a Bible, The Pilgrim’s Progress, and a book of receipts, and an English dictionary, The Life of Mr. George Herbert. She had never looked inside them.
‘I know nothing.’ Perhaps it did not matter.
Potter’s cottage, set at the bottom of a slight slope, was just ahead of her
, the roof rose-red in the evening sun. It was a neat cottage, for a man who lived alone, with tidy grass and a tidy hedge and fresh paint on gate and door. Did he cook and clean and wash entirely for himself, did he have no friends, no visitors at all? She wondered how lonely he was, and whether he read books, or thought, or only returned from his work in the woods, to work on his own garden and walk the dog and sleep.
She stopped, and half-hid herself behind the bracken. Potter. What should she say? And suddenly, her father and Ellen came into her mind, a picture of them, stripping the fruit from the pear tree, and she realised how long it was since she had seen them, how little she knew of their life together now, and how greatly she herself had changed. They had written, after Ben’s death, and asked her to go home, or offered to come here to her, but she would have none of it, she would manage and bring herself through entirely alone. For the truth was that she was afraid, after all those years closed up with her father, in that comfortless house, afraid of being sucked back into the old life, as though she were a child again, so that her time with Ben would be erased and in the end, might never have been. She had broken away and must stay away, they must live without her. And he was married now, he had Ellen, so he should have no more need of her.
There was the chop-chop of a spade striking rhythmically into the earth. He was home, then, and in the garden. She would go. A line of smoke, pencil-thin, streamed up into the air over the top of the hedge, and as she drew nearer the gate, the scent of it pricked in her nostrils, and abruptly, she felt herself swung back hard into the past, and an evening last autumn, when Ben had made a bonfire and it had gusted up at him, filming his face and hair and bare arms with ash. Oh, she thought, oh, this is how it is, it is small things; a bonfire in the evening; this is what makes it so hard to bear. For what she missed now was not passion or important deeds, significant words, but the routine of everyday life, eating and work and sleep and talk of this and that, and the sound of footsteps about the house, the smell of wet boots on the step. Nothing could replace all of this, nothing, though she might live forever. It was not vows and fleshly love and the bearing of children that she wanted, it was so much less, and so much more.