‘I don’t know.’
She straightened her shoulders. ‘Well it’s just as well, isn’t it? As things have turned out.’
Yes.
‘Rob?’
‘Yes?’
‘If ever you see an old high chair. It doesn’t matter what it looks like, just as long as it’s cheap, would you get it for me? I don’t get out much you see.’ She paused. ‘I mean I’ll look when I do but … I would be so grateful.’ She slammed one hand on each knee and stood up. ‘This won’t overlook that two-piece,’ she said.
Why the hell did she want a high chair? Rob’s throat was dry. ‘A high chair?’
‘Yes.’ Maureen waded across to the sofa, groped behind it and came up with Betty in one hand. The golden acrylic hair had virtually disappeared, the pink skull was hidden beneath a bonnet made by Maureen. ‘I tried to tell her,’ she said. ‘I tried to say it doesn’t matter, look at men, but she wouldn’t have it, you know what little girls are like.’ She lowered herself beside Rob, straightened Betty’s legs, sat her on her knee. ‘Who’s a pretty girl then?’ she asked.
Scrotum tightening. James Joyce was right. Rob breathed out.
Maureen glanced at him, her laugh friendly. ‘Lisa loved her you see. And she’s company. And if I can get an old high chair she’ll sit up there at the right height and I can look up and she’ll be there smiling and …’ Her voice changed, became sharp. ‘And why shouldn’t I? We’ve all got to work things out for ourselves. God in heaven, why shouldn’t I? I’ve seen in books, castles and that at the library. They had painted cut-outs in long corridors; flat, just boards, a woman peeling apples say. I can’t remember what they’re called.’ She was weeping now. ‘For company they are. To sit the other side of the fire. To be there! Why shouldn’t I? When I come in especially. When I come in and it hits me, Betty’d be there in her high chair waiting.’ Her voice rose. The anguished mouth widened. ‘Why shouldn’t I!’
He was on his feet, hugging her, loving her, agreeing, oh dear God, agreeing with every word. ‘You’ll get your high chair, mate.’
Too round, too red, staunch to the bone, Maureen sniffed. ‘Good. And another thing.’
She glared at him, her face tight with decision. She had something to say and Robin could shut up and hear it. ‘Don’t you listen to anyone else. You find your own way. You want to …’ She shook her head, baffled by pain. ‘You do it. You’re a young man.’
He looked at her in horror. Christ Almighty, what did she think he was. Appalled, disgusted and speechless, Robin sat with his legs apart staring at the crumpled wobble of her mouth. ‘I know it’s too soon to talk, but we don’t get much time just the two of us, but like I say you’re a young man Rob and all I say is …’ Tears were streaming down the powdered runnels either side of her nose, splashing onto Murray’s old sweatshirt. ‘You do that. Don’t you fuss what people say. It’s easier for men, that sort of thing. You’re young, Rob.’
This was too much. What was she offering him. What the flaming hell was she doing. Lisa, his wife, his love, his reason for being, was dead because of him. And this was her bereaved mother, offering him The Pink Pussy Cat, Shady Ladies or Sex to Go. There is no end, there never was and there never will be to the surreal ball-clutching insanity of grief.
‘Please,’ he said. ‘Please don’t, Maureen.’
She shook her head quickly. A tear splashed sideways, found a new track. ‘Yes. Yes. Too soon. Sorry. But you know now.’ She shuddered; a long convulsion mounted her heaving front. ‘And don’t forget the high chair.’
‘No. No, I won’t.’
Murray was different again. Yes Murray was different again and again and again. Murray wouldn’t let it go. Murray, who through the entire period of their acquaintance had never shown any interest or affection for his younger sibling, who had treated her as an intrusion on his pilgrim path upwards, wanted the facts. Why hadn’t Robin made a blaze on the tree? Murray was not a tramper, no way, but even he knew that the bush is confusing, right? You mark the tree. That’s what bushcraft is all about. And what did Robin mean she couldn’t move. She obviously had moved. She had crawled off the track and they had missed her and she had died. There was too much grey area around to Murray’s mind. Why didn’t she answer their calls the first time? Presumably they had called.
Wooden as a totara angled to fall, Robin answered. ‘Yes.’
‘Well then?’
‘You’ve read the coroner’s report.’
‘Yeah, but like I said. There’s too much unexplained.’
Robin leaned nearer. His eyes watched the scene from above, the right-hand corner of the ceiling gave his perspective. Soon his body would fall. Crush. Destroy. Obliterate.
Tell him. Just tell him. That’s all.
‘She had abrasions on her head. The pathologist thinks she rolled down a bank, was knocked out, and came to much later.’
‘And died.’
‘Yes.’
‘Well I don’t know.’ Murray’s large jaw hung loose, shut again, his head shook. ‘She was very precious to me, Lisa.’ He sat in his own chair, drank from his own coffee mug. ‘Cold,’ he said. ‘And Mum hasn’t done a stroke of work since. Takes rests, for God’s sake.’ Another shake of the bison head. ‘I don’t know. I just don’t know.’
Robin stood up and walked to the door in silence.
‘Where’re you going?’
‘To see Miss Bowman.’
‘She’s dead.’
He was shaking the man. ‘What d’you mean?’
Murray was fighting for breath. ‘Jesus,’ he gasped, one hand guarding his throat on release. ‘You gone nuts or something?’
‘When?’
‘Last night.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me!’
‘I just did.’ Fingers massaged the neck. ‘I could sue you, you know that?’
‘How did you find out?’
‘Emmie ran over. I took charge. Well, someone had to, you know what she’s like. Total flake. Bawling all over the place. As for the kid!’ Murray pressed the lever of his new La-Z-Boy chair. His legs tilted. He was an astronaut cushioned for take-off, a dental patient laid out for repair. ‘She was very grateful. I’ll say that.’
It didn’t matter of course. Nothing mattered, but he would have liked to have said goodbye.
*
Calvin met him at the gate. He took Rob’s hand and told him his news. ‘I’m not happy‚’ he said. Robin lifted the child in his arms and held him tight. Orange spiked hair, every vertebra palpable, nose leaking snot. ‘Why not?’ he said gently.
The eyes were fish pale, the tongue licked the slimy trail. ‘Mum’s bust my trike. She fell on my trike in the night and squashed it. She’s busted my trike and Aunt’s died.’
‘Calvin? Oh hello.’ Sodden, depleted, damaged, Emmeline came towards him. ‘Good to see you. Oh my God, I’ve done it again. I’m sorry‚’ she wept. He held her in his free arm till Calvin kicked his way to freedom.
‘It’s my fault you know‚’ she sobbed. ‘I didn’t sit with her last night. I wasn’t there.’
His gut tightened. ‘You don’t have to be there.’
‘But I loved her.’ Her forehead puckered, the damp silky skin beneath her eyes was blue. ‘Surely you can understand that.’
‘Yes.’
‘Well then? I let her down. She shouldn’t have died alone.’
‘Oh shut up‚’ he roared. ‘For Christ’s sake, just shut up.’
She leaped backwards, one skinny hand outstretched. ‘Thanks a lot.’ She ran to the front steps and turned. ‘I thought you’d understand‚’ she yelled as the door slammed.
Robin had no idea how he had got into it in the first place. Margery was a friend of Eileen’s which should have warned him. Why had he been persuaded to see this pleasant smiling woman who counselled? Because he had hurt Eileen too much. Because he had betrayed Emmeline. Because all he had achieved was a high chair.
He sat in Margery’s warm cr
owded flat filled with mud-coloured pottery and snaps of her grandies and chairs with fat cushions and talked things through. He hated it. Hated every moment of it. He felt like Oscar Wilde sitting in his prison cell telling lies to his solicitor and he, Robin, was not even telling lies. It was just that he could not bear to talk about it. His grief was his, all he had. Margery could not share it. It was not hers. It was his alone like the proliferating mould in the bathroom and the shower curtain which licked his thighs each morning.
Grief, he thought later, is like sex, indescribable and different from anything previously experienced. There are physical manifestations you cannot explain, detailed descriptions of which would induce either prurient interest or embarrassment from the uninitiated. Elation and depression may be mentioned but not the intimate mechanisms of euphoria or misery. Not to the lay person. There are specialists in these things. There are counsellors for sex and those who counsel the bereaved. Those who have been trained to understand and may be paid to do so. Those who explain that grief is normal, as is sex. That obscene night terrors and wakenings to despair are part of the healing process, especially in such a case as yours Robin. Those who meticulously, sedulously and from near at hand avoid any mention of Time the Great Healer, who understand, none better, that the living must of necessity feel guilt for the dead. Especially in such a case, yes well … Next Thursday then, Robin.
Margery wanted him to remember, to think through, to verbalise. Was there nothing, nothing at all, she asked him after some time, no matter how slight, nothing which had irritated him about Lisa?
‘No.’ And if there was I would not tell you.
He stood up. ‘Thank you very much Margery. You’ve been very kind, but I won’t come again. It’s not your fault, I just …’ He leaned forward. He didn’t want her to miss a word of Alice O’Leary’s counsel. ‘All grief is self-pity,’ he said and left.
It was better at work. Much better. His colleagues shook his hand, murmured condolences, were reticent and superbly non-inquisitorial. They did not want the facts. How Robin felt when he found his wife had disappeared from the track was not queried. One or two may have watched the drama of the search on TV but very few. By and large in this day and age the men and women in the English Department had minds above such intrusion. They were sorry for Robin who worked hard, appeared to have a few discipline problems and was probably not a first-class first. Nevertheless he was effective and willing and would doubtless move on in time and she had been a nice little thing. The whole thing was tragic. Tragic, they murmured and shook his hand again.
Tutorials also helped. He had to concentrate for an hour. The importance of Yeats’s later poetry and Lawrence’s early work had scattered like spilled mercury and must be recollected. Lisa’s death was not the fault of his students, few of whom appeared to be disturbed in any way and why should they be. Sad of course for the poor prick/boy/sod but there you were. There was a slight awkwardness the first time they met after the funeral but little more. Helen and Cara pressed his hand on leaving, their eyes tender; the rest shuffled out with heads down. Clyde was no more. Life went on. Toni, the blonde with the furry pencil case, wrote him a little note. There was a kitten curled on the top of the page and another on the back of the envelope. She was a kind person.
The chairs scraped at the end of the tutorial. One of them fell over, was manhandled back on its feet with plenty of wrist spin, teetered a second and stayed stable. 4B English slouched, ambled or departed with speed. It had not been a successful tutorial. Rebekkah had backtracked to Lady Chatterley. They had finished Lady Chatterley weeks ago, had laid her to rest beside Mellors and her floral arrangements, but Rebekkah needed more. Breasts heaved as she clicked her fingers. ‘Look, I just don’t get it. If a man said “there tha shits and there tha pisses” to me, I’d hit him. Why’s it meant to be such a turn-on? Why?’
Robins heart stopped. He stared in terror, hung on tight. ‘I don’t know‚’ he gasped.
‘I mean I understand the vision of tenderness and frank sexuality overcoming the coldness of civilisation and all that but …’
Helen’s face was anxious. ‘Yes, I agree in a way, but what I find even more odd is that he thought Lady Ottoline Morrell would like it. I mean.’
Rebekkah’s glance was dismissive. Sexual analysis, like symbolism in Lit Crit, is for the lusty or busty or those who know. Pollen she found significant. Arum lilies reduced her to pulp.
‘Who’s Lady Ottoline Morrell?’ asked Toni.
‘She sucked up to talent and was rich.’ Exit Lady Ottoline, kicked to leg by a scuffed boot in 4B. ‘Everyone knows about her.’
‘I don’t.’
This was not Rebekkah’s problem as her shoulders indicated.
Helen leaned forward eager to help. She was a good reader, always had been since Gulliver’s Travels at nine sprawled on the living-room carpet thirty miles from Geraldine. Being a mature student was the most exciting thing that had ever happened after Ron and the girls.
‘He quoted it to her in a letter,’ she said. ‘He thought she would like it if a man said it to her. In bed I mean.’
Robin’s fingernails were digging his palm, dragging him back from the hut, the bunk, the warmth beneath his wandering hand.
‘They corresponded,’ continued Helen. It was not a word she used often. ‘Corresponded,’ she murmured again. ‘The English used to be very frank sometimes in their correspondence. Those sort of people. It seems odd to us but …’
Ben at the back’s army-surplus beret had a feather; mallard duck, blue. ‘Jesus wept,’ he muttered and laid his head on his arms like Clyde.
Robin was in shock, his head reeling. The room was hot, stuffy, and smelled of lilac. Or rather fake lilac. You never see lilac now, or smell it. The stuff squirted on erogenous zones by Rebekkah bore no resemblance to the fragrance which flowed in summer from the bush beside the weeping Alice. Lisa had smelled of rose geranium. Lisa in the bed with rose geranium. ‘We were talking about Yeats’s relationship with Maud Gonne, Rebekkah,’ he said bleakly. ‘Lady Chatterley was weeks ago.’
‘But it’s interesting,’ insisted Rebekkah. ‘It’s at the base of the whole fundamental fallacy of Lawrence’s so-called eroticism. If you ask me it smacks of coprophilia.’ She was prepared to take them all on, the mute, the bored, the puzzled and the startled. She was a strong woman, Rebekkah.
She tangled with Robin a week later. She sat before him, proffered the deep scoop of her neckline and demanded an extension for her Yeats assignment—
‘We make out of our quarrel with others, rhetoric; but of our quarrel with ourselves, poetry.’ W.B. Yeats. Discuss.
‘I’ve told you all before, Rebekkah. There can be no extensions for late work.’
‘I have to have it. Both the kids have been sick and I’ve been up all night and there’s no way I can handle it during the day with Haden around and Shelley’s worse. All I need is one lousy week.’
The interesting thing, he thought, watching the surge of emphasis before him, was her tone. There was nothing placatory, apologetic or even hesitant about it. She was insisting on her rights, the due meed and rights owed her as a female crew member of spaceship Earth.
‘No,’ he said.
She leaned forward, explained carefully. ‘I must have an extension.’
He wanted to shout into her pancake make-up and the deep crimson blush of her anger and tell her what she already knew. My wife is dead. The words were ringing in his head.
The loaded eyelashes lifted. You do the top ones last, Lisa had told him, and don’t bother spending too much on mascara. They are all much of a muchness. Rebekkah’s eyes searched his as she changed tack. ‘Robin, I think I should tell you that one or two people in your tutorial are a little …’ She hesitated, gave a sad little smile. ‘There’ve already been two drop-outs.’
He heard his unspoken shouted words, watched them float paper thin and spineless to the floor, moved his feet.
‘Robin,’ her ha
nd touched his as she changed again. ‘I know about your wife. That’s tough, that’s very tough. Believe me, I know. Well, Wes didn’t die. God no, but it’s the same in the end only worse. It’s not a clean break like yours. It festers.’ One of her black eyelashes had come adrift. It lay beached on the lower lid, a minuscule scrap from the flotsam of emotion. Rebekkah was getting steamed up. ‘Like I said I’m sorry but this is my whole future and Haden and Shelley’s as well.’ Her eyes were snapping at him. You don’t often see eyes snapping, let alone lined and tarred with additives. She was a fighter, Rebekkah, a brave fighter like black-eyed Miss Bowman. Her kids would starve. Wes would win.
‘A week. No more.’
She practically skipped out the door. Remembered. Pressed his arm in comfort and ran.
It was the best thing that could have happened. He would never do that again. And to Rebekkah. Rebekkah of all people to have been tempted to flash his grief at. Never again.
Her Yeats was a fortnight late. It was not bad, not bad at all.
Spiro Daskalakis offered more work. The ropes are in good hands tonight. My offsider Robin is with us. Quick sharp.
They went home together to Spiro’s house afterwards, climbed the zigzag up the hill and shut out the night. They sat in the kitchen and watched the fish drifting and weaving in their heated tank.
‘Do they sleep?’ he asked.
Hands lifted, palm upwards, Spiro offered him doubt. ‘Sometimes I was coming down when they were new. When it was dark in winter with my torch. Always they move.’
‘Horses can sleep standing up.’
Useless. No help at all. ‘But not swimming, not waving their tails.’ The happiness of the image, the deep rumble of mirth starting deep and exploding with force, the sheer bloody joy of the man.
‘People ask me if they have names. They think they are pets or have names. That I call this one Tom and that one Harry and over here is Dick like The Great Escape tunnels. Pets! Why would they be pets? I know their names, I know their real names.’
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