Blackground

by Joan Aiken

  Masha had read English and Drama at Cambridge in the ‘thirties; she took her PhD, concentrating on Ibsen and learning Scandinavian languages. Russian she already knew, thanks to great-aunt Elena. Much good all this did her. Well, the Ibsen may have helped, who knows? She met Papa at Cambridge, where he was studying medicine, and they were married almost at once. He was a solitary; his father, Sir Paul Mars-Smith, had been a Governor of some Pacific outpost; he and his wife died of tropical diseases, leaving two orphan sons to be reared by an uncle. And one of the sons was brain-damaged.

  To help their finances, while Papa went on training in London, Masha taught at the Wolsey Hospital School for Girls, and they lived in Islington very frugally. While he passed through the lengthy process that turns people into doctors, she became respected in her sphere. By the time Edred got his Membership, she was in line for Senior Mistress at the Wolsey. By now World War II had happened and male teachers were being called up.

  Edred, of course, escaped military service because of being in the medical profession.—I wonder if he felt guilty about that, after the war? He could have volunteered for overseas medical jobs in the forces, but he never did; perhaps that is why he always became so angry and hostile, later on, if other men talked, in his presence, about their war experiences.

  From being poor, they suddenly grew quite rich. He had made several new medical beginnings, but finally elected for brain surgery, specializing in some particular job, a minute, fiddling, skilful piece of unplugging and rewiring, which, it turned out, he could perform far better than anybody else in the field. Even though it was wartime, people used to travel from other lands to watch him in action; several slow-motion films were made of his hands at their delicate work; he became a kind of surgical Menuhin. He exercised his skill on the brain of an ageing Royal and, if he had been a grocer, would thereafter have been permitted to put By Appointment over his door. By then he was in great demand for senior statesmen and war leaders. The flat in Islington was soon exchanged for a house in Park Crescent. Edred acquired a number of wealthy and influential acquaintances — I do not use the term friends because he never seemed to value other people to that degree. He looked to perfection the part of a famous surgeon: in his photographs from that time he is a handsome figurehead, tall and arrogant in appearance, with sharp-cut features, deepset eyes, upright carriage, and a fine straight mouth, very much tucked in at the corners, so that deep grooves ran up and down his cheeks.

  One day, as a child, I discovered by accident that I could draw his portrait by making a horizontal for a mouth, bracketing it by two verticals, then putting in two dots for eyes, rather close together. “Look, Masha, look — I’ve drawn Papa!”

  She, for some reason, appeared distressed by the drawing and withstood all my demands to show him my achievement. “Later: Papa’s very busy just now.” And then, somehow, the piece of paper got lost. I drew it again, several times, but never with quite such success. It was a bitter disappointment that she would not show him the drawing; at that time I still craved his approval. Although he frightened me, and I would never venture into his presence by myself. I somehow hoped that Masha would act as mediator, but she, of course, suggested that I run outside and dig in my little flowerbed.

  “It’s a beautiful sunny day, what are you doing frowsting indoors?”

  That was after the change in our lives, naturally.

  Masha had had to abandon her teaching career because Edred needed her for entertaining; by this time he knew dozens of celebrities. So, in what time was left over, she took to translating from Russian. In the cracks between their social life she saw her four sisters, Dolly and Tasha, Mig and Minka. None of them lived in London at that time, so they sometimes spent the night at our house after attending public meetings.

  Papa used to make slight, scathing remarks about them after they had gone.

  Then what happened?

  Joel asked me once — he is absorbedly drawn by other people’s family histories — whether, perhaps, one of Edred’s operations had gone wrong, slashing at the roots of his confidence? I couldn’t answer Joel, I had no idea, and I could see that he thought this gap in my knowledge odd and disgraceful.

  That was while Masha was still alive. So, the next time I went to visit, I put the question to her.

  “What happened to Papa? Why did he stop being a surgeon? Did he lose the knack?”

  I could imagine how terrifying such a failure might be. One day you begin serving all your balls into the net; or losing your balance on the high wire; or forgetting your lines, or typing all the words back to front. Your brain just declines to obey the orders sent to it. (Sometimes I think this is happening to me. I fall into odd gaps of consciousness; arrive in a room and don’t know what message sent me there; lose, into an utter void, some commonplace familiar word that had been trembling on the tip of my tongue.) So, what can you do? No great matter if it is just your own self in question; you wait a while and try again. But if you are in the business of carving up somebody else’s brain?

  Maybe the sight of all those exposed brains had given Papa the horrors?

  But no, Masha said, it wasn’t like that. “He was just as clever as ever. And quick! His hands moved like lace-makers’—the fingers flickered so fast you couldn’t follow them. Theatre assistants had to be absolutely top class to keep up with him — hand him the things he wanted.”

  “Did you often watch him at work?”

  “Only once,” she said drily. “I fainted dead away, which was a nuisance for the staff, so of course I didn’t ask to watch again.”

  “Was Papa angry?”

  “He never knew. I asked them not to tell him.”

  Her green-grey eyes came back from a distance and surveyed me reflectively. Was she wondering why I had never asked before?

  “So was it very sudden — when he decided to stop?”

  “The decision was sudden. But he’d been worrying about it for a couple of years. I’d had a stillborn baby five years before you — a boy, born with the cord round his neck.”

  She sounded thoughtful, detached.

  How badly had she minded that, I wondered. I could not imagine Papa being much comfort.

  “Was he upset?”

  She bypassed my question and said, “He had been reading a lot of books about God and science — men who explained how the nineteenth-century image of God was out of date, how the advance of scientific discovery need not interfere with people’s religious beliefs. After about five years of this kind of reading, he began to feel quite strongly that he ought to devote the rest of his life to the business of coming to grips with God.”

  “Did he believe in God?”

  “Not when we were first married,” said Masha. “He was quite an atheist then.” Her tone was dry, amused, reminiscent. She herself, I was well aware, had an untroubled, uncritical belief in the ultimate presence and benevolence of God; true, He seemed to have let things get into rather a muddle just at present in this world, but most of that was our own fault, doubtless He had other worlds to manage, and no doubt matters would sort themselves out in the end. I am quite sure she never discussed her beliefs with Papa; she had an immense sense of personal privacy. But they supplied the basis for her capacity to cope with adverse circumstances.

  I have a memory from around that time. It was my third birthday. I had had a party, I don’t know who came, children from the playgroup I attended. Papa had not been at home for it, he never participated in such affairs. I had gone to bed, before he came home, with my new kaleidoscope, and Kipling’s Just-So Stories, both presents from Masha. I could not read yet, but she had read aloud the first story, and I looked at the pictures.

  By and by I heard the front door slam, signal that Papa had come home. Others shut the door gently, he with a bang that reverberated through the house. Creeping out of my bedroom, I looked down the stairwell. Would he come up and sa
y goodnight to me, since it was my birthday?

  He did not. Tiptoeing down one flight of stairs, I heard their voices from the sitting-room, a long, back-and-forth, subdued exchange. I could catch no actual words, only a tone that was unfamiliar, and made me uneasy.

  After a while, Masha’s voice grew louder, as if she had moved. I heard her say, “I must go up to Katya for five minutes, her fingernails need cutting.”

  I just had time to dart upstairs again and scramble into bed before she appeared in my bedroom with the nail scissors.

  “But you cut my nails this morning,” I protested. “For the party.”

  “So I did.”

  That is my first memory of her inventing a pretext to have a private conversation with me. “I have to wash Katya’s hair.” “I must measure her for her new school blouses.” “I have to go through her things for next term.” They became frequent and recognizable.

  At the age of three I hadn’t yet become aware of Papa’s disturbingly strong resentment of the rapport between Masha and me. He did not care to be excluded. Ignoring my presence, as he did, for 90 per cent of the time, hardly ever addressing me directly, he had a paranoid sensitivity to all dialogue between Masha and me, he would grow silent, chill, and tense. If, crossing the hall, he heard us talking in the kitchen, while we hulled blackcurrants or performed some of the day’s tasks together, he would wander into the room and stand with a preoccupied expression, his eyes fixed on Masha.

  “Er . . .” And there would ensue a long silence, through which she waited patiently, going on meanwhile with whatever work was in hand. At last he would come out with some trivial inquiry, or demand her assistance to sort his papers, type a letter for him, press the pocket-flaps of his better jacket before a churchwardens’ meeting. Quite plainly he feared and distrusted the river of communication that ran between us so freely.

  When we had moved to tiny, cramped, clerical quarters these things, of course, became far more noticeable. By that time, anyway, I was older and more observant.

  On my third birthday night, dimly aware that some change was at hand, I clung to Masha — who, uncharacteristically, put an arm round me and held me close to her.

  She said: “Did you enjoy your birthday?”

  Yes, I told her, it had been lovely, and I loved my kaleidoscope best of all. “Look, there’s a rainbow in it.”

  “Soon we’re going to live in the country,” said Masha. “Where you’ll see real rainbows. And sheep and cows and haystacks and trees to climb. Won’t that be fun?” Her tone did not quite ring true.

  I was dubious. “Why are we going? What about my playgroup? Will there be toyshops?”

  “You’ll find new friends. And better things than toyshops. We’re going because Papa has decided to stop being a doctor.”

  “What will he do instead?”

  “He’s going to be a clergyman and think a lot about God.”

  To me this seemed an odd step. God was there all the time, why bother to think about Him? But it was no use trying to follow the vagaries of grown ups.

  “You’ll be very good in the country, won’t you? And not bother Papa? Because he’ll be at home all day, instead of going to the hospital, and our house will be very much smaller. But I know you will,” said Masha. “You always are a good child.”

  To my surprise, I noticed a tear slide down her cheek. This is the sole occasion on which I can recall such a manifestation — except when her sisters died.

  “Goodnight,” she said then. “Go to sleep now,” and firmly moved my book and toy to a distant chair before leaving my bedroom with the unused nail scissors still in her hand.

  After that, memory takes a leap. I have no recollection of the first rectory we occupied after Papa had been ordained. It was in Newcastle, I know, and I have heard Masha speak of the frightful cold, the cockroaches, and the roar of traffic by day and by night; but nothing comes back save a dim picture of a gritty little city garden with clipped dwarf box hedges giving off that particularly repellant smell that box has — quintessence of acid dust.

  I do remember that, after Masha’s predictions of country life, Newcastle seemed a total let-down; but before long we moved again, to a grey stone village between a coal mine and a fell. Here the people addressed us in such a gluey, unfamiliar dialect that it took Masha and me a long time — weeks for her, months for me — before we could understand what they were saying; and I don’t think Papa ever did communicate with his parishioners.

  I’m sure he was a total wash-out as a clergyman. The main duties of priests, I suppose, are to help, instruct, comfort, and support their flock. I can’t at the farthest stretch of my imagination see Papa doing any of those things. What he wanted, what he intended to do, was to carry on a dialogue with God; or try to; the congregation might listen to his dissertations on this theme, if they chose; or otherwise, manage as best they could.

  It is hardly surprising that he changed parishes so often. Even as a famous and successful surgeon he had a reputation for extreme intractability; he left a trail of angry hospital management boards, alienated patients, obstinate fools of colleagues and crass subordinates. In his new vocation he fell foul of pig-headed vestry committees and idiotic local authorities, bigoted bishops and stubborn rural deans; between the ages of five and ten I can remember four moves in quick succession. Masha began to look weather-worn; her black hair became streaked with silver, her broad forehead acquired vertical creases; yet she was only fifty. We lost touch with her sisters. At first she used to take me to Sunday Matins. We both enjoyed singing hymns. And Masha attended with scrupulous care to Papa’s soliloquies about the difficulty of getting up a dialogue with God. (He always seemed offended about this, prickly and disgruntled. Since he had gone to so much trouble to establish communication, why would not God make some suitable response?) Why, I wondered, since God, it seemed, did not choose to answer, why did Papa go on talking to Him? It seemed such a one-sided business. Why not, for a change, try talking to me? But the only remarks ever delivered to me by Papa were snubs.

  “You know nothing about the subject, Catherine, so don’t interrupt; it is very rude for a child to break into adult conversation.” “Be quiet, Catherine, please; this is not your affair.”

  Masha’s and my churchgoing stopped because Papa announced that if we went to any of the services we must attend them all. It did not do for the Rector’s wife to appear intermittently.

  In that case, retorted Masha with her usual firmness, she feared we must stay away entirely. She was not prepared to pay lip service when the spirit did not move her, and, moreover, she had not the time to go twice every Sunday.

  By now we were very hard up indeed. I discovered later that a huge amount of Edred’s money had been disbursed on the support of his unfortunate brother in an expensive sanatorium in Switzerland. This brother, Reginald, died when I was eight or nine. What we lived on after that was Masha’s savings from her teaching career and what she earned from translations.

  Why did she not return to teaching? Because Edred needed, she felt, her constant support. I was at home also. She did nearly all the work of our various parsonages, besides gardening and cooking. She never made the least attempt to enlist Papa’s help in these tasks; he sat in his study and wrestled with God while she fetched coal and logs, pumped, dug, chopped kindling, scrubbed floors, sawed wood, hammered nails, mended fuses, and painted walls. However small the house we occupied, Papa’s study was always forbidden territory, never to be invaded by visitors or children. In several of our homes, the study was a room I never entered from first to last.

  During these years we became cut off from my aunts. I don’t know that Edred actually raised objections to their visits. I think Masha may have found it too difficult being a buffer between irreconcilable viewpoints, and stopped inviting them.

  Besides, we were always in such inaccessible places.

 
At the time, when I was twelve, that we moved to Dorset, life had become a little easier. My two eldest aunts, Tasha and Dolly, were killed in a plane crash on their way to an I.L.O. conference in the Philippines. They had left their money to each other and, if both died simultaneously, to Masha. She felt their loss deeply — though they had not met in years, they wrote letters every single week, all those sisters were devoted to each other — but they had been considerably older, both in their mid-sixties, so her mourning was more like that for parents than for siblings. And the money made a great difference; for the first time since Papa quitted medicine, we could afford a couple of night storage heaters in our freezing rectory, and a woman who came twice a week to do the rough cleaning. (Why did not Dolly and Tasha give financial help during their lifetime? I’m sure they must have tried; Masha probably told them to give it to famine relief.) So, when I was thirteen, we acquired Mrs Eppy, a solid, resigned war widow with curly grey hair, a red face, and a biting tongue.

  She admired Masha immensely.

  “Oh, Mrs Mars-Smith, you do try,” was her constant, wondering tribute — admiration tinged with a touch of irony.

  What she thought of Papa was never expressed. But I noticed that he soon grew quite as sensitive to her communication with Masha as he was to mine and, when he heard their voices together for more than a minute or so, would emerge from his room to stand, clearing his throat and with lifted eyebrows, waiting for them to fall into attentive silence, or move elsewhere.