Once resigned, Joan shouldered much of the technical and logistical burden of Maggie’s departure. She supervised the packing and shipping of such bits of furniture and other impedimenta as Maggie thought she might have some use for at home (though some of her local market-cullings were going to look distinctly odd in the old house). She saw to it that the things Maggie didn’t want to take were equitably distributed among the servants. Her dry, invigorating presence served the dual purpose of keeping Maggie’s own doubts and fits of depression at bay, and shielding her from the intrusions of the WC, who were nosing round in search of titbits.
Tolly’s behaviour was distressing, a constant, nagging worry. She had reacted to Bruce’s decampment rather quietly, giving no sign of judging him, though she could see what damage he had done to the two people — Matt and Maggie — who mattered to her most. It was only when it became clear that Maggie was leaving too, and taking Matt with her, that Maggie got an indication of the fires of emotion banked down in that small black body — the fires that had driven Tolly, in her early womanhood, to follow her doomed and banished babies into the inhospitable forest.
She said nothing. But her behaviour spoke in howls. For several days she followed Maggie about like her shadow, literally on her heels all the time, answering questions in monosyllables, her eyes, with their yellow whites showing all round the irises, fixed upon her burningly. Matt was going to school by now, but when he came home Tolly seized him and bore him away to the kitchen. Several times Maggie caught her luring him across to her hutch. Against Joan’s advice, she decided to ignore this breaking of white taboos.
Then one morning Tolly did not cross the lawn to work. Maggie sent William to enquire. He came back shrugging. Maggie went herself, then.
‘Tolly?’ she called through the closed hutch door.
She came at once, and stood staring at Maggie. Her eyes were not rolling now, but half-closed, remote, enigmatic as the eyes of an Ibo straight out of the bush. It was as if the six years of sharing Matt had never happened. Even on that very first day, when Tolly, fresh from her ordeal in the forest, had leant over her with Matt in her arms, she had not looked as much of a stranger. Maggie had come to reason with her, to comfort her, but now she only said, ‘Come to the house.’
She turned and walked away. She knew Tolly would follow, and so she did; but when she got there, she wouldn’t work. She walked straight into the kitchen, but when Maggie went in there later to see how she was, she found her sitting on the floor in the corner with her face on her knees, doing nothing.
Maggie stood before her.
‘Tolly, it’s no use. I have to bear the master going away, and you have to bear this.’
Tolly did not answer or move.
‘Get up and come and help me now.’
The girl obeyed slowly. Obedience was second nature to her — she could not withstand a direct order. She helped all day in a silence that was not so much sullen as withdrawn — she moved like a robot responding to remote controls. When Matt came home from school, Tolly disappeared. Matt hunted everywhere for her, even in her hutch. Failing to find her, he sank into a silence of his own, baffled and alarmed. At bedtime he asked, with that pathetic, apprehensive, wincing quality that so many of his questions had had since Bruce left, ‘She hasn’t gone away too, has she?’
‘Matt, it’s we who are going to leave her, and it’s hard for her.’
His eyes opened wide and so did his mouth. He knew about going to Scotland, but not about this.
‘But we’re not leaving Tolly behind!’ he exclaimed, incredulously.
‘We have to. This is her country. She wouldn’t like Scotland.’
‘Why not, if we do?’
‘She’d be cold there,’ said Maggie, for lack of something better.
‘Colder than us?’
‘Yes, because she’s not used to it.’
‘Nor am I used to it.’
She tried to joke with him. ‘No, but you’re a Scot. You’ve got thick skin to keep out the cold, like a polar bear.’
‘A polar bear’s furry.’
‘You’ll be furry too. I’m going to buy you a sheepskin coat.’
‘Couldn’t you buy one for Tolly?’
Baa baa black sheep, have you any wool…? Maggie put her face down on Matt’s tummy to hide her sudden tears. As once before, she could feel Tolly’s pain in her own breast. She’d lost so much, and now — another child, and not a newborn one but one she had lavished love and nurture on for six years… It was too cruel! For a moment, Maggie thought, ‘No. I can’t do it to her. We’ll stay, I’ll find a way to stay! How happy she’d be, how quickly that pain would melt —’ The burden of power was pressing her down like a pile of stones. No one should ever have such power over other people’s happiness.
She summoned Joan, who came after school. It was winter; the days were short. They sat together in what Joan called ‘the shrill of the night’ and drank some of Bruce’s whisky.
‘You were right. Leaving Tolly seems nearly impossible. What am I do to do about her?’
Joan smoked steadily and thought.
‘I wonder,’ she said at last.
‘What?’
‘She’s so good with Matt. She seems to have a real gift with children. I was just wondering if I could take her on at the school. Train her to assist the kindergarten teacher.’
Maggie sat straight. ‘But Mrs Hatchard —’
‘Yup,’ said Joan sardonically. ‘A formidable obstacle, no doubt. But you know, you and I between us have already dug over the ground in that department. She’s not the rigorous white supremacist she was a few years ago. Things are changing… None too soon. Anyway, she’s leaving.’
‘Leaving?’
‘Nobody stays long here, you know. You’re one of our oldest habitués now. She’ll be going home soon enough, and… Well, there have been approaches.’
‘What do you mean? To you? Joan! Really? To be Head?’
‘I may not get it, but I have one advantage — I’m here for life; I’d never up-stakes again now. I’m a bit long in the tooth for it, but I won’t hide from you the fact that I wouldn’t give them time to change their minds if they did ask me. And if they did, I’d bring in a few black teachers. Through the back door at first. This might well be the answer for Tolly.’
‘But when would it happen? I’m going in two weeks.’
‘Not before then! But she can come and live with me. We’ll find her something to do.’
‘She’d have to learn to read.’
‘Won’t hurt her.’
‘It would be marvellous… A tremendous weight off my mind. If she’d only go along with it —’
‘What choice has she, poor little thing?’
They lapsed into companionable silence. Joan smoked and sipped her drink. The night shrilled piercingly, stopped suddenly — like a premonition; there was a few seconds’ perfect stillness, and then the heavens opened and rain deluged down. Maggie went to the window to watch it. It always fascinated her, those torrents of water coming down so thickly you could hardly breathe if you were out in it. She wondered where Bruce was, what he was doing, whether he thought of her and Matt, felt guilty… She fiercely hoped he felt awful, as bad as she had about her father, but she doubted it. Bruce’s conscience was not such a finely-tuned instrument as hers. She thought of her mother, from whom a happy letter had just come (‘Bless you, darling, now I have something to look forward to again!’) Of Stip’s relief… She was in debt — heavily in debt to her family. As with bankruptcy, she must clear herself of this debt before setting herself up in any new enterprise… But she didn’t fool herself it was going to be much fun. Without Tolly, she could foresee terrible difficulties with Matt…
Suddenly her steward, an elderly Ibo called Assaf, came bursting in, nearly scaring the wits out of her because the servants never entered at night except in an emergency.
‘Madam! You come! Your girl Tolly, she done hurting herself.’
Joan was out first. She simply leapt at the door. Maggie found space amid the horrors crowding her brain to marvel at the older woman’s fleetness of reaction and movement. She herself almost caught the screen-door in her face as she ran after the steward and Joan, round the outside of the house — already wet to the skin — and down toward the hutches.
There was a crowd of Ibos bent over Tolly, who was lying on the lawn outside her hutch. They made way for the white women. There was very little light, but what there was glanced off the wet black skins and stretched white-rimmed eyes. Assaf had a torch and he shone it down through the white shafts of rain upon Tolly. Maggie was afraid to look. If Tolly had attempted suicide it could not be by any easy, bloodless way, for she had none — no convenient gas-ovens or sleeping pills for the likes of her. Joan was on her knees beside the girl, with her ear to her chest. Maggie, dry-throated with terror, forced herself to look. There was no sign of blood that she could see, but she couldn’t see much.
‘Is she alive?’ Oh God, how would she tell Matt?
‘Yes. I can’t actually see what’s wrong with her. William — are you there? Good man. Help me carry her to the house. Assaf, run and phone Dr Simmonds. Quickly! Maybe she’s eaten something…’
Tolly had eaten something. The doctor pumped out her stomach with the pump he used, discreetly, on the occasional white woman who took an overdose. It was hard to commit suicide with Dr Simmonds around; he had once worked in a London hospital and was an expert. Soon enough, Tolly was conscious and lying in Maggie’s bed looking grey-skinned and bewildered, but at least recognisable as the Tolly who was part of her life.
Joan wanted to stay, but Maggie said she could manage. She saw everybody off the premises, and then made herself and Tolly some tea and sat down to her vigil. Tolly was very weak and couldn’t talk. She slept fitfully till nearly morning. When she woke then, she was better. She turned her head on the white pillow and looked at Maggie, who said the only thing possible.
‘Do you want me to take you with us to Scotland?’
‘I want you stay here.’
‘Tolly, I have a mother and brothers and no husband. I must go where my family is.’
She shouldn’t have said that. Tolly turned her face away. Maggie, who was holding her hand, squeezed it. Tolly said in a hollow voice, ‘I not got no person.’
‘Mrs Hillman says she’ll take you. You’ll learn to be a teacher.’
‘White people not let Ibo girl teach their piccens.’
‘There are black piccens at the school as well, Tolly, you know that. Mrs Hillman thinks there should be black teachers, too.’
Through the slight hand that had so often soothed Matt, caressed and cleaned and comforted him, Maggie felt a shiver run.
‘Ibos not let me teach their piccens, too,’ she whispered.
‘Nonsense, Tolly! Why ever not?’
‘They know I done born double piccens.’
It was the very first time she had ever spoken of it.
‘Lots of women have twins, Tolly. White people think it’s a blessing.’
Tolly stared into her eyes silently. Maggie thought, all these years she’s carried this — this sense of her own uncleanness, of being cursed.
‘If they would let you, Tolly — would you like it?’
Slowly the black head nodded.
‘I’ll talk to Mrs Hillman. Now try to sleep.’
The hand clinging so tensely to Maggie’s fractionally relaxed. After a little while, she slept.
Maggie detached herself and went to wake Matt. She closed her bedroom door but of course he had to find his way in there while she was getting his breakfast. He came running.
‘Mummy, what’s Tolly doing in your bed?’ he asked, half scandalised and half delighted at the novelty.
‘She’s not feeling well so I thought I’d look after her.’
‘I’ll look after her!’
‘You’ll go to school.’
But nobody had to look after Tolly as it happened, because by the time Maggie returned from taking Matt to school, her bed was made with clean sheets and Tolly was washing dishes as if nothing had happened.
The actual parting, when it came, was practically painless — at least for Matt. Tolly saw to that. Instead of clinging to him or letting him cling to her, as on previous occasions, Tolly did a very clever thing. She collected together a number of small objects — small carved animals, a set of miniature earthenware bowls, an ebony totem-figure, some strips of bright-coloured cloth stapled together, as well as some items of food, a picture-puzzle cut from a magazine, and a little creature made from a scrap of fur and some wire. All these were jumbled together in one of the little local baskets, wrapped in a blouse of Tolly’s which Matt knew well. (It even smelt of her. Maggie found this out when she saw Matt, a long time later, with his face buried in it.)
While Matt was examining this miscellany, Tolly quietly retreated. Maggie watched her back away, her eyes fixed on Matt. She never looked at Maggie, and by the time Maggie had put Matt into the taxi the black girl had vanished into the deep shadow of the porch. There were no goodbyes. By the time Matt had woken up to the fact that they were on their way, the airfield, the plane and all the thrills of the journey were in sight. It was Maggie, and not Matt, who, once they were airborne, turned her face to the window and wept.
PART THREE
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
So Maggie came home.
If her tail was between her legs, she tried not to show it. Once again, in a new context, her training as an actress came to her help. She walked tall: often, crossing a room under the eyes of Ian and Lilian, she would imagine she had books on her head, or consciously emulate the African women’s beautiful proud carriage as she had enviously observed it in Nigeria. She spoke clearly, remembering a joke her diction teacher at RADA had told his students to induce them to ‘project’, about a speaker’s notes, found after a meeting, which bore the pencilled self-injunction: ‘Weak arguments, raise your voice.’ She met everyone’s eyes boldly and tried, with her straight looks, to communicate the inner ebullience of the old Oklahoma! song about ‘never looking back to sigh over the romance behind me’ — a sort of to-hell-with-it, survivor’s mien.
But these were all, at best, superficial signs. What she really had to work hard on was the thoughts and moods that underlay them. For inside, the brazen Maggie was a suddenly faint and huddled Margaret, ashamed, deserted, insecure, facing trials she had recklessly forced herself to face but now found terrifyingly beyond her known strength. It was Maggie, insouciant, selfish and defiant, who was pushed ‘up front’ to face the music of coming home to cope with motherhood, daughterhood and sisterhood. And divorcehood.
No Robertson had ever been divorced before. This was partly, no doubt, because many of the poor things had never been married, but it was an undeniable statistic of the clan, which like Bruce’s regimental banners had been held aloft with an unthinking pride, even the bloodstains of personal suffering within all those unbroken marriages being held as an enhancement.
‘However unhappy we might have been,’ Auntie Flora of Fife had once remarked (and was often quoted), ‘we stuck it out. A vow is a vow to a Robertson!’
And now here came Maggie to shatter the tradition, to tear down the banner and trample on it.
Even her mother couldn’t conceal her shock.
‘Does it have to be a divorce, Maggie? Could it not be just a separation?’
‘It’s not my choice, Mummy. He left me.’
This was another dreadful thing. Nobody, in their hearts, could credit that a man would run away from a blameless wife, if only because it was not a thing any Robertson had ever done. If the Robertson women took their vows seriously, the Robertson men — to do them justice — were not ones to duck their responsibilities either. To leave a wife would have been disgraceful enough. To abandon a son was unthinkable.
So there was the underlying suspicion, of which Maggie was made constantly aware,
that she must have ‘done something’. Ian came closest to voicing his suspicion, not openly but in a series of irritating hints.
The contrast between Maggie’s brothers was now more marked than ever. Their paths had not taken them far from each other geographically or professionally; but in character they were now poles apart, and their attitudes to Maggie illustrated this. Stip led the welcome-home Maggie received. He was seen at his very best, from her point of view, for the first month after her return. Full of vigour and enthusiasm, he had done all he could to smooth her path, including invaluable practical things. He had arranged a place at the local school for Matt and prepared a beautiful nursery for him in Ian’s old room, embellished with all the old toys, long relegated to the attic — a rocking horse, old-fashioned wooden jigsaws, and best of all, Ian’s well-preserved Hornby trains. He had contacted those of their old friends who were still around, to greet her with phone calls, visits and parties.
All this bustle and sense of wantedness eased both Maggie and Matt over the first shock of change. It endeared Stip to Matt, which was a great comfort to Maggie, who had been quite as worried about how Matt would manage without a man in his life as how she herself would.
Nor would Stip allow anyone to put Maggie down. He hovered near her at all gatherings, ready to stamp on any discomforting remarks or awkward questions. He particularly stood up to Ian, and this made Maggie proud of him, for she suspected — rightly — that Ian was the dominant one in every other situation. (That Ian had to dominate Stip at work to make up for being dominated by Lilian at home was also a suspicion very soon confirmed by observation.)
Maggie had a plan, which she put into operation as soon as the first settling-in was over. It was to use the remains of Helen’s legacy to redecorate the house.
She had expected to have a free hand, and to share this exciting enterprise with no one but her mother. But she had reckoned without Stip, who, it soon appeared, had no intention of being left out of an undertaking so much to his liking.
The Warning Bell Page 18
