by Susan Hill
April cannot come and go quickly enough for Olga Hennessy, nor May either, for on the first of June she is to sail to America, where she will dance in a musical comedy, and have success, sufficient to be asked to dance again and again, until she leaves the line for a leading part, small enough – but enough to be noted all the same. For now, she is resting and practising and teaching dancing to small girls and seeing her friends in the town, where she is happy, pretty and happy, but not conceited, not thoughtless.
She thinks of her sister, not all the time, not every day, but often enough and with affection; but above all, with bewilderment and a sort of awe. ‘Florence is deep,’ their mother had said, ‘Florence is clever. Wilful. But clever. People will hear of her. One day people will talk of her. You should respect your sister. You should look up to her.’ Though her tone had always been puzzled. And Flora has puzzled Olga almost from the beginning, there has always seemed to her an aura about her, like a freezing zone through which she might never penetrate. But she has loved her in spite of it, and rather more as she has grown up – which she did very early, without the usual struggles and pain; she loves Flora because she senses a fragility within the frozen zone, a lack of human knowledge and strength, which will lead, must lead, to her ultimate unhappiness. She would like to protect her, for she herself is at ease with and in the world, has had the measure of it from birth; the world will never catch her unawares. But they will not coincide, these sisters, the paths they take will never converge, because they are so unlike, as is so often the way.
She prays for her (for Olga is very devout and that is never to change), though in general terms, uncertain what her sister’s real needs might be, prays regularly, and remembers from time to time, as on this day in April, for no particular reason, and is glad of the thought, and turns warmly towards it, gives it her time and her full attention, as the sunlight slices a blade through the shadow at the corner of the building. Flora’s picture and presence fill her head.
And then there are the dead, so many dead, too many for one who is, after all, very young. Perhaps these dead too call her to mind on this day – if there are days, for the dead.
John Joseph Hennessy. The boy Hugh. Miss Pinkney. The woman who brought her to this place, the Miss Judaker she never met. The dead crowd round her and into her consciousness, as she may already be in theirs.
Seven
On that day, then, Flora Hennessy was married to Lawrence Molloy, so that perhaps the thoughts of the others clustered about her by some telepathy, attracted by the simple force of her emotion.
The emotion, below a calm and measured happiness, was fear, fear of her own power, that things had fallen out in just this way, as she had foreseen and planned. She was afraid of how straightforwardly and swiftly it had come about.
They had eaten a plain supper warily together on that first evening after their meeting, in the dining room of The Ship Hotel, and afterwards he had walked with her to her cottage, watched her go inside, and then returned to his lodging.
‘This is the man I am to marry,’ Flora had thought every so often, and looked up with surprise at him, sitting opposite to her, carefully taking the skin off his fish, carefully cleaning the butter from his knife on a roll of bread, carefully stirring the sugar into his coffee.
‘This is the man I am to marry.’
It was as though she had been making her way for years through a maze of confusing paths up to a particular door and here the door was now before her, the door of the house she must enter.
He was courteous to her and careful in his manner. He was, she saw immediately, a nondescript man, dull even, with only a remarkable appearance that attracted and was unusual. He said little of interest, his horizons did not extend far. After his illness he had retreated into this found safety and would not venture beyond it again. Nevertheless, she was to marry him. He would give her what she needed. What was to happen, would.
Did. For he had looked at her, too, as she had come through the door of Miss Desmond’s shop, and seen what he needed there, and recognised the acknowledgment in her eyes, the corresponding need, interest. What more should there be? He was looking to marry, needing to feel safe, but saw at once that she was extraordinary, and that in marrying her he would not marry in any way that he might have anticipated. She had a grave calm which reassured him, and an intelligence that alarmed, an air of foreignness; he had been in awe of her at once. She was younger than he was and yet understood things he did not, had seen and known far more, yet she had no flirtatiousness about her, no cleverness. She had a stillness, and composure, a self-containment, that drew him.
They were not especially well matched, yet no worse matched than many. Perhaps his expectations were greater, his hopes more vibrant. Flora had only the clear assurance of following fate. This was to happen. Did.
And the wedding on that particular brittle, brilliant day in April had a frivolity and a dancing sort of happiness about it, after all, though only a few came. The fear had all been in advance of things, Flora thought, the trepidation at having taken this step, hesitation at the way she must go. Yet she had walked alone into a new life often enough before now, her inner strength was not in doubt. Things might go well. She felt relieved to be with Lawrence Molloy, who was so easily, so readily known, in whom there were no depths or dangerous waters.
She did not love him. She had loved Henrjyk Tadeusz. Such love was not repeatable. But the promises she made now to Molloy were truly made and meant, there were no reservations in her heart (save the essential one, always, which was the reservation of herself).
Lawrence Molloy was in awe of her still, awed by her beauty, and her assurance, by her seriousness, and he sensed the reservation of herself, the aura through which he could never break, and was accepting.
And so they began well together and happily enough, neither having too great an expectation of marriage or of one another, things settled, things ran along quite easily. Things would do.
Eight
He said, ‘I brought them for you,’ and opened one of the leather sample cases and began to pull out ribbons, broad bands and reels of silk, satin, grosgrain, taffeta and unroll them anyhow on the table top before her; scarlet, emerald, indigo, gold, cerise, lemon, ink blue, cream, white spilled out and lay heaped in the light of the lamp. ‘You’ve such a liking for them.’
She reached out and touched her finger to the soft silken colours.
It was a kindness of a sort he had not shown – though he was never harsh nor dismissive of her – for she thought that she missed her life at Desmond’s as much for this as for anything, the colours, the patterns and the brightness spilling out in front of her, and by bringing the samples for her, oddments he had collected and kept back, he revealed an understanding of how she felt that she had come not to expect. His thoughtfulness moved her.
She kept the ribbons beside her and laid her hand on them or slipped them through her fingers now and then.
He left again very early the next morning.
It was November, and scarcely light all day, the sky packed and dense with cloud, lowering over the sullen sea. At night the wind raced up the beach dragging a furious tide in its wake. Flora lay in bed for hours in the room facing the sea, silent, listening to the wind, and feeling the weight of the child beneath her hands as they rested upon it. The days were long and dark and silent and she saw no one. The coming child anchored her and filled her with uncertainty and dread.
The year burrowed deep into winter and blackness and went out in storms and boiling, terrifying seas. She felt as if she were islanded in the midst of them as the wind and water hurled themselves towards her. The child was restless. Who are you? She asked the question aloud, but could answer neither for it nor for herself now.
The first year of her marriage had not been unhappy. The spring and summer had seemed long, even, calm, quiet. When he was home he had sometimes walked on the beach with her, or else they had gone out in his car to the countryside, to t
he villages that lay on the watery flat lands and, once, back to Brodie Veagh Castle, with a picnic which they had eaten on the grassy mounds below the rearing stone walls, and thrown their crumbs to a little dog.
He was absorbed in his own thoughts, troubled sometimes, his face shadowed by past confusions, past distress. He left her to her own thoughts and she saw that occasionally he looked at her as if she were a stranger, as indeed perhaps she was. But there was a large enough part of their life in which they were companionable together to suit them. He was restless, never settled for long. He travelled miles. He needed his own company, set his own routes and calls, knew a great many people by name and face and place in the order book, knew their choices, their special dislikes, the taste of their customers. Otherwise, knew them not at all, as to them he was courteous enough, and amiable and also quite unknown.
He had not returned to his home town for years. In their rejection of their roots and their need to be free and separate, they were alike.
Flora had not considered the question of love again. Now, sitting at the window watching the mutinous face of the sea, she understood that this was not only because of Tadeusz. For she sensed that a different and infinitely greater love was to come.
*
He had seemed startled by the idea of a child, and went away at once, and for longer than usual. She scarcely noticed his absence, for it seemed that there could be no absence that mattered to her now, that her present and future were full.
She felt well but slow, and suspended in a twilight and dreamlike state, waiting, not speculating or looking ahead, trusting. The old sense of following her destiny never left her. It seemed patterned in the sky and on the surface of the sea, and in the arrangement of the stones on the shingle beach. She had only to follow.
She had continued to work in the shop with Miss Desmond and Miss Lea only for a short time. It would not be suitable, Miss Desmond said, not seemly. Her place was not behind a shop counter now, nor in public sight.
She was saddened, and for some time afterwards both regretful and rebellious, and unsettled, walking the streets and the beach four or five times each day, uncertain of things all over again. She did not know this child. Her own body was suddenly strange to her and grew each day more so, seeming to belong to her no longer but wholly to this other.
But as the weeks passed she settled into herself again and was happy, rooted and content to mark time, to wait.
She began to draw at that time. By chance, sitting in the window one morning she had seen a gull on the breakwater, and began to make pencil strokes of the pattern of its wing feathers in the margin of her book. That afternoon she bought paper and drew the pattern made by the shingle. She saw that what she drew was something produced as if by an earnest, meticulous schoolchild. Her critical eye did not fail her. But the activity was satisfying to her, the sound of her pencil scratching softly over the surface of the paper induced pleasure. After that, she drew every day, patterns and shapes in intricate, detailed cross-hatching, and her pleasure increased, and with it a small measure of skill. She saw the world differently, saw pattern everywhere, on the skin of the sea, in the night sky, in clouds. After a time, it was the clouds that claimed her. Her pages were cloud-filled, looking at them and into them took her beyond herself, her condition, her past and whatever might be her future. She did not pull the curtains together, so that whenever she glanced up, whichever way she chanced to turn, she saw a portion of the sky framed there, some formation of clouds.
Her husband did not trouble her. He seemed wary of her, anxious to let her be. Flora saw no harm in the way things were. Lawrence Molloy went away, returned, seemed to find her presence a reassurance, but he was abstracted, concerned always with leavetaking, moving on, travelling about, as the constant change itself, it seemed, made a pattern on which he could rely. She understood that he had been rootless, unhappy and unanchored in his single life, needed to know simply that she was where she was.
Once she found him standing at the table going carefully through a sheaf of her drawings, examining each one minutely, frowning in concentration. Seeing her in the doorway he went on looking until the last sheet and then set them down and turned away and said nothing. That was the night on which he returned with the ribbons. But to introduce some colour into her patterns of stone and sea and cloud was beyond her. Instead she simply enjoyed the heaps of brightness for themselves, and took to pinning a different one to her sleeve or draping one across the corner of the mirror or over the cushions. To catch sight of them on coming into the room lifted her heart, yet always, after a few moments, she turned back to the paleness of the clouds beyond the windows.
December blew out in raging seas and great-bellied, blue-black, flailing skies. The new year came in with bitter cold, scouring her skin when she walked, though it was only along the paths now, she was no longer able to plough through the heavy shingle.
Looking at her, sitting beside the lamp, Molloy said, ‘I’ll not go tomorrow. It seems best,’ and she was glad of it and, going up the stairs slowly that night, felt a spurt of fear.
She had written to her sister with news of the child and waited weeks for a reply, but that morning the letter had come, short, breathless, the words streaming out in excitement anyhow across the page. It was from America. Olga was dancing, acting, poised for popularity, acclaim, success, her good humour filled the letter. Reading it again after she had undressed, Flora wept suddenly for love of her sister, and also for a seemingly irrational dread for her, as well as for the past and their strange separate childhoods.
Beyond the window, the sky seemed oddly softened, muffled and heavy, the sea quite still. There were no stars. The moon was blanked out.
In the early hours of the morning she woke to a sense of absolute strangeness and an eerie light. The air was warmer.
She went to the window and watched the snow come tumbling from a vast, pale, quilt of sky, and the pains began as she stood there, bare-footed, shivering, transfixed.
Nine
And so it began, the rest of Flora’s life.
The snow fell, on the day of his birth and for a week afterwards, so that it seemed they were both caught up in it and held, cocooned in this whiteness. Even the sea was quieted.
She had known that there would be delight in the child, sensed that with this she was to take a final step, to her arrival in a new world. But the reality she could never have anticipated.
Where such love as she knew came from she could not fathom. She lay in the high bed and the boy slept in the crib beside her, or else in the crook of her arm and, bathed in this bliss, needed no other. The room was brilliant with snow-filled light. She scarcely lifted her eyes from his features, her mind was crammed full of his every limb and lash, blotting out the past and all memory.
The sight of them together filled Lawrence Molloy with fear. His banishment was absolute so that he knew it would only be a short time before, her protection having been withdrawn, the demons would crowd in upon him again. He escaped to the world outside, driving through the snow-filled lanes as the voices began to whisper, goading him on. He must concentrate fiercely on his counting, trees, fence posts, mile posts, crows, to placate and silence them. Only sitting in the room of the cottage with her and their son on the edge of the charmed circle of blinding light was he at ease and for the time being held by their force for good.
There was no unkindness about her, simply an absence from him, her withdrawal as she was caught up and held fast in the radiance of the child. He looked on, bemused, awed, fearful, and did not intrude, but fetched her things she wanted, spoke little, respected her state of possession.
She wanted this time never to end, the snow never to melt, the year never to move on, the child to remain as bound up with her as this, coiled away from the world. She lay awake as he slept to hold to the time, to feel its every moment of passing, and prayed for him never to leave her.
He did not. In the town it was always remarked upon, and with di
sapproval, that never had there been such a mother and son, never any so close, so inseparable. Unhealthy they said, unnatural. She held herself aloof, uninterested in what was said or in those who said it, and kept him aloof also. The truth was that they were inexpressibly happy, that the joy they had in one another’s company strengthened each day, that they were all in all to one another; and she saw nothing but good, it was as though her life had been a progress only towards this.
Her horizons had been closing in and her world had shrunk, but now, for all that she was in the same place, the same closed circle, all things seemed hers and all to be marvelled and wondered at, with him and through his eyes.
He was a quiet, steady child, alert and aware from birth, and yet, like her, quite contained. Everything interested him, everything he saw, learned, touched, tasted, fascinated him, he was eager for life, but if he felt any excitement or impulsiveness, restrained it. He was easy and even tempered, slept, ate, played, walked, talked with her or at the least in her company, scarcely cried or expressed impatience or frustration.
The bubble in which they were held during the days after his birth never burst, it sheltered them, sealing them off from the rest of life. Often, years afterwards, she was transported back to that time in dreams and recollections. In her last weeks the memory sustained her, as a balm to all pain, all distress. She forgot nothing, every detail was hers, to return to freely and dwell upon. Closing her eyes, night or day, she was back in her bedroom overlooking the sea in the brilliant light, surrounded by the softly falling snow, and he beside her. Every hair on his head was numbered. It was in those first days, too, that at last she understood May Hennessy and, in understanding, forgave. With her son’s birth she had crossed a one-way bridge and on the other side of it now was knowledge of the love and concern and anxiety her mother had had for her. There was nothing sentimental about her new-found knowledge. She had no longing for her mother, felt no further grief and scarcely ever spoke to her son about that time, that place; nor did she ever regret her own independence. Only now, in place of resentment and bitterness, there was healing and an understanding of the truth about the way things had been. If she had been haunted, the ghosts now had been laid to rest by his birth. If there were anxiety, guilt, fear, it was her husband who was at the heart of them, for she saw clearly that he was absorbed in some inner turmoil, withdrawn from her, preoccupied. He returned home less and less, and always without warning, but on seeing her, sitting with the child in her arms or sleeping close beside her, he seemed momentarily quieted. He would eat and talk a little and, always, he brought a gift for her pleasure, some scrap of colour, and brightness.
