Pagan and her parents

by Michael Arditti

  ‘Not really; it’s not a glorified birdbath. You don’t just sit back and watch them playing. There’s a delicate natural balance: they coo; we cook.’

  ‘How cruel,’ you say.

  ‘That’s cruel,’ Pagan echoes.

  ‘Life is cruel. Slaughterhouse or butcher’s shop: people should never live too far from their source of food; they begin to think they’re civilised … Will this do?’ She stands expectantly, as if the precedent makes it appropriate.

  ‘No, I don’t think so. It’s too enclosed.’ We trudge on, muffled and muted, except for Lydia who swings her arms and tries to pull at the branches above her head.

  ‘Stop that, you’ll hurt yourself,’ her mother warns; and, sure enough, she does.

  ‘She’s so silly,’ Pagan says as Lydia sits on a stump sobbing.

  ‘Stand up, Lydia; you’ll tear your coat. There won’t be another. Next winter you’ll freeze.’ The sobs become wails. ‘Right, we’re going on. You’ll be left behind …. You think I’m hard –’ she turns to … she turns on me; ‘you think that I ill-use one child and drove off the other.’ I try not to think at all. ‘Where is he? How can he hate me this much? It’s been so long. He may have a family of his own … children. He should bring them here. They’d have space, freedom. No one has walked this way in years.’ The breath in front of her freezes. ‘You know where he is; you must speak to him. You must tell him I’m old … ill. What’s to happen to his sister?’

  I extricate myself from her clutch. ‘I haven’t seen or heard from Robin for almost ten years. I live in exile from my past.’

  But I see him again, quite unexpectedly, when at the edge of the copse we reach the Temple of Love, an eighteenth-century homage to Athens from the one Lord Standish to resist the pull of Rome. The building is bolted, but its history bursts out; and I spot two young men silhouetted in the moonlight. They are not wearing clothes.

  Robin is angry with me for disliking Treflis. ‘He’s a guest of my mother’s. I didn’t know he’d be here. It’s nothing to do with you.’

  ‘But what’s he to do with you? Do you fuck with him?’

  ‘Oh for God’s sake!’

  ‘Then you do.’

  ‘So? It’s no big deal. I’m sorry to disappoint you but I’m not a virgin.’

  ‘Candida says your mother knows.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘About the two of you. What’s more, that she arranged it.’

  ‘Leave my mother out of it.’

  ‘It’s sick.’

  ‘You’ve no idea what she’s suffered.’

  ‘I care what you suffer.’

  ‘You know nothing. You have nothing to lose, so you’ve nothing to lose to keep it. The one trauma in your life was when your voice broke. All the rest is banal.’

  ‘You and me: is that banal?’

  ‘There wouldn’t be any you and me without Duncan. There wouldn’t be any Venice or Cambridge. Nor would there be any Crierley.’

  ‘It’s only a house.’

  ‘A house that’s been in my family for four hundred years. A house that’s not just where we live but who we are. Its stones are my second skin; its soil is in my blood. I can’t be the one to let it go.’

  I clutch you to my chest, caught in the crossfire between his pain and your wishes. If only you could hear – not now, but then – would you be so keen to come back?

  ‘Sometimes I hate it so much, I want to raze it to a pile of rubble; but it would be like desecrating a family tomb. It’s my heritage; I’m in hock to history.’ He laughs … or is it history’s echo? ‘With you, I thought I could break free; with you, I could make my own family.’ For an instant he makes me forget his sex. ‘But it was a fantasy. If you knew everything I am, you’d hate me.’

  ‘No, I could never hate you.’ I run my hand though his hair, over his flesh. ‘I love you.’ It is the first time that I have said it. I have practised so often and it has always sounded … practised. Now I know that it is real. He kisses me, pressing his tongue against my gums so insistently that they ache. Then he lies on a bench and offers himself to me. The cold stone shocks my skin; but the warmth of his insides welcomes me. The sex and the setting combine to confirm your theory; we are no longer English students but Homeric Greeks.

  The modern world intrudes with a fate as cruel as any classical deity. Two figures emerge from the trees: Lady Standish and Treflis. We are totally exposed. The moon has no truck with modesty. In its sharp white light, Robin’s skin has turned to stone. I try to pull away, but his muscles too have petrified and I am at the mercy of Lady Standish’s blows raining down on my back. I try to protect Robin from Treflis who plays the father’s part and slaps his upturned face. He makes no protest; but his body emits the most shaming fart as they prise me off and drag him away like two butchers hauling a hunk of meat. I am left choking on my sobs, raw and grimy. I have nowhere to go. I wear his underclothes for extra warmth. I curl up on the bench with his shirt for a pillow and sleep beneath the stars for the first and only time.

  I look at Lady Standish, whose face betrays no sign of recognition. ‘No, not here,’ I say; ‘I don’t think Candida ever came here. By the lake.’

  Lydia shivers. ‘She’s not allowed to go there.’

  ‘You’re alright when you’re with someone else,’ her mother says; and we walk towards its banks. I try to think of a story for Pagan about your spirit floating in the air; but I simply say that you wanted us to come and remember you here, that this was somewhere you were happy, and that we are going to make a wish with magic dust.

  I unscrew the lid of the urn; I tip out some of the ashes. I weigh your life – your afterlife – in my hands and feel the softness of death sifting through my fingers. I am surprised; ashes are not hard as in ‘sackcloth and …’ or Cinderella’s kitchen grate, but as soft as sun-soaked sand. I feel strangely reassured.

  I whirl my arms in a circle and make a private incantation. I am no longer aware of anyone, not even Pagan. My thoughts stream through my head as the ash streams through my fingers … I am back with you in the breakfast room, bereft and bedraggled, where Lady Standish makes no mention of what happened – was it all a bad dream? – but informs us with perfect composure that Robin has a touch of flu and has been confined to bed. It is wretched luck but, under the circumstances, she thinks it best that we leave.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ I say to you as we discard the cold kedgeree; ‘I ruined everything.’

  ‘No,’ you reply quietly; ‘it wasn’t you.’

  ‘We’ll never go back,’ I say, as the car deposits us at the station, where the first train to Worcester is cancelled and the second delayed.

  ‘You mustn’t say that. Of course we will. We must,’ you insist. As indeed we have. And a gust of wind blows the ash in the women’s faces. Lady Standish jumps away as if attacked by a swarm of bees, but Lydia tries to catch it, shouting ‘snow’. As I take Pagan in my arms, I suspect that it is you trying to puncture the solemnity. And, as we walk back to the car, I trust that you have found a home.

  3

  I have betrayed you. I hardly dare say it, but I have seen your parents. And yet somehow I feel that you know already. As we sit drinking tea, the air is heavy with disapproval … although how much of it is yours and how much theirs, I cannot be sure.

  Your spirit remains alive, if only in my consciousness. You would dismiss any larger claim as superstition, as grotesque a negation of nature as Mae West’s skin; eternal youth or eternal souls are both equally vain. But I feel you in my every moment; you make the past part of the present. I speak to you of it – from it – and I know that I am not speaking to myself. So I pick up my pen … my life has become one of paper intimacies. And yet, for you, I fear that it is an endless frustration. ‘You used to have such good stories; tell me something I don’t already know.’

  I think that I would prefer an old-style spirit, a guardian angel or vengeful ghost, someone always at hand with a word of warning; then I mi
ght have been better prepared … there again, you have warned me against them for nineteen years.

  The first indication is an envelope: an indistinct postmark, an unfamiliar hand. It has the copper-plate confidence of a poison-pen letter; and yet it has not been forwarded from the BBC. I turn to the signature: yours sincerely, Muriel Mulliner. My pulse quickens. Pagan laughs; I have sunk my wrist in the marmalade. Then she sees my face.

  ‘Is it a nasty letter?’

  ‘Just a bill. Eat up or we’ll be late for school.’

  ‘Good. I hate it. I’m going to run away.’

  ‘And who won a gold star last week?’

  ‘I like it really.’

  ‘I should think so too. Now hurry up and let Susan wipe your face.’

  ‘It’s not as sticky as your sleeve.’

  ‘Cheeky monkey.’

  We pick up two of her friends, Phoebe and Stephanie; the morning run has changed now that the Sampsons have returned to Washington. I might as well be wearing a peaked hat for all the notice that they take of me. Pagan tells them about our Sunday trip to the zoo. She watched two lemurs very actively mating; I watched the crowd. Some parents withdrew their children instantly as though from an accident; others laughed as the rampant male pushed the recalcitrant female round and round the compound. And I thought what they would say if they came upon two people making delicate love discreetly in the park proper. ‘What animals! What beasts!’ And we moved on to the reptile house.

  ‘It was yucky,’ Pagan says. ‘Ginormous snakes, all thick and slimy.’

  ‘Snakes aren’t slimy, darling; they’re warm and hard.’ There is a shocked silence as they register that I have been listening: a breach of etiquette on a Lord Chamberlain scale. Pagan continues in a pointed whisper.

  ‘I hate snakes. When I grow up, I’m going to live in Ireland.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Cos there aren’t any. A wizard sang a song and they all wriggled into the sea.’

  ‘Are they still there?’

  ‘No, silly. It was in history.’

  ‘They might have babies.’

  Pagan ponders. ‘It’s alright living in Ireland, but not swimming.’

  ‘I expect they put up a notice like when there’s a storm.’

  ‘Where my granny lives in Cornwall, when there’s a storm, the beach is full of dead fishes,’ says Stephanie.

  ‘I ’spect in Ireland there’ll be dead snakes,’ says Phoebe.

  ‘Urgh,’ says Stephanie; ‘that’ll be worse.’

  We arrive at school. All my lingering fears about Pagan’s depression disappear with her in the mass of squealing five-year-olds. I chat to Barbara Newsom who persists in her request to interview me for the Evening Standard. She wants to know how I am coping on my own with a young girl. I distrust her motives and deflect the offer. I return home and re-read your mother’s letter. I know from the start that it will be bad news. She writes that she would like to discuss Pagan’s future. There is far too much to say by phone or on paper, so will I be so kind as to arrange to meet her and her husband? They will be glad to come up to London. My first instinct is to refuse. I am Pagan’s testamentary guardian; they have never even seen her; there is nothing to discuss. But then I relent. I never understood your grudge against your parents. Besides, it might be useful for Pagan to discover a family that is more than a courtesy one; she asked me last week why all her aunts were only pretend. This is the nearest that she has to blood.

  So, against my better judgement, I invite them to tea. I don’t know why I spend so long tidying up … or rather, I do and I don’t like it. I refuse to allow Pagan to play downstairs, which only confirms her in her – in your – prejudice.

  ‘I don’t see why I have to see them. They were cruel to my mummy and she hated them.’

  ‘She didn’t hate them. It’s all very complicated.’

  ‘She did too. And you know it.’

  ‘Wouldn’t you like to have grandparents? They live by the seaside. Perhaps we’ll go for the day.’

  ‘I want to go to Butlins.’

  ‘And I expect they’ll bring you a present. Grandparents always bring presents.’

  ‘You give me presents. You said you’d give me anything I wanted.’

  ‘Now you’ll have even more.’

  ‘If you say you’re going to do something, you have to do it or else you’ll be a liar.’

  She snaps at Susan when she tries to change her dress. She doesn’t see why she has to put it on; it makes her itch.

  But Susan can afford to be stricter; she has references for her role. I am still discovering mine.

  The doorbell rings on the stroke of four. It is as if the chimes are synchronised. I am used to a world of fashionable lateness; these are people who run their lives by the clock. Consuela lets them in with an air of dignified disapproval. Pagan and I greet them in the hall. I cannot decide whether it is her hand sweating or mine.

  They look so old. I suddenly wonder if the reason for your adoption is that they married late; although I know that in truth they cannot be much more than seventy. But then they are the kind of people who thrive on old age, as if they have been waiting for it all their lives; the respect that they have not earned by any other means, the deference they demand as their due: people to call him ‘sir’ and stand up for her on buses … not, I am sure, that they ever use them, but supposing they should.

  ‘Hello,’ your mother says to Pagan. ‘I’m Granny.’

  ‘You’re old, aren’t you?’ comes her instant, obsessional reply.

  ‘I suppose I am. Although no well-brought-up child ever mentions a lady’s age. Especially since there’s nothing she can do.’

  ‘You could buy a bikini.’ I apologise for my cough.

  Consuela takes their hats and coats and I their hands. We make a tacit agreement on formality. As I say hello, I remember your description of your mother as a woman who enjoys goodbyes. Pagan hangs behind me, outwardly demure, inwardly defiant. I hear my voice growing harsh as I tell her not to be silly; I feel sure that your parents are noting every inflection. I selfishly hope that she will create a good impression because somehow it will reflect on me. This is the first test of my surrogate parenthood, and one that I am determined to pass.

  We had a long discussion as to whether she has to kiss them. In the event she holds out a compromise hand. Your father takes it with some amusement. ‘Quite the little lady, aren’t we?’ But your mother bends with conscious condescension. ‘Don’t you have a kiss for Granny?’

  ‘No,’ she replies shortly.

  ‘Pagan …’ I half-warn, half-remind her.

  ‘Oh, alright,’ she says and pecks her on the cheek. Your mother’s honour, if not her pride, is satisfied. I pray that she doesn’t see the pay-off as Pagan wipes her lips on her sleeve.

  ‘Shall we go upstairs?’ I say quickly.

  ‘Haven’t you brought any presents?’ Pagan asks and turns to me in triumph. ‘You said they’d bring me a present.’

  ‘Did he now?’ Your mother looks at me sharply. ‘That was rash of him.’

  ‘I knew you wouldn’t.’

  ‘Little girls who ask don’t get.’

  ‘They do too. Leo says I can have anything I ask for. So there.’ She sticks out her tongue at her.

  ‘Pagan …’ I feel events slipping away from me. ‘She’s nervous,’ I explain. Your mother laughs shortly, but her eyes are ice. I make to follow them upstairs and Pagan straps herself into the lift. ‘It was for Candida,’ I say quickly; ‘I keep forgetting to have it removed.’

  ‘You’ll lose the use of your legs,’ your mother warns her.

  ‘I do ballet.’

  ‘When I was a little girl, I had to walk over a mile every morning to school.’

  ‘Let it rest, Mother.’ Your father’s epithet surprises me. Is it a pet name, a last point of contact, or something he wants to prove?

  ‘It’s not the girl’s fault.’ She seems primitively anxious not to na
me her. ‘Children take advantage; it’s their nature.’ She turns to me. ‘It seems to me you’ve let her grow up thoroughly spoilt.’

  ‘I am not spoilt,’ Pagan protests with new-learnt precision. ‘That would mean I was no good. That would mean like throwing in the dustbin. I am not spoilt. I’m not.’ She threatens tears.

  ‘Of course you’re not,’ I reassure her and reproach your mother. ‘Please be careful what you say. She’s highly sensitive.

  ‘Like her mother,’ she snorts … the first time that she has mentioned you. ‘Highly strung.’

  Entering the drawing room, your mother stalls at the sight of Trouble. At first I fear that she shares my mother’s allergy; but it is a more general aversion. Trouble glares at her, arches his back, flexes his tail and hisses. Pagan picks him up and nuzzles his muzzle. ‘Don’t put your mouth to the pussy, dear; it’s dirty.’ I giggle. It must be nerves that are taking me back to the fourth form … although, even in the sixth, I thought pussy no more than a synonym for cat.

  Trouble stalks out, flashing a curl of contempt at the intruders. Pagan lies on her stomach reading, her heels clicking in the air. Your mother perches primly on the edge of her chair, as if worried what might be lurking between the cushions. Your father leans forward, his arms open, as if waiting for a confidence that never comes. Consuela serves tea. Your mother refuses all food; she has to watch her figure. I start to relax and wish that we could laugh together at her green tweed suit with its velvet panels, stretched like furnishing fabric across her well-upholstered hips. I study her face, which is a pantomime of disapproval as she scans the room, peering through spectacles that she has constantly to adjust.

  ‘They’re bisexuals,’ she confides. ‘I sometimes think they’re more trouble than they’re worth.’

  ‘Bifocals, Mother,’ your father corrects.

  ‘That’s what I said,’ she retorts sharply. I stir my tea.

  We make small talk. I begin to warm to them and feel that I may have taken them too much at your estimation. Your father admires the decor. ‘Very tasteful,’ he says, in a tone that suggests a ‘very tasty’ barmaid.