Poor Angus

by Robin Jenkins

  ‘About ten.’

  ‘I wonder what she thinks about it. Maybe, for all we know, she wants to be with her father, especially if he’s really rich and lives in Forbes Park. That’s an area of Manila where the cheapest house costs two million dollars. Armed guards are on duty day and night.’

  ‘Gomez owns brothels and night-clubs.’

  ‘I know his type. I was in Manila once. They sit beside you in the cinema. There’s a notice at the box office requesting clients to check in their guns. They don’t, so you’re sitting there enjoying The Sound of Music, surrounded by sweet-smelling gents fingering their guns and pricks.’

  Fidelia might have the blood of headhunters in her, thought Janet, but she was more of a lady than Nell would ever be.

  ‘You’re not taking into consideration,’ she said, ‘that Angus was in love with her once. I think he still is, if he would only admit it.’

  ‘Bullshit. He never was in love with any woman, except his mother, and that’s different. When he got drunk, which wasn’t often, he used to talk about her and cry. I believe she’s buried on the island.’

  ‘If you want to see proof that he loved Fidelia, come with me.’

  Nell followed up the stairs. ‘If you’re going to show me letters she wrote, it won’t do. I’m ready to believe that she might have thought he was in love with her, but that doesn’t mean he was.’

  Janet opened the door. ‘Wasn’t that painted by a man in love?’

  Nell sat on the bed and stared at the painting. ‘By a man that loved her body, I’ll give you that. Which is not quite the same. Don’t forget he’s an artist. He used to paint little Chinese whores. You’d have said he loved them, if you’d seen those paintings. He painted me once.’

  ‘I’ve seen it.’

  ‘I used to tell him he’d made me look like an orang-utan begging for a banana. But I didn’t mean it. I like to put on an act of being tough. I’m good at it. I’ve noticed you wincing once or twice. But at heart I’m soft. I’m easily hurt, though you wouldn’t think so to look at me. Well, you can see it plainly in that painting. So I guess it must be good, if it’s truthful. Maybe he’s a better artist than I’ve given him credit for. I know damn-all about art, so maybe I shouldn’t have an opinion. This one he’s working on now, what’s it about?’

  ‘He hasn’t said and I’ve never seen it. He keeps the door locked. Let’s go to your room. I want to talk to you about the letter.’

  In her room Nell lay on the bed and Janet sat on the chair.

  ‘Couldn’t you patch up the envelope somehow?’ asked Nell. ‘So that he wouldn’t know it had been opened?’

  ‘That would be dishonest.’

  ‘Dishonest? What the hell do you call opening somebody else’s letters?’

  ‘When Fidelia comes, we must make sure that he’s fair to her.’

  ‘Why should we? We’ve got no right to interfere. It’s none of our business. Anyway, she won’t come. Patel was just trying to show how smart he is. He’s got no idea where she’s gone. She could be in Manila, for all he knows.’

  ‘She’s coming here.’

  Nell spoke irritably. ‘What makes you so sure?’

  ‘Because I have seen her and her little girl out there in front of the house. I have second sight, you see. It’s been in my family for generations.’

  ‘Is that so?’ Nell was more flabbergasted than incredulous.

  ‘I saw them as clearly as I’m seeing you now. Fidelia was wearing a blue coat and white skirt, Letitia a white coat and red dress. She had a ribbon in her hair and she was carrying a doll.’

  ‘You saw all that?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It’s easy to make up a tale like that, when you know there’s no chance of it ever being disproved.’

  ‘When they come, you’ll see it’s all true.’

  ‘And when is that?’

  ‘Tomorrow, or the day after. Very soon.’

  Nell sighed. ‘Janet, would you please go away. You’ve got my head spinning. I’m not going to argue with you. If they step off the plane tomorrow or the day after, one of them wearing a blue coat and the other a white coat, I’ll crown you queen of the witches.’

  15

  Janet waited till after dinner before telling Angus that a letter had come for him.

  Angus was in a euphoric, benevolent mood. The painting was still going well. The demons were safely appeased.

  ‘Yes, I thought I heard the postman. Bumf, I suppose. Where is it?’

  ‘She opened it and read it,’ said Nell. ‘I had nothing to do with it. I told her she shouldn’t.’

  He smiled. He felt like a man who had just been told that he had won half-a-million pounds on the football pools. His benevolence was all-embracing. In any case, the letter was probably an appeal from some charity.

  ‘Is this a disease you have, Janet, opening other people’s mail?’

  ‘It’s from Basah. A lawyer called Patel.’

  ‘You remember him, Angus,’ said Nell. ‘An Indian. He was always trying to join the yacht club. They always black-balled him.’ It was an old joke but she laughed at it.

  Angus did not laugh. He had turned rigid, as if struck by a poisoned dart from the blowpipe. He remembered Patel. The white-haired Tamil had applied three times and been rejected. It had been said as an excuse that he wouldn’t have been suitable anyway, having no interest in sailing, boozing, gambling, and fornicating, the chief pursuits of the members. Therefore his persistent applications had been displays of anti-colonial spite. With the coming of Independence, when the Basah flag had flown above the Union Jack, he had had to be admitted. One or two had admired his courage, most had despised his snakelike pertinacity.

  But why on earth had he written to Angus? They had never spoken to each other. What dreadful news had he to tell? Was Fidelia dead?

  ‘You’d better read it,’ said Janet, handing him the letter.

  They watched him reading it, Nell with embarrassment and sympathy, Janet with stern suspicion. They saw how his hands shook.

  He could not hide his feelings: that power had been taken from him. On his face appeared dismay, relief, pity, resentment, anger, and puzzlement. In the end the benignity of the creator was submerged in the self-pity of the victim. The demons had not been appeased after all.

  ‘You owe her nothing,’ said Nell, ‘just as you owed me nothing. Like me, she took as well as gave. Like me, she knew what she was doing. If she comes here without being invited, you’d be entitled to shut the door in her face, just as you would have been entitled to shut it in mine. Isn’t that so?’

  Her question might have been addressed to Buddha. Certainly he paid it as much attention as the others.

  ‘Even if she was a stranger,’ said Janet, ‘and came to you for help, you would give it, I hope. But she’s not a stranger. She’s a woman you once loved. I think you still love her. Would you have hung that painting of her in your bedroom if you didn’t?’

  He shook his head. What he was denying wasn’t clear, even to himself.

  ‘He was never in love with her,’ said Nell, addressing Buddha. ‘I say that without knowing her. But I know him. He was always too fond of himself to love anyone else. We’re all too fond of ourselves, but, maybe because he’s an artist, he’s worse. She’s married too, with a kid. Trouble, and that’s what he’s always avoided. No woman was worth it. Only his art mattered. Artists, he said, had to be selfish bastards. If they didn’t put their work first, and second, and third, they’d never produce anything worth looking at. That’s what he told me, more than once.’

  ‘He’s got to help her,’ said Janet.

  ‘How can he?’ asked Nell. ‘This Gomez has the law on his side. As Patel says, Angus could land himself in trouble. All he wants is to get on with his painting. What’s wrong with that?’

  Angus managed a nod but it was a feeble one. He was devastated. Even if Fidelia and Letty did not come, his peace of mind had been destroyed. His godlike confidenc
e in himself was gone.

  ‘We’re worrying ourselves about nothing,’ said Nell, crossly. ‘They won’t come.’

  ‘They will come,’ said Janet, ‘but they mustn’t stay here. It wouldn’t be safe. I’ll take them to Skye with me.’

  ‘To that cottage you told me about?’ said Nell. ‘That’s got a marvellous view of the mountains but no electricity or running water? She’d thank you for that, I don’t think.’

  ‘To keep her child she’d live in a dungeon,’ said Janet. ‘Wouldn’t you, Nell?’

  ‘Well, I can tell you this, my kids wouldn’t live in the dungeon with me. They like their comforts. If she swallowed her pride, she could be living in Forbes Park. Why didn’t she divorce Gomez years ago? They’d have given her custody of the kid.’

  ‘Not in the East,’ said Janet. ‘Women have no rights there, as Mr Patel says. Besides, she’s a Catholic and doesn’t believe in divorce. Neither do I. She’d be safe in Skye.’

  ‘Until her visa expired. Where would she go then? Wherever she goes, Gomez’s lawyers will find her.’

  Angus then got to his feet, shakily. He put his hands to his head. He muttered that he was going out for a little while.

  No, said Nell, it would be better if he stayed in and helped with the dishes. In her experience, dirty dishes were more of a help than sunsets when it came to facing up to unpleasant facts.

  Later, after midnight, when they were all in bed and the house was lit by the moon, Janet waited and listened, suspiciously. Angus had remained disconsolate all evening, in spite of Nell’s efforts to cheer him up. Would she make still another?

  Sure enough, Nell’s door could be heard opening, very quietly. Whatever her purpose, she did not want Janet to know. But loose floorboards squeaked under her heavy weight. The handle of Angus’s door rattled as she turned it. The door opened with creaks like sighs.

  ‘Sleeping, honey?’ she whispered.

  A groan answered.

  ‘Would you like me to come in beside you, so that we could comfort each other? Janet’s asleep, sound as Dracula’s wife. She’s a rum bitch, that one.’

  There was a long loud contented sigh. She was in bed with Angus.

  What hypocrites, thought Janet. Just a few hours ago Nell was bleating how much she was missing Bruce, and now she’s in bed with another man. Angus has been given an opportunity to make himself a better man and therefore surely a better painter. And what is he doing? Putting lechery before compassion.

  Janet got out of bed and like a ghost in the moonlight crept towards Angus’s door, which was not quite closed.

  The two within were so engrossed in what they were doing to hear her.

  ‘This is just between you and me, honey.’ said Nell. ‘Nobody else will ever know.’

  ‘Thanks, Nell. But I don’t think I’m able. Too much on my mind.’

  ‘I know. There’s a lot on mine too. This is to get it off our minds, for tonight anyway. Don’t worry. I’ll get you going. You often were a slow starter.’

  ‘Would it be despicable of me, Nell, if I was to tell her, if she came, that I could do nothing for her?’

  ‘I don’t want to talk about her. But it wouldn’t be despicable at all. It would be sensible. Don’t look at her. Look at me. Don’t think about her. Think about me. Or think about your painting. I’ll not be jealous. If I think about Bruce, you’ll not be jealous, will you? See, you’re able all right. If this isn’t making love, what is? Here we are, two people, with animosity towards nobody. Isn’t that love?’

  Outside the room Janet’s own animosity faltered, when it ought to have been growing stranger. The pair inside were committing a sin. Nell was an adulteress, Angus a fornicator. In Biblical times they would have been stoned to death. Yet they were both in a state of grace, forgetting each other’s faults, forgiving all those who had ever harmed them, and wishing well to the whole world.

  It was, she felt vaguely, a lesson to her.

  16

  Though they did not know it and never would, the inhabitants of Ardnave were the cause that night of dissension in the Free Kirk manse.

  It so happened that a few days ago Mrs McPherson, she who wore hats shaped like chamberpots, had read in a woman’s magazine an article on the joys of marital love-making, and had reflected that Dugald must have used her – that was the only fair way to put it – with nothing but a grunt beforehand and without asking for permission, thousands of times, and she had experienced none of the pleasure that she ought to have done. What made it worse was that he had taken it for granted that that was how the Lord had meant it to be: the man enjoying, and the woman enduring. He would share a bar of chocolate with her. Why then was he so selfish and greedy when it came to love-making?

  That night in bed, with his jaws champing in a way that had irritated her for years, he announced that he was going out to Ardnave tomorrow to visit the wrath of God on the head of McAllister, that collector of idolatrous objects and the perverter of married women, for it had been observed by Mrs McCutcheon of the licensed grocer’s that the big red-haired Australian woman had been wearing a wedding ring.

  She waited, counted up to ten inwardly, and then retorted, in a tone of voice that he had never heard before, that he was going to do nothing of the kind. Those three persons were not members of his congregation and had nothing to do with him. If he did not mind making an officious fool of himself, she did: people were too ready to associate her with him. Nobody knew that she had opinions of her own. She had almost reached the stage when she hardly knew it herself. From now on, if he didn’t mind, or rather, whether he minded or not, she was going to speak for herself even if it meant contradicting him. She then asked, after a long pause, during which his champing died away, if he would swear on the Bible that it was their wickedness he condemned and not their happiness he envied.

  This attack on him by his hitherto obedient and pious wife of 35 years, just after he had said a lengthy prayer, was the most cataclysmic experience of his life. He sought explanations or excuses, for in his own way he loved her. She was 61, well past the menopause: so that could not be the reason. Did she have a secret cancer? She had a better appetite than he and walked more briskly. Could it be her childlessness? But had he not assured her time and time again that he did not blame her, that it was simply the will of God which had to be accepted without bitterness? It was not possible that she preferred some other man to him. He could think of none in Kildonan likely to be attracted to her. As she had got older she had got less comely and her temper shorter.

  He was interrupted by her suddenly reminding him of the occasion two years ago when she had caught him spying through binoculars at three young women sunbathing with the tops of their costumes off. He had said that he had been looking at some Arctic terns and she had pretended to believe him. But she had not believed him. She had known that it was lust. If he had confessed, she would have loved him for it.

  While he was struggling with that accusation, like a man drowning in a deep pool, she added that for her part she wished the people at Ardnave well. If he prayed to have them punished, she would pray for his prayer not to be heeded.

  17

  When Janet got up in the morning, she knew what she had to do that day. The first thing was to pack her suitcase in readiness. She would take it when she went to meet Fidelia and Letty at the airport. She intended to persuade them that it would be unwise for them to stay at Ardnave with Angus since Gomez or his lawyers would be sure to appear with warrants. It would be much safer for them to return immediately to Glasgow. She would go with them. They would stay with her in her house in Clarkston for a few days and then she would take them to Skye. Her parents would put them up until her cottage was got ready. Not even Gomez’s skilful and cunning lawyers would find them there.

  She told the others of these plans at breakfast. As she had expected, after last night’s misconduct they were reluctant to look her, or each other, in the eye. The love they had made then was gone and had be
en replaced by, in Nell’s case, self-disgust, and in Angus’s, self-pity.

  She could not resist saying, sarcastically: ‘You want to get on with your painting, Angus. Don’t you? Nell can make you your meals. I’ll arrange with my cousin David to have the car picked up at the airport and brought back here.’

  ‘They’ll not be on the plane,’ muttered Nell. ‘But it’s no good talking to you.’

  Then Angus, to Janet’s surprise and indignation, mumbled that if there was any possibility of Fidelia being on the plane he would have to go and meet it.

  ‘What about your painting?’ she sneered. ‘Yesterday you couldn’t spare a minute away from it.’

  ‘I’ll never paint again.’

  ‘That’s stupid,’ said Nell. ‘Of course you will. When we’ve all gone and left you in peace. All right. We’ll all go to the airport. It’ll be an outing, anyway. On the way back, you can show me the island.’

  Janet saw her plans being ruined. ‘But, Angus, if she sees you, she might want to come here. It would be better if I went alone.’

  ‘Well, you’re not going alone,’ said Nell. ‘We’re going with you. I want to see your face when they don’t come off that plane.’

  Afterwards, from her window upstairs, Janet saw Angus walking on the beach where she had seen the two monks. Perhaps, she thought, hundreds of years from now, someone with second sight will have a vision of him and wonder why he was looking so woebegone. The monks in her vision had been happy.

  Nell came in, dressed for going to the airport. She had on a green dress and was wearing her girdle.

  ‘About last night,’ she said. ‘You know what happened. It wasn’t second sight though but bloody spying. I didn’t hear you but I can tell from your face. You remind me of that minister with the black hat and long jaw. Well, I’d like to tell you that it’s none of your fucking business.’

  ‘No, and I’m glad it isn’t. Please don’t use such language. What’s the good of wearing a girdle to improve your appearance if you spoil the effect with guttersnipe language?’