by Mavis Cheek
After he had gone, Morgan Pfeiffer went to his desk. He sat and stared at the photograph. Mrs Morgan Pfeiffer smiled cheerfully back at him and he could almost smell her fragrance in the room — a commingling of chocolate and roses and the sweet smell of cachou violets on her breath. Her very skin, warm, rich layer upon layer of it, had given off an odour of sweet delight. Something to sink your teeth into. That was what he needed, all right. He was beginning to feel as if the stuffing had gone out of him. He was lonely. He should have been forcible, cogent, as vigorous with the Bulbecker woman as Stoat had tried to be, but somehow his spirit had dried. He touched the outline of Mrs Morgan Pfeiffer deceased's solid shoulder but all he felt was the glass that divided finger from photo. Nothing. He could look for nothing more there. In which case - he stood up, went back to the window - it was merely business as usual.
*
Gretchen O'Dowd had finished knitting and she was very pleased with the result. Both the sweaters came from a one-size pattern and were large enough to fit either of them and she had chosen the colours very carefully; both would suit either. She pressed them carefully with a warm iron and a clean damp tea towel and took them into the sitting-room, where Erica von Hyatt was eadng crisps. The cucumber sandwiches had long since been abandoned for snack pizzas and packets of nibbles, and freshly squeezed orange juice or tea from the Georgian silver pot made way for Diet Pepsi in cans. Nor had the dreamed-of dog materialized. Gretchen favoured a labrador, and Erica said that she didn't mind what dog they had so long as she didn't have to eat this one, hah hah (there was sometimes, especially towards evening, a coarseness about Erica's conversation), but somehow Gretchen had still not got round to buying it. She was impatient to begin their travelling, for she thought that once they were free of the house and free of the past, then, as she put it, 'Life would begin beautifully anew.'
Despite the crisps, the cans and the television game show, Gretchen was caught yet again by the sight of this beauty before her. Erica lay across the couch and looked much as she had when first they met, with her streaming golden hair, her pink, half-smiling mouth and robe with silver tassels. But this time there was not trace of milk around the sleepy lips, only salt crumbs and the gleam of Pepsi froth. Gretchen advanced, stood before her, worshipped anew. Gifts to the shrine of beauty. It worked every single blessed time. No matter how disillusioned Gretchen got, Erica would suddenly come over all beautiful again and that was that. Like now. How could she be cross with a vision such as this?
She knelt and laid the sweaters one, two, across Erica von Hyatt's knees. Dutifully Erica tore her gaze away from the screen ('C'mon, Billy, give us a clue.') and looked at the offerings.
'Lovely,' she said, 'really nice.' She darted a quick look at the screen. 'Smashing.'
'Which one would you like?' asked Gretchen. Erica looked back at them both. 'Either,' she said. 'You choose.'
Gretchen felt her fist twitch. In order to overcome the twitch she breathed deeply and took the can from Erica's hand. She swallowed a deep draught. Erica looked at her with something akin to fear. Gretchen returned the can to her and said, 'I don't know how you can drink that stuff. It tastes really odd.'
Erica gave a little giggle and then burped. 'Whoops,' she said. 'Sorry.'
'Which sweater, Erica?' said Gretchen through gritted teeth. 'It doesn't really matter, does it?' said the girl. 'They are both really nice.'
'Choose,' said Gretchen. 'Can't,' said Erica with a smile. 'Choose' repeated Gretchen.
'I can't,' said Erica, eyes back on the screen once more. 'You choose for me.'
Gretchen knew it was time to pack up and go. There seemed little to keep them here any more.
*
Deirdre had spent the seasonal period making lace doilies and her Christmas Day had passed without so much as one little drop of port passing her lips. Declan's card was postmarked 'Kilburn', which brought back strong memories both good and bad, and it said he was doing fine, planned to travel, and would write to them again one day. Deirdre went on working with her silks, occasionally looking from the card to Dermot and back again and sighing. He sighed too, but the source of his sigh came from a profound need for acdon. Where had the Spoon of Life gone? Declan far away, Deirdre as calm and unsdrrable as a nun. Nothing was happening any more. He seemed incapable of making anything happen. Not like in the old days when he had merely to bang his fist on the bar, shout almost anything, and have instant turmoil.
'Jesus, Mary and all the Saints,' he said despairingly, 'if only something exciting would happen . . .'
He said this to Leary, and Leary winked. He had been a doorman at Cork Lodge Hotel for thirty years. The wink was his 'big tip' wink. 'Maybe it's another woman you need?' he said, nodding down the bar towards the deft placidity of Deirdre. He winked again. Dermot poured him a large measure of whiskey, which Leary, obligingly, downed in one. So much for the profits, but what the hell. Maybe Dermot should go travelling, too. He had always said that he would. He might have gone with Declan and showed him how to do it properly. As a father should.
*
'Nihil obstat quominus imprimatur' said Janice. She leaned back in her chair, pointed a plump finger over the full-stop button, and brought it down on target. She had never enjoyed writing a book so much, though it felt strange to have abandoned the comforting shadow of Dermot Poll in this, her final work, her magnum opus. She put the very last chocolate brazil into her mouth and enjoyed it slowly. Well, Christine, she thought, this one is for you. It is the one you would have approved of most. Blastanges de femmes? Have done with ye . . .
She telephoned Rohanne, but Ms Bulbecker was out of town.
Coming back when, please?
A week. Message?
No, no message, but could Janice Gentle please have the address of Morgan Pfeiffer? Sure she could.
Then she picked up the telephone and dialled the Oxfordshire number. 'Girls’ she said, 'I'm ready.'
Gretchen went into town and posted all the keys save her own off to London. Returning, taking her favourite walk for the last time, she waved at the distant farmer, who was pacing his frozen fields. 'Sylvia Perth is dead’ she called.
‘I know,' he called back. 'But just see how it burgeons again in the spring.'
And she felt a tear trickle down her cheek and freeze like a tiny diamond in her moustache.
*
'I told you,' said Erica von Hyatt sleepily, 'that we should have brought the cushions.'
'How was I to know they'd be holding the Festival of Celtic Origins in the south?' said Gretchen O'Dowd, pulling the neck of her jumper up round her ears.
'I knew we wouldn't sleep in a hotel. I knew it. . .'
'Oh, shut up,' said Gretchen O'Dowd, surprised at how satisfying the suggestion was, and she turned her back, huddling closer to the base of the brick pier for protection.
'And we didn't get a cabin to cross in.'
'They were full.'
'Why didn't you book in advance? You said you would book in advance. When I asked you, you said you would book in advance. You insisted . . .'
'I know what I said, but there wasn't one to be had. That's why it took so long before I could get any booking. Anyway, we had Pullman seats.'
'Pushman, more like,' said Erica. 'Bolt upright all night with that crowd behind us on brown ale and pickle sandwiches and that painting of yours digging me in the ribs - I mean, fancy bringing that on holiday .. .'
'We are not on holiday -'
'Too bloody true.'
'And I had to bring it because I had nowhere else to leave it, and it is mine, and it is the only thing I have that Sylvia Perth gave to me.'
'Even if you hate the sodding thing . . .'
'It was her gift to me . . . And I've asked you not to speak ill of the dead, please. Anyway, it's something for you to lie on. I haven't got anything.'
'You don't need any extra padding.'
'What?'
'This jumper is sodding itchy.' 'It's best angora w
ool mix.' 'It's given me a rash.'
Gretchen felt a faint stirring in her fist, shades of her father calling her back. 'Take it off, then.' 'Mean old cow.'
'Who?' The fist twitched more strongly.
'Psycho Perth.'
'Sylvia!'
'Bollocks.'
'Erica!'
'I'm cold.'
'Thought you were a child of the streets.' 'I am.'
'It's not even frosty. The wireless in the chip shop said it was the mildest February for years.'
'You said we'd sleep in beds in hotels.'
'We will tomorrow. We'll head for Skibbereen. There'll be plenty of room there.' 'Say you love me.'
'I love you,' said Gretchen O'Dowd, but the words rang hollowly round the darkness. 'And tell me a story.'
'Once upon a time’ began Gretchen O'Dowd, 'there was a beautiful princess imprisoned in a dark dungeon from which only a Green Knight could save her.'
Erica von Hyatt snorted. 'Pull the other one,' she said, and, wrapping the Irish Press more tightly around her shoulders, she fell sweetly and delectably asleep.
At least, thought Gretchen O'Dowd as she closed her eyes tightly and wrapped her arms round herself, at least Sylvia used to hold on to me once in a while.
Janice looked in the freezer. There was little left - a packet of chocolate muffins, three take-'n'-bake rolls . . . The refrigerator was almost empty too - a little butter, a little potato mayonnaise, some cream cheese. In the cupboards it was the same - a packet of milk, scoured pots of lemon curd and jam, a tin that rattled with a few broken biscuits. And the Turkish delight was reduced to granular crumbs submerged in white icing. She stood back and surveyed the debris with pleasure and satisfaction. Such perfect timing. And now, as soon as the news came through from Ireland she would deliver up the manuscript and . . . She shivered. The night was a cold one, she argued with herself, no reason not to shiver even if her kitchen was always warm. She took out the packet of muffins to defrost, and went, smiling, back into the living-room. The screen shone soft as underwater light and she resettled herself in front of it. She remembered that there were souls inside it who had to be released.
The creator is God, she said to herself, as she called up the tube-train travellers. You have been safe, protected, secure in my green cave but now I must free you to travel where you will -
The pinger went on the microwave, the muffins were done. God the creator was hungry. She rushed to the kitchen forgetting her protected souls. For the moment the warm, moist chocolate enticed. She ate contemplatively. She would render up nothing to Rohanne Bulbecker until she was sure of Dermot Poll. Wanting to trust was not the same as conviction. And after Sylvia Perth's behaviour, Janice felt she had a right — no, a duty - to be wary. It was a good book. She knew it. Quite the right thing to bow out on. She would not change one sentence, phrase, word or letter of it. She hummed a troubadour's song.
My lady will not speak the word
That shines without her eyes
Yet may she sing it pure and clear
And save her lover's sighs ...
*
Rohanne looked behind her at the blue-white snow, virginal save for the slicing tracks she had made. The air promised a new fall soon and then these would be covered, the landscape once more returned to its unsullied state. She leaned on her suck and thought that not all things are so easily restored. Perhaps, she decided, there was a time to fail. She had missed it with Janice Gentle, who, true to Rohanne's predictions, had succumbed, for whatever the reason, to the enticement of money. Rohanne had found no pleasure in her success, and of the whole episode perhaps that response in her was the most disturbing of all. She replaced her visor and pushed off from the mountain with all her strength, scoring the whiteness again with her skis. It was a wonderfully dangerous and slippery slope, just as dangerous, she suspected, as Janice's ...
'My wife,' he said, 'that's her down there with the cherryade and embroidery kit - well, I would not wish you to get me wrong. ..'
Erica shook her head. 'Not at all,' she said.
'But, well. ..' - he shifted nearer - 'she does not. . . understand me. She does not. . . understand me at all. . .'
'Ah,' said Erica, moving a little closer across the bar. 'Surely not. And you such a dear and lovely man, too, Brian.'
'And I'll tell you something else about me ...' He also leaned closer, and poured a sensible measure of Jameson into both their glasses. By gosh she was a picture. 'What's that now, Brian?'
He bent his mouth to her ear. So pretty, the little pink shell of it. 'My name is not Brian at all.'
'No?' she said, sitting back a little and giving him a look of perfectly delightful wonderment. 'You don't say. What is it, then?'
'It's Dermot,' he said. 'Dermot Poll.'
'Well, I never . . . You don't say,' she breathed, smiling with her glistening pink mouth.
'I do say. And I say something else, too.' 'What's that?'
Her laugh was like harebells.
'You have the loveliest ears, the loveliest eyes, the loveliest hair and the loveliest body I ever did see. Slender as a lily stalk. For I could never abide fat on a woman. Fat shows they're running to seed.' He directed his gaze down the bar towards Deirdre. 'If you see what I mean.' He raised his glass to Erica. 'You are like a pure, white light at the end of a tunnel of darkness.'
'Sweet of you,' said Erica, and she toddled down to the other end of the bar to tell Gretchen.
'You want the good news first or the bad news?'
Gretchen asked for the former.
'The good news is we've found Dermot Poll.'
'And the bad?'
'It's that slob at the other end of the bar.'
Janice sent one copy to the Pfeiffer Organization and one to Rohanne. As she went out to the post office, she could hear Mr Jones muttering to himself while his hearing-aid whistled plaintively. She no longer feared him. 'Good morning, Mr Jones,' she said to his kneeling back view, but he did not hear. He was dealing with the lift. She peered into the compartment and remembered the face that had lain there so livid in death. To be buried in Birmingham seemed a fitting bathos. Poor Sylvia, destined to lie not among the rural beauties of Oxfordshire but in the concrete shadows of manufacturing England. In a way she owed her everything — both the good and the bad — and she decided it would be perfectly fitting to dedicate this, her last, to the memory of Sylvia Perth, who had, despite Janice's ignorance, helped bring pleasure and literature to thousands. That, then, was the final part of the rebus: ‘For my friend and betrayer, Sylvia Perth. Rest in peace . . .' For a moment she thought she could smell that aromatic smoke again, hear a hissing behind her. Perhaps Sylvia was not able to rest in peace. Janice smiled benignly behind her glasses. Perhaps she was actually turning in her grave ...
The old grocer looked out as she passed. There was a metal grille in his window now and the bubble-gum machine had been smashed. 'They'll be putting wooden pips in the jam again soon,' he said dolefully. 'You mark my words. Nowadays' - he looked up at the sky and shook his head - 'nowadays everything's up for grabs.'
'Well, I'm not,' said Janice firmly, and she pressed on towards the post office, the frosty February air whipping an unaccustomed colour into her cheeks. She paid the fee for express delivery, watched the packages consigned to a mail sack, and was glad to do so. It had been far too long in coming, this moment; she wanted to go full speed ahead from now on. With a lightness of step that she had not felt since that other February night, she made her way to the travel agent's to inquire about Ireland.
'Going for the Celtic Festival?' asked the man.
'No,' said Janice. 'Pilgrimage.'
*
It had been a wild and thrilling night. Looking out of her window, Janice saw a dustbin lid flying down the road, and people of quite substantial proportions being blown off their feet. It was exciting weather - if you were not out in it, and she had cause, as she pulled her cardigan round herself, to feel very grateful for
her sanctuary. She took it as a sign, she took it to mean that this journey to Ireland was always meant, for she had had a very narrow escape. Thank heavens for cocoa. It was cocoa she was making when a piece of somebody's chimneypot crashed through her big picture window. A few minutes before she had been standing there, looking out, when the urge for cocoa came upon her. Without that urge she would have been dead, ribboned flesh, bleeding freely. Yet here she was, whole, undamaged. It must be a suitable omen for the Tightness of her cause and she felt positively uplifted. Mr Jones came and put up brown board and said the glaziers would visit as quickly as they could come, local damage being what it was. Janice did not care about that, either. When they came, she would already be far away.
She crossed to her trunk and removed the detritus of years that stood upon the lid: yellowing papers, old magazines, a few glued china fancies that had been her mother's. She put all this to one side, opened it and breathed in the smell of lavender and camphor. She took out her coat of many colours and smiled as she examined the cloth. Neither time nor moths had damaged it at all.
Dressed, she let herself out of the flat and patted the door with a sigh. Everything was done. All over now. And she was on her way - not via Walsingham, it was true, but Heathrow Airport could justifiably be thought of as a contemporary staging-post.
She knocked on Mr Jones's door. When he opened it, muttering, irritable, impatient, she was engulfed in an odour of warm oranges. At least somebody was still making real marmalade.
'Good morning,' she said.
'Um,' said Mr Jones.
Janice handed him her spare keys and a sheet of paper. The paper contained the address in Skibbereen. Mr Jones had been insistent. 'After all,' he said, 'your windows are out. . .'
