by Mavis Cheek
'Bullshit?' said the young woman eventually.
'But you might prefer "Cowshit"?' asked the unblinking Christine. 'Hmm?'
'But why?' said the woman, who chose to ignore the suggestion.
'Because sleeping with the enemy is a no more substantial notion than the dew drying in April sun. The enemy is first within ourselves. It is ourselves who must stand firm. After all,' she said finally, 'I have seen little change down the centuries. No, no. Go for love, my dear. Love, after all, is truth.'
Reminiscing now, Christine de Pisan smiled. The newcomer would change in time. There was nothing like living in an atmosphere of absolute equality to purify belief. We are, after all, but one flesh. Get that under your girdle, she thought, as she swished off to Mr Ibsen's eyrie, and you are free to explore much more interesting paths. Christine herself was almost up to date — only the twentieth century left to go. And then what? she wondered. What then? Another form of looking-glass to distil the age?
*
Rohanne Bulbecker was asleep when the truck reached its destination. The driver let her rest while he sat having a smoke, safe and warm in his little cab, looking out on to the seething darkness. He could just make out the ramshackle public house. He had always thought of it as a quiet place, but tonight it took on the activity of a shaken ants' nest. First had come a wild man running down the path, over the fields, shirt-tails flapping, hand to his head, going as if the banshee itself were after him. He was followed through the broken gate by a large man in a pale coat who called and hollered and raised a murderous arm. But the fugitive ran on, away to the sea. Then came two others, walking slowly, deep in conversation, seemingly indifferent to the winds that whipped about them. He watched them disappear into the darkness, and then climbed out of his cab, stretched himself, and shook the sleeper awake.
'Journey's end,' he said.
Rohanne Bulbecker got down from the truck and looked about her. It was as if she had reached the edge of the earth, empty of everything but the roseate light from the pub. The storm was dying, and the clouds, moving on, left behind them tranquillity and starlight. In the distance another bank of clouds rose up, slow-paced, ready to cover the firmament, but for a time there was the moon to guide her. She breathed deep and, whispering to herself Vous ou Mort for courage she did not feel, walked up to the half-open door. She would defend Janice Gentle to the uttermost. From now on Janice Gentle would be hers.
In the warm light of the room she saw the writer and the publisher in apparently harmonious debate. Janice looked up, her face smiling with surprise, her eyes alight.
'Rohanne, my dear.' Janice extended her hand. 'Are you, too, here to berate me for what I have written?'
'Certainly not,' said Rohanne. 'I have come to defend you.'
'There is no need,' said Janice simply. 'I have defended myself.' She took Rohanne's hand. 'Did you like my magnum opus?
'Like it?' said Rohanne. 'Like it? Mr Pfeiffer, if you have any principles, you will publish and be damned.'
Morgan P. Pfeiffer looked at Rohanne. It "was not the look she expected. It was an acquiescent look, the look of a conquered man.
'Oh,' said Rohanne Bulbecker, setting aside her shield of faith, which was, apparently, not required. 'You are?' 'I am,' said Morgan Pfeiffer.
'Have a chocolate,' said Janice, offering the heart-shaped box. 'Everything is going to be perfectly all right now.' She smiled a little wicked smile. 'Just like in my books.'
Rohanne took a chocolate. Outside snow had begun to fall, covering the land in a blanket of purity. 'Well, what do you know?' she said, biting into the rich, dark sweetness.
*
Erica stood looking out to sea. The snow fell in soft white lumps that melted in the churning water. She felt very small and very ordinary despite the fact that a whole book had been written about her.
'I am not anybody's princess,' she called to the waves. 'And I am glad of it.' She laughed and threw a pebble into the sea. Her eyes, screwed up against the cold spray, were mischievous. They had all believed that bit about the dog - every one of them. She thumbed her nose at the waves. As if she would. You had to make some things up now and again, didn't you? Otherwise it would all be so dull. And, anyway, it only went to prove that you couldn't believe everything that was written in books.
She wondered if one day Dawn would read it, and if so, what she would make of the tale. A tear joined the foaming sea. Well, at least she would never know it was her own mother who had professed to having eaten dog. Janice said Dawn might trace her one day if she left word of her address with the authorities. Another tear fell, plop. What address? Care of third cardboard box, South Bank? It was even more impermanent now they had started recycling the stuff. Quality cardboard was not what it used to be. Nowadays it just fell apart. Ah well. That was life. They were saving the planet, but who for and why?
She turned to follow Gretchen O'Dowd's footprints back towards the pub. She could murder a cup of tea. Bugger the drinking, she thought, and never again. Free once more, Erica, she told herself. Free again.
Her foot hit something soft. She looked down, screwing her eyes against the darkness. Dermot Poll lay on the wet sand, in the purpling dawn. He looked very peaceful, with snowflakes covering his nose, quite at rest, not moving at all.
'A terrible night,' said the officer who took charge. 'Did he often go walking like this?'
Deirdre buried her head in Gretchen's shoulder.
'He liked to go out and sing in all weathers, officer,' said Janice Gentle, replacing the covers as she knelt on the sand. 'This was not the first time.'
The officer looked down at the motionless tea towels and sighed respectfully. 'Maybe not,' he said softly, 'but it'll be his last.'
Chapter the Penultimate And a tying of ends. . .
JANICE lay in an almond-scented bath in the sugar-pink bathroom of Morgan Pfeiffer's suite. Outside the door, Morgan Pfeiffer paced, listened, paced some more. He looked hungrily at the ruffled bed. He wanted to keep her in beautiful surroundings with silken sheets the colour of apricot jam (Janice had specified this) and walls the colour of pistachio and mint. He wanted her there, always, ready to entertain him, to fill up his gaps — available, loving, eating, grateful, existing solely for him. He wanted her seated at a table full of good things, smiling benignly on his guests as she played queen to his king, and later, when alone, he would wrap his arms around her melting extensive-ness and sleep the sleep of a couple's harmony. He heard the water running away and the sound of his lady singing as she made herself ready. He put his ear to the door, for she was singing very low.
'I have a gentil cock
Croweth me day;
He doth me risen early
My matins for to say.
'I have a gentil cock
Comen he is of great;
His comb is of red coral
His tail is of jet.
'I have a gentil cock
Comen he is of kind;
His comb is of red coral
His tail is of inde.
'His legs be of azure
So gentil and so small;
His spurs are of silver white
Into the wortewale.
'His eyes are of crystal
Locken all in amber
And every night he percheth him
In my lady's chamber.'
Impatience made him peevish. Songs about poultry at a time like this?
Janice gave her powdered flanks one last pat.
Morgan Pfeiffer, ear pressed to the door, closed his eyes in anticipation. 'What are you singing?' he called.
Janice smiled and came out of the bathroom in a vapour of scented steam, padding through the doorway, a sweet, damp-scented serving of comely melting flesh. Morgan Pfeiffer licked his lips. He was ready to adore. She smiled more wickedly. 'Just a little Middle English rebus,' she said, 'that I had forgotten I ever knew .. .'
He embraced her and she was like the sweetest fruit on earth.
'So much more vigorous than those shallow, affected Elizabethans, don't you think?' The warmth of his naked skin was pleasing. Instinct told her this was no time to discuss medieval riddles. 'Proserpina, indeed,' she muttered. 'Who needs her?’
He had no idea what a Middle English rebus might be, nor Proserpina, nor why the strange song pleased her. But he thought she would probably teach him in time. He just hoped that Mrs Pfeiffer, deceased, would understand why her commemorative imprint was publishing the sort of thing she would have found offensive. 'Forgive me, Belinda,' he murmured into Janice's soft neck, 'but I have to.' And, after all, he had been very good about the cigars. Never lit one once before noon. 'A man cannot mourn for ever,' he murmured, as he led Janice Gentle to the apricot ruffling.
'I think,' said Janice dreamily as she sank like a soft fondant cream into the centre of the bed, 'that in my new book there will be lots of lovely sex. I shall make it a celebration of the act . . .' She reached out and riffled her fingers in a box of chocolates placed enticingly on the pillow. Morgan Pfeiffer was entranced. She placed a walnut cream deep into the recesses of her mouth and sucked hard. 'Mmm,' she said, 'I can't wait to begin. And Rohanne Bulbecker is going to look after me . . .'
'New book?' said Morgan Pfeiffer, suddenly anxious, for he saw the vision of his king to her always available queen fading.
She rolled over on to her stomach. He touched her gleaming contours lightly. Here was his ideal, here was perfection.
'Now is not the time,' she said. She sucked the tips of her fingers and looked at him with eyes that yielded up their innocence. 'Is it?'
Already she was dreaming of Dante and Beatrice, Laura and Petrarch, Michael and Rosalia, and the countless others who had been consigned to an eternity without the delights of the love bed. She thought it would be nice to put all that right. Release them from their purity. Once she had experienced such a release herself. She imagined how the entire canon of literature would look if Dante and Beatrice had coupled, if Laura and Petrarch had known more than acquaintance. And supposing Theseus hadn't abandoned Ariadne but married her? Just think -no Catullus, no Ovid's Heroides, no Chaucer's Good Women . . .
She crept her plump hand along the coverlet, over the apricot-ruffled hills, towards him. And she sang again, '"I have a gentil cock, Croweth me day . . ."' as her fingers drew nearer and nearer . . . And Morgan Pfeiffer was forced to agree that this was no time to discuss the future of books.
*
Gretchen O'Dowd looked out from the shore of Skibbereen. The sailing boats gathered the wind in greedy mouthfuls and sped through the waves, looking quite as buoyant as she herself felt. During the last few months she had grown very fond of this view. It was never the same twice and she was no longer seasick at the sight of it. She began to understand the fascination of mariners for their calling and to look upon the painting Sylvia Perth had given her with much more affection. Indeed, it hung above their bed on a fresh white wall and looked rather fine - homely, as if it, and therefore she, belonged. Skibbereen had begun to feel curiously like home. But then, as Deirdre said, it was hardly surprising given her surname, now, was it?
She sniffed the salty air and felt at ease. Nothing on earth, nothing in the water, was going to trouble her now. In her pocket she fingered the Gold Barclaycard, symbol of so much. And it was true: once you had such a thing, people left you in peace, they left you deferentially in peace, or hopped about doing your bidding if you so wished. Good old Sylvia. She hadn't been quite so bad, after all .. . Gretchen slitted her eyes against the sun's misty light - there was something of the effect of the painting when you did that. Sylvia's own little memorial triumph . . .
The day after Dermot Poll's funeral (she sighed at the happy memory) Gretchen had taken Deirdre to the Antiques Roadshow, which was visiting Skibbereen, thinking it would be an acceptable form of fun for a new widow. To give the visit some point they took the seascape painting along. And there was a most gratifying moment when the languid assessor with monocle and the upraised nose of an Afghan hound fell off his stool with shock. J. M. W. Turner was, apparently, a much sought-after painter of the sea and its ships, and this appeared to be one of his works. With that kind of security, a Gold Card was easy.
She smiled and looked away from the water towards a black-clad figure sitting on a rock further down the beach. The distant figure looked up and waved. Gretchen kissed her fingers to the waver and then stroked her moustache. Deirdre was fond of this silky growth and quite often touched it and said so. It reminded her, so she said, of her mother who had cut cabbages all her life, died doing it, a woman of considerable strength and loyalty, who had never once seen fit to pluck a hair from her body in the name of conformity. She was sure Gretchen was no different.
Indeed, as Deirdre said to still the tongues of idle gossips, where would she have been without Gretchen O'Dowd's comfort and help in this most trying of times? Gretchen had arranged the funeral, everything - the flowers, the coffin, even the wake with its food and a ceilidh. Deirdre said to those same wagging tongues that Gretchen O'Dowd had handled the whole thing as if she had been waiting for just such an event all her life. And where she slept was nobody's business .. .
Gretchen, enjoying the peace, heard a noise on the beach behind her. Before she could turn to look, she felt a resounding thump in her lower back - so forceful that she was nearly felled by it. The watching figure on the rock laughed heartily and the sound of her laughter came clear across the breezy distance. Gretchen O'Dowd turned. She refused to smile though the urge to was strong. One of them had to be firm . . .
'Down, Sylvia, down,' she said sternly. 'Good girl. Down, girl. Sit. . .'
*
Erica von Hyatt felt anxious. To overcome the feeling of anxiety she put the key in the lock, turned it, opened the door, removed the key, stepped back, closed the door and repeated the ritual several times. It always cheered her. She spent quite a lot of time going out and coming in again because the pleasure of putting her own key in her own lock was irresistible. What she was not so happy about was going out of the building and into the streets, for no matter how she devised new routes, there was always some living reminder of her past. Today's had been more telling than usual because it was a girl she recognized. Erica had walked past with her eyes fixed unseeing, just as passers-by had once done to her, but it made her feel sick to do it. The girl would not be a survivor. Some fought and won through, some decayed and faded away. So what good, she said to herself, would my parting with a pound have done her? What good would my giving her a room have done her? What good the coat from my back? There are too many of them and I can do nothing. She put to the back of her mind a voice that echoed, mockingly, 'They all say that...'
After a few more goes with the key, and feeling better, she entered the apartment. It was full of flowers and greenery -jugfuls, bowlfuls, jam jars of them - and littered with half-made wreaths, bridal sprays, dainty table decorations and fan-shaped bouquets. Some days there was scarcely enough space for all the outwork the florist sent to her. She gathered up an armful of lilies to move them out of the sunlight, turned, found no free surface, and replaced them. It was absolutely no good, that television thing of Janice's that was not a television would have to be moved. She was sure Janice would not mind if she just unplugged it and put it on top of the chest. She would tell her when they next spoke. After all, she would have little use for it now she was in America and never planning to come back. She pressed a switch and the screen startled her by bursting with light, but she could see nothing within, only green emptiness. Nothing there, she decided. Nothing to worry about.
She would put it on Janice's clothes chest. Erica never used this, and all it contained was the pink gown with silver tassels. She couldn't quite bring herself to throw the gown away, though she did not know why. Perhaps because it had made her feel like a princess when she wore it, the kind of princess found in books, the kind of princess that children loved to draw, the unreal princess of a thousand fantas
ies. The princess Dawn would have wanted her to be. So she kept it. It did no one any harm.
She had thought that perhaps she would wear it for revisiting the crypt — just for a bit of fun and because it would surprise them. But she had never got round to it. Part of her wanted to see the priest who had told her about the different kinds of love, but an ever bigger part of her wanted to stay away .. . She was on the other side now, she was straight, and she certainly didn't need reminding of Before. She was content, quite happy with
what she was doing, and she was waiting for the day when Dawn would become eighteen and get in touch with her now that she had a place of her own. After all - she picked up a lily and breathed in the scent - after all, the years would soon pass. She didn't mind the waiting. And if she shopped mostly at the corner shop in future she would avoid the unhappy reminders she had experienced today.
She unplugged the machine and lifted it on to the chest. Then she placed a tea towel over it to save it from getting dusty and began weaving the lilies into a wreath.
Chapter Thirty
S
QUARE Jaw is holding on to the strap in the carriage and hoping the lucky band of seated travellers will shortly reach their destination so that he can sit down. He is avoiding the small printed poem above his head which begins:
