The Birds of the Innocent Wood

by Deirdre Madden

  ‘Youth,’ she said demurely, ‘Yes, I still have my youth.’

  *

  On leaving school, Jane took a job in a city-centre office. At first she assumed that she would be expected to find a home for herself, and that her aunt would sever the last tenuous links. So it was a great surprise when her aunt politely asked Jane to live with her. Jane was about to refuse, but then she stopped to consider the alternatives. Her relief at leaving school was tempered with a certain fear, for much as she hated the routine of life at the convent, its very monotony had given her a feeling of security. She knew that the society of her aunt would be the nearest thing she could find to that curious combination of close physical proximity and emotional distance which she had been used to at school.

  Jane therefore agreed to move back into the white attic on a permanent basis. She would pay a fixed rent and maintain her independence; and her aunt was all compliance. This made Jane most suspicious. Before long she had guessed the reason for her aunt’s behaviour: her aunt did not believe that Jane would ever leave her. She felt quite sure that unless she severely antagonized her niece she would have her to care for her in her old age; and so she pretended to be docile. And when Jane understood this she knew that time would prove one or other woman to be right. She felt sure that it would be she.

  But as time passed, she began instead to wonder if it would not be her aunt. Her independent working life did not fulfil any of the hopes which she had built around it; and before long she had slipped into a routine as narrow and as tedious as anything she had ever experienced at school. The office where she worked was cramped and dark; the tasks which she was given to do were simple and boring. She felt much more uncomfortable with her colleagues in the office than she had ever done with the girls in school. Often when she walked into a room silence would fall and she knew that they had been talking about her. Sometimes when she was bent over her desk she could feel the eyes of her fellow workers watching her. They thought her very odd: thought her cold and unfriendly. Some of the girls were even a little afraid of her. Certainly she had not been popular at school, but to a degree she had been understood and accepted there. Most of her schoolfellows had known her since the age of five, and having grown up with her oddness, took it for granted. They also, she now realized, had forgiven her much because she was an orphan.

  At this stage in her life Jane dressed badly, the inevitable result of a life spent in uniform. The ugly gymslip of heavy bottle-green worsted which she wore when she was five was, apart from size, identical to the one which she wore when she was eighteen. She remarked upon this one day to one of the girls in the office. The girl was puzzled.

  ‘But why did your mother send you off to boarding school when you were so small?’ It was the opening Jane needed, and with the same apparent artlessness which she had employed so many times before this, she told the girl about her unhappy childhood. The anecdotes had, of course, the desired effect: the girl was shocked and deeply sympathetic; she in turn told the other girls in the office and from that time on they were kinder to Jane, and more understanding.

  But this, Jane discovered, was not enough. She was very lonely now, and wanted friendship, not pity, but did not know how to break through the careful mask which she had constructed throughout her childhood. Because she felt that she could blame no one but herself for this, her misery was compounded with guilt. In her early youth she had always had an unswerving faith that there would be a happy ending, and that she would find a contentment which would vindicate all this suffering, but now she had to confront reality. Her life was simply a life, not a fairy-tale or a romantic novel, and it was perfectly possible to live long – to live all one’s life – never knowing anything but futility and misery. The intensity of her loneliness frightened her.

  The months and even years passed, and little changed, except that she began to have two recurring dreams. In the first dream she was trapped alone in an empty room. The walls, ceiling and floor were all painted white, and the room was harshly illuminated by artificial light. The only door was locked, and through the tightly sealed windows she could see people passing by. In the dream she felt that she had lived through a whole day, in the course of which she never ceased to beat against the windows, screaming and crying in ever-increasing panic, afraid that she would not be seen and rescued before darkness fell. But the people on the other side of the glass either did not see her, or, seeing her, they did not care, and when night came she was still always trapped alone in the room. And now, although she could not see the people she felt that they, out there in the darkness, were all gathered round to look at her. In silence they watched her, with derision and contempt and a total want of pity. Now when she stood by the windows of the brightly lit room she could see nothing out there in the night, nothing but her own hated face reflected back to her from the black glass.

  In the second dream she was again locked in a room, but this time there was complete darkness and she was not alone. Although she could not see or hear anyone, she could sense another person there with her. In her dream she tried to find this person, and so for hours she felt her way around the room, searching blindly. Her outstretched hands grasped at the dark and empty air: sometimes she felt that she had been eluded by no more than a fraction of a second; sometimes she found that she was stumbling against the walls of the room. And yet her conviction that the other person was there never wavered. As the dream progressed her fear that she would not succeed increased, bringing her to a terrible pitch of frustration. Just when she felt that she could not bear the loneliness for a moment longer she would awake in tears.

  One night, some three years after she had started work, Jane left the office in the company of one of the other girls, and as they walked along the pavement the girl suddenly stopped short before a shop window.

  ‘Oh, look at that,’ she said. ‘Isn’t that beautiful?’ Her eye had been caught by a wedding dress of white watered silk, frothed at the neck with lace and artfully lit to show at its best the sheen of the silk.

  ‘I wish I needed a dress like that,’ said the girl wistfully. ‘I’d love to be married. Wouldn’t you love to be married, Jane?’

  Jane was still looking at the dress, conscious of the exaggerated shape of the dummy upon which it was draped, the bust too big and the waist too narrow to be natural. She imagined a row of clothes pegs running down the dummy’s back, nipping in the excess material.

  ‘No,’ she said at last. ‘I don’t think that I would like that.’

  ‘What do you want, Jane?’

  ‘I don’t think that I really know,’ she said, moving away from the window. She did not speak again after that, except to say ‘Goodbye’ when she parted from the girl.

  Shortly after that she began to develop sharp physical pains which apparently had no organic cause, but would strike at any time and in any part of her body. On several occasions she fainted.

  Then came the night which was to change her whole life. Standing in her aunt’s chilly bathroom she suddenly caught sight of her own naked body reflected in a tilted cheval glass. She was shocked because she saw it first distantly and objectively, as if it belonged to someone else, and then she knew that in that thought there was a wish and a refusal, knew, too, that it was foolish. That strange woman’s body with its breasts and the dark triangle of hair; that body, with all its implied, attendant feelings, that body, bare as a corpse, was hers, and she had to claim it. But she could not bear to look and she turned away horrified. Now you have to choose. The bath brimmed invitingly, squat upon its four clawed feet of iron. She looked away again, saw the light socket and began to cry; took a few steps towards the bath and as she wiped her eyes felt a softness and warmth in her hand which she did not want to feel; then again glimpsed her body in the mirror and saw a certain beauty which she did not want to see. She cried aloud and suddenly her whole life opened up before her: not her past life, as was supposed to happen at this particular moment, but her future life, and she saw i
n it a blankness and a mystery. Time would fill those empty years with something and if she now fulfilled her intention she would never know how it was all really meant to end? ‘But how can I bear to live all those years?’ she thought. She closed her eyes and put her hands across her face; again she cried and cried. But then she made her choice: then she said yes. Slowly she put on her nightdress. She drained the bath, put out the light, and she went to bed.

  In the following weeks the pains and the two dreams about the dark room and the bright room continued, but her life was different because, for the first time since her school-days, she had a real hope that the future would be better. Her strong will reasserted itself to ensure that this would be so.

  It was a few months after that night that she met the man who was later to be her husband. She was in the habit of calling into a café on her way home from work, and one day an excessive crowd had forced them, strangers, to share a table. For the first fifteen minutes she pretended to gaze into the middle distance, while in reality she was carefully studying his reflection in a mirror which hung on the opposite wall. He was covertly staring at Jane (which she, of course, clearly saw in the mirror). She guessed that he was from the country, and when the waitress came to take his order his accent proved her right. She also guessed that he was shy, and was right in that too, for when she at last asked him to pass the sugar he was startled, and he blushed. Looking at her teacup she timidly engaged him in idle conversation. She would not let him go. From long, linked, insinuating sentences she made a web of talk which communicated nothing but which held him there, listening until she had created the right moment. Then she told him about her childhood: the fire; her aunt; the hospital; the convent. She told her story as though it had all happened to someone else, and told it so well that he could not fail to be moved. When she had drawn from him all the pity she wanted she lightly changed the subject; but still she kept talking, until again she felt (and this was more dangerous) that she had created the right moment. Then she stood up, and drew the conversation shyly, clumsily, to a close, as she gathered together her jacket and handbag.

  Hastily he asked if he might meet her again. She looked surprised, and became quite flustered. But said, ‘Yes.’

  They did meet again, and often. His home was over an hour from the city by car, and she was flattered to think of his travelling all that distance just to see her. He took her to the cinema, they went out to tea, they went walking in the park. In the course of these meetings she found out a little more about him. He told her that he lived in a farmhouse right by the lough’s shore. Like Jane, he was an only child; and he lived alone with his father, his mother having died some five years before.

  Soon her whole life had dwindled to an empty space flanked on one side by recent memories of being in his company, and on the other by anticipation of seeing him again in the near future.

  She had a deep contempt for all those who had known from birth what it was to be loved. She did not believe that they could ever know how strange and wonderful it was to watch another person gradually fall in love with them. She certainly watched James, and watched him with a steady fascination, as a naturalist might watch a butterfly uncrumple itself from a chrysalis, or wiltingly die in a killing jar. She would always make a point of arriving early for their meetings, so that she could conceal herself at a distance and covertly watch him arrive and then pace the street disconsolately, looking at his watch, as he waited for her. Then she would leave her hiding place and approach him, her eye steadily fixed on his, so that she would not miss the moment when he caught sight of her. Because to see that moment was the whole point of the exercise: to see his face change, to see the relief and the tenderness and the love with which the mere sight of her filled him was the highlight of the entire evening. It made her feel dizzy with power.

  The thought that there was something quite basically wrong with the relationship did drift into her mind occasionally, but she always quashed it. But she noticed, for example, that often when the girls at work asked her questions about James – even simple factual questions – she did not know the answers. At first she admitted her ignorance, but the longer she knew him the more embarrassing this became. Soon, she began to reply with plausible lies. It did not worry her unduly, because, she reasoned, if she did not know much about him, there was also much which he did not know about her (and, she realized, that she did not want him to know).

  One night she awoke in the white attic out of a dreamless sleep. Because it was summer the room was not perfectly dark, and she could easily distinguish the shapes of the simple furniture.

  She had now known James for six months, and she began to think how happy he had made her. The very night before she met him she had awoken in this same room in great distress because of a dream: now, however, she was completely at peace. She felt now that it was as if she had lived all her life looking into the disturbed waters of a rock pool, and seeing nothing because the waters were clouded with sand. But then, when she had least expected it, the surface had been stilled and the pool became clear, so that she could see into its depths where a small yellow crab moved sideways over the ribbed sand, and a few little fish glittered and were gone. Scattered on the bed of the pool were smooth black and white stones which puckered the sand where they lay, and above all this she could see her own face, reflected so perfectly that her countenance appeared to become a part of the water. Nothing could be more desirable than to stay looking in to that pool for the rest of her life.

  But what if the waters were to become disturbed again? Then she felt an even worse panic: she felt now that if James went out of her life everything would be lost. A few evenings after that she met him again and they went walking in the park at dusk.

  ‘What did you first see in me, James?’ she asked with feigned levity as they passed through the gates. ‘Was it pity for the poor orphan?’

  ‘No,’ he said, but he said nothing more, and although he smiled he also looked embarrassed. Jane was afraid to ask why.

  The park was deserted: the very light had gone from the air and from the earth, although the sky was still bright blue. Clumps of white flowers seemed to glow luminous in the parterres. Eventually they came to a deserted bandstand which loomed up in the gloom like a vast, empty gazebo, giving the surroundings the air of a large private estate rather than a public park. Together they mounted the steps and as they stood there Jane tried to imagine the place flooded with light and full of rich brassy music; but her imagination was powerless to overcome the still, scented, silent dusk in which they stood. Within the bandstand there was a wonderful sense of air contained. She felt as if they had gone into a huge, ornamental birdcage from which a few of the bars had been removed, and as she leaned back to look at the panels of white wood in the dome of the roof she felt his hand close over hers. She looked down again and he put his arms around her, and she embraced him in response. They stood for some moments, she leaning against him, silently willing him to ask her now. But when he did say ‘Marry me’ she did not answer at once but waited until he asked her again.

  She did not look at him: her gaze was directed out and away across the park when she at last said ‘Yes.’

  *

  The following week he took her to visit the farm. On seeing the house Jane immediately knew certain things as if they had been spoken to her by a prophet. She knew that she had come to her home. She knew that she would live her life out in the big grey house; and yet she knew that she would always be an outsider. Despite James’s love for her, she would never love this place and it would never love her. Never, in leaving it, would she feel anything more than indifference, and she would feel no regret to close her eyes upon it either in sleep or in death.

  The lough frightened her. She thought that it would be strange to live by such a huge expanse of water, where so many wild things lived; all the birds, the fish, the eels; a place strange as a forest. She wondered if she would ever become used to sleeping and waking with the knowledge that
that big natural thing was out there. She could have no power over it, but it could, perhaps, have power over her, as it did over James, who could not countenance living far from water, far from the lough. There was an ease about him in the country which she had never seen in the city.

  The first thing she had noticed that afternoon on stepping from the car was not the expected silence but the sound of the birds, their weird cries going on and on. They said that you could get used to anything in time. She wondered if it were true.

  He brought her into the parlour, and she guessed that nothing in it had been changed since his mother’s death. In the dimness she could see a fat sofa like a recumbent animal, and a small glass-fronted cabinet filled with china and trinkets. On the mantelpiece were two empty vases made of dark red glass, their rims gilded; and on the wall was a framed print of overblown, unnatural-looking roses. Heavy brown velvet curtains obscured most of the light. There was a damp, musty smell and even though it was obviously kept as a best room, it had a great air of indifference and neglect.

  James led her over to the window and pointed across a flat vista of fields, which stretched away beyond the edge of a dark orchard.

  ‘We own all that land,’ he said, ‘right down to the lough shore. Almost a hundred acres we have now.’ But Jane was not interested in land ownership, nor did she understand the emphasis which country people put upon it. Secretly she thought it foolish to pride oneself upon the possession of fields: one might as well point at a cloud and say ‘That’s mine’, as far as she was concerned. She murmured politely, and then indicated a cottage which stood down near the water’s edge. ‘And do you own that too?’

  ‘No,’ he said, ‘that’s not ours. That belongs to the woman who lives there.’

  ‘Who’s she?’

  ‘She’s called Ellen,’ he said, and he did not elaborate, but Jane remained silent until he added, ‘She’s a music teacher.’