‘You must be making a mistake,’ she would say quietly. ‘You never told me that before now.’ And to humour her he would tell it all again, only to find on successive visits that she had still no recollection of his conversations. Once she became angry, and said that he was deliberately telling her lies to try to confuse her, and thereafter he gave in to her completely: yes, it was he who was forgetful; no, he had never told her such and such a thing until now. But it did frighten him to talk to her and see her watch him as though with piercing clarity, while knowing that she was absorbing nothing of what was being said to her. He was told that she had become very religious, so he was surprised when she said, ‘Before I come home, I want you to take down all the holy pictures in the house, and put them away somewhere that I won’t find them.’ James promised that he would do this, and the following week she again made the same request and again he made his promise, although he had already put all the pictures and statues up in the attic. Jane frowned and pressed her palms together. ‘They might let me home in time for Christmas, if I’m a good girl,’ she said, with such extreme artlessness that James, knowing Jane, could not help but believe the remark was veined with irony, her illness notwithstanding.
‘That would be good, wouldn’t it?’ he said.
‘Yes.’ She paused for a moment, then said again, ‘You will put the pictures away before I get home, won’t you?’
‘Yes, of course.’
‘I had a dream and it was very hot, I was suffocating and the pain, you wouldn’t believe the pain, I was all sweating and blood and the pain, there were little flies all around my face and I couldn’t brush them away, my eyes kept closing and I knew that if I didn’t keep them open I would close them once and never open them again.’ Again she was silent, and twisted her palms together. ‘Before Christmas. Perhaps. If I’m good.’
Exactly a week before Christmas, James collected Jane and took her home. As they drove up towards the farm, they saw Ellen in the distance, and making no comment, Jane instinctively turned her head aside, and did not look up again until they had driven past the woman. She did not see, therefore, that Ellen was pregnant. James had not dared to tell her this while she was ill, and the sight of Ellen on the road had terrified him until he saw Jane pointedly look away. Still, he dreaded the day when she would find out. She was bound to know eventually.
As they drew up at the door of the farm, Jane was thinking of the day when first she came to the house, when she had been startled by the clamour of the wild birds, for she had expected only silence. The wildness of the landscape had frightened her, but in the years which had passed since that day she had been frightened even more by that which she had found in herself. She felt ashamed to think that she had been that stupid girl, who had come to the house with all her hopes and her expectations. She did not believe that a single illusion was left, and she was grateful for that.
‘Are you glad to be home?’
‘Yes.’
Jane walked through all the rooms of the house, touching things and smelling them, looking pointedly at the rectangles of unfaded wallpaper where the holy pictures had been hanging, but she made no comment.
She went to bed early that night, for she was very tired. James soon followed her, and found that she was already lying tucked up. He undressed and got into bed beside her, leaning over to kiss her in a rather hesitant way upon the cheek. Her skin smelt of soap.
‘I’m so glad that you’re home and that you’re well again,’ he said.
She smiled and settled down stiffly, lying far from him at the edge of the bed. After he put out the light, however, she said, ‘Give me your hand please.’ And when he did she gripped it tightly. They fell asleep thus, hand in hand and side by side, lying flat in the dark, as a dead knight and his lady carved in stone might lie upon their tomb for centuries, in the still and silent darkness of an empty chapel.
CHAPTER EIGHT
On an icy spring morning, when the trees are still bare and black, Lent begins. Early on Ash Wednesday morning, the family goes to church, although Sarah goes with reluctance. She sits upon a hard pew beneath a stained glass window, which is the finest of the few such windows in the chapel. She has realized that long before now, and this morning her eyes are drawn to it again and again. The window depicts the baptism of Jesus in the river Jordan, and Sarah is struck by its coolness. The morning sun catches the white dove and freezes it in its clear glass nimbus. More remarkable still is the coldness of the blue glass water and the paler blue of the pointed, sectioned sky. The coldness of the water seems inevitable, a stunning coldness, felt that morning in the icy bathroom where she washed, and again in the chapel’s damp porch, dipping her fingers in the grimy water of the dark stone font. And an image suddenly rises in her mind of the man, all those years ago, walking out into the lough secretly to give himself up forever to the water’s coldness, and Sarah shivers in horror, wonders if the world will ever be warm again.
She regrets that she has come to the church, for here the sadness and exhaustion which she has lately felt cannot be fought, but instead gathers together and intensifies. All around her are the familiar faces of people from the village, and sitting near by are Ellen and Peter. He catches her eye but no flicker of recognition, much less affection, passes between them. Remembering that it is mid-week, Sarah feels more miserable still, as she thinks of the dull days since last she was with Peter, and of the days still to be lived until she will be free to go to him again. He kneels, and from where she is sitting, Sarah looks down upon the fair crown of his bowed head, and wonders at his passivity; remembers the feel of his mouth acquiescent upon her mouth, and the warm weight of his hand lying in the small of her back, to which point she had guided it.
One by one, the people go up to the altar and the priest smears ash upon their foreheads. Sarah watches them as they come down by the side aisle. She does not want to go up, but then when her sister stirs beside her and leaves the pew, Sarah follows her at once, with instinctive solidarity, for she cannot let Catherine do this alone.
When she feels the cold thumb of the priest upon her forehead Sarah thinks for a moment that she will faint, for it is like the touch of death itself. She feels as if coldness and eternal silence are being pressed into her mind, as if her dead mother has returned to stand secretly, silently behind her daughter, placing her slim dead hands over Sarah’s eyes. Later, Sarah will not remember how she made her way back to the pew: but she will never forget the sight of the dark mark upon her sister’s face. She wants to wipe the ash away and to weep, to put her arms around Catherine’s neck and to console her; although Catherine’s eyes are innocent still.
They return home, and the remainder of that day is taken up with the usual farm tasks, which Sarah helps her father to perform with an even greater want of interest than is usual. In the back scullery, Catherine prepares the three frugal, meatless meals required to keep the fast day. It is almost a relief when dusk begins to fall, and with it comes the rain. Sarah stands by an uncurtained window watching the water stream icily down the glass. All the chores of the day are over, but the complete weariness which she feels is due not to hard physical labour, nor to the want of food. From where she stands, she can hear a bird crying out in the blackness, like a thing without hope. Sarah will not go to bed for hours yet, knowing from past experience that this weariness is not eased by lying down but worsened.
When she thinks of her family, she wonders why all this has happened, and at times during the day she has looked from her father to her sister, as if she might see there the cause of all their misery. Or more than a cause: Sarah wants guilt and blame, wants to point the finger at someone to say, ‘It’s your fault: you did this.’ At some point in the past, someone must have done something of their own free will, which eventually set the world unwinding around them all, and against which they can do nothing but suffer and be. But even as she thinks, she knows that it is cowardly and foolish; and that her pain comes only from consciousness of the pa
in around her. As she stands here by the window and looks at one particular raindrop, she knows that if she looked long enough and hard enough, in time a point would come when she would see everything in it, and would be forced to close her eyes.
In the evenings now, she withdraws early from her family’s company. She cannot bear to be with them, because she is afraid that she will crack under the weight of what she knows, and that she will suddenly say it aloud, feeling that if she says it before her father and sister it will somehow make it unreal and untrue, as saying it before strangers somehow seals and confirms its reality. They cannot know yet: they cannot yet have guessed: their unhappiness must be centred around some other source. The harm that I could do, she thinks. And she fears that she will do that harm, her knowledge gives her such power. And suddenly there on that cold wet night, anger rises up in her, anger that this knowledge has been given to her, for she did not want to know, and she fears the responsibility which it puts upon her. For what if, in years to come, she will see that she waited too long to speak, and that she should not have held this knowledge a secret. Perhaps even now, with the best will possible, she is taking the worst course of action. She can confide in no one, and the strain of this loneliness is becoming too much to bear. Vividly she remembers a day one summer, years before: Catherine and herself in the loft of the barn and Catherine opens the door which gives on to nothing but the ground some twenty feet below. Beyond her sister’s head she can see the sky, and she feels dizziness and fear, as if she were the one hanging on the edge of the void, and not Catherine. Crossing the loft softly, so as not to startle her sister, she gently puts her hands upon her shoulders to draw her back, but as soon as she has touched the thin warm body her resolve changes, and she feels now not the desire to save her sister, but an urge to push her out through the door, making her fall crack like an egg on the ground below. And now Sarah feels that she has that power, and is conscious of that power for every single second of the day, and she presses her forehead against the glass, believing that she cannot endure this power for a single day longer.
That night, she barely sleeps. Long before dawn she rises, packs a small bag and puts all her loose money and her savings account book in her pocket, then goes to her father’s bedroom.
‘Dada?’
‘Mmnm?’
‘I’m going to the city for the day. Tell Catherine when she rises that I’ll see her this evening.’
He grunts again. The musky male smell of the room makes her think, briefly, of Peter. She goes downstairs, and, on reflection, scribbles a note in case her father on waking does not remember her visit. Then she leaves the house, walks to the village and takes the bus to the city; and once in the city she walks to the train station.
She has missed the first train east. It left an hour before her arrival, and there will not be another one for an hour and a half, so she buys her ticket and sits down on a bench to wait, with her luggage at her feet. The station is cold and bleak. Sarah considers buying a cup of tea as she did not have breakfast before leaving the house, but decides that she ought to be careful with her money: she has very little and it will have to last indefinitely. When she thinks this, she sees suddenly the strangeness and stupidity of what she is doing, and she is stricken with panic. She knows no one in the big city in the east to which she intends to travel, and she has no idea at all of what she will do or where she will go when she gets there. She sees the futility of trying to run away, but she does not leave the station, she stays rooted to the bench.
After an hour, she can wait no longer, and so she rises to go and buy a cup of tea, but as soon as she is on her feet she goes automatically not to the buffet, but to a phone booth, and she dials her home number. She hears the phone ringing, and then it is interrupted by bleeps which indicate that someone has picked up the receiver and that she is now to put in her money. Instead, Sarah panics, and hastily hangs up. Then she does go to the buffet, and she buys some tea and biscuits.
She sits on a seat of rigid orange plastic, and she warms her hands around the plastic cup. Catherine will have risen by now, she will be baffled by the scrawled note, and Sarah feels guilty at not having seen her before she left – not even having called into her room but then, Sarah has felt guilty about Catherine for some time now. She has felt guilty since the day she betrayed her by going to the convent. (And try as she might, she cannot but think of that as a betrayal.)
She will never forget that day. She thinks of it now: and she is standing again on the steps, she has rung the bell and has heard it clang in the distance, she is looking at the brass plate with ivy around it and she is almost hoping that no one will answer (a foolish hope) when she hears feet approaching within, and the heavy wooden door is swung open. Sarah asks to see the Mistress of Novices, and she waits in the dim hallway while the nun who has opened the door goes in search of her. There is a smell of floor polish, and a more distant smell of cooking vegetables. Sarah feels ill at ease in such a place, feels that her very presence contaminates it. It is bodiless, spiritual, clean; and to think that her own twin sister wishes to spend the rest of her life here shows already the distance that there is between them.
She walks across the small hallway, and looks to her left down a long corridor which is shiny and dark. The floor is highly polished, and the vaulted ceiling is of varnished wood. At intervals along one side there are holy statues: garish, ugly things. There is a big red statue of the Sacred Heart, a blue and white one of Our Lady of Lourdes, and a cream and brown one which Sarah cannot identify, for the corridor is dim. The wall facing the statues is hung with thick curtains from floor to ceiling, and chinks of daylight show between them. Sarah guesses that behind the windows which are covered by the curtains there must be a garden, for she can see a glimpse of green, and she hears the sound of bird-song. Suddenly she hears something else: the sound of footsteps behind her.
When she turns around, the Mistress of Novices smiles, as most people smile when they meet Sarah, having first met Catherine, for the physical similarity between the twin sisters is remarkable. The nun then knows immediately of whom Sarah has come to speak, but she does not know why. She takes the girl into a tiny parlour to the left of the hallway, and they sit down on a small sofa. This room has the same air of cleanliness which Sarah has already noticed. Above the mantelpiece she sees a small watercolour, and she lets her glance come to rest on that. It shows a flat landscape with a cottage and some trees, and has been executed with a fair degree of skill. The pale clouds upon the painted sky are particularly attractive. It is, she thinks, probably the work of one of the sisters in the convent, and Sarah looks at this painting very intently as she begins to speak, and she looks steadily as she has lately looked at the pen-holder upon the doctor’s desk.
Then she had been listening, not speaking, and she had looked at the pen-holder which he has had for years; all her life when she has come to this surgery with her insignificant ailments she has noticed the pen-holder. It is made of plastic, and inside there are a sea-horse and some tiny shells arranged in the form of a flower. As a child she had admired it, even coveted it, but as she grew older she had wondered at the doctor having such a cheap trinket upon his desk. She wondered at the depth of sentiment that could make him keep such a thing so prominently placed before him. Or perhaps it was just habit. He never used the pen which stuck out of it, perhaps he had even stopped noticing it years ago, and would be surprised if someone pointed out to him that the ugly little thing was there upon his desk. On that day she had thought about none of these things, it had meant nothing to her. It was a thing upon which she looked, but looked as though it were an object of monumental significance; as if she were pouring her whole life and her consciousness into it, and she did this because the truth of what the doctor was saying was incredible, too shocking and too horrible to be borne. And the only truth which she had to set in the face of this was the existence of an ugly little plastic pen-holder.
The doctor thought that she was str
ong and brave. He had spoken directly and simply and he had not been so foolish as to try to spare her feelings by talking around the subject, as Sarah now tries to protect the nun, staring at the watercolour and talking such nonsense that she sees at last she is not trying to spare the other woman, she is trying to spare herself. The Mistress of Novices is now confused, and still looking at the painting Sarah forces herself to try to tell the simple truth, which can be told in four words. She breaks her half-spoken sentence, she breathes deeply and she says, ‘My sister is … my sister is …’
She cannot speak the word. This happened before, on a morning now two years ago, when they had returned from the hospital before the dawn, and had waited until a later hour before phoning the priest to make arrangements. Even then she had apologized for phoning him so early, and had listened to her own voice, polite, almost incidental, as if she had called him for no particular reason, and then when she started to say the words, ‘My mother is … my mother is …’ her voice had broken and she could not speak. She could not say the word then and she had begun to cry, as she cannot say the word now and as she now begins to cry. The watercolour landscape blurs, splinters, vanishes in blackness as she closes her eyes, and the nun knows now, as the priest had known then.
‘My child,’ says the nun, ‘my poor, poor child.’ And when she puts her arms around Sarah’s shoulders Sarah falls across the little sofa, crying like the child the nun has named her. She weeps, knowing that this is not an end of suffering but a beginning, that the worst is yet to come; it is all before them.
Sarah insists from the first that Catherine is to be told nothing of this visit; above all that she is not told of the intelligence which Sarah has brought with her. The Mistress of Novices questions this at first, and asks if Catherine has not got a right to such knowledge. Sarah hesitates, as she will hesitate for weeks and weeks to come, wondering at her own right to withhold this knowledge from her sister. Then she says resolutely, ‘No. She must not know. At least, not yet.’ Perhaps a time will come when it will be easier to tell her, or when she will guess for herself, and Sarah will only have to give confirmation and comfort. In any case, the doctor has told her not to tell her yet, that the time will come and that until then Catherine is not to be worried or stressed. The nun at last agrees.
The Birds of the Innocent Wood Page 12
