Faith Fox

by Jane Gardam

  ‘Five minutes.’ Jack manoeuvred the car on to the hard shoulder and went walking about the caravans, but nobody seemed to be answering his knock. ‘Oh, stuff it,’ said Philip. ‘Stuffation and grot.’ A man had come to the door of the fourth caravan and Jack leaned down to him ceremoniously. Then disappeared inside with him. Not long afterwards he reappeared with the man and walked with him towards the car. Philip, his face squashed against the glass, was looking down and saw dirty trainers in the mud and above them shining black trousers. It was hardly a glance upwards, but eyes met.

  The man in his elbow-patched jacket turned and made off back to the caravan.

  ‘Well, most interesting,’ said Jack, ‘most interesting fellow. I’ve left our address. He seemed quite enthusiastic. I don’t know why he made off like that. Very well-spoken, educated man. An intellectual. This car is a brute to start.’

  ‘For God’s sake, get on with it. Quick, get on with it.’

  ‘Not like you to be rude, Philip.’

  ‘I want to see my sister. Get me home. He was horrible.’

  Jack brooded. ‘Little Faith,’ he said, ‘dear little Faith.’ He imagined a stout and homely soul following on from Pema. Perhaps a fine old gypsy woman. Or a Traveller. The woman gazing from the caravan window, eating a pie? He saw the blotchy face soften, grow gentle, self-respecting, as the child was rocked and serenaded. Maybe the wife of the intellectual man?

  And if not her arms, whose? he wondered. Jocasta’s? Oh let it happen. Slowly, slowly. Let her take to Faith. One day a child of our own.

  ‘I believe you really do think of Faith as your sister, Philip. I wish Jocasta felt more for her.’

  ‘Yes, it’s funny. She always wanted a girl.’

  After an age—they were climbing now up Sutton Bank, spluttering and groaning, leaving the sprawl of the works below—Jack had said, ‘Ah.’

  Then later, ‘I didn’t know that, Philip. I hope it doesn’t upset you? Make you feel unwanted in any way? I’m surprised she told you.’

  ‘Oh, Jocasta tells me everything. She told me when she was beginning to think of marrying you. She actually asked my advice. I was quite young, too.’

  ‘Ah.’

  I said—d’you want to know what I said, Jack?’

  ‘Well, I suppose I do really want to know.’

  ‘I said, “Jack’s OK, but I don’t think we’ll like living up there for ever. It’s going to be lonely.”’

  Jack said nothing until, at length, ‘And you, Philip? I expect you must be rather lonely. As you expected?’

  ‘No, I’m not now. I like it OK. I wasn’t exactly mad about it till Faith came, but now I’m not an only child any more it’s fine.’

  ‘You’d like real brothers and sisters, I expect?’

  ‘Faith’s real.’

  ‘You are extremely fond of her, aren’t you?’

  ‘Well, she’s the only one I’ll ever have.’

  ‘You never know. You never know, Philip.’ He looked beatific again. Light perpetual. Hope perpetual.

  ‘Yes I do. Jocasta’s had all the parts you need for childbirth taken out. Didn’t you know? I’d have thought you’d know. She’s got this great scar across her tum. You must have seen it, Jack, don’t be daft. Andrew did it. He helped the surgeon when he was young. What’s wrong with this car now? We nearly went over the edge. Shall I drive? I could. I drive the tractor for Nick.’

  ‘I believe,’ said Jack twenty minutes later as they reached the cross, ‘you may be a bit wrong there, Philip. Wasn’t that just something like an appendix or a peritonitis business?’

  ‘D’you mean you’ve never even asked her? Jack, you’re crazy. I mean, I asked her and I was little. She said that I’d have had to know anyway because it was only fair to me.’

  ‘Only fair,’ said Jack. ‘I see that.’

  The only person he had told of his longing for a child was The Missus. He had not told Jocasta. He had assumed she must know. Any wife would. Naturally. Now he thought that somehow The Missus must have discovered about Jocasta’s barrenness and that she had never told him of it. Maybe Andrew or Philip had somehow let it out—Philip playing cards with The Missus in the gatehouse. The Missus couldn’t cope with treachery. She smelled it a mile off. Her ferocious face belied her capacity to be deeply shocked and when shocked she fell silent. She collapsed and ran. Out of pity for him The Missus would have sunk deep into herself, glaring, crashing the saucepans, become remote, ready to kill Jocasta for embracing him in the kitchen with her open eyes full of love. Alice was a woman awkward when it came to imparting bad news. Or any news. A difficult, heavy little woman. I don’t know why I kept her so long, Jack thought, and shocked himself.

  But truly The Missus had reacted ridiculously. The trouble was that she deeply hated Jocasta and had done from the beginning. She had simply been waiting for the final coffin nail. He should not have allowed such hatred to fester at The Priors. He must put things right. The first thing he would do when he reached home was tell Jocasta that he loved her and put things right.

  He went straight to her room, knocked politely, waited for permission to go in, and found her with her hair loose and an open book face down on the bedcover, staring at the door. She looked as if she had been lying like this for ever, staring ahead.

  ‘Jocasta.’ He sat down at the end of the bed. ‘In bed early?’

  ‘I was cold.’

  ‘Tell me, do you—did you hate poor Alice Banks?’

  She said at once, ‘So you know.’

  He was surprised that she leaned forward then and picked up one of his hands. She stroked it and laid it against her cheek, ‘You know.’

  ‘You’re crying.’

  ‘No,’ she said.

  ‘Your eyes are enormous. You’re so beautiful, Jocasta.’

  ‘I love your eyes, too,’ she said. ‘I love it when you look like that. All raggety-baggety. You’re a loving old Don Quixote. I want to have you in my arms.’

  ‘Then why—why ever? Why won’t you ever . . . ?’

  ‘Well, it’s not like that.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Sex. I’ve told you so often. I can’t. I just can’t. Darling, how could I?’

  ‘You shouldn’t have married me without telling me. You must have known then that there was no chance. How could you not have told me? I’m Andrew’s brother, for God’s sake.’

  ‘But then I couldn’t have married you, could I? I wanted to. And you would not have married me. Well, you shouldn’t have been able to marry me. I should hope not, anyway. I’m the sinner.’

  ‘Of course I would have married you,’ he said.

  ‘What? Even knowing . . . ? No, Jack. No!’

  ‘It was Andrew brought you to me. It wasn’t his fault you were his patient. You talk as if he’d violated you. He had no choice but to bring you here to me. Yes, he should have told me and you should have told me, that’s all I mind about. I could have coped. It’s all so sad. But it wouldn’t have changed my mind. You know—I am so hopeless I’m beginning to wonder now if you did tell me and I somehow simply forgot.’

  ‘Forgot!’

  ‘Well, maybe Andrew thought I knew. In some way. That he’d told me sometime at the very beginning. We’ve never been close, you know. We never had conversations—he’s a different generation. And of course he has no time for religion.’

  ‘Well, heavens. It’s hardly a thing he would have dropped into a conversation. It’s nothing to do with religion.’

  ‘I truly promise you . . . Of course I’m not, well, happy. Of course it changes the future—our future together. It can’t be the same now. But “blame you?” No. I can’t. I couldn’t. After all, how could you help it, my poor love?’

  She stared in disbelief. She dropped his hand. The eyes that had been full of affection and loving tears had chang
ed. He saw a younger, harder Jocasta, the one Philip’s unknown young father must have met. The Jocasta who had lived by her wits in India after school, the pot-smoking, seriously trendy, guru-seeking, guru-rejecting Jocasta, a King’s Road and Carnaby Street Jocasta, a brown-rice, barefoot, Streatham Common Jocasta. The eyes said, What sort of dope is he? You can carry forgiveness too far. He makes me sick.

  ‘You’ve no anger in you, have you?’ she said. ‘No passions? You’re not even going to throw him out. You’ll have him back for Christmas. You won’t even hit him.’

  ‘Hit him? Hit Andrew? Of course not. Why ever should I hit him? He liked you, grew to know you. It wasn’t unethical. You’d ceased to be his patient. He was sorry for you and brought you up here to me for a home. I fell in love with you and we were married. He has done nothing wrong, then, before or since.’

  ‘Jack,’ she leaned forward and took both his hands, ‘Andrew and I have both done wrong and doubly wrong not telling you. I am very, very, very sorry. I have never felt this before. I suppose it was The Missus told you. That’s why she went off. She couldn’t bear it. She has a strain of purest vitriol inside her. She’d kill for you. She discovered it and went. It’s a wonder she didn’t stay for breakfast and poison Andrew and me together.’

  ‘Oh my dear—come on.’

  ‘Oh, my love, I’m sorry.’

  ‘It’s not that serious,’ he said. ‘I don’t think she’d have stayed, as a matter of fact, if we’d had a baby. She likes Philip but that’s because he’s not childish. She’s never paid the least attention to Faith.’

  Very slowly she said then, ‘Do you mean that it’s just because you won’t be begetting any children by me that it matters? That that’s what it’s all about? Yourself?’

  ‘Well, partly. Naturally. The other part is your not telling me it was a hysterectomy.’

  ‘And otherwise you don’t care?’

  ‘Not at all. Not in the very least.’

  ‘But, Jack, Andrew and I have betrayed you. Philip and I will have to leave you. Andrew and I knew that when we saw The Missus standing staring at us in the doorway.’

  ‘My dear. My dear sweet girl, you are being theatrical. You and I are married. We love each other. Whatever does the gynaecological stuff matter? I mean, it’s not as if you and Andrew had been having an affair, is it? Poor Andrew—just look at his face. He’ll mourn poor Holly, I’m afraid, for the rest of his life.’

  33

  Every few minutes trains were running into Waterloo East station to tip out their contents. Hundreds of people surged forward, wave upon wave, at a stiff jog-trot towards their daily bread. The trio waiting on the down-line platform was jostled about several times and Alice Banks’s suitcases were at continuous risk. No sooner had one train left than in came another. The crowds were being sucked towards London for their execution.

  Alice watched and could not see one contented face. Poor stock, she thought, most of them half-breeds. Black and curly, greenish-grey, blotchy brown, some white—well, pink. All of them glazed over like they’ve got New Forest disease and need their ointment. No shepherds. No dogs to guide them. They all seemed to know the way, though. Off they went up the slope in a huddle, butting away at each other, left wheel and out of sight. Not one of them turning to run for it. Nobody coming back. Like death really, thought The Missus. So much for London.

  She thought that she’d like to tell Jack of it. It might be a thing for a sermon. Then she thought not, for there was nobody anywhere near Ellerby Priors the least bit interested in the London rush hour. Fancy, she thought, Philip must have seen this. It was his home once. She thought of him, a sharp-faced baby in a pushchair.

  And that Jocasta. There’s plenty places she knows about, and us with no idea. You wonder how Philip’s grown up natural at all. He’s had a break away from all this anyway. He’ll be stuck back in it soon, though, mark my words. They’ll all be tipped back down here, that Andrew, that Jocasta, Philip. They’ll never get heard of more. You’ll see.

  And me down here, she thought, whatever am I down here for with this fond pair? Not one of us knows why. The balance of my mind must be disturbed, like in the papers. I’ve always got the balance of it back talking to Philip in the past, but here’s something you can’t talk about with Philip, nor yet with Toots and Dolly. You can’t tell the best people things like this. That Smike pair, they’d take it. A fancy-boy and a common criminal. I’d not tell that Middleditch one breath. Give her a whisper and next morning it’s in the North-Eastern Gazette. ‘What’s that?’

  ‘We were just saying, Miss Banks, that perhaps we shouldn’t wait on this cold station for an hour. We think we’ll take you for some breakfast at Lady Madeleine’s club.’

  Alice could think of very little to say to this.

  ‘You must be so tired. We must find you somewhere nice to sit down.’

  ‘I’ve been sat down all night.’

  ‘But—a good cup of coffee?’

  ‘I ’ave me sandwiches.’

  ‘We feel it’s not very pleasant here.’

  ‘What I don’t fathom,’ said Alice to Madeleine, woman to woman, ‘is what you’re doing ’ere your age at all before eight o’clock in the morning. You was to meet me t’other end. You must have got up bright and early to get ’ere in time to take me back down again. Are you taking me back? I’d say you ought to be careful of yourself.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Madeleine, looking up at the blank train-times indicator.

  At once a message flickered up on it announcing Alice’s destination. ‘Arriving one minute,’ it said. ‘Front four coaches only.’

  It arrived.

  The general seized the luggage. The Missus clutched her parcels, and they ran. ‘Don’t change, cried the general, sounding like a romantic film, and The Missus found herself in an almost empty compartment, bound for East Kent. ‘You’re to cross the footbridge when you get there and there’ll be someone meeting you,’ he cried.

  ‘Who?’ she shrieked back through the window—but Madeleine could not be asked. She could only just be seen far away up the platform under the indicator, her fut hat, her opened newspaper.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ called the general guiltily, ‘please don’t worry.’

  And The Missus’s baleful face disappeared into the dark morning.

  34

  Jack awoke the morning after his conversation with Jocasta to find that he no longer loved her.

  The knowledge astonished him. The experience of falling out of love was not new, he had done it often, seldom with women, of whom he had little experience, but he had lost other passions. Mathematics had left him early. Physics had deserted him at the university just before his final examinations and he had walked out of them. The passion for Oxford, where he had gone next, to learn some Architecture, had been intense and he had for a time walked in the Celestial City. Then one blustery dead day in the vacation it had withered and died.

  The ensuing passion had been for God and that had led him to ordination and to his affair with Holy Church and its rituals, its ancient words, its magnificent music, but all this had weakened when he came upon the Muslims in Bangladesh, the Buddhists in India. God Himself he had never abandoned, quite sure by now of his need for the everlasting arms to comfort and hold him at the end of his every adventure.

  There had been women, crowds of them, but only for gazing at and loving in a perfectly pastoral way. He had seen splinters of God in each and had enjoyed adoring all of them, but he could scarcely remember a name now, hardly a face. Some radiant moments only.

  Jack’s passions consumed him but vanished always, and it was this aspect of himself that saddened him and gave him his rueful, gentle face, the face that was his fortune and disarmed the world. But he wondered why God had deprived him of the talent for fidelity he would have so much enjoyed. In the end he had decided that his incapacity to concentrate on b
eing faithful must be treated as his Pauline thorn in the flesh, the cross he had to bear.

  And at last he had been rewarded. Jocasta had walked in and at once swept away the years of his fickleness. Lost, ill, looking for love, here was God’s requested gift. She was the only one he had ever asked to marry him and he was in terror lest, should she accept him, he would at once go off her.

  She had given him no answer for weeks, but kept out of his way, spent most of her time in her own room or the Art rooms, wandered the countryside by herself, gone sitting about in cafés in Whitby, begun to take an intense interest, at last, in her little boy. Jack had kept his distance and his regretful face, allowing himself to look increasingly unparsonic, rougher, to remind her of her hippie years. He had stopped washing for a while, and eating, worn threadbare clothes. He was a man who suited a hollow face and as it grew more so he thought this might attract Jocasta, remind her of hungry seductive India. In the fields those first months at The Priors she saw him standing with his cassock hooked up like a medieval French saint. At night over the stove he sat in contemplation, his face turned from her, trying to despise himself for such affectation.

  She would sit apart drawing or sewing, sulky, almost ugly, he thought. Not entertaining. A bore. And he waited for these conclusions to bring the blessed release from his obsession. And then she would look up and smile wearily and he was wild for her again. ‘Marry me, marry me,’ he begged in a silence she could feel. She would gather up her stuff and leave the room.

  At length she had said she would. It was directly after Andrew had visited with Holly Fox, after they had become engaged, and Holly Fox had looked at Jocasta and said—in front of her—‘Golly. Aren’t you wonderful!’ Holly Fox had said, laughing, to Jack, ‘I’ve told Andrew I’m jealous. His patient, if you please! Shocking!’ Holly Fox had tried to be friendly to Jocasta, who had seemed tongue-tied, quite overwhelmed, had tried to keep out of sight. Holly Fox had grown noisier and slightly embarrassing.