God on the Rocks

by Jane Gardam

  It was so queer to be out without the pram, the one long-legged child holding her hand and not the pram handle. At eight Mrs Marsh realised that hand-holding with Margaret was nearly over. She looked down at Margaret’s face. It was unsmiling and thoughtful and she squeezed the hand hard.

  ‘Lovely going out together, just us two.’

  Margaret did not reply.

  ‘Too big to hold my hand?’ She leaned down, conspiratorially, ‘Oh come on now, Margaret. Answer me.’

  Margaret said that she was trying not to speak until she had got to the tea place.

  ‘But, darling, why not?’

  No answer.

  ‘Darling—have I upset you, angel?’

  ‘Oh, shut up,’ Margaret lunged off from her mother’s hand. ‘I was playing.’

  ‘I’m sorry I’m sure,’ said Elinor. They crossed over the sandhills and into a formal and rather nasty-looking park with prominent litter-bins and bright green council seats and benches. Dene Close was just beyond.

  ‘Since we’re a little early, shall we sit down?’ said Mrs Marsh, ‘and you can tell me all about what you and Lydia do when you go out with her.’

  ‘No, let’s get on.’

  ‘I don’t like to be too early.’

  ‘Oh let’s,’ said Margaret.

  ‘No, dear. She may still be changing.’

  ‘Changing!’

  ‘Yes, dear, Binkie always changes in the afternoons.’

  (From what? Into what? Spiders? Fairies? Serpents? Houses could become snakes.)

  ‘At least I’m sure she always used to.’

  ‘Could I go home?’ said Margaret.

  ‘Darling, no! Don’t you like being with me?’

  ‘Yes, but . . . ’

  ‘You don’t want to run home when you’re out with Lydia.’

  ‘No. I know. But . . . ’

  ‘Darling—do you like being with Lydia more than with me?’

  In the green crêpe-de-chine, low-waisted and sloping shouldered, with the romantic trailing scarf Mrs Marsh sat down on the ugly seat and looked terribly sadly down at her greenish silk stockings. Tears welled up.

  ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake,’ said Margaret and flounced off out of the park, with her mother in a moment running after her.

  ‘What is it you do when you’re with Lydia that’s so nice?’ she begged at the kerb.

  ‘Not anything. Oh, do shut up.’

  ‘Everything seems special about Lydia.’

  ‘I don’t think about her. I don’t bother with her when I’m out at all if you want to know,’ said Margaret. They had reached number three Dene Close and stood before a chromium knocker, boot-scraper, letter-box, and door handle and a door which had the rising sun in stained glass panels bursting from the bottom left-hand corner. ‘What a door! Ghastly.’

  ‘Ssh! Darling! Yes, I know.’ Torn between delight at Margaret’s revelation about Lydia and her reaction to the commonness of the door she suddenly enveloped her daughter on the step. ‘Oh, my darling,’ she laughed, turning very pretty, ‘hush.’

  ‘She’s quite right,’ said a man’s voice behind them just as the door opened in front, ‘Hello, Elinor. Hello, Miss Marsh.’ He was smiling at them both, a tall, easy-looking man, thin, with a soft moustache. His eyes were sweet and gentle. Margaret knew in this first glance at him that whoever he was he liked her mother very much.

  ‘Hello, Charles.’

  Her mother had looked quickly at the man and then away.

  ‘Hello, Elinor.’ The sun-ray door was open and a big strong-looking woman with square shoulders was on the inside of it, drying her hands on a tea-cloth. She wore a blouse and skirt and very heavy shoes. ‘You’re early. I haven’t changed. But I wasn’t going to.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry. Of course not.’

  ‘Given it up,’ said the woman glaring at Elinor’s crêpe-de-chine. ‘Don’t you agree? Come in. And I’ve stopped a maid.’

  ‘Goodness,’ said Elinor. ‘I haven’t done that yet.’

  ‘The times are changed instead of Binkie,’ said Charles. ‘Farewell sweet maids.’

  ‘Well, I hope that Binkie will never change for me,’ said Elinor. She caught Margaret staring at her and said quickly, ‘Oh—this is Margaret, Binks. I didn’t bring the baby. The baby’s on the sands.’

  ‘Good,’ said the woman. ‘I like little girls and I hear the baby’s a boy. Come with me.’ She thrust out a hand and took Margaret into the kitchen and sat her on a chair before a table on which was a knife, a bowl of butter-filling, and a wire rack with yellow sponge buns on it. ‘Cut off the top of each bun,’ she said. ‘Go on. That’s it. Turn it on its side and slice. Now then, paste a thick blob of filling on the new top, wipe the knife, and cut the little circle you’ve cut off in half. Now, dab it like a butterfly into the filling. It is a butterfly cake.’

  Margaret smiled.

  ‘Clever girl. Pretty fingers. Now, do fourteen more while I make tea and uncover the sandwiches. How many buns is that altogether?’

  ‘Fifteen.’

  ‘And how many people?’

  ‘Well, two.’

  ‘No—for tea.’

  ‘Oh—four.’

  ‘So how many each?’

  ‘Oh—not quite—oh—four I suppose.’

  ‘Wrong!’ said the square woman happily. ‘You’re relying on all kinds of most unlikely things. For instance everybody being equally hungry.’

  ‘It was tables,’ said Margaret.

  ‘Tables are all very well,’ said the woman, ‘but they take no account of whims.’ She swung about the kitchen on her stout legs and Margaret watched her and wondered why such a bossy woman didn’t annoy her. The kitchen was very clean and sunny and all the tins were painted different colours. There were bright checked curtains and a lot of plants on the window-sill above the sink. The whole kitchen was yellow with sun. There was a smooth and comforting Aga cooker, a row of cake-tins with flowers on, labelled sponge, fruit, madeira; shallower tins for biscuits, and whenever the woman opened and shut cupboards, rows of very clear glass bottles and jars with coloured things in them, and all labelled, were seen to be standing at the ready in very straight rows. There were several tea-caddies and the woman opened them all and took a spoonful from each and put them one by one into a silver tea pot with an acorn on its lid for a knob. The quickness and sureness and kindness of the woman made Margaret begin to slice up the buns and turn them into butterfly cakes without any self-consciousness at all and she heard herself say in her Lydia or Drinkwater voice, ‘In the afternoons—what was it you usually changed into?’

  ‘Oh—any old thing. It was just a habit. By the way I’m called Binkie. My brother’s Charles.’

  ‘I expect mother would . . . ’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Oh—well. I expect I ought to call you Mrs something. Frayling.’

  ‘I don’t,’ said the woman, ‘Mrs Frayling is my mother. And Charles’s. I’m a miss, thanks be.’

  ‘Don’t you want to get married?’

  ‘Too old now.’

  ‘Your brother isn’t . . . ’ Margaret thought about it, ‘married either?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I wouldn’t think he was too old.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘It’s a bit unusual though.’

  ‘It is rather.’

  ‘He’s so . . . ’

  ‘What?’

  ‘So lovely,’ said Margaret.

  Binkie gave her a swift glance as she poured boiling water on the tea. ‘I’m glad I’ve met you,’ she said. ‘You’re a nice little girl. Come along. Help me pull the trolley in. Put the butterflies on the bottom shelf. Be careful.’

  She raised her voice rather as they crossed the hall and made a clumsy sort of noise opening the door. ‘A useful girl,’ she called out to her brother and Elinor, who were sitting very far apart and silently in the long sitting-room. ‘She is a record breaker at butterfly-cakes.’ Charles had stood up when they came into t
he room and did not sit down until Margaret had sat down on the chesterfield beside her mother. ‘Can one break cakes?’ he said thoughtfully.

  ‘Yes,’ said Elinor thoughtfully back.

  ‘Doesn’t breaking imply noise?’ he asked with the same frowning crossword-puzzle air.

  ‘Not necessarily,’ she said.

  ‘What breaks silently?’

  ‘Well, bread. Breaking of bread.’

  ‘There is a tearing noise. Anyway—archaic?’

  ‘Dawn,’ she said.

  ‘Different meaning. A metaphor.’

  ‘Snow,’ she said. ‘Avalanches—bits of snow breaking off. Quite silent.’

  Margaret looked from face to face like a person at a tennis match. She knew—though heaven knew how—that this game had been played before and very often and very happily. The tennis match idea stayed with her and she had a queer picture of her mother and Mr Frayling playing tennis with careful slow strokes on a summer evening with the shadow of the net growing long across the grass. Some people stood watching from a distance. Perhaps some old photograph.

  ‘Do you and Mummy play this?’ Charles Frayling asked her with his head on one side, as if to catch her answer exactly. Still muddled with tennis, she looked at her mother.

  ‘I don’t think we do, do we, dear?’ Elinor said.

  ‘Not ever.’

  ‘Try,’ said Charles. ‘It’s called the grand great word game.’

  ‘The great grand word game,’ said Elinor.

  ‘Yes. Sorry. Great grand. Try, Margaret. What breaks without a noise?’ He looked out of the window and said as if he was not listening for a reply, ‘It’s been rather long. I’m out of practice. What breaks silently?’

  ‘Hearts,’ said Margaret.

  There was a quick, electric pause.

  ‘Rubbish,’ said Binkie, ‘I don’t believe in broken hearts.’ Elinor, who had turned rosy, crumbled her butterfly-cake and said neither did she.

  ‘But it is not rubbish,’ said Charles and Margaret noticed that he was the only one who had seen her discomfort and bewilderment and that they were growing worse the less she understood them. Tears had even come into her eyes. ‘Hearts do break silently,’ said Charles.

  ‘No. A different meaning again,’ said Elinor, cheeks cooling down. ‘Like dawn, you wouldn’t let me have dawn and I won’t let you have hearts. Metaphor was never allowed.’

  ‘Metaphor,’ said Charles to Margaret, ‘means a way of saying something by using a picture. It’s called an image. You make a picture of a heart breaking in two, you see, to say that someone is unhappy. It can’t of course happen in fact.’

  ‘It can,’ said Margaret, suddenly angry at the man’s patient schoolmasterish kindness. ‘Father said it happened to Jesus on the Cross. That’s the meaning of water and blood John nineteen thirty-four. When the centurion put the sword in there issued forth water and blood. That is because Jesus died of a broken heart. It’s a thing surgeons know and it’s what they call it when they aren’t using the long doctor’s name for it. It’s a broken heart and compare Luke six forty-five.’

  There was now a very long silence in the room.

  ‘And anyway,’ said Margaret. ‘Father doesn’t like her to be called Mummy.’

  Walking back through the park and along the sea front she was jaunty and defiant. She walked ahead and clattered a stick she had picked up against the litter-bins, one by one. On the Front she ran about the sand dunes and then along the stone wall that flanked the sands. She determinedly did not look at her mother, and appeared oblivious and arrogant about the slight droop of the crêpe-de-chine trailing along behind her.

  It occurred to her now and then in flashes that something had gone badly wrong with the afternoon, but by the time she had reached the end of the stretch of dunes she found that she believed that her rudeness at the end of the visit, though horrific to people who had offered friendliness and puzzles and butterfly-cakes, was the least part of it. Things had happened which she knew quite certainly were not her fault. They related to other things that had happened a long time ago, and secrets. She knew that the tea-party had been an attempt at a bridge back to some of these old events, had been an event in itself of great delicacy and fearfulness to—whom?

  To her mother rather than to the man, she thought. He seemed so wise and strong, though saddish. To her mother then—for the sister Binkie was certainly not fearful at all. You felt that she had had her say a good time ago and was proceeding sensibly. Her feet were on the earth and her life yielding fruit Genesis one eleven. No, it was her mother who had had to endure most during the afternoon as a result of something that had happened a great time ago. And she had taken Margaret along as a safeguard. A foil. And Margaret had disgraced her.

  ‘I am a disgrace,’ she thought.

  She stopped half-way along a slatted seat which faced the sea. It had a metal ticket nailed to its back saying that it had been given in memory of someone dead in the war to enable others to rest. ‘Get down off that seat,’ a man shouted. ‘Walking all over it with your filthy feet.’ Margaret in her smocked dress and polished shoes hung her neat head. She deserved this. She had been a disgrace. She accepted everything. She got down. ‘Children,’ said the man angrily to her mother who had come up with them.

  Elinor took Margaret’s hand and said that she had only been playing.

  ‘Play. That’s it. That’s the trouble.’ He shambled off.

  ‘Dreadful creature!’ She kept tight hold of Margaret. ‘Dreadful. He’s that gassed man—that crank. Whatever’s his name?’

  ‘It’s Bezeer-Iremonger. He’s one of Father’s.’

  ‘Good gracious. He is. How angry he looked. He’s so gentle usually. He must be getting worse. What can have upset him? He seems to get all over the place these days. Or maybe it’s just that all of them get the same in the end—the ones that got back from the war. Wander about. I believe he was in a sort of Home for a long time, poor soul. He is always so docile—how very odd.’

  ‘Mother . . . ’

  They walked along.

  ‘Mother—I’m sorry.’

  ‘It’s all right,’ she said.

  ‘I just felt . . . ’

  ‘Never mind, darling. I know. He’s so . . . ’

  ‘He was so—sort of understanding. That man Charles.’

  ‘He was. Always.’

  ‘Always? I’ve never seen him before.’

  ‘He was my—best friend. When I was little.’

  ‘How little?’

  ‘Oh—five I suppose.’

  ‘Until when?’

  ‘Until—well, until I married your father.’

  ‘Father’s a bit different.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Actually—you are very understanding.’

  ‘I’m glad, darling.’

  ‘No—I mean, like him. I wish you weren’t sometimes. It makes me feel—just that I’ll never be good enough.’

  ‘You father should be able to deal with that.’ Elinor’s voice was sharp. It hurt. It was not comfortable.

  In the distance they both watched a little dump of people coming up off the beach, in the middle of it the flash of a trumpet and the white flap of sheet music. A baby’s pram detached itself from them and then Lydia—her hair a golden blob even at that distance.

  The pram and the blob drew away from the others and then a single figure walking urgently followed them. Marsh’s short-legged, hustling steps which could never quite free themselves into strides reached Lydia quickly, and appeared to complete a family trio which crossed the road towards Seaview Villas.

  ‘There’s Daddy.’

  ‘Father.’

  ‘Yes. I didn’t like him saying “Mummy”.’

  ‘Charles? Are we talking about Charles now?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well you made that clear, dear.’

  ‘I’ve said I’m . . . ’

  ‘You could write a little note.’

  ‘I’d writ
e to her—the sister.’

  ‘You were not rude to her.’

  ‘But I wasn’t rude to him. Only telling him about Jesus’s heart. Daddy—Father would of . . . ’

  ‘Would have.’

  ‘Wouldn’t he?’

  ‘He—but he would never, never, never have gone there to tea.’ She sighed.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Well—they don’t believe in . . . As a matter of fact you see they, the Fraylings, actually hate the—Saints.’

  ‘Well, so does Lydia.’

  ‘They argue outright about it though. You see, they’re very clever, the Fraylings.’

  ‘But isn’t Daddy?’

  ‘Father. He is not clever like Charles and Binkie, dear. He’s not educated like them. He has always lived here, you see. He’s never lived anywhere else.’

  ‘Do you have to leave a place to be clever?’

  Mrs Marsh thought about it. They too were up to the end of Seaview Villas now, and walked more slowly as they neared home. ‘I believe you do in a way,’ she said. ‘It’s because I never went away that no one here will ever think I’m clever. Charles and Binkie were at Cambridge.’

  ‘What’s Cambridge?’

  ‘A place for clever people.’

  More that anything that had happened during the afternoon—more than anything that had happened since the baby came, perhaps in her whole life, this astonished Margaret. Her parents, it appeared, were not clever. They had never been away and they were not clever.

  ‘I think, you see . . . ’ Mrs Marsh put on the abominably kind face, the slow understanding voice of the man. ‘I think . . . ’

  ‘Oh it’s all right,’ Margaret yelled. ‘I’m going to catch up Lydia. Bye,’ and she rushed off down the road. Her mother joined her on the doorstep—for it was much too late to catch Lydia, of course, and she had no key. Mrs Marsh said, ‘I think, you see, that everyone should get a bit beyond . . . ’

  Lydia was lifting the baby from its folds. The black pram suited the hall. Marsh stood in the gloom, alert in his dark suit, and spoke sombrely.

  ‘They sang from the heart.’

  Lydia turned away.

  ‘I hope you had a nice tea-party, Elinor?’