God on the Rocks

by Jane Gardam

  Margaret thought, No, he’s not very clever. He is not. But, poor thing, he tries to be good. Then she was filled with guilt at such a cool and unloving thought.

  ‘I was weighing him up,’ she thought, ‘as if he was just anyone.’ She went to him and put both arms round his waist. He took no notice but went on talking above her head, only putting his hand on her hair a moment before pushing her away.

  ‘There isn’t a thing I could tell him,’ she thought. ‘Not a thing he would listen to. He’s as bad as that man Charles who listened too much.’

  She thought of Mr Drinkwater who had listened and considered to perfection, had understood utterly, though patchily because his memory had kept slipping. He had given her deep attention even while so busy with the snakes, and being so upset. The snakes showed just how upset he had been. He had not been wanting to spoil the house with snakes—he had just been showing how awful things could be—how the house could be strangled up by snakes. He knew that poisonous things could stand side by side with heaven. The creature in the wicker box, in all her horror, had lain looking at the apple tree and the deep blue sky.

  Still talking, her father pushed her away. In the hall was the smell of warm baby and some rabbit stock boiling much too hard on the kitchen stove. The huddle of big people above her head cluttered the narrow space. She thought of Drinkwater’s bright face, the marvellous space he had sat in, the burnt gold grass, the great dry lake of lawn, the queer procession, the fierce dark nurse, the huge brilliant living eyes of the flat woman in the basket.

  ‘I have been away,’ she thought. ‘She doesn’t know—none of them know. I’ve been away already. I’m cleverer already.’

  ‘That lass is clemmed,’ said Lydia. ‘Fair clemmed to death. Tired out. Look at her. Thin and done. Neither back nor belly. Look at her!’

  ‘I’m all right.’

  ‘She does look tired,’ said Elinor, surprised.

  ‘’Ere,’ said Lydia and dumped Terence into his mother’s arms. ‘Jus’ you see to ’is bottle, missis. I’s puttin’ that Margaret into her bed.’

  9.

  It was more than a week before Margaret left the house again, for when she woke up the morning after the outing to Dene Close it was to know that something was badly wrong. Her neck hurt and her head was not eager to move about on it. It did not feel ready to raise itself from the pillow without the neck’s aid. It lay there like a head of lead or stone, like the head of a prone monument. Carefully she felt the neck. There was a great deal more of it than yesterday. The head ached and the light coming through the thin curtains was too bright. Lydia came in and drew them back, making it torture, and said that she must get up quick. Breakfast was ready. Whatever was the matter—Margaret who was always down first?

  ‘Ow,’ said Margaret shielding her eyes, and Lydia yelled, ‘Lord above, what’s this?’

  Mrs Marsh arrived with the baby curled on her dressing-gowned shoulder, gave a gasp and cried, ‘I’ll come back. I must put him down.’

  ‘Mumps, darling,’ she whispered then from the bed’s foot. ‘Mumps,’ she said turning to Lydia with a voice fit for typhoid. ‘Mumps, my angel. Oh, what if Terence . . . !’

  ‘Breast-fed he’ll not,’ said Lydia. ‘An’ if he did it’d not do harm. He ought to get it over before ’is balls is down.’

  ‘Lydia, leave the room!’

  ‘What’s matter?’

  ‘Before Margaret! Anyhow, it isn’t a phrase I can have in this house.’

  ‘Ow’, said Margaret again, ‘I can’t lift my head up. Can you shut the curtains?’

  ‘It’s mumps, darling,’ said her mother again. ‘Now don’t worry. You’ll just have to stay there a few days and have lovely cool drinks.’

  ‘I want bacon,’ she said, but when bacon came she couldn’t deal with it. Lying flat, she prodded it back and forth with a fork and then let it drop down on the plate. She let the tea grow cold and got her fingers in the butter. ‘Can’t you prop me up?’ she cried, but Lydia heaving at pillows had to stop and let her sink down again with wails. A doctor came and went. The day passed slowly. The sun mercifully moving away from the window at dinner time let her sleep. In the evening she said that she thought she must be very infectious and the note of relish made Mrs Marsh relax.

  ‘It’s only mumps,’ said Lydia, ‘an’ both sides together so you’ll soon be over it. You can’t have it twice.’

  ‘Have you had it, Lydia?’

  ‘Don’t know. Our Les an’ all on them did. And me Mam. An’ I looked after ’em.’

  ‘How old were you?’

  ‘I dunno. Thirteen.’

  ‘Weren’t you at school, Lydia?’

  ‘I nivver bothered. Me Dad got it an’ all.’

  ‘Did you have to look after him, too?’ Margaret whispered when her mother had returned to the cot.

  ‘Nobody nivver looked after ’im.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Nobody went near ’im. ’E threw bottles at yer.’

  ‘He sounds awful. What’s balls going down.’

  ‘Nivver mind.’

  ‘Have I got them?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Had your father?’

  ‘Not ’alf.’

  ‘I feel awful.’

  ‘Here’s aspirins. D’yer want the mirrer?’

  Margaret, presented to herself, began to weep.

  ‘’Ere. Shurrup. You was meant to laugh.’

  ‘Ss-ssh,’ wept Margaret. ‘You hurt my head. I’m changed.’

  Her father came in and looked at her unsmiling. ‘I have brought you some tablets,’ he said.

  ‘Exodus twenty-four twelve.’

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘I’m changed. Like snakes.’

  ‘Snakes?’

  ‘Shall we say a prayer?’

  ‘It’s all right.’

  ‘It never goes amiss. Job thirty-three twenty-six.’

  ‘His was boils. Mumps is nothing. Lydia said. Unless your balls haven’t dropped. Maybe she meant boils haven’t . . . ?’ Mr Marsh went quickly from the room. ‘Job’s boils hadn’t . . . ’ said Margaret yawning, and shrieked. ‘Yawning’s terrible,’ she said.

  So were the next three days and she wondered if it was her rejection of the Scriptures.

  The fourth day though was rather better and the fifth better still—she could feel the bumps beneath the swelling now and harped on their shape and tenderness. The next day she addressed to the insertion of ice-cream through her teeth and on the next was calling for braised steak and cabbage. Her mother, who had kept her distance because of Terence, now came in to read her a story, and her father paid her less attention. Terence she had not seen at all and had not missed and was told that it would be sensible to keep away from him for a while. ‘Though the time when you were really infectious,’ said her mother, ‘was just before the swelling appeared. I do hope Binkie and Charles—I wonder if I should send Lydia to see . . . ?’

  ‘Have Charles’s . . . ?’

  ‘That will do, Margaret.’

  Two days later she was allowed to go out on the beach in the sun for twenty minutes and the next day for longer and by herself. She walked down by the sand-hills, then turned away from the sea. The sand-hills ran white behind her as she climbed them, wide shallow avalanches pouring like wide streams round the silver spikes of sharp grass. There was a change in the season. It took her some time to realise it, thinking for a bit that it was something to do with herself and the mumps. She noticed a different colour in the sunshine. Though it was still just as hot there was a clearness in the air and a deeper red to the geraniums and the dahlias in the flower-beds of the park which she had wandered into from the dunes. She walked about the park, considering.

  The lobelias along the edges of the flower-beds seemed a deeper blue than last week and the sky slightly darker too. There were fewer people about. Holidays must be getting over. The thought of school beginning again drifted up and was quickly put away. She wandered over to th
e drinking fountain that stuck vulgarly up on its cement dais. She pressed its smooth knob. Water welled and bubbled roundly out of the hole. She knew that the drinking fountain was disgusting, germ-laden, corrupt, Leviticus five three—if he touch the uncleanness of man whatever uncleanness it be . . . They actually put their mouths over the spout, the day-trippers. They covered the spout with their lips. The horrors of the lips of trippers encompassed her Isaiah six five. I am a man of unclean lips and I live in the midst of a people of unclean lips . . .

  Well, why? Why are trippers’ lips bad? It’s Mother’s idea from Father from Isaiah. How did Isaiah know about spit? Jesus used spit. It was His own spit though. He used His own. He didn’t like the dumb man’s spit. The dumb man wallowed foaming, Mark nine twenty.

  Mother isn’t clever. Neither’s Father—she said so. In a way, she thought, Lydia is cleverer. She knows more things. Like about mumps. It’s because she’s been away. I wonder if she went to Cambridge?

  She tried to imagine Cambridge and saw a grey place of avenues and, for some reason, sheep pens (no goats) all labelled for the clever people. She saw the people taken from the pens and set down in classrooms where they were looked at severely by grey men and all glared severely back. Some were sent in one direction, some in another and there was great seriousness and sternness like Jesus and Paul, and you couldn’t see Lydia there. The water bubbled on.

  ‘Hello,’ said a voice.

  The man, Charles, was beside her in a pale linen suit, swinging a walking-stick with a gold top. His moustache looked very soft like Robert Louis Stevenson’s in the book at school. His face had the same kindness in it. His sloping shoulders looked just a bit soppy. Also like Robert Louis Stevenson. Yet extremely nice.

  ‘And what are you thinking about?’ asked Charles.

  He got into step beside her as she moved off and she thought, I’m not going to say Treasure Island. It sounds like showing off. And he’ll say, ‘Does your father allow you to read Treasure Island,’ and I’ll say, ‘It’s school,’ and then he’ll go on and on and on with those awful questions.

  ‘Dreaming over a water spout,’ said Charles, ‘a sprite.’

  (It is going to be that daft game.)

  ‘Like a thoughtful dryad.’

  (I’m not asking what a dryad is, neither, she said silently in a Lydia voice.)

  ‘A dryad,’ he said, ‘is a water fairy. I always thought it silly when I was your age to call anything to do with water dry! But it’s a good way to remember it.’

  (I bet he’s a teacher.)

  ‘Well, how are you?’ he asked.

  ‘All right. I’ve had mumps.’

  ‘What—since you came to tea?’

  ‘Yes. I’m out for just the second time.’

  ‘You’ve been very quick. Sometimes mumps take much longer.’

  ‘Have you had them?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Oh, that’s good.’

  ‘It’s a good thing to get over.’

  ‘Yes. Had your . . . We were a bit afraid we’d given you them because I was terribly infectious, Mother says, when I came to tea.’

  ‘I thought there was something.’

  They walked on. She said, ‘No. That wasn’t the mumps.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘My being rude.’

  ‘You weren’t rude.’

  ‘Mother said I was.’

  ‘No. You weren’t.’

  ‘I didn’t mean to be,’ she said, ‘but I meant to . . . ’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Put me in my place?’

  ‘I don’t know what your place is.’

  He sighed. ‘Neither do I,’ and slashed the walking-stick at a huge shaggy pink dahlia they were passing and snapped off its head.

  ‘Oh.’ She stopped in her tracks. She had not been so astonished and shocked since—something similar. Yes—since Mr Drinkwater had called the chaplain a fucking fool.

  ‘What an awful thing to do!’

  ‘Yes, isn’t it?’

  ‘Aren’t you ash . . . You’re awful!’

  ‘Yes. That’s right.’

  ‘You must be—’ the bland fat face of sweet Mr Drinkwater, and swashing slops of cobalt blue—‘You’re mad,’ she said.

  ‘That’s right. They ought to put me in a Home. Why not come to the one I’m already in and have tea with Binkie and me again?’

  ‘Now?’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘All right.’

  They stopped a moment on the kerb to cross to Dene Close and she looked up at him. He looked down at her and pulled a face, a terrible shocked look with eyes on stalks and pursed lips and a dropped jaw. He stuck his straw hat at an angle and danced a little jig. ‘Mad Marmaduke,’ he said. ‘Well, that’s better—I’ve not seen you laugh.’ As they walked up the path to the rising sun she took his hand.

  10.

  In the half-dark Rosalie Frayling lay and waited for the call of the first bird. The room had never been really dark all night. Cool air had blown in through the open terrace windows, making some of the smaller pictures tap here and there. All through this long summer there had been no other sounds at night except occasionally when the trees across the lawns or over in the woods gave one toss and swished for a few moments. The past few weeks as it had grown even hotter there had been hardly a breeze of any kind, however, even at night, just long silence, long twilight, then slightly lighter twilight, then the first harsh chirrup, experimental, comic, the first long cry, then the dawn chorus, then the dawn.

  From the high bed she could see the line of the pillow at her temple. Odd that her head, so small now with the scratty cap of hair, was still heavy enough to dent the pillow down. She lay straight as a plank, almost weightless, and watched the light gather round the huge windows which she refused to allow to be closed.

  ‘You should have them shut at night,’ the doctor said.

  ‘I like the air.’

  ‘What about the pictures?’

  ‘There are no robbers.’

  ‘Anyone could walk in. Straight off the beach and through the woods and across the park.’

  ‘Nobody ever has,’ she said. ‘There has always been a notice on the bridge saying “Private.” I don’t believe we’ve ever had prowlers. I don’t know why.’

  ‘You might now,’ he said. ‘Times have changed.’

  She thought of some shaggy tramp blundering in, breathing hard, falling over the wash-stand in the cruel pale hours before dawn, seeing her iron bed and her wide-eyed shadow on it. She said, ‘He’d be terrified.’

  ‘Not if he was after the pictures.’

  ‘There’s only the Renoir really,’ she said. ‘And it’s too high up. He’d hardly bring a ladder all the way.’

  ‘I should shut them though,’ the doctor said. ‘I should shut them. No point in inviting a disturbance.’

  The first bird had finished chirping and in the pause before the chorus proper the light ran slowly along the left-hand side of the room, spreading from the direction of the conservatory behind her, bringing faint pattern to the heavy old brocade of the curtains not yet showing green, a shine to the fat belly of the water-jug on the wash-hand basin. With the great out-pouring of birdsong that followed, the sun catapulted up and sent immense momentary shadows springing from the trees on the lawns, making the picture-frames, row upon row, from dado to ceiling, blacken up, then suggest colour in blocks. The shielding curtains showed greyish green and a smell of grass and earth blew in. Rosalie moved her eyes upward towards the Renoir hung high on the cornice where she could see it. It was still just a patch in a heavy frame. Reassured even by its shape however she slept, waking only with the rumble and clatter of the night-nurse getting things ready to go off-duty—the wide swing of the door as she came in, the thud of her feet, the lift of the pillow, the breath taken to meet the pain of dropping her head forward to the feeding cup to sip at the tea.

  ‘Yer right. Yer grand. That�
��s right now.’ It was Effie from Hinderwell, kind and frowsty but far too familiar.

  The moving-about, knocking-about noises in the room, the tossing of sheets, the cold horror of the bed pan. Effie’s back politely turned at the window. Then the sun suddenly sprouting into the sky like midday, and still not eight o’clock.

  ‘It’s another,’ said Effie. ‘Another roaster.’

  She must not groan as they eased her down. There’s Joan there, too, now, sweet Joan with the fat mongol smile who had once been only a patient in the wards and now was a nurse. Or a servant—or a friend. One grew confused.

  ‘Change yer sheets?’ shouted Effie, splashing and sluicing behind the screen. ‘No? Leave it for Nurse? All right then. More tea? No? Right-ho—see yer tonight.’

  Mrs Frayling did not reply.

  ‘Bye-bye,’ said fat Joan, patting at her hand. ‘Bye-bye, bye-bye.’

  ‘Good-bye, Joan dear.’

  Effie glinted and crashed out. ‘Too grand for me. We’ll condescend for fat Joan but seems we’re too grand this morning for me.’ Rosalie knew each thought. She closed her eyes and opened them only for the onslaught of Sister Booth at nine. Again she said nothing. Bread and butter was slid between her teeth, an egg soft-boiled expertly spoon-fed into her mouth, scraped off round her lips. More tea from the unspeakable spouted cup.

  Booth did not speak either. Her huge bulk swung lightly about the room, her great sloped chest with its watch and military medals which rested there rather than hung, her big truculent face above, coarse black hairs along the upper lip, the speaking wet brown eyes, the clamped jaw. Booth and Rosalie closed with one another for a new day in the mutual professional duet which masked both disgust and love.

  Listening to the slap and heave of Booth with sheets and counterpane, the sharp directions to fat Joan, the brisk pouring of water, the squeeze and shake of the face-flannel and the clink of the toothbrush being rinsed in the glass, Rosalie marvelled at the death of an old and different affection—passion. And love and passion for men, for example. She remembered such things now—desperation, longing—only in the image of herself suffering it. The ‘affaire,’ she thought, all it is now is myself, vague, distracted, the children looking bewildered, husband pointedly unnoticing, the object of all adoration now hazier than myself longing for it. For him. The army Captain, 1917. Recovering from France. One of the convalescents they’d looked after when the house had been made like all the other suitable houses round about into a convalescent home.