by Jane Gardam
Sins of ignorance? Did Binkie ask forgiveness for sins of ignorance? Had she addled that much?
Charles walked about the house in the lovely hour of late summer afternoon. He had nothing in the world to do. It was still the school holidays—not one book to mark. The dry hot little garden was impeccable, the marble boy opening his mouth to the ever-uneaten grapes, the house shone—not a teacup left to put away. His study was full of beautifully-kept books and as neat as an office. Not a bill on his desk to deal with, not a letter to answer. He sat down at the desk and thought vaguely of the thesis he had kept going through the years on European Battlefields. The notes for it in six pale yellow folders lay on the farthest shelf from him across the room. This was the front of the house, away from the evening sun, but the light still beat in on the distempered walls, the ultra-modern tubular furniture. The only important colour in the room was the ruby red of the Afghan rug he had brought from home when the loonies had moved in. Binkie had said, ‘I’ll take nothing. I want nothing. Let her be.’ (Later she had taken the marble boy.) But Charles had wanted to take very much—all the pictures, just one of the small landscapes would have been comfort. But the battle had been very terrible and he had made his choice. ‘We’ll have nothing,’ Binkie cried. ‘How could you want anything, after what she’s done? She can give them the lot. I’m surprised you can think of anything you want now she’s taken Ellie from you.’
‘Taken Ellie?’
‘Stopped you having Ellie.’
‘Stopped me?’ He had developed a slow, sweet almost tender way of speaking since his mother had vetoed Elinor, like a very old man, an old, old emperor above material things, too old for campaigning. At his school where he taught English literature he was considered now as rather a joke, with his pipe and his stately ways and his old-world accent—and still under forty. They had increased and over the years he had developed by now an air of regal distance from ordinary questions of the day, and so successfully, he thought, that now that I am back here near home there is no one in the world who dares ask me a personal question.
‘Did you never think of getting married, Frayling?’
‘Did you never feel like a bit of fun then, Charles?’
Nobody to say this.
He was witty and charming and sweet-tempered and good-looking and sexless—there was certainly no question even of homosexuality about him. That would have shown up in the school at once. Both the trench-survivors and the others who like himself had missed the terror were agreed upon it. ‘He’s a scholar,’ it was at length decided, ‘a real scholar. He writes, you know—law books and so forth, I believe. He’d meant to be a doctor, didn’t you know? No—he was in the war—shell-shocked. You can always tell. No. He was too young, believe it or not. Tubercular? There’s money, you know—there’s still money. Very well-to-do. Old family. He was never expected to do much—they didn’t have to in those days. County family.’
‘They’ve got an air to them, him and that sister, now even.’
‘The confidence of the very rich,’ thought Father Carter watching Binkie shaking out albs and cottas and calling rather loudly to the organist. ‘There are still some pictures somewhere.’ The priest preparing for confessional considered a new reredos and thought—and then felt shamed—about the need for better guttering.
Yet life was frugal really at Dene Close. Except for the very occasional tea-party it was margarine rather than butter and their own rather leathery lettuce. Sunday lunch pudding was always a plain jam roll covered in packet custard and supper was hard-boiled egg with potted anchovy paste. The Fraylings drank no more alcohol than the Saints and seldom took a holiday.
Charles earned not quite five hundred a year and a few pounds from private tuition in the evenings and of this gave Binkie most for the housekeeping. She managed spendidly, went to bed early, read the works of George Macdonald and gave the rest of her life to her brother except for alternate Thursday afternoons when she visited her mother, returning less sure after each visit whether there was any point in carrying on with them. The great divide over Ellie Marsh had not been closed even by Mrs Frayling’s hideous imprisonment so many years later.
Charles never visited her. He had not been to the Hall since he left it twelve years ago with only the Afghan rug slung into the back of the Austin motor car which he could not now afford. Even as he had slung the rug into the car he had felt her eyes on him from the windows, unrepentant and unrelenting. Not knowing he knew she was there, the ruminative face, the fine probing nose. He had seen her think—‘How curious—a rug!’
‘Why that?’ even Binkie had said. Things were said between them for a while that would now be quite impossible.
‘I’m not leaving it for the bloody mad.’ It had been such an uncharacteristic remark that they had both remembered it and ‘bloody mad’ were the words he associated with the rug ever after when he looked down at it in the box of a room in Dene Close which they called The Study and in which he studied nothing.
He stared at the rug now, thinking that such an empty beautiful afternoon was perfect for a return to the European Battlefields, and traced the pattern on it with his toe thinking of every one of its thousands of knots being tied separately by brown Afghan hands. In the queer silence that sometimes falls in rooms where there are a lot of books on still afternoons he thought, I am a portrait. This room and I are a portrait. He felt benign, gentle and good—even rather beautiful. It is enough, he thought, that I exist. There is no need any more—the pale yellow folders were delicate and distant in the yellower light. They looked peaceful enough and it was summer-time. Winter nights are for scholarship. There is no need any more for me to do a thing. He imagined the pleasure his tall aesthetic figure must give to passers-by—a touch of style, of imperturbability. He rearranged his gently sloping shoulders a little and ran a hand across his soft hair and picked up his pipe. He leaned back.
Directly below him the front-door bell began to ring, shrill as a drill as though it would never stop.
15.
Teach me the disregard of every creature so that the Creator may be found,’ Binkie prayed, jabbing big yellow daisies in an altar vase. She stood back and looked at them. The yellow howled at the Dean Inge blue and blood-red of the altar frontal and the healthy complexions of the twelve apostles who huddled in groups to either side of it in robes as brilliant. The niches for the servers and the carpets and hassocks for the acolytes were in the same jolly hues. Binkie had embroidered some of them herself. The jar she had chosen for the flowers was the boldest brass and there was a huge purple banner above her head where a pelican pulled feathers out of itself for its young above several large Greek declarations in gold and silver thread. ‘Very nice,’ she thought. ‘Nice and bright.’ A long hard-stemmed daisy began slowly to fall out of the pot. It collapsed to the ground as if it had fainted.
‘Lord bring me self-renunciation,’ prayed Binkie. ‘Self-denial and the renouncing of every evil appetite. I need some bits of green.’
She went out through the vestry door, then out of the back door of the church leaving both doors open and snapped a few branches of yellow privet which had been planted there to mask the horrors round the grave tap—greasy vases and heaps of dead flowers. She ran the tap and let water drum into a can. With haphazard extra privet held before her in a bush and the extra water held before that and out of her range of vision she strode back into the chancel. ‘Let me attain to entire resignation of myself and obtain freedom of heart. Give me good government of things external and not fretful of matters of business.’ Missing her step as she passed the back of the confession box she cannoned into it and spilled water, dropped the can and gave a loud cry. Bezeer-Iremonger, who was finishing his confession round the other side, fell back in disorder and Father Carter within closed his eyes and paused for a moment before continuing absolution.
‘Oh Lor!’ called Binkie. She gathered herself up and shouted, sorry, trying to brush water off her skirt. ‘Sorry! (Le
t me put my trust in God and I must get the dustpan and brush for the glass, when the arrows of the world assail us.)’
The privet looked very messy on the chancel steps and the water had left dark stains. The rest of the flowers had fallen out and lay around as if they had been flung by some explosion. As Mr Bezeer-Iremonger shuffled off there was nobody left but their scattered corpses and herself and Father Carter waiting in the box, and it was time for her to go to him and kneel down.
But the privet looked dreadful and how could she leave glass all over the place? How hot, how hot it was. Perhaps after all she would not make her confession today. She would discipline herself by being very patient and steady in gathering up the flowers instead. All grievous things—Father Carter drew back his little curtain and coughed summoningly—are to be endured for the sake of eternal life.
He coughed again. Perhaps she had better go. Leaning to the flowers was making her flush. If the glass cut someone . . . It was odd how she gave such an impression of capability, when really . . . Just look at the glass! I am so indecisive, she thought. So indecisive. Yet my shape is the shape of a stalwart woman who can proceed steadily towards goals.
She knelt.
In the name of the Father and Son and Holy Ghost, O Lord, I have sinned . . . Behind the curtain Father Carter leant his attentive ear as the formal words flowed on.
And nobody knows, she thought, what it costs to live the life I live. The ordered life. All the tins, in the cupboards, with all the different coloured tops. Bedroom day Thursday, drawing room day Friday, baking day Wednesday, Charles’s shirts all perfectly ironed by Tuesday after being perfectly washed on Monday. The milk-money ready in the hall, exact to the halfpenny every Saturday and the side door unlocked each week on dustbin day at precisely five minutes to seven. Every Sunday after lunch the cleaning out of the inside of the gas oven to catch the grease still hot. All grievous things are to be endured for the sake of eternal life.
They are not, though.
She did not endure. She did not readily endure the tyranny of the laundry list, the milk man, the grocery order for the sake of eternal life. She endured it because it was the lesser endurance. It kept her so busy that she need not think. If she stopped for a second to think, then the game would be up. Chaos would take charge. The sea would rush in and give up its dead. If she missed the three-fifteen for instance every other Thursday to Eastkirk to visit Mother, then she would find that time empty and reason might take over. Real issues might be broached then—such as why are you visiting her anyway? What are you doing? Where are you going? Since you hate her and have always hated her even before she emasculated Charles, why do you go at all? Since you despise Charles for having ever listened to her and for not marrying Ellie Marsh, why do you even iron his shirts? And since you despise Ellie Marsh for being so limp and simple, and since you are in your heart pleased that he didn’t marry her and she is therefore nothing deeply to do with you, why do you see her again? Invite her to tea again after ten years? Fuss over the child?
Why do you care whether or not her child likes you? Why are you so ashamed that her child saw you looking a guy, sprawled on the floor, spilling cakes?
‘I hate my mother,’ she suddenly announced to the priest.
There was a sort of shuffle and glint from behind the grille and a clearing of the throat.
‘He thinks I’ve gone wonky,’ she thought. ‘Thinks I’m a bit funny.’
‘Hate, loathe and detest her,’ she said again, loudly. (Oh, if thou hadst seen the everlasting crowns of the saints in heaven and with how great glory they now rejoice . . . )
‘I despise my mother, and my brother and I hate my life with him. There is nobody I do not hate or despise. Nobody on earth ( . . . who once were esteemed in the world as contemptible. Neither wouldst thou long for this life’s pleasant days . . . ).’
‘My child . . . ’ (behind the grille.) ‘You are repenting of this?’
‘No.’
‘I see. Then . . . ’
‘I am not repenting. I am telling you that I am filled with hate and that I am not repenting.’
(Her age.) ‘My child, let me . . . ’
He came out of the box and helped her up and walked her to the front pew. The church was quite empty.
‘This is a shock,’ he said. ‘It’s a shock, Binkie . . . ’
‘I’ve had a blow,’ she said and began to scream a little. ‘“I’ve had a blow, Jane”.’
(Right off it. Round the twist.) ‘Binkie, I had no idea . . . ’
‘I was at Girton,’ she wept.
‘Yes—yes, I know.’
‘It was the best time of my life. When Charles came up—the year after me, he took me about. May Balls . . . ’
‘I’m sure . . . ’ Father Carter looked about him. The twelve apostles looked unflinchingly back. ‘I’m sure it must be dull. Dull for you now. Here. It is a very great waste . . . ’
Through her tears the words of Thomas a Kempis went straying on. ‘Oh if these things had a sweet savour and pierced to the bottom of thy heart how couldst thou dare so much as once to complain?’ Then she thought that he had said something about her waist.
He had said she was fat.
‘I was thin. I was thin as could be,’ she wept, looking into his face. ‘At Cambridge. If you’d known me then . . . ’
(Oh Lord!)
‘I got a good Upper Second. I had several chances to marry. But I couldn’t get away, you see. Do you see? Do you know what it’s like with a woman like my mother in the background? She ruins everything. Ruins. Ruins. Destroys. She sneers and watches. Even now she sneers and watches. Laughed at Charles wanting to marry Ellie. Laughed at me from the beginning because I couldn’t play the piano—didn’t like her beastly pictures or want to read her ghastly books. She hated us so much one summer she used to run off out of the house and walk about on the beach. Just to get away from us. She used to burst into tears at breakfast. She killed my father—he just sat wondering why he was hated. Then at Cambridge she laughed at Charles and me for being Socialists. She gave the house to charity just to watch what we’d do about it. Disinherited us, she said, “Now see how you like equality.” She is a vile woman. She has ruined my life.’
‘I believe,’ said the priest, ‘that she is very sick . . . ’
‘And Charles’s.’
‘Binkie—Miss Frayling—she is dying.’
Red as a bull Binkie blew her nose and roared, ‘So are we all.’
They sat silently together and Father Carter took off his stole and held it between his hands fingering the silk threads in it, threads worked by another Binkie in the parish before—a loving present when he left. ‘Another of them. Another—’ he thought. ‘So many. It was the War. Not enough men left.’ Binkie covered her splendid face up in a handkerchief and the unending summer sun beat on through the bright windows.
She thought, ‘Oh, if these things had a sweet savour for thee and pierced to the bottom of thy heart, how couldst thou dare so much as once to complain? Are not all painful labours to be endured . . . ?’
‘I’ve left the privet.’
‘Privet?’
‘All over the chancel. And broken glass.’
‘I’ll see to it.’ He held her hand.
Then he helped her from the church and they trailed together over the graveyard to the vicarage wicket gate (Bezeer-Iremonger was studying a headstone in the graveyard with interest) where he held it open for her and put across her shoulder a comforting arm and Bezeer-Iremonger bent to the headstone with greater attention. ‘But it’s not true,’ she cried across the graves loudly, making him jump.
‘It’s not true. I don’t hate everybody.’
‘Of course not.’
‘I don’t hate you, Father. And I do really love children.’ She began to weep again.
He took her over the vicarage lawn in the bright calm evening. The pink houses in streets and crescents lay peaceful in the hot light, basking all around. Alo
ng the Front people trudged up sandy from the beach, dragging spades and the hands of children. A few solid old buildings and the lifeboat house stood out, reminding anyone who cared to be reminded that the place had once been a fishing village. Fishing boats pulled up on the promenade still pointed their prows upwards to the heavy blue of the sky. A place at peace, the War long past, the stench of the trenches gone, thought Father Carter. And here are the survivors—strong and well and bitterly unhappy. With nothing to do. Whatever has Christianity to offer this one? What is there to be done for her, poor thing. Intelligent—and trying her best. He settled her on the vicarage sofa.
‘The C of E breeds them,’ he thought, offering her a very small sherry. ‘God knows what’s to be done.’
16.
On the doorstep Ellie stood. She said, ‘I’ve left him.’ Charles held the door, still dazed from the emptiness of the afternoon. Behind him the dazzling light in the clean little house, nothing displaced, nothing brewing, simmering or boiling; supper set and complete on the trolley covered by a cloth, the ham and salad hygienically out of sight in the larder. Here in front of him on the step was the woman he had nearly married over twelve years ago, in an untidy blouse, hair blown about and a red face and tears running diagonally from her eyes to the base of each ear. He said vacantly, ‘I was in my study.’
‘I’ve left him!’
‘Oh . . . ’ He looked round thinking to see an empty pram about somewhere. ‘The poor child!’
‘I’ve left my husband. Kenneth. Let me in.’
‘My dear Ellie . . . ’
‘Where’s Binks . . . ? Oh, Charles . . . ! I must lie down.’
He wavered about the hall and looked in the sitting room. Upright chintzes and pouffes. ‘I’m afraid there isn’t anywhere exactly . . . very . . .
