When I had hidden the hearing trumpet carefully I set about my afternoon’s work.
The red hen looked as if she was laying another egg on my bed and Marmeen was objecting to having his tail combed out, all as usual. The sudden apparition of Galahad in the room almost knocked me off my chair. The last time my son visited me was when the tank burst and he came in with the plumber. He stood mouthing in the door. I suppose he was saying something.
Then he put a bottle of port wine on my chest of drawers, mouthed some more and left. This astonishing behaviour from Galahad left me pensive till evening. There was no reason I could think of to explain his visit. It was not my birthday, and he never gave me a birthday present; judging from the weather it was not Christmas. Why should he make such extravagant changes in his habits?
At that time I do not think I attributed any ominous interpretation to the event, I was merely curious and surprised. Of course if I had Carmella’s gift of perceptive psychology I might, even then, have been a little preoccupied. In any case even if I had foreseen the events that followed there was nothing I could have done except wait.
A great deal of my life has been spent in waiting, most of it quite fruitless. Recently I do not go in for much coherent thought, however on that occasion I actually made a plan of action. I wanted to find out the motives for Galahad’s unwonted kindness. Not that he lacks ordinary human sentiment, simply that he considers kindness to inanimate creatures a waste of time. He may be right, but on the other hand the maguey cactus seems alive to me, so I feel I can also make claims on existence.
When the evening drew on and dinnertime was past I waited for Rosina to retire and then, unwrapping my hearing trumpet carefully, I left my room and went and hid in the dark passage between the lounge and the kitchen. The door here was always open so I had no trouble taking in a nice picture of family life. Galahad was sitting opposite Muriel near the fireplace which had an electric log. This was out, as the weather was not too chilly. Robert was sitting on the narrow sofa tearing the morning paper into strips. The new antimacassars were hanging dutifully on the chairs and sofa. They were dark beige with fringes, practical I suppose, and easy to wash. The three members of my family were engaged in some sort of discussion.
“Even if it never happens again the result is intolerable,” said Robert, so loudly my trumpet vibrated. “I shall never dare invite any of my friends here again.”
“I thought everything was already decided,” said Galahad. “You don’t have to go on being so excited when we have all agreed that she would be much better off in a home.”
“You always decide everything twenty years too late,” said Muriel. “Your mother has been a constant anxiety to us for the past twenty years and you have been stubborn and inert enough to keep her here on our hands just to satisfy your own sentimentality.”
“Muriel, you are being unfair,” said Galahad weakly. “You know we never had the means of keeping her in an institution before Charles died.”
“The government provides institutions for the aged and infirm,” snapped Muriel. “She ought to have been put away long ago.”
“We are not in England,” said Galahad. “Institutions here are not fit for human beings.”
“Grandmother,” said Robert, “can hardly be classified as a human being. She’s a drooling sack of decomposing flesh.”
“Robert,” said Galahad without conviction, “really, Robert.”
“Well I’ve had enough,” said Robert. “Inviting people here for a normal chat and a drink and in walks the monster of Glamis, gibbering at us in broad daylight until I have to throw her out. Gently of course.”
“Remember Galahad,” added Muriel, “these old people do not have feelings like you or I. She would be much happier in an institution where there’s proper help to take care of her. They are very well organized today. This place I told you about out in Santa Brigida is run by the Well of Light Brotherhood and they are financed by a prominent American Cereal company (Bouncing Breakfast Cereals Co.). It is all very efficiently organized and reasonably inexpensive.”
“Yes you told me,” said Galahad who seemed bored by the discussion. “I agree it seems the sort of place to send her, she will be quite well cared for there I expect.”
“So when do we pack her off?” said Robert. “I could turn that room into a workshop for the motor bike.”
“There’s no desperate hurry,” said Galahad. “She will have to be told.”
“Told?” said Muriel in surprise. “She doesn’t have any idea where she is, I don’t think she will even notice the change.”
“She might,” said Galahad. “You never can tell how much she understands about anything.”
“Your mother,” replied Muriel, “is senile. The sooner you accept that the better.”
For a moment I took the trumpet away from my ear, partially because my arm ached. Senile? yes I dare say they were right, but what does senile mean?
I applied the trumpet again to the other ear, “She ought to be dead,” Robert said. “At that age people are better off dead.”
Back in bed wearing my woolen nightshirt I found myself trembling with an ague that seemed to belong to someone else. The dreadful recurrent thought was first: “The cats, what will become of the cats? then Carmella, what about Carmella on a Monday morning, and the red hen? and why do they suppose they know that one is better off dead? how can they possibly know that? and O Dear Venus (I always pray to Venus, she is such a brilliant and recognizable star) what is the ‘Well of Light Brotherhood’? that sounds more terrifying than death itself, a Brotherhood with the grim knowledge of what is better for other people and the iron determination to better them whether they like it or not. O Venus, what have I done to deserve that? and what about the cats, what will become of Marmeen and Tchatcha? I shall never spin their wool into a cardigan to warm my bones, I will never wear cat’s wool, I shall probably have to wear a uniform, no red hen to lay a daily egg on my bed.”
Tormented by all these horrible visions and thoughts I dropped into something nearer to catalepsy than sleep.
Naturally I visited Carmella the next day to tell her the dreadful news. I took my hearing trumpet, as I hoped for some advice.
“There are times,” said Carmella, “when I am clairvoyant. When I saw that trumpet in the flea market I said to myself ‘that is just the right thing for Marian.’ I had to buy it at once, I had a premonition. This is terrible news, I must try and think of some plan.”
“What do you feel about the Well of Light Brotherhood?” I asked. “It frightens me.”
“The Well of Light Brotherhood,” said Carmella, “is obviously something extremely sinister. Not I suppose a company for grinding old ladies into breakfast cereal, but something morally sinister. It all sounds terrible. I must think of something to save you from the jaws of the Well of Light.” This seemed to amuse her for no reason at all and she chuckled although I could see she was quite upset.
“They will not allow me to take the cats you think?”
“No cats,” said Carmella. “Institutions, in fact, are not allowed to like anything. They don’t have time.”
“What shall I do?” I said. “It seems a pity to commit suicide when I have lived for ninety-two years and really haven’t understood anything.”
“You might escape to Lapland,” said Carmella. “We could knit a tent here so you wouldn’t have to buy one when you arrived.”
“I have no money, I could never get to Lapland without money.”
“Money is a great nuisance,” said Carmella. “If I had any I would give you some and we would take a holiday on the Riviera on the way to Lapland. We could even gamble a little.”
Even Carmella had no practical advice.
Houses are really bodies. We connect ourselves with walls, roofs, and objects just as we hang on to our livers, skeletons, flesh and bloodstream. I
am no beauty, no mirror is necessary to assure me of this absolute fact. Nevertheless I have a death grip on this haggard frame as if it were the limpid body of Venus herself. This is true of the back yard and the small room I occupied at that time, my body, the cats, the red hen all my body all part of my own sluggish bloodstream. A separation from these well-known and loved, yes loved, things were “Death and Death indeed” according to the old rhyme of the Man of Double Deed. There was no remedy for the needle in my heart with its long thread of old blood. Then what about Lapland and the furry dog team? That would also be a fine violation of those cherished habits, yes indeed, but how different from an institution for decrepit old women.
“In case they lock you up in a tenth-storey room,” said Carmella lighting a cigar, “you could take a lot of those ropes you weave, and escape. I could be waiting down below with a machine gun and an automobile, a hired automobile you know, I don’t suppose it would be too expensive for an hour or two.”
“Where would you get the machine gun?” I asked, intrigued at the idea of Carmella armed with such a deadly artefact. “And how do they work? We never succeeded in operating that planisphere. I must suppose that a machine gun would be more complicated.”
“Machine guns,” said Carmella, “are simplicity itself. You load them with a lot of bullets and press a trigger. There is no intellectual manipulation necessary and you don’t have to actually hit anything. The noise impresses people, they think you are dangerous if you have a machine gun.”
“You might well be dangerous,” I replied alarmed. “Supposing you hit me by mistake?”
“I would only press the trigger in case of absolute necessity. They might turn a pack of police dogs on us in which case I should be obliged to shoot. A whole pack of dogs is quite a large target, forty dogs at a distance of three yards would not be difficult to hit. I could always tell you apart from an angry police hound.”
I could not feel quite happy about Carmella’s argument, “Supposing there was only one police dog chasing me around and around in circles. You might easily hit me instead of the hound.”
“You,” said Carmella stabbing the air with her cigar, “would be swarming down ten storeys on your rope. The hounds would be attacking me, not you.”
“Well,” I said still not quite convinced, “after we had left the exercise yard (it would be an exercise yard I suppose, surrounded by high walls), littered with dead police dogs, what would we do then and where would we go?”
“We would join the gang at an expensive seaside resort and go on tapping telephone wires for horse race winners before the bookies pay out.”
Carmella was off on a tangent. I made an attempt to bring her back to the point of our discussion.
“I thought you said animals were not allowed in institutions. Forty police dogs are surely animals?”
“Police dogs are not properly speaking animals. Police dogs are perverted animals with no animal mentality. Policemen are not human beings so how can police dogs be animals?”
This was impossible to answer. Carmella ought to have been a lawyer, she was so good at complicated debate.
“You might just as well say that collie dogs are perverted sheep,” I said eventually. “If they keep so many dogs in an institution I don’t see what difference a cat or two would make.”
“Think of the cats living in constant anguish amongst forty ferocious police hounds.”
Carmella stared in front of her with an agonized expression, “Their nervous systems would not survive a situation like that.” She was right, of course, as usual.
Still feeling crushed with despair I hobbled back home. How I would miss Carmella and her stimulating advice, the black cigars, the violet lozenges. They would probably make me suck vitamins in an institution. Vitamins and police hounds, grey walls, machine guns. I could not think coherently, the horror of the situation floated in tangled masses in my head, making it ache as if it was stuffed with thorny seaweed.
Force of habit rather than my own capacity carried me home and sat me down in the back yard. Strangely enough I was in England and it was Sunday afternoon. I was sitting with a book on a stone seat under a lilac bush. Close by a clump of rosemary saturated the air with perfume. They were playing tennis nearby, the clump clump of the rackets and balls was quite audible. This was the sunken Dutch garden, why Dutch I wonder? The roses? the geometrical flower beds? or perhaps because it is sunken? The church bells ringing, that is the Protestant church, have we had tea yet? (cucumber sandwiches, seed cake and rock buns) Yes, tea must be over.
My long dark hair is soft like cat’s fur, I am beautiful. This is quite a shock because I have just realized that I am beautiful and there is something that I must do about it, but what? Beauty is a responsibility like anything else, beautiful women have special lives like prime ministers but that is not what I really want, there must be something else . . . The book. Now I can see it, the Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, the Snow Queen.
The Snow Queen, Lapland. Little Kay doing multiplication problems in the icy castle.
Now I can see that I also was given a mathematical problem which I cannot solve although I seem to have been trying for many many years. I am not really here in England in this scented garden although it does not disappear as it nearly always does, I am inventing all this and it is about to disappear, but it does not. Feeling so strong and happy is very dangerous, something horrible is about to happen and I must find the solution quickly.
All the things I love are going to disintegrate and there is nothing I can do about it unless I can solve the Snow Queen’s problem. She is the Sphinx of the North with crackling white fur and diamonds on the ten claws of every foot, her smile is frozen and her tears rattle like hail on the strange diagrams drawn at her feet. Somewhere, sometime, I must have betrayed the Snow Queen, for surely by now I should know?
The young man wearing white flannels has come to ask me something, am I going to play tennis? well, I am not really very good you know, that is why I prefer to read a book. No, not an intellectual book, just fairy tales. Fairy tales at your age?
Why not? What is age anyway? Something you don’t understand, My Love.
The woods are full of wild anemones now, shall we go? no Darling, I didn’t say wild enemas, I said wild anemones, flowers, hundreds and thousands of wild flowers all over the ground under the trees all the way up to the gazebo. They have no smell but they have a presence just like a perfume and quite as obsessive, I shall remember them all my life.
Are you going somewhere Darling?
Yes, going to the woods.
Then why do you say you will remember them all your life?
Because you are part of their memory and you are going to disappear, the anemones are going to blossom eternally, we are not.
Darling stop being philosophical it doesn’t suit you, it makes your nose red.
Since I discovered that I am really beautiful I don’t care about having a red nose it is such a beautiful shape.
You are hatefully vain.
No Darling, not really because I have a frightful foreboding that it will disappear before I know what to do with it. I am so horribly afraid I don’t have time to enjoy being vain.
You are a depressive maniac and I would be bored stiff if you were not so pretty.
Nobody could ever be bored with me I have too much soul.
Far too much, but lots of body too, thank Heavens. The green and gold light in the woods, look at the great ferns. They say witches make magic with fern seeds, they are hermaphrodites.
The witches?
No the ferns. Somebody brought that colossal bluish fir tree from Canada, it cost millions and millions, how silly to bring a tree from America. Don’t you hate America?
No, why should I hate America, I’ve never been there, they are frightfully civilized.
Well I hate America because I know
that once you get in you can never get out and you go on crying all your life for the anemones you will never see again.
Perhaps America is covered from head to foot with wild flowers, mostly anemones of course.
I know it is not.
How can you possibly know that?
Not the part of America I am thinking about. They have other sorts of plants, and dust. Dust, dust. Probably a few palm trees and cowboys galloping hither and thither on cows.
They ride horses.
Well horses. Does it matter when you are so sick to get home again that you wouldn’t notice if they were riding cockroaches?
Well you don’t have to go to America, so cheer up.
Don’t I? Who knows, something tells me that I am going to see a lot of America and I am going to be very sad there unless a miracle happens.
Miracles, witches, fairy tales, grow up Darling!
You may not believe in magic but something very strange is happening at this very moment. Your head has dissolved into thin air and I can see the rhododendrons through your stomach. It’s not that you are dead or anything dramatic like that, it is simply that you are fading away and I can’t even remember your name. I remember your white flannels better than I can remember you. I remember all the things I felt about the white flannels but whoever made them walk about has totally disappeared.
So you remember me as a pink linen dress with no sleeves and my face is confused with dozens of other faces, I have no name either. So why so much fuss about individuality?
The Hearing Trumpet Page 2
