by MARY HOCKING
Inevitably, Stephanie came. She approached the house prepared to turf out the helpers who must be holding the fort – Patsy, Deutzia, perhaps the vicar’s wife. She did not think they would have organised nursing help and she had not much confidence in the doctor’s ability to attend to such matters. Humphrey bounded across the grass to greet her. Over his golden head she saw washing strung out on a line hoisted from drainpipe to lilac tree, neither of which supports was doing the washing any good. Patsy, she thought – Deutzia would certainly have used the washing machine. At least we must be thankful she didn’t string it along the hedge!
But the only person in the kitchen was her father. He was wearing an apron and there was blood on it. The dyke so carefully constructed to hold back the ominous seas was breached in a single instant. The very house seemed afloat and hurling itself upon her as she stood in the kitchen doorway. She cried, ‘What is it? What has happened to her?’
Murdoch held something up in his hand. ‘I don’t seem able to shred beans with this thing.’ She came and stood beside him, looking down into a bowl in which mangled runner beans floated in bloody water. It was too much; the worry of the last few days, the mounting tension of her journey – she had nearly run over a child in Farnham, the fear which had haunted her as she approached the house now justified by blood. There was cold sweat on her forehead, the room lurched.
Murdoch removed Matilda from the chair by the kitchen table and pushed Stephanie into it. ‘You never could stand the sight of blood as a child,’ he reminded her when he returned with a glass of brandy.
‘That’s why I never became a nurse,’ she said, all authority gone. ‘Goodness knows what I think I can do here.’
‘The beans, perhaps?’
‘All right. But take that awful thing off and put it in a bucket of cold water out of my sight.’ She gave a weak laugh as Murdoch did as he was bidden. ‘I suppose if Malcolm were here he would say “Who would have thought the old man to have so much blood in him?” ’
‘That is the last thing Malcolm would say. He finds it hard enough to bear a name taken from the Scottish play.’
Matilda jumped onto Stephanie’s lap and butted her head between the ample breasts, purring and dribbling ecstatically. ‘You are feeding these creatures?’ Stephanie asked.
‘On demand.’
Stephanie thought that she would like to remain here, talking about nothing in particular, for the rest of the day. She analysed her extreme reluctance to move as she sipped her brandy: she resented her mother’s illness; she resented having to look after her mother because her mother was the person who should be looking after Stephanie. There, it was not so bad once it had been articulated!
‘I thought the house would be full of helpers,’ she said to Murdoch.
‘Half an hour ago it was full of Patsy and the children.’
‘You mustn’t let Patsy do the washing. Leave that to Deutzia.’
‘Deutzia hasn’t been near here. She telephoned to ask after Janet and to assure me that she would not dream of intruding at such a time. And I did the washing and strung it up. You wouldn’t catch Patsy making those bowline knots.’
He was actually enjoying himself, like a little boy who has been left in charge for the first time! Stephanie told herself that she must not damp down his enthusiasm; she must take over gradually. This justified her remaining at the kitchen table, sipping the brandy slowly, kneading Matilda’s head, while Murdoch poured fresh water over the beans and put a plaster on his finger. ‘I’ll get your case,’ he said. ‘Is it in the boot?’
She handed him the car keys. ‘I bought a ham. That’s there, too.’
When he came back, she said, ‘I feel quite squiffy. I’d better sober up before I see Mummy. She is in bed, I assume?’
‘She gets up in the afternoons sometimes.’
Stephanie felt a tightening of her stomach muscles. There was no order here; it would be left to her to devise a sensible routine.
‘Well, we’ll see about her lunch first. What does she have?’
‘Boiled egg, mostly.’
‘She mustn’t have too many eggs.’
He said meekly, ‘No, I suppose not. What would you suggest?’ He was feeding Humphrey who had been making strenuous demands ever since Stephanie’s arrival. A few weeks of this and even the animals would be out of condition. She went to the refrigerator which seemed to be stacked with offerings from Patsy which Stephanie did not distress herself by trying to identify. On the bottom shelf were three trout.
‘How did you come by these?’ she asked her father. ‘And when?’
‘This morning. At the trout farm.’
‘Oh!’ Her heart lifted. She had been running her own home for nine years, so why was she so overwhelmed by the prospect of preparing one lunch for her mother and father? ‘You’ve done enough beans,’ she said. ‘Now you can do a few potatoes while I see to the trout.’
‘They don’t need doing, not new potatoes.’
‘But you wash them! You don’t eat them, earth and all.’
She stood by the grill, watching her father out of the corner of her eye. ‘I should scrub them, if I were you, not just maul them.’ It was a wonder they were not all dead.
The heat from the grill was intense and she felt faint again and rather sick. ‘I’ll get some mint from the garden. The trout doesn’t need to go on for a minute or two.’
She walked slowly across the lawn, fighting a desire to get in the car and drive away. It was hot in the garden. It was going to be a hot summer. Hot summers did not suit either her temperament or her Nordic beauty. She picked the mint and went back to the kitchen where she dropped it in the saucepan.
Murdoch said, ‘Shouldn’t you have washed it first?’
His teasing broke her last resistance. ‘I’m frightened. Isn’t it silly?’
He put an arm round her shoulders. ‘I’m frightened, too.’
She felt better and went to attend to the trout. ‘One should be able to cope without props, of course,’ she said, standing further back from the grill. ‘But apparently I can’t.’ It was not an admission she would have made to anyone else.
‘Wish me luck,’ she said conspiratorially as she left the kitchen bearing Janet’s tray.
She found her mother sitting up in bed looking clean and tidy, but rather blurred as people do when they have woken from a heavy sleep or when their eyes are not focusing properly.
‘I’ve come,’ Stephanie said, setting down the tray and kissing her mother.
‘I heard.’
It was surprising that the words, spoken in a monotone, could convey to Stephanie such complexity of meaning – awareness of the time which had elapsed between the daughter’s arrival in the house and her presence at her mother’s bedside, indifference to that belated presence, and a deliberate intention to hurt and provoke.
Stephanie responded by making her own contribution to provocation, adopting a resolutely cheerful manner which did not quite say, ‘Now let’s have an end to all this nonsense, shall we?’ but came perilously close to it.
‘And I’ve brought your lunch.’
Janet looked at the tray. ‘I can’t eat all that.’
‘It’s only trout.’
‘Trout is very filling.’
‘Eat as much as you can, then.’
Janet studied the trout for further inspiration. ‘What’s this you’ve poured over it?’
‘Caper sauce.’
‘It smells of vinegar. You know I don’t like vinegar. I never have mint sauce.’
‘I had forgotten. I’ll change it. I haven’t put any sauce on mine yet.’
‘I shan’t eat it, anyway. Matilda can have it.’
Stephanie said, ‘Then perhaps you can manage the potatoes and beans?’ She sounded tolerant, and added, ‘And anyway, Matilda doesn’t like vinegar either.’
Janet prodded the potatoes with a fork. Stephanie had set the tray carefully so that it looked elegant and had arranged the food artistically on the
plate because presentation was important in stimulating appetite. She watched her mother making a laborious mess of it. ‘I’ll leave you to that,’ she said, allowing her mother to see that she was not taken in by this performance, but was amused rather than irritated. ‘Would you like some fruit afterwards?’
Janet looked at her reproachfully and then turned her head away. Stephanie went downstairs clenching her fists.
‘You know why she is behaving like this?’ she said to her father who was standing by the sink. ‘It is important that you should understand. The breakdown is the only thing she can believe in. So she must insist that this is the way the world is – she could not bear to have another, parallel world, from which she was excluded, which ran on oiled wheels. The broken down world serves another purpose – it is her justification. I am as I am because this is the way the world is. And so, every attempt to introduce order and hope must be defeated, repulsed, shown up for the sham it is. Otherwise the failure is in her.’
Murdoch said, his voice anxious, ‘Darling, do you think . . .’
‘I didn’t want to upset you, I just wanted you to understand . . .’
He turned to her, his face folded in concern. ‘This mark, was it always here? I can’t seem to get it off.’ He held a saucepan out for her inspection.
‘What are you thinking of?’ she shouted, staring into the pan. ‘It’s been there for ever by the look of it,’ She took the pan from him and placed it roughly on the draining board. ‘For goodness sake, I can’t have you going dotty, too!’
After lunch, which was not a meal which Stephanie enjoyed, she tried to talk to her father. But she was so used to talking to clients that she found difficulty in deciding on the right mode of speech for a parent. She experienced a similar difficulty with her husband. The trouble with being so aware was that one ceased to react naturally. Awareness was the very devil! The only time she ever found herself being remotely natural was when she lost her temper. One did not like to think of oneself as the kind of person whose only natural outlet was a display of temper.
‘Darling, you have obviously been doing wonders here,’ she said in a tone which she immediately recognised as the one in which she ‘rewarded’ Marcus when he had cleared his own toys away.
Murdoch said, ‘So what have I done wrong?’
‘You shouldn’t be doing at all. We must get you some help.’
‘Janet doesn’t want help.’
‘She is not her usual self, so I don’t think perhaps we should take too much notice of that.’
‘But this is her home. She has always had the running of it.’
‘At the moment, she isn’t running it, is she?’
‘Mrs Pringle comes twice a week.’
‘You need someone far more capable than Mrs Pringle.’
‘Janet wouldn’t like that.’
Stephanie felt her mouth going dry. ‘I don’t think she is in a state to tell what is best.’
‘If she can’t, I don’t see how anyone else can.’
‘When we are ill,’ Stephanie said, speaking quietly and spacing the words, ‘other people have to make decisions for us.’
‘I don’t give a fuck about other people.’
‘You are like most men,’ Stephanie felt anger quivering in her veins. ‘You don’t believe in mental illness. You think that if you turn your head away it will all be gone by the time you look round.’
Murdoch said, ‘Janet is not mentally ill. And if she doesn’t want anyone here, we are not having anyone.’
He strolled across to the kitchen door and whistled Humphrey for his walk. As far as he was concerned this was an end to the conversation; had she not been his daughter, he would have told her so in no uncertain terms. Not entirely a gentleman, my father, Stephanie thought – at the moment he had the look of an old breed of Englishman, by no means the noblest strain, rather one of Falstaff’s drinking companions, perhaps, and she a silly woman who had thought to check him.
When she had cleared up in the kitchen, Stephanie called to her mother, ‘I think I’ll go down and see Patsy.’
She walked slowly down to the village. She did not like to admit that she needed to talk to Patsy, but she certainly needed to talk to someone and Patsy, after all, appeared to have been the only regular visitor.
The children were playing in the garden, Sam in a torn shirt and no trunks, Francesca quite nude, her limbs plentifully stained with purple juice. Patsy was sitting outside the kitchen door renovating a cane chair. Other examples of cottage industry in an unfinished-state littered the garden.
‘How is your mother today?’ Patsy asked.
‘In bed and not very gracious. How has she been on other days?’
‘Oh, so-so.’
Stephanie sat at her feet because she was tired and there was nowhere else to sit. ‘What are we to do, Patsy? Or rather, what can we find for Mother to do? Because that, I am sure, is the root of the trouble.’
Patsy tugged hard on a length of cane. She had strong brown hands which looked capable – in her case it must be the spirit and not the flesh which was weak. She said, ‘Janet shouldn’t have to do anything. It has already been done.’
‘And what is that supposed to mean?’
‘In another culture, your mother would be honoured in her tribe. She would grow old in dignity, just sitting under a tree smoking a pipe, if that was her choice – just being. She has made her contribution. And it was enough. No more should be required of her.’
‘She requires more of herself,’ Stephanie pointed out.
‘Only because you have all denied her her place of honour.’
‘Oh, I really don’t think I can accept that, Patsy! She is only fifty. She can’t spend the rest of her life sitting around being honoured!’
‘If she had honour she would continue to contribute. People would come for miles to see her because she was a wise woman, as they came to anchoresses and their like in the past.’
‘That awful woman Margery Kempe!’
‘Or Dame Julian. They were the people with the real healing power. The true psychologists.’
‘So, as you can see, in their different ways, Murdoch and Patsy are prepared to let my mother rot!’ Stephanie said later over the telephone to Piers. ‘You really must come down here this weekend. Angela will just have to have the children again.’
Piers came by train because Stephanie had taken the car. He was disposed to believe his journey had not been necessary. After supper on the evening of his arrival, he said to Stephanie, ‘Your father seems to be managing very well, he’s quite a cook.’
‘This little spell of housework is the equivalent of one of his gypsy journeys. An interesting novelty. When the novelty wears off he will be back where he has always belonged – in his study.’
‘That isn’t kind.’
‘I don’t mean it unkindly. Piers. That is where he belongs. It grieves me to see him cluttering up his mind with pots and pans.’
‘To some effect, you must admit.’
‘You know what it was that you ate, don’t you? One of Patsy’s herbal brews to which my father in his unwisdom had added chunks of stewing steak. And when I asked him where he had taken the steak from, it was clear that he didn’t know the difference between the refrigerator and the freezer! He assured me I didn’t need to worry – the meat had been “a bit stiff” but he had poured hot water over it and left it for a while. I didn’t find that out until after we had eaten it.’
‘Well, I don’t feel any ill effects.’
‘You wouldn’t yet.’
‘And I am most impressed by his resourcefulness.’
‘Anyone can be resourceful with an adequately stocked freezer at his disposal.’
‘You seem to be proceeding on the assumption that your mother and father are unable to cope with their problems. If you carry on like this you’ll be persuading them to move into sheltered accommodation next.’
‘My father is not working, Piers! It worries me almost
more than anything else. I’ve never known my mother to be ill before – that’s bad enough. But to find my father is not working terrifies me. You wouldn’t understand that. But he was always there, in his study, all through my childhood. It’s as though I had lost him.’
‘He is only revising now, so is it so important?’
‘Revising doesn’t mean just dotting an i and crossing a t – not with him. His publisher once told me that rereading one of the novels was like looking at an old master which has been cleaned and realising that one of its most marvellous effects – the shaft of light falling across a table in the background which seems to illuminate the whole work – had been added at the last moment.’ Her face screwed up in misery. ‘I can’t forgive my mother for doing this to him. She has created the atmosphere in which he can work – enabled him – and now, quite suddenly, she has lost interest and gone away.’
The next morning, to Stephanie’s relief, Murdoch worked in his study. In the afternoon he and Piers took Humphrey for a walk. It was a fine day and hot. There were full heads of elder flower along the banks of the road and briar roses bloomed in the hedgerows. The woods were dense with the heavy foliage of oak and chestnut and a dainty feathering of silver birch – a many-leaved tapestry with, here and there, spangles of blue sky no bigger than a peacock’s eye. Light slanted on twisted branches, making shining green discs of the leaves, liming the trunk of a roadside hawthorn.
It was almost too much for Piers, this lime-green loveliness. He was glad, when at last they came to the gorse-clad heath. The expanse was not vast but, uncluttered by hedges, bare of trees, it seemed to roll into infinity. There was no sound of traffic, only the song of larks and the occasional haunting cry of the pewit. Usually even his breathing was hurried and shallow, but here he took long, deep breaths like a man who has escaped from prison and imagines that from now on life will never be the same again. Not true, of course; yet as he and Murdoch walked, the illusion persisted.
‘I feel all my problems falling away.’ He had never spoken of this need before. ‘It’s so childish. I suppose one is a child at heart. Always seeking some kind of cure from Nature which she won’t give.’
