by Francis King
At first, in embarrassment, he stood with the water up to his neck: he was as modest as if he had no clothes on, though in fact he was wearing a serge bathing-costume of the period which was far less revelatory than the tight cotton trousers of the reapers he sketched.
She sat down on the bank, and again and again, like a shuttle, the ball shot outwards and the dog shot after it. There was no shyness about her: nor did she behave as if he were not there. She accepted him tranquilly.
Then, when his teeth began to chatter and his arms were going blue, she suddenly said: "Is it nice in there? Is it warm?"
At first he thought she was mocking at him. "Y-yes," he said through chattering jaws. "Y-yes. It’s beautifully warm, really." And as though to demonstrate how pleasant it was he began to kick out and eventually to swim discreetly on his stomach.
"I think I’ll come in," she said, and disappeared behind some bushes. A moment later she was back in only a chemise.
With extraordinary grace she climbed on to a tree trunk and dived in.
Later she ducked him.
Later the sun burned out, and the cows wandered away, and everything was tranquil.
Later, at one o’clock, he was again sluicing cold water on to the back of his neck.
When the war broke out Denise said: "Don’t go. We’re so happy. Why should you go?" But for once he did what he himself wanted instead of what she told him to do.
In the train, going to the Front, he suddenly began thinking of how on the eve of his first departure for Paris he had said to Mamma: "Sing for me"; and she, because she was sentimental, began on "Danny Boy"; and at the words, "But come ye back", her cheeks had started to trickle with tears. But she had continued singing, without shame.
And now, at the recollection, his own eyes filled and his own throat ached with grief.
Although it was growing dark, and it was nine o’clock, Shirley still played in the courtyard of the hotel. She buried an old spoon under the rowan as treasure, and clapped two pieces of wood together to scare birds, as she had seen them do in the fields, and sometimes she sang to herself in a tuneless alto. Miss Cory and Miss Witherby, the two English ladies who wore their grey hair in plaits over their ears, so that they looked like telephonists, and always walked close, arm-in-arm, passed her and murmured to each other: "Disgraceful! She ought to be in bed. Only four..." And they moved on in black silk and Queen Alexandra collars.
Shirley pulled a face at them, their behinds so close that they seemed to have only one behind between them; shiny and rolling and hard. Then she picked up handfuls of dust and threw them into the air, shouting: "Bang! Bang! Bang!" These were the shells of which she had heard much recently.
"Shirley! Shir—ley!" A window was thrown up and Mother shouted to her. "Come here, dear! Come here!"
"What is it?" she asked sulkily. "What do you want?"
"Come here!"
"Oh, all right."
Was it bed? Was it an errand to the baker? Was it cigarettes for Cousin Maurice? Or did Mother want help with her curlers?
Slowly she mounted the stairs, lingeringly, sometimes pausing to listen to conversations in other rooms. She wore a faded blue pinafore with a butterfly embroidered on it in yellow wool: but the wool was unravelling, a piece hung loose for her to fiddle with. Her hair was in plaits; she hated plaits; Cousin Maurice pulled them.
Mother sat before her kidney dressing-table, half of her hair twisted into papers the other half falling over bare shoulders. She looked comical like this. Her fingers massaged the lobes of her ears from which she had just taken off ear-rings. One breast poked out of her wrap, her eyes gazed at her own reflection. On her upper lip was a faint moustache, her legs gleamed with hair.
"Yes, Mummy?"
Without saying anything she handed Shirley a piece of paper and continued massaging her ears. Shirley stared at it.
"But I can’t read," she said at last.
"Maurice! Maurice!" Mother swung round, another breast popped out. "Maurice!"
Cousin Maurice appeared in black-and-white silk pyjamas from the dressing-room. He had obviously been listening at the door. "Yes, my dear?" he said. "Yes?" Manicured hands slipped into the folds of his sleeves, after the fashion of the Chinese.
"Read it to her."
"But Denise... You yourself—"
"Read it to her."
He turned to Shirley, came close to her, so that she smelled lavender-water and bay rum and Russian cigarettes. His feet, in slippers, were red and swollen, as though after a hot bath. "It’s like this, my dear," he said. Then, articulating each word with undue precision, he told her: "Your—father’s—dead."
"Dead? Dead? Daddy dead?" She stared at him under her matted fringe. Then she ran across to her mother: "Mummy, what does he mean? What is he talking about?"
Denise repeated: "Your father’s been killed."
"Killed? Then—then—he’ll never come back—?"
"Oh, Maurice, take the child away! I can’t stand it! I can’t stand it!"
For once Cousin Maurice was kind. "Come along, Shirley," he said. "You must go to bed." His slippers flopped loudly at the heels as he took her to her room. "You must be a brave girl," he added. "Your mother needs your help."
When she was in bed he felt in the pocket of his dressing-gown and took out some cough pastilles. "Here’s a sweet for you," he said.
She took it gratefully. "Good-night," he said. The light clicked out.
The hot and bitter taste of menthol filled her throat.
Cousin Maurice wore a toupet. It was an old story. When they were children—he, and Denise, and the rest of them—they had a maid called Sophie who was deaf and dumb and almost a lunatic. They all teased her, for years and years and years. Until one day, in a sudden fit of rage, she picked up a copper of boiling water and threw it at them. Most of the water fell on Cousin Maurice’s head.
Hence the white scars on his neck and forehead: hence the wig.
Cousin Maurice was a furrier in Paris. But soon after Father’s death, and indeed before it, he took to spending weekends at the hotel in Barbizon; and Shirley noticed that when she took round the bills to the other residents there was never one for him.
She hated him, with the vindictiveness of children. Once he asked for the salt and she passed him sugar. Absentmindedly he ladled it into his soup, and then pulled a horrible face, wrinkling up his lips till the gums showed, white and flabby. Another time, she saw his tennis trousers in Mother’s room beside her work-box; Mother had just been sewing buttons on to them. Hurriedly, Shirley pulled out a pair of scissors and slit them up the back.
Next day, when Cousin Maurice went up to change, he came down again looking rueful and puzzled.
Once, at a Christmas dinner, among a crowd of Mother’s relatives, he crept up behind her and pulled a cracker on her bare neck.
"Maurice, you are a tease," said Mother, laughing.
But Shirley, white with anger, screamed: "How dare you! You beast! You brute!" She rushed at him waving her arms round her head.
"Steady!" he said, catching her. "Steady! You must learn to take a joke."
"You wait!" she said, breathless and kicking in his grip. "You wait! You wait till my Daddy comes home."
There was a hush: everyone stared; the relatives ceased blowing tin-whistles and giggling at mottoes.
Then Mother said, tranquilly, in a loud, clear voice: "I’ve told you, dear. Daddy will never come home."
Father’s belongings were kept in two trunks in the attic. Shirley often crept up there to touch old shoes, suits that smelled of moth-balls, collars that were now out of date. And the pictures. "They’re lovely," she thought; and it was this that started her off with his black paint-box.
Smelling the clothes, holding them to her cheek, running fingers over them, she felt the same things as when she looked at the photograph. Father was near, oh, so near. If she wer
e still enough, if she sank deep enough into these emanations from the past, if she held her breath and concentrated on the touch of the flannel that he had once worn, on the aroma, then he could materialise. He was there, in the whole atmosphere of the attic. If only he would appear!
One day Cousin Maurice came down to lunch in a morning-coat with the wide lapels and facings of another era.
Shirley stared at him, her fork half-raised to her mouth. "Where did you get that suit?" she asked.
"Shirley!" her mother protested, her face reddening. "It’s very rude to ask those sort of questions."
"Where did you get that suit?"
Cousin Maurice speared himself some hare out of the casserole, tucked his napkin into his collar, and began to eat.
"It’s Father’s, isn’t it? You’ve taken Father’s clothes! That’s it, isn’t it?" She rose from the table, her face crumpled, her body trembling.
"Sit down!" Mother commanded: in those days she was too indolent ever to be really angry. "What are you making this fuss about? What do you expect to be done with the clothes? They might as well be used."
Cousin Maurice masticated with large white teeth; he grinned; hair grew out of his ears. "Exactly," he said. "The clothes were just rotting up there. Don’t be such a silly little fool." With one finger he flicked at his nostril; then he took out a scented handkerchief and blew. Turning to Mother he said: "Really, the child—"
He got no further. Shirley had tried to stab at him with her knife. He leapt to his feet: "My God! The little demon!" Down the hairy back of one of his hands trickled scarlet gouts of blood. He put it to his mouth, but clumsily, so that it smeared across the sagging fold of his cheek.
Mother ran out into the courtyard after Shirley; the child was screaming, while Miss Corry and Miss Witherby hung out of a window together, cheek pressed to cheek. "I’ll teach you!" said Mother. "I’ll give you a lesson." She suddenly felt light and happy with power—‘drunk’ with it as they say. She experienced what one feels when squashing a cockroach or smacking a dog for a misdemeanour.
"No, Mummy! No!" Shirley screamed, rushing round the rowan tree under which was buried the spoon. "No!" She tripped, fell, grazed her knee. She sat up, dusty, groaning.
Mummy thrashed her and put her to bed. Then Cousin Maurice went up and thrashed her. Then she was sick all over the floor. So that meant another thrashing.
Her father’s photograph remained mute.
After a while she ceased to expect the miracle. He was dead, he would never speak to her. After she had stabbed at Cousin Maurice, then, if at any time, he should have comforted her, he should have said: "You have done right". But the lips were still shut beneath the moustache, the hand still rested on a chair. It was useless.
She realised then that our ancestors are more subtle than this. They do not make an obvious intervention, they have no language. They speak, but not with words; they tyrannise over us, but not with their presences. They are powerful because they do not materialise; that is their strength.
So she gave up waiting at night. She no longer watched the photograph. For the dead were dead.
But the oleograph would bleed. She had read of such things. If she had faith enough the Sacred Heart would bleed, as a sign. It was for this that she now watched. Often, in a white cotton nightdress, she would rise from her bed and reach out an arm and touch the oleograph. Always she expected to find something sticky and warm. But the material was cold, shiny, sleek as celluloid.
She had begun to go to church. Her mother was a Catholic, so she went to the Catholic church. But later, surreptitiously, she would also go to Sunday school in the English church. Often she went there when there was no service, and prayed and lit candles and gazed at the waxen Christ who hung there with gaping stigmata.
"The Lamb of God..." The phrase lingered in her mind, like a benediction. It made God suddenly lovable, not frightening. A woolly lamb... She could nestle against it; its fleece was warm. She could run fingers through its fleece.
Then, at a service, she heard the words "... washed in the Blood of the Lamb". At first, the idea seemed terrible to her. But later it gave her an odd shock of pleasure. Sticky and warm... She looked upon it as a barbarous but somehow delightful ritual. "This is love, I suppose", she thought, as though she could already see a time when school-fellows of hers would mix their blood and swear eternal fidelity. Christ, divided and eaten: that too was a shocking and yet delicious thought...
At Sunday school she always tried to sing louder than anyone else, as though in this way she could prove an abundance of love. But since she was incapable of keeping a tune in her head, and in any case chanted through her nose, the result was hardly pleasing.
Once, only once, she experienced what she believed to be religious ecstasy—at the age of nine. She was wandering through the empty church, the heels of her shoes ringing with an unnatural loudness. Incense filled her nostrils; the air seemed thick and heavy. She ran fingers along a brass rail, making a smear where there had once been the brightness of polish; she knelt on a hassock, praying and fingering her dark plaits at one and the same time; she looked up at the ceiling, intricate with carving, and down at the floor where whole families lay buried. Through stained windows pressed a ruby light. "The blood of the Lamb..." Her fingers as she held them in an attitude of prayer were warm with it; the whole church was drowning in its viscid fountains.
Then she stood before the waxen figure of Christ. It was not a beautiful image, as so many are: this Christ was the work of a nineteenth-century artist, a realist, who gave Him a grey-green skin, creased sides, distended ribs, pink nipples. The wounds yawned like chasms of a violet colour. But as she looked at it, her gaze fixed on the bearded yet effeminate face and then on the pitiable slope of the shoulders and then on the fragment of clothing, a mere rag, that covered the loins, tears began to trickle down her cheeks and she was sobbing. She found pathos here.
But then, a moment later, she was tingling inside, her tongue seemed enormous, it felt as if her eyes would burst through their sockets. And she felt such joy. Both hands moved up in a gesture of love; she clasped the feet of the Christ; she kissed the wounds, bearing on her lips an accumulation of dust.
A wind seemed to be blowing against her breasts, and then against her throat. It was dry and hot: the pain was almost intolerable. Moving upwards, it fanned her cheeks and then her forehead. Yet in spite of the agony of it she welcomed it; again she stretched hands towards the Christ; a scream tore from her, as though from her entrails.
Afterwards, she lay for a long time on the chill floor, scraping her nails against marble and mosaic. She was tired; she was at peace; she murmured explanations to someone who was not there.
The sagging Christ looked down; the red light glowed on etiolated flesh.
But one sign was not enough. She was a person who sought many signs. She needed continual reassurance.
After her first communion the relatives gathered at the house, and gossiped, and ate, and made jokes. Cousin Maurice proposed a toast to Mother: and Mother blushed. Later, he pulled away Uncle Raymond’s chair so that the old thing landed on the floor. This was considered very funny.
But through all the noise and the congratulation Shirley moved aloof. She felt a curious exaltation, akin to that moment before the Crucifix, but this time it was suppressed, an ache, which must somehow be released. It was as if there were something hard and stubborn within her; and by a great exertion she must thrust it forth. All that day it remained, this sensation of something within her; all day she smiled distantly at remarks made by humorous relatives, all day she fasted, all day she sat with her hands folded over her stomach.
That night she prayed. She wept as she shaped the words; she trembled with a power too huge for her; she clutched the sheets of her bed, choked, dug her nails into the flesh of her arms in nervous spasms. "Our Father," she prayed. "I believe in God ... the Father almighty." "Gentle Jesus
... look upon Thy little child."
Then she climbed into bed and drew the coverings up to her neck. She was still shivering. But the great weight was expelled. She felt light, elated, dizzy as one does after a haemorrhage. "It will happen to-night," she said. "The Heart will bleed..."
Turning towards the wall she closed her eyes, she sighed in acquiescence.
Many hours later she woke up as she knew she would. The house was silent; the guests were gone. Slowly she clambered into a kneeling position on the bed. Her joints cracked noisily, her breath came in gasps. The white nightdress fluttered in a wind, as her communion dress had fluttered. The soles of her feet gleamed white, her arms gleamed white. Gently, caressingly, she raised one hand and then the other; they moved towards the oleograph; she murmured to herself fragments of prayers: "Lord, I am unworthy ... Who, like a raging lion ... Our ghostly adversary ..."
Then a sob broke from her, she threw herself back on to her pillow. Still on her palms was the chill touch of paper. There had been no blood...
Her teeth bit deep into the stuff against them. In a gesture of mutilation she struck her breasts, again and again, with her fists. Tears poured from her eyes.
On trains she was always sick.
After a few minutes in her seat she began to walk up and down the corridors, as though in this way she could persuade herself that she was not boxed in, irrevocably, and moving at forty miles an hour. Sometimes she hung her head out of a window and took deep draughts of air until cinders blew into her eyes or her hair became dishevelled: sometimes she talked to other passengers, or counted up to a hundred, or tried to read. But always there was a growing sense of confinement, a growing nausea.
