The Question

by Jane Asher

  ‘Nonsense.’

  They were walking in the garden, George exploring ahead of them, Eleanor feeling chilled in the early autumn morning, but enjoying the feeling of the air on her bare arms beneath the short sleeves of her cotton frock. She had fully intended to unburden herself to him when she had first asked Andrew to come outside with her, hoping to find comfort in the knowledge that she would no longer be alone with her terrifying secret, but after her first few words she had changed her mind. A glance at his carefully assumed expression of benign understanding had made her wince, and she had suddenly felt like just one more dilapidated member of his flock; a number on a list for him to deal with and then tick off as part of the job; a supplicant scheduled to receive the allotted quota of sympathy before he moved on to someone else, or walked back into the house to relay everything to Catherine. Her initial words had been vague enough for her to change tack without any appreciable swerve, and she had diverted her speech into describing a generalised, sourceless fear and depression. She hoped the ensuing discussion might yet bring her some relief without having to let him in on the truth.

  Andrew was holding his hands behind his back and dipping his head in what he hoped appeared to be a suitably serious and sympathetic posture of friendly accessibility: the wise, all-knowing priest, who is shocked by nothing, and endlessly understanding. He had assumed such poses before when confronted, as he inevitably had been many times over the years, by human misery; each time hoping that the external appearance would somehow find itself mirrored in a true depth of understanding, but always aware that part of him was standing back and watching as he played the role expected of him. Once again, as on so many previous occasions, he felt the inadequacy of his experience; his life had been so sheltered and so limited that the times he came up against the emotional crises of human nature left him flailing. He knew that somewhere inside himself was the capacity to give true support and understanding, but the instinctive closing up that the approach of emotion produced in him always got in the way. He could sense quite clearly that Eleanor had been about to confide in him, and he was ashamed at the relief he felt at her obvious decision to keep it to herself after all. He knew this was the moment he should persuade her to tell him everything, to let go and trust in him and God to offer peace and understanding, but somehow the thought of his own sister opening herself up to him was too difficult to take. He stopped and stood still for a moment, and as he did so Eleanor turned and looked at him.

  He’s getting old, she thought. My big brother: my shy big brother is getting old. She thought of the thick dark hair that had always grown straight out from the top of his forehead in a horizontal fringe, cute and strokable as a child, but intensely irritating to him as a teenager, and felt a pang of pity at the sight of the thinning grey strands that had taken its place. The kindly, florid face, half hidden behind horn-rimmed glasses, still held the look of permanent slight anxiety that she had known all her life. Now she knew she was causing it, and she reached a hand onto his shoulder and squeezed it.

  ‘Don’t worry, Andrew, I’m not really asking you for any answers. Nor any advice, either. It’s just that I haven’t got anyone else I can talk to now.’

  ‘What about John? You can talk to him, can’t you? It’s very easy in a marriage to skim over the surface for most of the time, but believe me, if you try one can –’

  ‘No. No, unfortunately that’s not possible.’

  ‘Ah.’

  So it’s the marriage, thought Andrew. He felt rather relieved. He had assumed something far more sinister than a bad patch in her marriage; something darker, more complex, more – metaphysical. If John had been playing around, or drinking or even whacking her about a bit – well, these things could be got through, passed over, survived.

  ‘Eleanor, you have to understand that marriage never stands still. The times of—’

  ‘Andrew, it’s all right. I told you – I don’t expect any answers. It’s not John. Or at least, not in the way you think. I’ve just lost heart in it all. Not marriage, I mean – in life. A bit. At the moment. But I’ll be fine. Don’t worry – it’s just good to get away for a while and clear my thoughts.’

  She turned and began to walk again, looking down at the ground just as her brother had before.

  ‘Is there anything I can do to help?’ he said.

  She was surprised to hear the tone of gentle enquiry in his voice, and glanced up into eyes that, for a moment, had lost all their usual shuttered nervousness, and looked into hers openly and with genuine interest.

  ‘No, just let me mope about here for a while, that’s all,’ she smiled.

  Andrew was still looking at her, and a small frown grew between his eyebrows in a little fold of reddened skin, falling easily into its familiar, well-worn creases. He bit his lower lip and made a small grunting sound, and Eleanor almost smiled as she felt the effort to communicate going on behind the hesitant exterior.

  ‘We all live a lie, Eleanor, you know that, don’t you? I mean to a certain extent.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  He paused again, and smacked his lips apart. She fancied she could almost see the waves of energy produced by the battle within him between the urge to make some sort of direct, heartfelt admission and the stronger instinct to turn and flee – or at least to cover the inner turmoil with a comforting platitude.

  ‘Well. Catherine and I – of course, we haven’t been what you’d call husband and wife for many—I mean—Oh dear, oh dear, this is—No, no, I’m sorry I can’t burden you with this.’

  ‘Andrew – oh Andrew, I’m so sorry. I’m so selfish. It’s not burdening me. Not at all. You never talk to me about your life; about your marriage. Of course it’s not burdening me. I just always assumed that everything was fine.’

  ‘Yes, well, of course. One would. But no, we haven’t been fully – we haven’t made love for many, many years now. She doesn’t enjoy it, you see. Well, she never did, really, I don’t think. And of course that’s her privilege. But it does make for – what shall I say – a rather bleak old time of it, on the whole. I always envied you and John so much. You seemed to be so – so loving.’

  There was a silence for a moment as they walked on. Eleanor was surprised to find that his reference to John didn’t at this moment bother her; it was as if he were talking about someone she hardly knew, someone not connected with her or her life at all. She found herself concentrating on her feelings of pity for the bewildered man by her side. There was something immensely touching about the way he had confided in her, the sadness of his feelings still conveyed in the peculiarly British matter-of-fact shorthand that betrayed in a few clipped phrases the agony of years of loneliness.

  ‘But you still care for each other? I mean, you’re good friends, if I can call it that, aren’t you?’

  ‘Oh yes indeed. In fact, I’m making a terrible fuss about absolutely nothing, Eleanor. Forget it. I don’t know why on earth we got started on all this. I’m meant to be comforting you, not telling you my small problems. I’m absolutely fine. Really.’ He turned away from her and looked across the small lawn towards the overblown, spilling herbaceous border. ‘Just look at the colour of those dahlias – one of Catherine’s triumphs.’ He turned back and smiled down at Eleanor. ‘I have much to be thankful for, you see. Many small joys. Closer to God in a garden and all that.’

  They walked on across the grass and towards the flowerbed. The bright yellow of the dahlias was indeed startling, Eleanor thought; almost too bright against the mass of hazy purples and greens that made up most of the background. The tall spikes of the lupins were bent over towards them, dry and brown, and when she reached out a hand to touch one she could hear as well as feel the dry seeds moving in the myriad hanging pods.

  ‘I should have cut those off weeks ago,’ said Andrew. ‘We often get a second flowering from them if I deadhead them in time. Not as big as the first one, but pretty all the same. There just seems so much else to do.’

&n
bsp; ‘Well, at least they’ve done what they’ve spent all year working towards,’ said Eleanor, pulling a pod from the spike and opening it. ‘I always feel rather sorry for the roses as I deadhead them day after day. Every attempt at reproducing snipped off by my secateurs before they can make their little babies. Frustrating their natural urges. Funny old business, gardening, really, when you come to think about it. Everything desperately budding, eating, reproducing, just so that they can start it all over again the next season. Every plant competing to get the water, the food, the air, the sun. Selfishness wherever you look. And all that cruelty. Insects boring holes in each other and munching their way out. Ghastly.’ She emptied the small, round seeds into her palm and watched them as they rolled off and onto the grass as she tipped her hand upside down. She threw the empty pod back towards the bed and dusted her hands against each other.

  ‘You are in a melancholy old mood, Eleanor, you really are,’ Andrew laughed. ‘Cruelty or not, it’s very beautiful, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, it is. Very beautiful,’ she smiled in return.

  They turned away from the flowerbed and made their way back towards the French windows of the sitting room.

  Just before they went inside, Eleanor said quietly: ‘And you’ve got your beliefs, haven’t you? I mean, you’ve never really talked about any of that to me, Andrew, but that really is something to envy. I envy you that. Knowing there’s a reason for it all, some sort of point. I wish I had that. That must be a strength to you, surely? Whenever I go into an empty church, and just sit in a pew, or look at the statues or the paintings, or light a candle, I feel such a strong sense of – well, something. But I never like to explore it because I know it’ll just disappear in a little puff of realism. But you can explore it. You have someone to turn to.’

  ‘Yes. Yes, indeed.’

  But she knew, even without looking at him, that the shutters had come down again.

  As they walked back into the house through the French windows they met Catherine carrying a tray of coffee and biscuits into the drawing room.

  ‘Come and sit down, Eleanor,’ she said, smiling. ‘Leave George out in the garden, will you? A cup of coffee will do you good. Take that chair there, dear,’ she went on, gesturing with one shoulder at an armchair on one side of the fireplace as she put the tray down on a small table behind the sofa.

  Eleanor knew it was Andrew’s chair that was being offered to her and that she was expected to protest and fuss until persuaded to sit in it, but she took it without comment to avoid giving Catherine too much satisfaction. She’s loving this, she thought. She’s loving knowing there’s something wrong. It’s making her feel smug and safe and she’s going to be solicitous and wonderfully kind and understanding and vicar’s-wifeish about it all. It made Eleanor feel even more determined not to reveal any more than she already had to either of them.

  ‘I am so sorry I woke you so horribly early this morning,’ she said. ‘And I do hope you didn’t mind me using the phone?’

  ‘Of course not,’ Catherine said. ‘You know you can use it any time. Any time at all. Here …’

  She crossed over to the armchair and passed a cup of coffee to Eleanor and then knelt on the floor next to the chair and looked up at her. Oh, very little-girly, thought Eleanor. Very charming and unassuming and sweet. Here it comes. Any minute.

  ‘Is everything all right? You sounded a bit—’

  ‘Fine,’ said Eleanor, bringing the cup and saucer up to beneath her chin. ‘Fine now, thanks. Just one of those things. Nothing to worry about. But it’s lovely to have a break. I’ll stay over the weekend if I may and then I’ll leave you in peace on Monday and make my way home.’ She took a sip of coffee then put the cup down again and smiled.

  ‘Huh!’ she said very quietly.

  ‘What?’ asked Catherine, looking up eagerly as if still hopeful there might be an interesting revelation.

  ‘Oh, sorry – nothing,’ said Eleanor, still smiling. You don’t have sex, she was thinking. You’re sitting there all smug and self-satisfied in your boring little dress and what you don’t know is that I know you don’t like sex. You’re a cold fish, Catherine, for all your warm sympathy and wifely duties. You don’t give my brother his rights, my girl. We may not do it often, but at least John and I—

  ‘Oh Christ!’ she said out loud, slopping the coffee into its saucer as her lap jolted with the sudden movement of her hand to her mouth.

  ‘What is it?’ asked Andrew, rushing to her chair from the window.

  ‘It’s nothing,’ she said, bringing her voice quickly under control again. ‘I just remembered something. It’s not important.’

  But the image of John on top of her that had come so suddenly unbidden into her mind was harder to restrain: even as she spoke she still saw the flushed sweatiness of his neck and the familiar grey head bobbing up and down with the rhythm of his movement. And, more clearly than anything else, she saw his face; it was reddening and tensing, the eyes focusing on somewhere and nowhere at the same time, the muscles of his cheeks and mouth pulling themselves into a mindless grimace that was animal in its intensity. He was coming.

  And now she knew she wasn’t the only one who had seen it.

  Chapter Nine

  Once again it was exactly two o’clock when Eleanor woke. For the third night running it was as if a silent but undeniable alarm clock had summoned her from sleep at precisely the same time. She was wide awake before she knew what the grumbling, tearing agony inside her was all about; it took a few seconds to dig into it and unearth the seething jealousy that had erupted and dragged her into consciousness. A flame burnt in her groin: she squirmed and dug at it with her clenched, entwined hands, turning her head to the side and squeezing her eyes shut as if she could push it away while she wasn’t looking. But it burnt on, feeling scalding hot between her thighs, and insisting on her attention. Images of John caressing Barbara, his face twisted and flushed with desire, leapt into her mind and fed the flame, and she cried out loud with the unbearable mixture of sexual excitement and sheer miserable unhappiness that the visions produced. She opened her legs and pressed her hands harder up and into herself, indulging the need to push the irresistible physical sensation to its inevitable climax, moaning and juddering unwillingly into some sort of relief.

  Then she felt ashamed: dirty and humiliated, in a way she hadn’t since first discovering such secret pleasures as a child. Sex had been of little importance in her life, and she was astonished and horrified to discover the extent to which, uninvited, it had invaded her body and proved its continuing dominance. Now that it had been rekindled by the idea of someone else enjoying what she had thought to be exclusively hers, she realised how powerful a hold her physical needs still had over her, and she hated herself for finding excitement in the terrible, unavoidable images that forced themselves on her unwilling imagination. Regret preyed on her, tormenting her. Why hadn’t she enjoyed the delights of the marriage bed more often? How could she have turned away so many times: times when she knew John was hinting at his need for sex? How could she have resisted the touch of his hand on her breast, or the feeling of his body sliding onto hers in comfortable, familiar, unthreatening lovemaking? Now she ached for it; her arms in the chastity of her double bed flailed and slid over the sheets as they instinctively searched for his chest to grasp and squeeze; she spread her legs and wept at the emptiness between them. Too late, she cried to herself. It’s too late – I’m a stupid old woman. I loathe myself. I loathe him. I hate him: I hate them: I hate them together: but I want him. I want him so much I shall die. I shall pull out my hair as madwomen do; I shall cut myself; tear pieces of flesh from my groin; bite myself.

  She sat up suddenly and put her head in her hands, unable to lie down with her thoughts any longer, desperate for distraction. A crack in the curtains let in a sliver of moonlight, and she lifted her head and by the thin, white light looked round at her bedroom. She frowned as she tried to remember how she had felt when she was th
at other woman: the woman who had lived in ignorance, in innocence. The woman who had minded about things like furniture and fabric, who had chosen with such care everything in the room in front of her. The woman who had thought it mattered what colour the walls were; who had chattered to Ruth about the weather, holidays, John’s whereabouts. John’s whereabouts! She shook her head at the foolishness of that alternate being: how naïve she seemed now. Eleanor knew she could never inhabit the same world as she had; that, although she had to live in the same body, she was a different person in every way, and could never again look around her from the comfort of the bed without dying a little. Eleanor before the knowledge, she thought to herself, before the lifting of the veil, before the snake. Before the woman. A universe apart. Divided for ever from her present self by an unbridgeable chasm of awareness.

  But what if she’d walked on by the side of that chasm without ever having looked down? If she hadn’t found out, would it still have been there? Would it still have been true? If the Eleanor of a week ago had gone on existing, would the world have been different? Did her knowledge make it happen? If she could go back, walk past the yellow tie and ignore it, could she still make everything be as it had appeared? She almost felt that a strong enough effort of will could spin the part of her mind that mirrored the world so that it would reflect on the other side, that the brightness of its vision could be reversed into a misty new beginning that would show yesterday’s reality, not the horror of today’s truth.