“Buying trips. My father’s off in China at the moment, buying carpets. He goes once a year, sometimes twice. It’ll be my turn next, I hope, if the old man will agree to it. He’s rather protective of his solitary travels, but he’s getting on and has come back completely wrung out the past few years. He’ll have to hand over the reins soon.”
She looked at him as though he’d grown wings between his shoulder blades. “But that’s amazing, Harry! Why, I’d give twenty years off my life just to see China!” Then, thinking it might sound as though she were asking to be included in his travels, she added, “I’ll go one day, too, I will.”
“Of course you’ll travel. Every person must. Maybe we’ll even see the world together, eh?” He smiled and steered her past the wood-and-iron benches toward the thicket of golden bamboo.
“Don’t you love the smoothness of the stalks?” He ran his fingers up and down the closest one, ignoring the signs that admonished visitors against such behaviour. He took her hand, peeled off her glove and turned her knuckles against the plant. “Here, feel.”
She felt a sudden intensity in that area of her skin, as though every nerve ending in her body had rushed to the very spot where his flesh met hers.
“Feel how almost cool it is,” he said.
“Yes,” she said, for her lips would form no other syllables just at the moment. A small girl with blue ribbons in her hair ran past them, squealing shrilly.
Harry dropped her hand and stepped away to look at a small palm with a bulbous root and leaves like uncombed hair, and another with branches like tubers, and then to the Leguminosae calliandra haematocephala, the powder puff tree from southern Brazil. Irene followed him like a somnambulist. The air inside the conservatory was soft as she breathed in, and she felt the effects of this nearly liquid oxygen insinuating itself further inside her, to her lungs, her belly and beyond. Around her the ferns and palms unfurled like a verdant veil. Near them was a plant with leaves spread so far and so muscularly it looked like a large sculpted mushroom. Irene had the impression that the world around them had grown to enormous size, or that they had shrunk down to the height of elves, and that at any moment goblins might appear from some hidden marketplace, like in the poem by Christina Rossetti.
She tried to focus on a plant whose leaves were hung with small red berries, like pomegranate seeds within pale, translucent pods.
“Aren’t they pretty?” she said, although pretty was not exactly what she meant. She meant succulent. She meant sensual.
“They look edible, don’t they? But I suspect they’re probably poisonous. The red colour, you know. It’s a warning in most things, plants and toads and insects and so forth.” Harry cupped the berries in his hand. “Come on,” he said and led her through a door into the next greenhouse, which was the Cool Temperate House. Water dripped and gurgled musically all around them. Harry pointed up, and Irene saw, running along a pipe, a squirrel, which froze in its tracks when it saw them. They followed the meandering path lined with Greek myrtle and genista from the Canary Islands.
“Through here,” said Harry and opened yet another door.
The air was warmer here, rich and ripe and pulsing. The room was alive with thick green plants sprouting up to the pearlized light. Irene felt damp; her slip clung to her body and her skin felt plumped and silky with the air’s moisture. In a special glass booth, orchids clung to the sides of trees like undersea creatures.
The atmosphere was like a perfumed piece of moss held beneath her nose, infused not only with the scent of flowers but with something else: the smell of Harry, spicier and dark as cloves. Overhead hung a golden trumpet plant, its pulpy yellow flowers dangling near her mouth like forbidden fruit.
“Apocynaceae allamanda cathartica,” read Harry, and it sounded like an incantation to a deep magic spell. He moved on, leaving her standing where she was, hypnotized by the blossoms hanging overhead.
“Passion flower! Come here, Irene. Do you know these?”
She stepped up beside him, aware of his hand on her arm, above her elbow, near her breast. She looked where he indicated, at a not very impressive group of leaves.
“Passiflora coccinea. Red passion flower. It was a religious symbol, you know, for early Christians. You see—pity they don’t have at least a drawing of the flower, because it’s quite amazing—but the construction, it’s all in the way it’s constructed. They say the ten petals symbolize the apostles of the crucifixion, the five anthers are the five wounds, the three stigmas are the nails, do you see? And there’s this extraordinary corolla, all purple, which is the crown of thorns. Quite amazing.”
“I’d love to see one,” said Irene, who actually wanted nothing more than to continue to stand close to Harry and to hear his voice.
“A tall order, I’m afraid. The flowers last just one day and then close forever as night falls.”
“That’s sad, but somehow beautiful too, isn’t it?”
“I suppose. Nature. Such a showoff, eh?” He laughed, and he looked at her. For a moment they didn’t speak, but simply stood near each other, the pulse in Irene’s throat clearly visible. It was just then that her stomach growled. She clamped one hand over her belly and the other over her mouth as she giggled.
“Oh, I’m so sorry! Listen to that. It’s all the work I did this morning. I haven’t eaten since, I don’t know, sixish, I guess.”
Harry looked slightly disappointed, but also relieved.
“Lunchtime, young lady. I’m famished myself.”
He steered her outside and she breathed more easily here in this passive place where the lines between skin and leaf, between leg and root were more clearly drawn.
They chose a bench with dappled shade beneath a tree. Harry leaned back, spread his arms along the width of the bench and stretched his legs in front of him. He tilted his head to look through the branches, and Irene’s eyes ran along the bow of his throat. A trio of sparrows twittered mindlessly above them.
“So, you’re enjoying Eliot, are you?”
Irene handed him a chicken-salad sandwich. “Yes, but I’m sure I don’t understand it. I’m not that clever, I’m afraid.”
“Don’t sell yourself short, Irene. You have a good brain.”
“Iced tea?”
“Don’t be evasive. Or coy. It doesn’t suit you.” He took the glass she poured. “Nothing wrong with recognizing you’re bright. In fact, it’s quite attractive.”
“That’s not what my mother says.” Irene drew back her shoulders, pursed her lips and spoke in a hard-edged imitation of her mother. “Don’t lord it over boys, Irene, if you’re smarter than they are. Men are like skittish workhorses, you keep the blinders on ‘em, keep them focused on what you want them to see and don’t let them get distracted by things that’ll only frighten them.”
“Your mother,” said Harry, “is wrong.”
“I suspected she might be. About any number of things.” She looked away, spread a napkin over her lap and bit into her sandwich.
“Like what else?”
“She has some funny ideas, is all.”
“Tell me. I’m curious.”
“Oh, I don’t know. She’s so bitter about everything. She has her … I don’t know, her demons, I guess. She’s not very strong.”
“Everyone reacts differently to grief.” He gazed up through the tree branches as he said this. Then he finished his sandwich and wiped the crumbs away from his mouth. “Any chance of another one of those?” he said.
“There’s egg salad, or devilled ham. Looks like Mum made enough for an army.”
Irene tried to think of something to say that would bring his attention back to her. A blond girl with a handsome young man walked past them and Harry’s eyes followed. Irene envied the girl’s ripe curves and easy air.
“Tell me about Oxford,” she said. “You must have had some lovely times there. I’ve seen such marvellous photographs of England.”
“There’s no place like it in the world, that’s for su
re.”
“Do you miss it very much?”
“Yes, I admit I do. On a day like this we’d be in punts on the Thames or maybe at Lolly Spencer’s for afternoon tea. She had fox hunts during the season. Beautiful horses.” And Harry went on to describe his life abroad. His speech became languid and his eyes half-closed as though dreaming. Irene studied his face, the clean planes of it, the hollow of his cheek and the front tooth ever so slightly crooked.
When he had spoken for some minutes he said he’d like to sit on the grass, that the bench was a step removed from the real pleasure of earth. She said they had no blanket, but he said never mind, the grass was dry, but she spread out a napkin and sat on that, fearing a wet mark on the back of her skirt. Harry ate a large piece of pie and drank another iced tea. Then he settled himself, lying down with his hands behind his head, his legs crossed at the ankle, and began to recite:
“‘Loafe with me on the grass, loose the stop from your throat, Not words, not music or rhyme I want, not custom or lecture, not even the best, Only the lull I like, the hum of your valved voice.’”
For the next hour or so they talked about Walt Whitman and his Song of Myself. Or rather Harry lectured and Irene listened. Harry spoke of the bodily delights and how Whitman’s genius was in accepting himself as a natural man. Irene didn’t notice the passing of time, except to sense that her world was spinning ever so slowly on a particular axis, centred directly on Harry’s face and Harry’s hands and Harry’s lips.
She hardly registered what he was saying. She was mesmerized by the cadence of his voice. Then suddenly he said he must be off and would walk her home. It was mid-afternoon and far earlier than she’d hoped, but he said he had to run, for he had family engagements. When they reached her house (such a small distance, it wasn’t fair, she wished she lived in Outer Mongolia so she could walk next to him for years and years) he did not kiss her mouth but did give her a kiss on the cheek. Better, she decided, on the cheek than on the mouth, because on the mouth would mean, if he kissed her out on the street, that he didn’t respect her and she would surely have become unrespectable for she wouldn’t have been able to resist him, no matter that the neighbours were watching or her mother was peeking from behind the curtains, and Harry knew it and winked and waved as off he walked.
Her mother pounced on her the moment she floated through the door.
“I saw you out there on the street. All the neighbours could see you. You’re turning into quite the little chippy, aren’t you?”
“Oh, Mum, don’t start.”
“What did he try? What did you let him do? Men can smell it, you know.”
Irene had no idea what it was precisely that men could smell, and she wasn’t going to ask. She merely smiled and said it was a lovely day and thank you for the picnic. She went upstairs, undressed and took a long bath, with the door locked so her mother couldn’t come in, although she did knock three times, making sure, she said, that Irene hadn’t slipped down the drain. Irene ran her hands over her breasts and her stomach and her thighs and her throat and let Whitman’s words, rolled in the memory of Harry’s tongue and teeth and lips, slide over her and under her and buoy her body up and away to somewhere thoroughly splendid.
Margaret sat in the living room, listening to Irene’s gentle splashing in the bath above. She slapped herself lightly on either side of the face. Stupid, stupid, to leap on the girl that way. Margaret had been trying hard in the past few weeks and was proud of herself. It had been the fear, of course, of what would happen to her if Irene left that had propelled her to pull herself together. Sometimes she still felt the old madness creeping back, and she would lock herself away then, back in her room where the Mad Margaret could be contained, quieted again.
She’d read somewhere that if you think you’re crazy it doesn’t mean you’re sane, it just means you’re far more intelligent than most people. If that was true, and she liked to think it was, then she had decided she could teach herself many things. Like how to hide, how to arrange herself so that it was not so noticeable that she was from time to time taken over by Mad Margaret.
There was even the small hope that she might teach herself not to be crazy at all. In fact, since she had been experimenting with this new line of thought, she was taken over by the Other Margaret less and less. And that was important, because only two things would happen if she didn’t learn a new way of presenting herself to the world. Either Irene would leave or Margaret would be sent to the bug-house. Terror kept Margaret trying, if not to be normal, then to feign normalcy.
It had begun with small things. Washing her face, her hair, her body. That made a person look quite normal. And no one had to know that while you were washing you had to grit your teeth, because the touch of your own skin was so repulsive. Skin of any kind was revolting. Particularly the fleshy sort of skin that young girls had. All that bursting sex everywhere. The breasts, the hips, the thighs, the lips. Irene’s type of skin. It wasn’t her fault, of course, all girls had to go through it, Margaret supposed. Still, she was trying to warn Irene not to trust such flesh, for it would lead you to despair.
It would not do to jump on Irene the way she did. She tried not to, but when the longing came over her, to speak, to tell, to be heard, she couldn’t control it. Margaret looked down at her hands and noticed one was scratching at the other. She slapped the offending hand. No. Bad hand. Things were going so much better. She must keep at it. She longed to climb the stairs again and whisper through the door. Did he touch your breasts? Your cunt? Did he touch your cunt? She clapped a hand over her mouth, afraid the filthy word might have come out. Where had she even learned a word like that? She gripped the sides of the chair and willed herself to stay put, to speak no more. She would practise being still, being quiet, being normal, until bedtime.
She turned on the radio. It crackled and hummed as the tubes warmed up, and then the sound of people speaking, of the audience’s laughter, soothed her.
20
July 1936
One Friday, the last day in July, Harry dropped by the store and invited Irene to the picture show. She hadn’t seen him in ten days, although he’d called once to say his father had returned from the Orient in a pitiful state and he’d be stuck at the office double time, since the old man wasn’t really capable of much just now. She agreed at once, but said she’d have to pop in on her mother first, to make sure she didn’t mind.
“Aren’t you a tad too old to have to ask permission? If she says she does mind, what then? You won’t go?”
“No, of course not,” she replied, stung. “I’d go anywhere with you.”
“Fine, then,” he said, adjusting the hanky in his jacket pocket. “You can’t spend your whole life running back to her, you know. You’ll have your own life one day soon, a husband, children of your own. You’d better start cutting the umbilical cord now.”
“You have to understand, Harry. She goes to so much trouble, trying to make the house nice. She has dinner ready every night. I don’t want to do anything to upset her.”
“She certainly has you well trained. You’re beginning to sound like a hen-pecked husband.” Harry agreed to stop by the house, but they’d have to hurry. It would be too late to see Mr. Deeds Goes to Town with Gary Cooper, and he’d rather had his heart set on that. He supposed they’d have to settle for that Robert Young movie.
“Three Wise Guys?” said Irene. “The one by Damon Runyon?”
“Well, based on his work, his stories, yes.”
“I’d love to see that. Although it doesn’t much matter, as long as I’m with you,” she said.
“Oh, all right,” said Harry. “Sounds rather foolish, but I need something light and foolish. All this talk of the war in Spain is enough to depress anyone. Besides, Rebecca Palmer saw it and she said it wasn’t half bad.”
“Who’s Rebecca Palmer?” she asked.
“Just a girl I know.”
“Oh.”
“Are you ready? We really need to hu
rry.”
On the way to her house Harry stopped in to a fruit market to buy a bag of cashews—an unheard of extravagance these days and her mother’s favourite.
“That should keep her happy,” he said, and although Irene didn’t like the inference that her mother could be so easily bought, it seemed he was right, for Margaret was delighted with the offering and told them she didn’t mind being left home.
“But I must say, young man, you should have the common courtesy to give a girl a bit of notice when you ask her out on a date, don’t you think?”
“It’s just a show I wanted to see, Mrs. MacNeil. Thought Irene might enjoy it.”
“You took a risk. After all, Irene could very well have had other plans.”
“Is that right?” said Harry, grinning.
“Yes, it is,” she said, looking at him with a sharp eye.
“Guess I would have been out of luck, then, wouldn’t I?”
“Oh, come on,” said Irene. We’ll miss the newsreel.”
“Have a good time, you two.”
“I won’t be late.”
“Good night, Mrs. MacNeil,” said Harry, who clicked his heels, took the older woman’s hand and bent to kiss it.
She slapped his hand away and blushed. “Don’t be a fool! Go on, out with you both,” she said and closed the door. Going to the window, she rubbed the feeling of his lips off the back of her hand. Margaret watched as Irene leaned toward Harry and repeatedly glanced up at him. She noted, too, the way Harry slouched along, his hands in his pockets, his gaze looking every which way but at Irene.
“He’s a rascal, that one,” she said aloud. He was just the kind of boy she’d have fallen for herself in her youth. They were two of a kind, she and her daughter—same sad and sorry taste in men. Why, they were just like those Siamese twins from China, what were their names? Eng and Chang. And hadn’t they married sisters? Imagine what must go on in their house when the lights were turned down low! But the similarity between them didn’t mean Irene had to make the same mistakes her mother had, not if she could help it.
The Stubborn Season Page 22
