The Queen of the Tambourine

by Jane Gardam

  “It was you who moved the beds.”

  “That was years after. When you seemed mad.”

  “I may have been a little mad. It was the best way to manage. Joyce!”

  “Lizzie, how did you know? At first I never meant you to know. Then—I so needed you to know.”

  “You must have thought me pretty frail,” I say. “How old is Joyce?”

  “She’s—well, she’s eleven. I think I was mad, too. I thought you’d gone forever. We had stopped talking.”

  The phone rings and I go over to it and it is Mother Ambrosine who says, “Eliza, dear, could you come? Come now?”

  At the car, Henry stands on the pavement. I sit at the wheel and he taps the glass. I let down the window and sit looking ahead.

  “I’ve been over and over it—thinking how to tell you. For years. I’ve done it, and made havoc.”

  I look at him not remembering a thing about him. When at last I do remember I say, “What, falling for Annie Cartwright and giving her a baby? Oh Henry—don’t look so sad. Grow up. I have to go.”

  “But where? Why? You will come back? Lizzie—I want you back. I want to be with you. You know I always did. It was you who left me.”

  I try to concentrate but the sound of the Fair keeps blowing about. I see tears in poor Henry’s eyes. My hands are heavy but I haul one of them up on to the steering-wheel and drop the other down on the gears. I say, “Promise me you’ll come back tomorrow.”

  “Can’t I stay now? Tonight? Will you be long? Will you promise to come back?”

  “I won’t be long, but go. Don’t come home till tomorrow. We’ll talk tomorrow. Go back to the flat tonight.”

  He runs along beside the car with a miserable face and I stop again. “I’ll walk Toby,” he says. “Save you when you come back.”

  “Henry—no more!”

  “Look, you know I ask you nothing. Joyce is settled. It would be cruel to move her now. You wouldn’t countenance it and neither would I. I know how you hated Annie.”

  “Hated Annie?”

  I wonder whatever he can mean. If it is true, then I have sinned. Hatred is worse than treachery, less redeemable, especially hatred of the dead. Did I hate Annie? I was jealous from the start, but did I hate?

  I can’t think, because the Fair is thumping away, and as I come to the Common I see it all spangled and wheeling with lights and noise, and the people trooping in strings towards it, stumbling over the tussocks of grass. There are shouts and laughs and whistles. Children are running, not heeding their parents who are yelling at them to take care in the dark.

  Up the Roman track I drive and there, standing outside The Hospice door I see something white. I park and Mother Ambrosine comes forward and takes my hands. We stand. The Fair sounds faint now. Julius Caesar’s fir trees tip their points about, blowing away from The Hospice and towards the revels. Here in the precinct, all is quiet.

  “You are just too late. It was very quick and peaceful at the end. What we’ve all prayed for so long.”

  “I’m always late.”

  “No. Nonsense. You were always with him. Whether you were in the room or not, you were always in his mind. Come and say some prayers. We’ll go to the chapel.”

  “No. Soon. I’ll do that soon. Can I see him?”

  “Certainly not. He’s gone. You may view the body if you’re feeling morbid. Or pagan. But Barry has moved off. He’s far away. En route to heaven. He’s maybe there already.”

  “I can’t believe all that.”

  “Well then, you shall go and see. You’ll see he’s gone. Go in for one moment. Would you like me to come with you?”

  “No. Could I go by myself?”

  “Of course.”

  Barry is sitting at the end of his bed in the chair that is usually mine, and consulting his watch. He looks so marvellously well that for a moment I can’t believe it is he. He’s in combat-dress and beside him on the floor is an immense pack. “About time,” he says. “Where were you? I was getting worried.”

  “Henry turned up.”

  “Thrills.”

  “No. Listen. He had an affair with my awful cousin, Annie. Years ago. In Washington I think. There was a baby. He didn’t dare tell me.” Barry is shining with delight, and laughing, “And all that with the Baby Belling, Cock. Well—are we off?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  Neither of us pays attention to the narrow shape on the bed with the sheet over it, and the Cross above it on the wall. I open the latch of the French-windows and we step through. Barry takes a breath of summery air. “I’ve not that long,” he says. “Where’s the car?”

  We drive off fast down the lane, Barry balancing the pack on his knee. He doesn’t speak. The traffic along the main road down Common Side is heavy and the lights coming towards us dazzle and dazzle. I say, “You all right? Not frightened?” but looking at him see his lit young face and say, “Sorry. I must be mad.”

  He says, “Queen of the Tambourine. The tangerine and nectarine and aubergine. Queen of the Glockenspiel and Jew’s Harp, Queen of the Night—where shall we go when we get there?”

  “The Big Wheel?”

  “The Big Wheel.”

  We park. It’s quite difficult, for there are cars everywhere.

  When at last we’re on our feet and walking towards the Fair, I keep stumbling in the boa-constrictors of the electricity supply under our feet. We pause to watch The Ultimate Whizzer—metal eggs spinning horizontally out on sticks, two faces to each egg. We watch the rushing Golden Horses. Guns crack on the rifle range, there are shrieks from the Ghost Train. Dishes smash at the Coconut Shy. The Merry-Go-Rounds and the Bumpums blare, and the little pedal-cars go round and round and round. The children swing the dummy wheels and the parents smile.

  I buy two tickets for the Big Wheel and strap myself in. Barry takes his place alongside. Up we go, jerkily at first, step by step as other people are strapped in below. When every compartment is full, each bell of the tambourine, we begin to move smoothly, up and up, then faster and faster, then down and down, and it’s soon an exciting, windswept, regular roll. Below us is all the spilledout electric jewellery of the Fair, beyond that the dark of the Common, beyond that the map of the lighted world. We spin in the warm wind and we shall spin forever.

  “Hey-up now,” says Barrry. “What’s this then?”

  There’s a hitch. A hiccup. The Big Wheel judders and almost stops. It picks up again, and smoothly, smoothly we spin.

  Then there’s a cracking, tearing sound and the Wheel shakes and rocks. It slows and then stops and all the lights of the Fair go out.

  We sit, and at first it’s quiet, but then shouts and screams float faintly up. Our little buggy, our compartment, is balancing right at the top of the Wheel, at twelve o’clock, and the wind blows through the struts below us battering and complaining. We both look up at the stars and the enormous night.

  “You had better tell it all,” says Barry.

  “Must I?”

  “You know you must.”

  And so I say:

  “There is no number thirty-four Rathbone Road. Once there was, but it went years ago when a bomb fell on it in the War and left it ruined. What was left of it remained standing for years and I remember it being pulled down and bulldozed. The land was bought by the people in the houses on either side. Dulcie’s house and Dickie’s house took in half each. Their gardens are bigger than the others in the road.

  “There has been no family at number thirty-four since 1941, and goodness knows who they were. I made up all ‘Joan’s’ family—Charles and Sarah and Simon. It was the family I wished was mine. No Sarah ever rang to ask my help from Oxford. I did go to Oxford one day to an imaginary Sarah. She occupied my old room. I went to see it. Then I wandered round the colleges—there was no Doctor Gauntlet: I don’t know where I manufactured him. I did call in on my old tutor, Mabel Pye, but I was much too difficult for her I’m afraid. I just took the train home.

  “There w
as no Kurd. There was no Tom Hopkin, though I wish there had been. Perhaps he was the wraith of my beloved Henry of long ago. Oh, and there was no—this last one, the jogger who goes trotting about, Miss Ingham’s Croupier. At least I suppose he’s real but he never climbed through my window to make love to me.”

  “You didn’t tell me about him.”

  “And there was no dog. No second dog. Only my own dog, mine and Henry’s. There was no Simon doing demon laughter in the Church.

  “The letters I wrote to Joan I never posted after the first few—and goodness knows where those went. I never put my address on the back. They’re probably mystifying foreign embassies here and there. The rest of the letters are in my desk, or just tossing about the house. I think I’ve told you almost everything that’s in them, one way and another. I’ll burn them now. They’re pretty sick.”

  More and louder shouts are floating up now from the ground and sounds that might be fire-engines and police cars. Looking over the side of our little seat I say, “I nearly drowned a baby today.”

  “Eliza—be careful.”

  “It’s all right. It’s true. That really did happen. I nearly killed a baby. In the mere. It won’t ever happen again.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because Henry came back. We talked to each other aloud instead of in horrible secret. I am righted now.”

  “So now, Eliza, tell me everything else that was true.”

  “Well, everything else is ‘true.’ That’s to say everyone in the Road is true except for at number thirty-four. Miss Ingham is true, the Gargerys, the Robins, the Baxters and Lady Gant. Deborah next door, Bernard and Lola—though I think I made up that daughter. Angela was real, all right. So was Bella and all the unmarried mother bit and The Shires and the Chaplain. And the Penumbras.”

  “Nick Fish?”

  “Well, of course he’s true, and Vanessa and the children and the missing Granny in Bangladesh. I couldn’t have made her up, there’s no story in her at all. And anyway—you know Nick yourself. Oh yes, Pixie Leak and the Creative Writing Class are real.”

  “I’m glad they’re real. They lightened a dark day.”

  “I think that’s the lot.”

  “So now,” he says, “tell me the start.”

  “It’s getting cold up here.”

  “Come on.”

  “I can’t. It’s too cold. I can’t think.”

  “You must.”

  “I didn’t bring a coat with me. I just rushed straight out when Mother Ambrosine rang me. I ran to you.”

  “Don’t flatter. You will be cured tonight, or never.”

  I cross my arms and put my hands into my armpits. I moan and sway. I look down at the dark.

  “I began to lose the baby after four months of pregnancy. It was over twenty years ago. I was thirty-one. Henry was away. Without me. He was already beginning to go away without me, though we neither of us were very happy about it then. He was far away. In India, I called in old Doctor St. Thomas, the father of this one and very much like him. He said, ‘Well, there’s really very little we can do. It’s much better that these things should come away, you know. Nature’s way when there’s something wrong.’

  “‘We’ve been trying for years.’

  “‘Such a shame.’

  “‘Could I go into hospital?’

  “‘I don’t think it would make any difference you know.’

  “‘Do I stay in bed?’

  “‘Well, you could stay in bed. Or you could get up. The result, I’m bound to say, will be very likely the same. But let’s not be despondent. You may hold on to it. Do just as you like. Stay in bed or get up. Whatever feels right. Not alone in the house are you?’

  “‘Well, yes.’

  “‘Ah well, never mind, there’s always someone in the Surgery.’

  “Ten days later he called again. I was still creeping about bleeding. I hadn’t written to Henry, he would have been so desolate and maybe, after all, there was nothing to worry about. I had some pain the next day and rang the Surgery. The receptionist said that she thought that the doctor had had a word with the hospital but that there was no bed at present. Dr. St. Thomas rang later and said, ‘Soldier on. Soldier on. Nil desperandum.’

  “Across the Road was my haunt, the garden of the ruined house, number thirty-four. For a year or so I had felt it was mine. Virginia creeper had grown up over most of its walls. It was turning blood-red that October and sending long pretty fingers over the windows. There was even still some furniture in the rooms. In a glass room to the side, a ballroom in Victorian times . . .”

  “Not imagining this now, are you, Eliza?”

  “You are young, Barry. There are still houses with ballrooms. Most of them have become granny-flats. In this ballroom there was a cobwebby stack of chairs. They were gold. Flimsy. It looked as if the house had ended after a celebration of the end of the world.

  “Oh, I loved the garden. It was very wild. It had been terraced once, but now you could hardly tell. The old lawns were lumpy, like meadows, and roses had nearly strangled the fruit trees. Even so late there were some surprising flowers, very bright and brazen.

  “Down in the end of the garden under the trees was a summer-house with some cane furniture dropping to bits. Beyond, in the sunshine in a dell of their own was a row of broken beehives. One was surrounded by mounds of dead black bees. They looked like currants. A new swarm had taken over that hive and was clearing out old comb, purifying and singing. From the top of the garden, the half-house looked down from its one drunken eye through the strands of creeper. On its terrace, what was left of it, lavender and cat-mint flourished in huge sweet pillows. Even now, so late, there were roses and the bees busy with them.

  “I had become miserable in bed with my aching back. The ache kept coming and going. The Road was still. I got up and put on my dressing-gown and went across the Road. The terrace round at the back was sunny and warm. I looked in at the deserted rooms, the ghostly ballroom. I imagined people like my parents there. I imagined them out on the terrace in the dusk, drinking cocktails. Noel Coward clothes. Laughter. I walked from the terrace down the lawn. I passed the summerhouse. I came to the apple-trees. Little crimson apples. Very hard and bitter. Very pretty. I held tight first to one tree, then another and thought, I suppose this couldn’t be it? Nobody had told me that even as early as four months, you go into labour. I had thought it would be a quick thing.

  “Then it was over. In the end it was a quick thing. Or at any rate, it was partly over because the thing I had voided, with its little hands was still joined on to me. I lay, wet and sweaty, and out from behind the beehive there came an old tortoise walking straight towards me. They’re not slow, you know. Not at all. It came on, rather fast. Very steady on its long obscene legs, sharp claws. It lifted its snake head in the air. It had an old man’s mean little mouth. Black pin-head eyes. Up on its toes it came.

  “So I screamed, and tried to kick it away, but it came on and the bees buzzed in the luminous migraine dahlias.

  “I passed out. I’d left my front door open across the Road and in the end—in the early evening I think—somebody found me. Henry flew home. He couldn’t have been kinder. I think he and the doctor had a consultation, but I didn’t ask. I know there was something, but never mind.”

  “You must go on.”

  “I believed. I believe—that they. I’d read that foetuses are sold for research. I heard the doctor say that mine had been very perfect.”

  “I’m sure it was.”

  “I should have asked. I should have been asked.”

  “Forget it now, Eliza.”

  “They didn’t tell me what sex it was. I didn’t ask that either. I still don’t know. l’ve never told anyone about the tortoise. They’re harmless creatures. They’re herbivores, I think—I never really dared find out. It was the claws. Yet I do know that it was nobody’s fault. It was the slightest thing compared with what our ancestors . . . It was just life. They were such
claws. This is all true, Barry.”

  “It is all true,” he says. “And it is all over. And you are disentangled.”

  “Barry—you are true?”

  “I was always true. I was there and true from the first time we met in The Hospice. A poor specimen but of flesh and blood. For what that’s worth.”

  “It’s worth so much. Barry, shall I ever see you anymore?”

  He’s become not in the least faint or fuzzy but most brilliantly present. “I’ll always be with you somewhere,” he says, and is gone.

  The seat beside me is empty. Pack and boy have vanished. I touch the cushion. It is undented and cold. I take out the awful earrings I bought in the Indian shop on Putney Bridge, where I bought the dress and the sweets. I place them on the seat. The last trace and breath of Barry registers approval. The very last whisper of him says, “And when you get home, remember. There will be one last thing to face. A hard thing. But only to do with this last hour.”

  The Big Wheel shakes itself. There is a wracking shudder. The lights of the Fair come on again and the tin-can music starts to play. Step by step, slowly and daintily, we are all brought down from our nests, helped out, made much of. There’s a crowd. Firemen shout. Someone puts me down flat on my back on the grass, and I lie there, spread.

  I hear excited voices and looking sideways I see feet. Four of them belong to two sentinels each holding a torch of candy-floss almost the size of its bearer. The sentinels run off. They return and I see between their feet, a larger figure and a pair of dirty trainers with a broken lace. The sentinels get down on their knees beside me and Amanda strokes my hair. Over Nick Fish’s shoulder peeps the baby, like arrows in their quiver.

  “Oh no,” I hear the Curate cry. “It’s Eliza Peabody!”

  Morning of mornings

  They got me home, dear Joan, but I did not go to bed. I took a bath with scented soap and I ate some strawberries that I’d found on my doorstep, left by the man who has everything, with a note. My dog was kind to me, faithful bewildered dog. I shall put the rugs back for him, and the furniture and the cushions. Long-suffering, nice animal.