Reading Madame Bovary

by Amanda Lohrey

  When Patrick’s turn came he dipped his fingers into the sauce and daubed his face in brown chocolate streaks, flapping his arms and legs and whooping around the cabin like a lithe little demon.

  Their last night.

  It had been a hard day on the locks and the kids were subdued, almost sombre. ‘They know they’re going home,’ Tom muttered, as he settled into the sleeping bag, ‘and they’re not looking forward to it.’

  Jesus, I am, she thought. She was looking forward to a hot shower. But the kids seemed to be in another space altogether. A few of them were sullen, angry even at the prospect of having to leave the boat.

  In the middle of the night she was woken by a tap on the door. Tom was a heavy sleeper. He didn’t stir. ‘Who is it?’ she called in a pronounced whisper.

  ‘It’s Ruth, Miss. It’s Joel. He’s acting all funny.’

  When she entered the main cabin she couldn’t see the boy at first and shone her torch into the corner behind the table. There was Joel, curled up in a foetal ball on the damp floor, keening in a low, shivering moan.

  In a dismissive gesture she patted Ruth on the shoulder and nodded in the direction of the bunks at the far end. Then she moved towards the boy.

  ‘What’s the matter, Joel?’

  The boy looked through her.

  Again she asked, and again, but he would not reply, nor would he respond to her requests that he return to his bunk. Even when she crouched beside him and looked directly into his eyes he continued to stare ahead with a glazed expression, his arms locked around his sides. It occurred to her then that she should wake Tom, that the situation might be beyond her, but Tom had a long drive ahead of him the next day and it was worth at least one more try. So she began quietly, so the others couldn’t hear, to talk coaxingly to Joel; about the trip, about what a good time they had all had and how it was a pity to spoil it now, about how, whatever was bothering him, he could talk to Tom in the morning and she was sure that Tom would be able to help in some way. All the while she could feel the chill from the damp floorboards rising up through the soles of her feet, through the thin skein of her thermals and into the small of her back. Her feet were turning numb. Damn this kid, she thought. She would try a more forceful approach and if that didn’t work she would have to send Ruth for Tom. Squatting on her haunches she grabbed hold of his arms and attempted awkwardly to raise him to his feet, but with a sudden jerk he twisted to one side and then fell back against the wall of the cabin so that his head made a dull thud against the wood. For a second or two he lay there and then, like a puppet, he sat up as if in shock, with one hand held gingerly to his head.

  Kirsten was relieved to see that he was conscious. ‘Will you get back into your bunk now, Joel?’

  The boy shook his head.

  This was too much. ‘Ruth!’ she hissed. ‘Bring me the blankets off his bunk.’

  Soon two outstretched arms were handing her a mound of grey blankets, disgusting army-ration serge for those without sleeping bags. She disentangled a blanket from the pile and laid it across Joel.

  What now? She couldn’t possibly leave him here like this.

  There was only one thing to do and that was to snuggle into the corner against him and draw the other blanket around her.

  The boy made no resistance. Indeed, he had become calm. Before long his breathing slowed and deepened and she knew he was asleep.

  Good, she thought, and allowed herself a slow exhaling sigh. Thank you. Thank you, God. It was their very last night and all they had to do was get through it without further mishap. There were so many things that could have gone wrong, and hadn’t, and she had played her part well, all things considered, all natural obstacles taken into account … and with this thought she settled beneath the blanket, her head drooped and she began a slow drifting into sleep, but not before she caught a glimpse of herself as a figure from one of those sentimental prints of the kind that had hung in her great-grandmother’s house. ‘Young maiden comforts orphan in the night’.

  And she felt almost virtuous. She was cold, she was uncomfortable but she had done a good deed.

  What woke her was the sound of the splash.

  It wasn’t loud, but instantly she knew what that sound meant. She opened her eyes and glanced instinctively to her left where Joel had been sleeping, but the corner of the boat was empty. As she flung back the sliding door of the cabin she shouted, ‘Tom! Tom!’ and glanced hastily up and down the narrow deck. Then she saw him, a shadowy figure flailing in silence by the edge of the lock and seeming to sink before her eyes. ‘Tom!’ she shouted again, and at the moment of shouting leapt from the deck of the barge.

  The icy shock of the water rose up through her blood like voltage.

  Later it would seem as if at that moment she were lifted off the deck by some blind force, for she had no sense of agency, of any operation of will. She simply leapt into the black water and grabbed hold of the lump that was rising up to the surface. At first she thought Joel might be unconscious but the minute she grasped hold of him he began to howl and writhe. Fortunately he was puny, but he bit her on the left hand so that for a moment she lost her grip and had to struggle – treading water all the time – to lock her right arm around his skinny neck. And still Joel fought her, lashing out with his feet. It was a full moon, and an eerie lambent glow bathed the canal and surrounding fields in a ghostly sepia gloom. Those few moments when they thrashed around in the dark chill of the English countryside seemed like an eternity until, in a sudden moment of apprehension, she understood that the boy wanted to die.

  By this time Tom and the other children were crowding onto the deck. Some of the boys had leapt onto the embankment for a better view and stood shivering in their pyjamas. Tom, meanwhile, was kneeling on the deck, preparing to grab hold of Joel as Kirsten manoeuvred him alongside the barge. Assisted by Terry, he managed to drag the dripping Joel onto the deck and by the time Kirsten had climbed aboard they had wrapped Joel in a blanket. ‘Hold onto him,’ Tom said to Terry, and a look of grim understanding passed between them. Then, turning in consternation to Kirsten: ‘Are you okay?’

  It was a feeble question and she resented it. If it hadn’t been for him and his bloody excursion she would not now be standing here in a state almost of shock. ‘Go to the cabin,’ he began, ‘use my towel to dry off. I’ll deal with Joel and I’ll be along in a minute. I’ll get Ruth to make you a hot drink.’

  ‘You can’t just leave him there unsupervised.’ She was shaking violently.

  ‘True.’ He hesitated. ‘I’ll probably have to sleep in there for the rest of the night. On the floor. But I’ll come back to the cabin first.’

  Without a word Kirsten returned to the bat cave. Her eyes felt as if they were coated in icy grit and she had a headache from the chill of the water. From the neck down she was numb. Standing, dripping, outside the door, she stripped off and bundled her sodden clothes into a nearby bucket. Inside she towelled herself down as briskly as she could and put on her warmest gear. The torch had disappeared. Too shaky and exhausted to zip the doona up into a sleeping pouch, she wrapped it tight around her and then, almost falling onto the air mattress, she lay there bent in a foetal arc and could not control her trembling.

  After a while Ruth appeared with a tin mug and set it down beside Kirsten’s head. ‘Here you are, Miss,’ she said. ‘They put Joel to bed in one of the bunks and Sir is lying with him so’s he can’t move.’

  ‘You’d better go back,’ Kirsten whispered. ‘I’ll be okay.’ But when she sat up and took a sip from the mug it was full of a tepid and sickly cocoa that made her gag.

  Tom did not return.

  In the morning the kids were mute as they packed up their kits and went about cleaning the interior of the main cabin. Joel had been placed under Terry’s watchful eye but for the moment he appeared okay; he had eaten some toast for breakfast and would nod when spoken to by Tom. Mostly the kids ignored him, deep in their own reluctance to leave the boat. They had the
air of mourners in the wake of a funeral procession. As the barge glided and bumped into the mooring dock they gazed with blank, resigned faces at the big green bus that awaited them. Then, hoisting their packs over their shoulders, they lined up by the cabin door and awaited Tom’s command to walk the plank.

  Kirsten felt like death. Her head throbbed, her throat was raw, her limbs ached in every muscle and joint and she knew that some bug or virus had ambushed her in the night. All she wanted was to crawl under a blanket but she knew she must stand and say goodbye to the kids. She waved from the open door of the bat cave as Tom stood at the end of the plank and shook hands with each boy and girl as they trooped off, and she saw a gruff male courtliness in her lover that she hadn’t seen before … but was too sick to hold this thought for long.

  After they had waved the kids off on the bus she fell into Tom’s car, aching in every bone. It was clear that Joel must travel back with them and Terry was delegated to the back seat to sit beside him and keep an eye out for sudden moves. Tom was afraid that the boy might open the door and attempt to leap out, but for most of the drive home he seemed almost normal, as if that nocturnal parabola of watery flight had purged him of his demon. At least for now. Kirsten was beyond caring. All the way back to London she drifted in and out of a painful sleep in which it felt as if her body were encased in a rotating drum of fire. Tom, exhausted, drove like a maniac.

  She spent the next three days in bed.

  It was the sickest she had ever been in her life. All day and all night she lay in her track pants and polar-fleece jacket under the thick doona and still she was cold. Her head felt as if it were being compressed by an iron weight while a current of raking pain tormented her back and joints. Her fever it seemed came and went, and came again, and with it a series of dreams so torrid that at times it was hard to tell whether she was dreaming or hallucinating. One late afternoon she dreamed that she was kneeling on top of the main cabin of the narrow boat and banging with her fist on the door, and the door was stuck so that she had to break in through the hatch. And there they all were, the children lying on their bunks like angels, their eyes closed beatifically while through the open hatch poured a torrent of milk so that in their sleep they were force-fed, their skin bathed in rivulets of cream, their eyelids glazed with a thick white coating. Not long after, Tom came home from school and sat by her bed, muttering about Joel who had gone berserk in the playground. Joel? Who was Joel? Then the doctor arrived; a shadowy figure, like an apparition in a cloud of warm pink fog.

  On the third day, the fever broke. In the early morning she woke, feeling better. Instinctively she fumbled for the torch, but of course it wasn’t there. The book was there, Madame Bovary, looking much the worse for wear, mottled and wavy from where hot tea had been spilled on the cover. Poor Emma, she thought, poor Emma. Too young to be the wife and mother of a plain man in a small village; too constrained too early. Thank God that she, Kirsten, wasn’t married. She wouldn’t marry Tom, and perhaps not anyone. And with that thought, suddenly into her head came the image of a narrow boat, not the boat they had just returned from, which had no name, but the photograph in the book; that strange picture of the Gort. There in the gloom she could see the young bargemaster’s wife at the door of her dark hollow; could see the tightly wound ringlets that framed her head, the prim white collar, the neat cuffs and the wide serge skirt of dull grey, so wide it skimmed the sides of the doorway. How on earth had she borne it? And how solemnly she gazed back at her onlooker, though the seriousness in her eyes was an enigma. How steadily she held herself before the camera, because it took so long to make an exposure then, and it was impossible to hold a smile for long without feeling foolish. And perhaps, after all, she was not inclined. It was unbelievable that anyone could live in that dark, confined space, never mind make a home of it for a child. Day after day, on the drab water, so flat and oily in its man-made channels; so dense with the sense of enclosure, of brick and tar and charcoal and smoke. And in her arms, still, the white swaddled baby, its blank face all but erased save for those eyes like two sepia smudges, staring out in hope.

  Kirsten sighed, and turned over onto her flank. Time to let the long night of water-sleep draw in on her, and burying her face she snuggled down deep into her padded cocoon. Now, once again, she could feel the buoyant curve of the narrow boat beneath her, rocking gently to the familiar slop, slop of water against the stern, while outside there hummed the deep stillness of the countryside. And all the while she was moving inwards, floating on a slow tide of surrender, floating towards the turning wheel of the lock. Sleep, she thought, savouring the word … sleep. And drifting off into the limp repose of the convalescent, she wondered if that baby had ever learned to swim.

  Ground Zero

  All his life he had been restless and discontented, haunted by a fear of boredom. There were various incidents that need not be recounted here, just the stuff of early manhood, but beneath them ran a powerful current of unfocused anger that never left him, even at the best of times. Much of that seemed to fall away once he was married; in the years following his marriage to Zoë it was as if he were on a roll and he experienced one of the most uncomplicated periods of his life. He felt at last that he was maturing, that he was settling equably into early middle age, that the worst of the devil had gone out of him. He had fallen into something called normality. He had grown up.

  And then, in the ’80s, he descended into hell. Everything at work began to jar, to shudder and crack under the pressure of the recession. Sometimes it was as if pieces of him and everyone else were strewn around the floor and they scarcely had enough energy to pick themselves up, like broken tin men, and put themselves back together again for the evening drive home.

  Anger began to fester in him, slow and insidious. In his sleep he ground his teeth and would wake some mornings with his jaw clamped and aching. On the drive home, stuck in traffic, he would bang with a loose fist on the steering wheel of the car, robotically, over and over.

  In his twenties he had thrown himself into his work in a gung-ho way and it had not been difficult to cover his tracks during the black periods. But now the future was no longer an ocean of possibility, more like a river where the waterline was lowering in the face of recurrent drought.

  He was forty-three and he was stalled. Too often, mostly around three o’clock in the afternoon, he felt as if time was standing still for him. He wondered if he was having a mid-life crisis. For the first time ever he began to question the meaning of his work. He felt his mortgage like a leaky barge, creaking beneath him. There were mornings when he was fuggy; late afternoons when he was brittle. And then a strange thing happened: his ambition began to bore him. He saw that there was just work and more work, the next project and the next, and the one after that. His old ennui returned, only now the feeling was worse. There was no longer The Future to look forward to. He was in it. The Future had arrived, and it was no different, no more satisfying than the rest of his life. It was not the repository of some special meaning, some revelation that was the reward for stamina, for hard work and for being sharp.

  The anger rose in him, anger seemingly about nothing.

  He began to have night rages. He would wake in the dark with his fists clenched or with that aching jaw. Sometimes he wouldn’t even get to sleep; he’d be over-tired and living on his nerves and a problem at work would have him lying awake, bug-eyed in the early morning. He became increasingly sensitive to noise and the least little thing would set him off into a hair-trigger tantrum. One night, he was disturbed at three in the morning by a shouting match below his window. In that area the streets were alive until sunrise and it was a rare night that he wasn’t woken at least once – sometimes, depending on the state of his nerves, into a fury. That night he had thrown open the front door and shouted at two men and a woman who were arguing drunkenly beside the cast-iron fence. One of them had moved, threateningly, to open the gate and that gesture of transgression had sent him over the edge. Indiff
erent to the fact that he was naked, he’d moved instinctively towards the stranger, ready for whatever might be coming, and gashed his toe on the edge of the brass sweeper that had come away from the front door. He could feel the blood trickling over the nail as he kept his eyes on the man who at that moment was backing off, retreating in an aria of screamed obscenities to cover his loss of face.

  Closing the door he turned back for the bedroom, only to find Zoë at the bottom of the stairs, furious. ‘You idiot!’ she seethed, ‘they could have worked you over well and truly! You don’t know what they’re on or what they’re carrying. Or if they’ll come back!’

  He said nothing. Bandaged his toe. Poured himself a whiskey, and went and sat in the darkness of the living room. The toe throbbed all night.

  He knew he was taking it out on Zoë. He withdrew from her emotionally; he fought with her over money; he neglected his share of the chores; he started dropping into the eleven-o’clock sessions at the local movie house, although sometimes he would fall asleep after the movie began and have to be awakened by an usher. Then he would slink home and Zoë would be awake. She would lie on her side and say nothing.

  They slept with their backs to one another.

  Each day his anger began to bite into him corrosively, like an acid train, stopping at all stations: lungs, heart, liver, spleen, kidneys, and the whole messy labyrinth of his guts.

  He was in good health, he had a nice wife, a son he doted on and a good job. Why wasn’t he happy?