by MARY HOCKING
Pale sunlight slanted through the trees, played delicately on the snow and traced a film of gold on the branches of the apple tree in the middle of the lawn. It was a pleasing effect but conveyed no promise of warmth. If anything, the sun’s impotence served only as a chill reflection of the cold.
After the other party-goers had left, Frances remained to help with the washing up. Florence was not deceived by this gesture. Frances was wearing a chunky cream roll-necked sweater, none too clean, and black corduroys and Florence was convinced she had come in this unfestive attire with the set purpose of tempting Nicholas out of doors. Neither of them had put in an appearance while the party was in progress. The only reason the girl had installed herself at the sink was because she intended to stay to tea. Florence said, ‘And how are you going to get home?’ Florence looked people straight in the eye when she spoke – even if it were only a matter of querying a recipe she would bear down on them with the whole force of her personality.
Frances, resolute if uncomfortable beneath this scrutiny, said that she would walk.
‘If you don’t mind my saying so, I think that is rather inconsiderate.’ Florence flung this opinion down like a gauntlet. ‘You must know we couldn’t possibly let you go on your own in this weather.’
‘I go out on my own in all weathers when you aren’t here,’ Frances retorted with more spirit than courtesy. When Frances had arrived, Florence, observing that she was dark for an English girl, had comforted herself with the reflection that this was not the flashing Mediterranean darkness, but the darkness of one of those velvety little animals rarely glimpsed abroad. Now, she noted with alarm how the flush of rose in the cheeks livened the face. ‘But if there’s any problem,’ Frances went on, still uppity, ‘I’m sure Thomas would come over for me. He’ll have to take Jasper for a walk, anyway.’
Florence inspected the stains on a mug with interest. Frances was surprised that her response should silence Florence and felt she must have contravened some social convention as well as that of outstaying one’s welcome. Her inspection completed, Florence said jovially, ‘In which case there would be a confrontation between Jasper and Tobias.’
‘It wouldn’t be much of a confrontation. Jasper’s afraid of Tobias.’
The kitchen door opened and Sophia came in carrying a tray she had brought down from Konrad’s room.
‘But he hasn’t eaten anything,’ Florence protested. ‘And I made that soup specially.’
‘Never mind. He’s sleeping now.’
‘And Anita?’ The rejection of her soup had upset Florence. Her energy was suddenly spent and she looked crumpled as any elderly woman at the end of a party. The hair which had gleamed brightly while it stayed in place was now forlorn as an abandoned bird’s nest and the muscles at the sides of the jaw sagged like over-filled purses. ‘Where is Anita?’ she asked fretfully. ‘She can’t spend the whole of Christmas being inconsolable. We should count ourselves fortunate. If Terence was going to have an accident, it’s better he had it somewhere other than here, all things considered.’
Sophia picked up a teacloth and a handful of cutlery. ‘Why don’t you have a rest, Florence. You’ve worked so hard. Frances and I will finish in here.’
Sophia and Frances worked in silence for some time after Florence departed. Sophia, who had allowed the party to take its course, seemed not so much tired as distanced. She laid the familiar objects on the kitchen table as if she had been away for a long time and was surprised to find them still in use. Every so often she stopped, staring down at the pattern of the oilcloth covering and once she stroked it gently, then fisted her fingers. The muscles of jaw and throat tensed with the effort to swallow.
Frances looked out of the window, watching the slanting shadows of the trees, the blue of evening encroaching on the sparkling sunlit lawn, hoping for the first sight of Nicholas, who had gone to see if he could dig at least one of the cars free. He appeared to be in no hurry. She said, fiercely wringing out the dishcloth, ‘It’s a load of old rubbish, all that business about lovers choosing one night of love as worth the price of eternal torment. It’s not even worth the price of a flat battery.’
It seemed unsurprising that she should say this in front of Sophia, since it was Sophia’s presence which had wrenched the words from her, just as Sophia had so often led people on by saying, ‘You think . . .?’
‘You don’t perhaps . . .?’ and then the other person would pick up that floating sentence and complete it for her. This time she had done it without being aware of any involvement, and she had to drag her attention to Frances as if there were a heavy weight on her eyes.
‘You put that into my mind,’ Frances said.
Sophia did not confront the girl as Florence had done. She studied her sideways from beneath lowered lids, a wry, tentative smile hovering about her lips as if waiting permission to share a discovery which she wondered if Frances might be able to accept. Her appraisal of the girl was tactful. She said, ‘I seem to remember that in Hassan it was the woman who made the choice.’
‘You think love never comes first with a man?’
‘Do you think it should? Would you want Nicholas so much if you thought he would be with you always, that nothing else called him?’
Frances looked with aching intensity at the golden light on the apple tree. ‘I want one perfect moment.’
‘A lifetime of imperfect moments wouldn’t sustain you?’
‘I expect it would sustain me a whole lot better. Is that what you’re telling me?’
‘I have nothing to tell you, Frances. It’s just that I’m not sure what you mean by perfect.’
‘I call that perfect,’ pointing beyond the window. ‘Now, this minute, while the glow lasts.’
But already the golden light was withdrawing and the apple tree was no longer transformed. And Nicholas, was he, then, only the bearer of this much-desired thing, not himself the glory? ‘I don’t mind how it is,’ she said stubbornly. ‘I only know I want it. He can go away afterwards, I know he will go away next week, and I shan’t make a misery for him or myself. I shan’t blame.’
Sophia, looking at her face, thought that there was much of the child in Frances still – a child dazzled by the tinsel and the gold and silver balls, a child crying for the fairy on the Christmas tree.
‘Let’s warm up some of that punch,’ said Sophia, who was not above such remedies for sickness of heart. ‘It’s supposed to be for tomorrow, but we have plenty.’
‘I’m very selfish,’ Frances said as she was sipping the punch; this was more an acknowledgement than a cause for contrition. ‘I haven’t asked about Konrad. I knew I couldn’t in front of Florence and then I forgot.’
Sophia said, ‘Never mind,’ and Frances accepted this as an absolution and forgot about Konrad again.
Out in the garden, Nicholas had finished work on his car. The light was failing. He put the shovel back in the boot and walked slowly down the garden path, pausing for a moment to look at the snow, deep blue in between the trees. Frances saw him standing there, hands in pockets, like a man on a street corner, trying to solve the great problem of nowhere to go.
It was early evening. The cottage was quiet. Florence was aware of the stillness as soon as she woke, indeed it seemed to have woken her, this absence of meaningful activity. She lay for a time listening to the creaks and groans as the cold tightened its grip on the bones of the cottage. Soon, she heard Nicholas return from taking Frances home and she said angrily, ‘She means to have him.’ There seemed nothing she could do about it which would not antagonise Thomas Challoner. This was one of the most interesting men she had met in a long time and his presence was the only thing that would make Christmas Day bearable. She would have to suffer Frances. Of course, the girl was not attractive – she lacked charm and seemed to see no need for it – but Florence sensed that she was very strong. She was the sort of person who brought about the things she wanted. Nicholas was hopelessly weak, but his very weakness had helped him t
o escape before. Now, Florence was aware of some weakening of his resolve to escape. She was not particularly perceptive where other people were concerned provided their interests did not conflict with her own; but she was very quick to pick up any signals that meant danger to herself. The hairs on the back of her neck had risen at her first sight of Terence. Now she sensed desperation in Nicholas as an animal senses fear.
Florence sat up on one elbow. Her lamp was burning low and the symbolism was not lost on her. She felt a need to cry, something she had rarely experienced since childhood. Why was nothing happening? Why had no one switched on the radio – there must be a carol service on one of the wavelengths, surely? Sophia had a transistor, but perhaps the battery was not working. If that was the case, Nicholas must get into town and buy one; they couldn’t go through Christmas with no television and no radio. And what was Anita doing? And why was Konrad sleeping so much? It must be the painkillers. Sophia must telephone the doctor and ask if they could cut down on them. She pulled on her dressing gown and opened the door cautiously in case Tobias was outside, awaiting the opportunity to get into a warm bed. Faintly, she could hear voices in the kitchen. She went down the stairs – narrowly missing her daughter as Anita went into Konrad’s room – adding up in her mind the things Nicholas could do while he was in town.
On the mantelshelf in Konrad’s room there was a wooden carving of a boy playing a fiddle to a bear. Anita had not noticed it standing there on the previous occasion when she had come into the room. Now she went to the mantelshelf and stared at the carving. Both the boy and the bear danced: the boy, one leg crooked sideways, was ugly and graceless; the bear, forepaws spread at shoulder level, one pointed toe crossing the other, was nimble as a Scottish dancer. Although it was beautifully carved, there was a zestful crudeness in the figures, particularly that of the boy. Anita remembered the little piece well; as a child it had fascinated her because it was at once droll and macabre.
Where had it come from? She was sure it had not been made in England. It was old; once it had been painted, but now only a few flakes of green and red and brown remained. Had it belonged to Konrad’s father, his mother? She moved to the bed, as though he might yet provide the answer. ‘The dancing boy,’ she said softly. ‘Whose was it originally? Where did it come from?’ She felt her own history was tied up in the little carving. As a child she had not been curious about her parents’ background – perhaps because her mother had talked so much about her own childhood and how undervalued she had been because ‘I am one of the Marthas of the world . . .’ All her memories of her father were centred in herself: her father teaching her to ride a bicycle, fetching her from parties, telling her stories, dressing up as Father Christmas at her own children’s party. As a psychologist, she knew that children’s pictures of their parents tend to be self-centred, concerned with their own care, protection, amusement; children imagine that their parents have no life other than that in which they themselves figure. She knew also that this illusion tends to persist in the face of the evidence as children become adults. The last remnant of childhood is in the parent. Even her own emancipated generation was no exception, using their parents as a back-stop and imagining them relatively ageless, as able at seventy to fetch and carry, care and provide as they had been in their prime.
All this Anita knew. But where her father was concerned her powers of analysis deserted her. Just as she herself had never truly escaped from her mother, so she in her turn had never let her father go. When she had grown away from him, it was as though he had ceased to function once her back was turned. Perhaps the fact that he had no roots in England, no demonstrable past in the form of parents, brothers, sisters, that no letters came bearing foreign stamps, that there were no photographs to which he could point and say, ‘This is where I lived as a child,’ perhaps all this had contributed to her attitude. Yet, even allowing for that, her lack of curiosity now struck her as unnatural. She had never been interested in her foreign grandparents, had never asked about the place where he was born, and he had never talked about that distant childhood, perhaps had not been able to. She did not know how bad his memories were. Although he was a Catholic, there was Jewish blood in the family and none of his relatives had survived the war. But he had told her stories with a Russian background, several of them about circus life. As she listened to those strange tales, which must have been told to him by his mother or even one of his grandmothers, was she learning something of the family history? Or had he himself, possibly because he could do it no other way, recreated the past in those stories?
‘I need to know,’ she said. ‘The stories you told me when I was a child, did you make them up or were they handed down to you?’
He lay still, his breathing a little laboured, but not painfully so, each breath expelled with the sort of noise Tobias made when he was trying to get rid of a fur ball in his throat.
She took his hand. ‘I need to know because I love you,’ she said. His fingers pressed her hand. It was the kind of thing a person might do when they were listening to music intently, yet wished to reassure a demanding, anxious companion.
She sat quietly, holding his hand, and as she did so a thought occurred to her. Wherever it was he came from all those years ago, he had brought one thing with him. She got up and returned to look at the carved figure, her interest kindled sharply. She was holding it in her hands when Sophia came into the room. Their eyes met and Sophia looked straight this time, no sidelong glance.
‘He has been here before,’ Anita said.
‘Yes.’
‘All those painting weekends?’
‘Yes.’
‘I don’t know how I feel about this.’ Anita seemed to address the remark to the boy with the fiddle, rather than Sophia. ‘My mother didn’t deceive him, you know; she’s just rather greedy. She could never leave one chocolate in the box.’
‘Did your mother ever ask him for particulars of where he went on those weekends?’
‘So long as he didn’t turn our attic spare room into a studio, I don’t think it bothered her where he painted. But she did believe he went away to paint.’
‘We can’t talk about this now. Later we may have to, but not now.’
She was quite without shame. Anita, who thought that older people unnecessarily complicated sex with feelings of guilt and the need to justify, was considerably put out by the lack of any such need in her aunt. She went out of the room, imagining her cup of woe to be filled to the brim, only to become aware as she went down the stairs of a terrible moaning coming from the kitchen. Here she found Nicholas and Florence, Florence was weeping over the table, rocking to and fro, while Nicholas stood by looking as if he were facing! a firing squad, gazing towards an eternity concealed behind the doors of the dresser.
Anita said, ‘What is this all about.’
Florence turned on her as if in the middle of a fierce argument. ‘Of course I knew; you didn’t think I didn’t know he was going to die? But not now.’ She turned away, cradling her breasts and rocking again. ‘Next week, perhaps, but not now.’
Anita looked at Nicholas.
He said wearily, ‘When we arrived and Sophia saw him, she sent for a priest. She said the blizzard would get worse and he mightn’t outlive it.’
‘So he has received the last rites?’ A person who was not Anita but whom she carried around with her and on whom she relied to create the right impression – on this occasion, calmness – addressed Nicholas. ‘Why didn’t you tell us?’
‘There’s hardly been an opportunity, has there? I thought it better to wait until we had a few quiet moments together, the three of us.’
‘When have we ever had one quiet moment together, let alone a few?’
‘How can you speak like that?’ Florence rose unsteadily from the table, slapping away the hand Nicholas stretched out to help her. ‘I have always had time for you; whenever you needed me I was there, ready with advice and comfort.’
‘But not to listen,’ Nicholas
said coldly. For a moment, the vagueness that blurred his features cleared as if a mist had lifted revealing a wintry prospect, its outlines pared to the bone, sharp and stark as it was unforgiving.
Florence put a hand to her breast, a gesture not entirely histrionic. She closed her eyes and made an effort to stem the weeping; sounds came from her windpipe like a person who has swallowed a pea the wrong way snatching for breath. Anita went to the sink and filled a glass with water. Florence drank, slopping the water down her chin and on to the front of her blouse. She thrust the empty glass at Anita and turned to Nicholas.
‘You’re upset by this. I understand.’ She patted his arm. ‘But you must pull yourself together. I’m going to need you.’
He backed away. Anita said, ‘Don’t be such a shit, Nicholas.’ Florence rounded on Anita. ‘I have asked you not to use that word. Have you no consideration for me, not even at this time?’ While Florence’s attention was distracted from him, Nicholas left the room.
Florence collapsed on to the kitchen chair, which rocked uneasily beneath the weight of her distress. ‘What is happening?’ she moaned. ‘What can be happening to me?’
‘You’d better go and lie down,’ Anita said.
‘You want to get rid of me. You want to push me out of the way.’
As this was exactly what Anita did want, she felt she could not persist. ‘Come in to the sitting-room, then. It will be more comfortable there.’
In the sitting-room, to Anita’s surprise, Florence sat quietly, staring first at one object and then another as if seeking a clue to her whereabouts. From time to time she shivered. When Anita went to pull the curtains, she said sharply, ‘No, leave them. This room is small enough as it is.’ Anita busied herself adjusting the oil lamp. The wick was burning low. ‘Darkness is all we need,’ she thought.
Florence said, ‘How can Sophia live here alone?’ The question was not rhetorical. ‘What does she do when we’re not here?’ This was her first essay in imagining other people existing when she was not present and she soon abandoned it. ‘It’s not natural. Not a natural way of life. I have always been a very natural woman.’ She went on talking, half to herself, plucking at the pleats of her kilt.
