The Backward Shadow

by Lynne Reid Banks

  My father’s relief that the New York scheme was not going into action at once was severely modified when I informed him of my immediate plans. He wrung his hands and moaned: ‘Why don’t you come and live here? What have I been working hard all my life for, if not to help my only child at a moment like this?’ Such melodramatic expressions were no part of his usual lexicon, so I knew he was under great stress, and I was very tempted to give in—it would have been so lovely just to relax into his arms, so to speak, and let him take care of all my problems, as I’d discovered during the short visit I’d been paying him. But once independence gets hold of you, it becomes like an obsession to which you cling when it’s impractical and stupid and even unkind to do so.

  So I put David in his battered carry-cot, set it on the back seat of the Galloping Maggot, and headed back for Surrey, to think.

  It was hard winter now. The track from the village was a crunchy morass of mud and ice; to maintain momentum (the tyres had no tread left and I was terrified of getting bogged down) I had to keep up a speed which resulted in the car leaping and bounding over the hidden ruts—I had to grip the lurching wheel with one hand and reach behind to pin the carry-cot down with the other. I was heartily glad to round the last bend and see the cottage, looking grey and forsaken with its masses of leafless creepers swarming up its walls like some creature about to overwhelm it, and its thatched eaves weeping icicles.

  I had been away a scant fortnight, but awful things had overtaken the poor little place in my absence. The last of everything in the garden had died, but that was inevitable, merely a gloomy prelude to what I would find inside. As I opened the door, a thin trickle of water came to meet me. Appalled, I followed it up the stairs, and found—what I might have expected—a burst pipe in the lavatory. The devastation was frightful—the whole floor (wood, of course) soaked and warped, the walls (plaster) soggy, the pipes rusty and a stench of damp everywhere. Going to my bedroom to get into some working-clothes, I made the cheering discovery that I had left the window unfastened; it had blown open in a gale, the bed was thoroughly wet (there was mildew on the eiderdown) and the carpet was apparently ruined. That the whole cottage was bitterly cold goes without saying.

  Before I could even think what action to take, David signified that he was chilled, tired and hungry. He was half on baby food now, and he liked everything nice and hot, which there really wasn’t time for, so I found a relatively dry spot in the living-room, sat down in it, ripped open my shirt with a distracted gesture and stuffed a nipple somewhat untenderly into his wailing jaws. While he had a snack, I made a plan of campaign. First, fires. Fortunately I’d left a supply of dry wood in all the woodboxes before I’d left, and there were electric fires that I could apply to the wetter areas in bathrooms and passages. Then, mops and pails, oh God! No, first, I’d better get a plumber. But how? I’d no idea where there was one. Oh, why had I been too mean to keep Mrs. Griffiths on while I was away? She would never have let this happen! These were the moments when a man about the place seemed not merely desirable, but utterly essential. A man would know, for instance, where the tap was that turned the water off at the main. It was probably outside somewhere, hidden among the frozen wet undergrowth surrounding the cottage. I would never find it, and meanwhile the water from the burst was still flowing.

  After bedding David down under a smother of blankets, I put on one of Addy’s ankle-length mackintoshes and gum-boots and ventured outside. I circled the cottage three times before I located the tap, cunningly hidden beneath an evergreen shrub which was leaning heavily against the wall. The tap, when I had fought my way through to it, was immovably stuck—I had to fetch a pair of pliers before it would budge, and by this time I was in such a temper I did something I hadn’t done all the time I’d been living there—namely, locked myself out. Smashing a window would have given me intense satisfaction at that moment, but unfortunately—or rather, mercifully—they were all diamond-pane so it wouldn’t have helped much. Instead I climbed back into the car, and drove furiously back to the village, skidding recklessly from side to side in the ruts. It was lighting-up time by then, and the plumber, when I at last located him with the aid of Mrs. Griffiths (who, to my relief, had managed not to lose her key in the interim) only agreed to come that night when I wept, wrung my hands, and told him my baby would get pneumonia. His wife, very naturally, took a dim view of the whole thing, and while the plumber was grumbling his way into his coat and scarf she sat silently looking me up and down and just as I was going out of the door said in clear, ominous tones: ‘Yers. I’ve heard of you.’ This transparent lifemanship ploy managed to wilt me as none of the more direct comments of my relations had ever succeeded in doing, and I drove back to the cottage in disconcerted silence while the plumber muttered and snuffled self-pityingly beside me, holding his battered old leather tool bag clanking on his knees.

  However, while he worked on the pipe, I built a roaring fire and made a hasty but rousing pot of tea. Twice I popped up to give him a chance to remark yet again: ‘Bitin’ bloody cold in here, isn’t it? Take a while to get rid o’ this damp. Pity you didn’t lag ’em.’ At last he came down, shivering ostentatiously. The living-room looked bright and cheerful, with the fire-light flickering on the walls and the curtains drawn; knowing I had interrupted his supper, I had prepared a hot toasted sandwich as well as the tea, and there was a discreet glass of whisky near the plate. He protested he couldn’t possibly stop, the missis was waiting, and then lingered in the doorway for half-an-hour while I brought the cup, plate and glass one by one from the table …

  When at last he’d gone, and I’d shut everything tight and lit all the fires I could produce (including an old primus stove), mopped up as much as I could, and checked that David was all right, I finally flopped down in the cretonne armchair before the fire and had a cup of tea myself. I was suddenly but completely exhausted, and once more close to inexplicable tears. It was not only the crises in the cottage, or what the plumber’s wife had said; there had been something vaguely disquieting about the plumber. I had suddenly had a most unpleasant feeling, when I gave him the whisky, that he—well, that he’d misunderstood what seemed to me the most ordinary courtesy when you’ve dragged a man out on a cold wet night. It was nothing he actually did, only that he straightened himself away from the door-jamb and looked at me through his rather low-slung eyebrows and winked; he took the glass and looked around, saying something like ‘You’ve got it right snug here, I will say,’ and followed this up with a sort of slow, knowing smile, and his eyes followed me back to the table. Impossible to explain why this made me so uncomfortable, but it did. After that I thought he would never go. He just stood in the doorway, sipping his whisky and watching me and talking slowly about nothing very much. He made me feel I was waiting for him to do something. I was; I was waiting, with increasing impatience, for him to leave, and when at last he did, and I had to offer to drive him home, he grinned again and said, ‘Well, bus’ll be passing in two minutes—a’course, if you was goin’ that way—’ and he winked once again.

  This, then, was to be part of my ‘punishment’. It was what Terry had said—I was ‘that sort of a girl’, irrevocably, until I either married or started to tell lies about widowhood or something similar. People were very charitable, very kind and understanding, even the supposedly narrow-minded villagers; but there was always this, the implied or even overt predatoriness of the men, and the basic disapproval of the women which of course derived from it. I sighed deeply and swallowed my cold tea. It was part of it. I would have to face it, along with the other things. I could manage. But just the same, I thought of the plumber’s sly wink and shivered, and felt the loneliness slide one rung deeper.

  Chapter 4

  FOR a week after my return to the cottage, I lived in my shell and took stock and thought. David and I slept in the relatively dry living-room while I systematically dried out the other parts of the house.

  Outside it rained steadily, hampering the dryi
ng process, but effectively immuring me indoors, which was where I really wanted to be. I was so happy to find I wanted to be alone. Every day that passed without my being lonely or bored seemed like a feather in the cap of my independence. In a queer way it also seemed like a present to Toby—one more day when I hadn’t needed him. I wanted him all the time, but not in a craving, grabbing way, not so desperately that my need was stronger than my wish that he should be left alone.

  In any case, I had to occupy my mind with more practical details. There stretched ahead of me at least eight months before I could go to America with any real excuse or sense of purpose; that eight months must inevitably be filled with profitable labour of some sort. For hours at a time I lay on my back on the sofa, half-hypnotised by the grey drops running endlessly down the diamond-panes, over the ridges in between, and on down at a slight tangent, feeling warm and lazy and broke and happy and alarmed all at once.

  My assets were few, but definite. I could type. I had a car. I could act after a fashion, though I hadn’t for years—not much use, that one. I could cook, sort of. There was almost no category of work I felt myself to be intrinsically ‘too good’ to have a go at. But naturally, some things appealed more than others.

  At the end of the week, the weather changed; I woke one morning to find a different sort of light in the room. Rising to peer over the back of the sofa, I perceived a pattern of sunlight on the curtains. I hurried to draw them, stopping on my way to prod David, who was keeping the most irregular hours—my hours, almost, which explained why he was still fast asleep at half-past eight in the morning. Outside, the garden was a pale glittering mass of water-drops each cored with a tiny spark of reflected sunlight. I threw open the windows and breathed deeply of the sweet wet loamy air. It was so intoxicating after a week of frowst that I immediately put on my gum-boots and climbed out of the window. It was lovely to sink ankle-deep in the wet earth and feel the mild water stains soaking through my pyjamas as I was caressed by bushes and curled brown leaves.

  I wandered about happily, shivering as much with delight as with actual cold, getting wetter and wetter, my gum-boots gleaming like patent-leather. After a bit I went in again and fetched David and a ground-sheet, setting them down together on a bumpy bit of lawn. He promptly crawled to the edge of the rubber and onto the jewelled grass, but I didn’t think it mattered much. I sat down beside him a few minutes later and shared my hunk of bread and butter and marmalade with him, washing mine down with a mug of tea while he swigged his usual, his icy hands clutching my bare ribs, his head hidden inside my jacket, his muddy feet stamping a tattoo of pleasure against my thigh. I sat thinking how lovely it was not to care about getting wet and dirty, and not to have anybody around to tell me what a bad mother I was. After our meal, we rolled around together until we were both thoroughly soaked and filthy; then we went indoors, I threw everything we’d been wearing into the sink to soak, and we had a joint bath.

  I had no special bath for David; we always bathed together. It was the high-spot of the day. What I used to do was put him down on the bathmat, climb into the bath when it was really hot, soak myself a bit, and then run the cold in until it was the right temperature for him. Then I’d take him into the bath with me and wash him and play with him, until he’d had enough; roll him up in a towel and put him back on the floor, run more hot in and wash myself, and then get out and dry us both at once. This was a most delightful arrangement for both of us; the only drawback was that he refused to take a bath without me, and several times I had to undress and get in with him even though I’d had my own bath separately.

  While I was sitting there that bright morning, holding the baby between my knees and making his plastic duck swim under water, my mind perfectly unencumbered by any thoughts of a practical nature, an idea suddenly popped into my head. What I really needed was a job I could do in my own time, like the typing I’d done in the L-shaped room. I wondered suddenly if I couldn’t set myself up as something—preferably something a bit more lucrative and less dreary than typing, possibly something creative. ‘Cottage industry’ was the phrase that inevitably leapt into my head. The difficulty was, I wasn’t really the handicrafts type; I couldn’t even knit. Nevertheless, I whiled away a few moments with a pleasant dream of collecting sheeps-wool from the rhimy hedgerows, washing it, dying it with vegetable dyes (home-made, of course) spinning it on the decorative spinning-wheel that stood on one of the landings, and then embroidering wool panels of my own designing. And selling them for large sums. I finished the dream off neatly, sighed, and began soaping David’s back.

  No, but something of the sort. What could I do? Surely I had some kind of flair which could be useful? Abruptly I envied Dottie, an old familiar feeling that I hadn’t had for a long time. Dottie had taken herself in hand, channelled her talents, been clever enough to get herself a niche in the fashionable world where they could best be put to use, and where she could embellish them with new skills. Any fool, I suddenly thought, can have a baby. But not any fool can support it.

  My early-morning pastoral elation was cooling with the bathwater. I was getting goose-flesh, and not just from being slightly chilled. The lonely feeling, the helpless sense of being too small for the battle, could lash back in a moment, like a bent branch, if one didn’t watch it. I clambered out, wrapped myself in a bathrobe which had been warming in front of the oil-stove, and dried David while the water gurgled away with a passionate resonance. The sun had gone in, and I felt rather like having a good cry all of a sudden, which wasn’t wise in front of David who had recently begun to sense my moods like a dog and respond to the bad ones with sympathetic howls. So I quickly got him to bed before the mood overwhelmed us both.

  It was just about time to dry my eyes and start thinking about lunch when a car drew up outside. My heart gave a little lurch of joy which told me more clearly than the unexplained crying-fit that the feathers were fitted very insecurely into my cap; almost any visitor (except the plumber) would have been welcome just then, even though the house was a mess and I was still looking like the wrath of God in a pair of pregnancy slacks and one of Addy’s age-old smocks. When I saw Dottie’s behind emerge from the car, followed by the rest of her lugging a large carry-all, I couldn’t get outside fast enough to greet her with hugs and glad cries.

  She noticed my red eyes immediately.

  ‘What’ve you been bawling about on this gorgeous morning?’

  ‘I’ve been bawling because no one was coming to lunch—as far as I then knew,’ I said, taking one handle of the hold-all. ‘Good God, what have you got in here, geological specimens?’

  ‘Toys for my godchild.’

  ‘I must warn you, his tastes aren’t very sophisticated. His favourite thing at the moment is a rather oily length of old bicycle-chain.’

  ‘And bottles.’

  ‘Ah! There you may find a more appreciative response.’

  She was dressed for the occasion in tight trousers, tucked into very smart leather boots, topped by a hip-length jacket of tartan wool with a fringe.

  ‘I do wish you’d try to look a bit more dowdy when you know you’re going to see me,’ I couldn’t help saying peevishly.

  ‘My dowdy days are over,’ she said. ‘Only women like you, with no need for sublimations or compensations, can afford the luxury of dressing badly.’

  We went indoors and she flopped down on the sofa. I threw a log on the fire, which was burning sluggishly amid yesterday’s ashes, wishing I’d done a bit more housework in the morning.

  ‘How long are you staying?’

  ‘How long can you put up with me?’

  I looked at her sharply, remembering quite suddenly that it was not Saturday.

  ‘Indefinitely, but … what about your job?’

  ‘What job?’ she asked, with a one-sided smile.

  ‘H’m. I sense a crisis. Have a sherry before you begin.’

  ‘Forgive my ingratitude, but this is not an occasion for sherry.’ She plunged a hand into
the hold-all and came up with a bottle of Black and White.

  ‘I’ve got no soda,’ I warned her.

  ‘Soda’s for good days.’

  We drank, Dottie eyeing me over the rim of her glass with a rueful, ironic expression.

  ‘Well?’ I asked.

  ‘Well! The job has folded. Not the job only—the whole enterprise. Bust—kaput—down the drain. Pity. It was fun while it lasted.’ She shrugged, a casual gesture which didn’t fool me. Dottie had waited a long time for this particular opportunity, this potentially gold-plated niche within a niche—buyer for a new and wildly with-it boutique in Sloane Street.

  ‘What happened, exactly?’

  ‘The happy young couple who started it with the aid of large wedding-presents from their respective daddies decided, six months after the nuptials, that they’d “made a nonsense” as they put it. Strange how they both used the same expression, though there the similarity in their stories ended. According to him, she was frigid and neurotic; according to her, he was kinky and wanted to tie her to the bed-posts, among other exotic delights. All very sad. And strange … they looked so normal. But then, who’s normal these days?’

  ‘I am,’ I said. ‘I think.’

  ‘Only because you live in the country,’ she said obscurely. ‘There’s no “normal” any more. If normal means average, you’re the kinky one, believe me.’ She sighed deeply. ‘I don’t even know if I’m normal any more. Is it normal to choose the chaste life when one could be getting tied to bed-posts or rolling about on grubby mattresses in discothéques every night? I’ve been told so often lately that I’m a freak that I’m beginning to believe it.’

  ‘Which is what you’re doing here.’

  ‘The whisky is making you very acute, Janie. But then, you always were pretty perceptive, even before you opted for the life of a happy cabbage which I suddenly so envy you.’ She poured another drink and stared at the fire. ‘What a really wonderful smell that is—wood burning.’