by Alice Jolly
At home Freddy is out in the garden scraping snow from the path and she puts down her shovel. ‘So what did the doctor have to say?’ There’s disdain in her voice because, in her view, anyone who goes to the doctor is rather letting the side down.
‘Oh some bug or other. Not much they can do.’ My legs feel suddenly weak and I move towards the front door, frightened that I might fall, and I turn my face away from her, wiping my handkerchief across it.
‘Well, it is a bore,’ Freddy says. ‘Too bad of you to be ill when I really need some help getting this snow cleared.’ She walks away down the path, her shovel swinging in her hand. She never was any good at other people’s illnesses but as long as she can clear the snow then all will be well.
Inside the kitchen is bitterly cold, and melting snow drips and drips through a crack in the ceiling and onto the kitchen table. For five days now we’ve been frozen in, and the pipes are solid, but the electricity mercifully continues, despite the winds that batter us. Bullseye is snoring on a pile of washing, his tail curled around him, and I put a bowl under the drip and start to make tea, my hand shaking as I load more wood into the stove. The water in the kettle is melted snow and makes tea which has a bitter taste of wood, but now my hands are too cold to manage the mugs and the tea bags, and the room is breaking up into shafts of light …
I stumble back into the sitting room and look around at the debris of our various projects, at the books which are spread everywhere and topple on every surface, and the floor which is stacked with boxes, journals, Arms Campaign leaflets, pamphlets about Prison Reform. On the desk there’s a review I’m proofreading for Theodora, several unfinished articles, piles of letters and photographs, the new book on Thomas More, a broken cup I’m trying to mend for Freddy and my German dictionary open and ready. But whatever is the point of all this? I pull myself up, decide to take a positive approach, and then realise that there isn’t one, that the fact of this will not yield to all my mind’s guile.
For so many people life is just a slow process of giving up; they bed down for death as early as forty or fifty, and they stop fighting for any improvement in themselves, or in other people. Theodora, Freddy and I have watched our friends get picked off, one by one, and in truth we have almost felt some contempt for them for surely they simply didn’t try hard enough? We have kept ourselves alive by working, struggling, and searching, and at every junction we have chosen the scenic route. To begin with, in that far, far distant world of our youth, the search was all about people and every problem would be solved by the liberation of women and the triumph of the communist cause. A just society could be created if only the full potential of every human being could be released – that we decided while at Oxford, cycling to and from tutorials, through foggy streets beside the canal, where armies of women were trapped in mean terraced houses, their shoulders permanently tipped to one side by the weight of shopping, or washing, or babies. We would never live like that, we decided, and neither should they.
But then war came and after that there could be no grand plans, no more poetry, and so we came here to Thwaite Cottages, fifty years ago – longer even than that – and although work, friendships, lovers have often taken us away, we always return, caught on the hook of this place, and reeled back in. The space, the gaps, the expanse of nothing reflecting always the emptiness above us, that is what calls us back again and again – the unconscious realisation that what is important is not the grand plan, but the gaps in between, the space where an outstretched hand is not met, the meaning which lies in between the black typed words on the page, the weed that sidles up unnoticed in the carefully sprayed and clipped garden, and suddenly bursts into flower …
Gaps – yes, the gaps – that is where I search now, looking for that nameless something, whatever is beyond – Jung’s collective unconscious perhaps, or the Buddhist nirvana, or Plato’s ideal world to which the soul yearns to return, or perhaps even plain old-fashioned God, who as a young woman I strived so hard to discredit. I don’t know, and I have never expected to know, doubt has been the foundation of my faith, but now suddenly questions of belief can be deferred no longer and I feel that I must come down on one side or another. I need a magnet to bring together the scattered filings of my mind, I need a geometry for the random elements of my beliefs. Always we are running and running from that fearful thought that we might be intelligent beings doomed to live in a meaningless world …
Of what use have they been, so many years of striving and questioning and searching? I thought that death would bring some final enlightenment, but now I fear that it will not be so, and I stumble towards it with no more understanding than those ignorant millions who have never given it a single thought. There is, perhaps, nothing beyond, and now the thought comes to me again of those Oxford women we so despised, and I realise that they, at least, ensured that some man had a properly laundered shirt and a hot dinner. Perhaps, after all, such achievements are not to be so lightly dismissed. This is the beginning of despair.
I go upstairs, feeling a click in my hips, placing each foot carefully, then I cross the landing and go through the door which leads to Theodora’s cottage. As always, she sits at her desk, amid piles of books, starting work early, writing with a fountain pen, despite all that new technology which is now available. Her books are biographies of famous women, or women who should be famous, and at the moment she is researching, sorting through the life of her latest subject, Lou Andreas-Salomé, one of the first women psychologists, beloved of Nietzsche, Rilke and Freud. Theodora is organising that life into a pattern, identifying the themes, working out the main route from the side roads, showing what in the early life proved significant in the later … if only one had been able to see the shape of one’s own life from the beginning.
Light shines on her cheek from a lamp with a jewel-encrusted stem. When we were at school she was considered quite a beauty, and she still looks as though she expects to be admired, and her hair has strands of red in it even now, and every morning I put it up for her, tying it up into two separate buns on either side of her head, leaving a dip in between, just as she likes it. Her ears lie flat against the side of her head, and their length is emphasised by drop pearl earrings, and her pale skin is smudged blue by the veins beneath it, and her eyes poke forward above her long nose. I watch her mauve hands, with perfectly manicured nails, moving her tortoiseshell pen across the paper. Those knots of hair bob up and down as she works. Her regal bearing, and the high white ruffled collars she always wears, ensure that she resembles nothing so much as a portrait of Elizabeth I, and this room, her study, is also decorated with a touch of luxury which might befit a queen. I watch, and watch … I thought that I would be able to watch her forever. How I long to go in and rest my head on her shoulder and talk to her, but what is there to say? There’s nothing to discuss, the finality of this is brutal, the knowledge of it drips down my spine – the minutes, the hours, the days are already tipping away. As I’m turning to go Theodora looks up over the top of her spectacles and her grey eyes pierce me, then she opens her mouth to speak but says nothing. Her eyes close and then open again, she lays down her pen, and her hand flutters as she moves to touch the collar of her blouse, and her face seems to be falling, all of it moving, like a landslide, and I turn away, unable to bear that sight.
‘No, no,’ she says. ‘Come in and sit down.’
‘Oh no, really.’
‘Yes. Yes, please do.’
I move down the one step into her study and sit on the sofa by the low window and outside the snow is silver where the sunlight falls on it, and there’s a dip in the land which marks the route I have just walked, the track across the fields, and the turning where the road drops over the side of the hill and down towards Burrington. There are no clouds and the sky is pale, pale blue with only the vapour trail of a plane stretched across it, disappearing beyond the hills, and on the windowsill a green glass vase is filled with holly and mistletoe. Inside the vase the sun magnifies the
shadows and separates the stalks into myriad shades of green. The beauty of it grips at my throat.
In all the many, many years we have spent together I have never seen Theodora like this. Her head hangs down and her eyes watch a patch of sunlight which falls on the carpet, framing the dainty shoes that she always wears although her ankle bones bulge to the side of them now. I feel our eyes meet on the floor, and the world is turning and turning, and time holds us in its grip. Theodora picks up her walking stick, rises and takes hold of a cardigan which is on the back of her chair, then she puts the cardigan over my shoulders and I pull the sleeves of it straight, and she moves to sit beside me on the sofa.
There is a joy, a strange warped joy, in seeing her so broken, for in all these years I have sought her love and yet I have never been certain of it. Now the strength of it is revealed, finally, in the pain that she feels. From outside we hear Freddy dragging a shovel along the path, and a shiver of wind in the trees and, in the far distance, the sound of a tractor. We stare down at the frozen fields, and the trees, black where the snow has melted, silhouetted against the snow-flecked land – and, oh, how life is distilled now, and stripped right down to the white of the bone.
Maggie
Today I’m having lunch with this journalist Adam Ferrall – Adam Ferret.
On the telephone, he was shifty, red-haired and long-nosed, sniffing around in other people’s lives. So now it’s a surprise that he isn’t much older than me, and that his face is pale, clear-skinned, with dark eyes. Certainly not sharp-and-seedy journalist. Perhaps more earnest-Englishman-with-plastic-bag? He’s got those wide-open kind of eyes, slightly red at the rims, which don’t blink for five minutes, then blink twice, then stare again. His hair is cropped very short, which normally I don’t like, but above his mournful face, it looks all right.
‘Maggie?’ He squeezes my hand so that the bones of my fingers cross over and stares down at me as though concerned about the state I’m in. Or perhaps it’s just that I’m not what he had in mind? He runs his hand over his bristly hair and smiles. His teeth are even and white, except for one at the side, which is crooked, and triangular in shape. He carries a soft leather briefcase – and yes, a plastic bag. He’s dressed in jeans, a woollen jacket over a ribbed rollneck jumper and a striped scarf. His eyes draw like magnets. I turn away, shrugging, staring around me.
This café – just off Fleet Street – is his choice and it’s all stainless steel, like a school canteen, with pale wood and spotlights on wires stretched across the ceiling. I told him on the telephone that I wouldn’t have long. Now I say it again, but he’s brimming with charm, indicates a spindly table near the window, and folds his legs underneath it. Does the fact that he is not sharp-and-seedy journalist make this better or worse? Just get it over with, that’s the important thing. He starts to talk about his work, mentions various newspapers. Probably I should have heard of him but I don’t read the newspapers.
He’s trying to put me at my ease. Where do I live? Where does he live? Fulham. The weather’s been awful, we agree. More snow is still possible. His voice is flat, with a paper-bag rustle, and no emphasis anywhere. I watch his mobile phone on the stainless-steel table. In the space between us a white tulip wilts in a milk bottle. I grip my hands together in my lap so I’ll remember not to eat the sides of my nails and my eyes buzz around his head, not settling on his face.
Of course, I’ll have lunch? No. No, thanks. I’m in a hurry. His hands are large and capable. Plug-wiring and bottle-opening hands. His nails are neatly cut with a shine to them, as though they’ve been polished. Perhaps I’ll have a cup of coffee? Yes. A hot chocolate would be better actually. A waitress squeaks over to us in platform trainers. He orders a toasted Mediterranean ciabatta sandwich, with some salad, not on the side, but on a different plate, and a cappuccino, made with double coffee, and mineral water, flat not sparkling.
He talks about Dad and it’s clear he’s swallowed the lot – hook, line, sinker, fisherman and river bank. The person he talks about is a man in the newspapers, not my dad – or perhaps it is my dad, and I just don’t know that. His hands rearrange the cutlery as he talks, lining up the knife and fork so that they’re the same distance from the edge of the table. My eyes move to the steamed-up window beside us and across to the few other customers, media types, sipping coffee, huddled together in hushed conversation. I’m worried that they’ll hear.
I cycled here, so my skirt is wet and my russet-coloured scarf – the carefree gypsy look – keeps slipping off my shoulders. My hair is damp and hangs down like a witch and my boots are dirty. It’s deliberate, that. I want him to know that I am not to be charmed. Odd clothes are always useful for that, they put other people at a disadvantage. I peer at the salt and pepper pots, shaped like chrome pyramids. My nose is running, I haven’t got a handkerchief and the napkins here are linen so it seems a bit much to wipe my nose on them. I’m loaded down with two plastic bags of overdue library books. Under my skin, I’m shivering. I look at my watch.
Adam Ferrall asks about my early memories of Dad and I tell him that I don’t really have any, because I lived with Nanda, and then I went away to school. He asks more questions. No, I don’t think so, I say. Yes, perhaps. I’m sure you’re right. Yes. No. Probably. It’s surprising how many questions can be answered in one word. The waitress returns and I stir hot chocolate with a swirl of cream and cinnamon sprinkled on top.
What actually can I remember about Dad? Mainly weekends when he used to come to Thwaite Cottages and I used to describe colours to him, because he’s colour-blind, and I felt sorry for him, because I didn’t understand and thought that all the world looked black and white to him. Blue tastes fresh like peppermint, or a sharp winter morning, and it sounds like a running brook, and feels like a feather brushed against your face. Red screams and burns your fingertips and smells like pepper. I used to go on and on like that.
And one day he taught me to smoke, sitting on the front wall at Thwaite Cottages, looking down over the valleys, in the summer, with his cigarette making a curl of smoke, as he showed me how to inhale it, and everything went fuzzy and blew up like a balloon inside me, and we laughed and laughed until I nearly fell off the wall. Probably I won’t tell Adam Ferrall that.
Silence now, except for the squeak of the waitress’s trainers, and the mumble of hushed conversations from behind overcoat collars. I watch his eyes and wait for them to blink but they don’t. Like a good barrister, he’s knows that silence makes people indiscreet but he’s got the wrong person because I’ve seen all that before. I imagine myself like a cartoon character, hanging on to the edge of a cliff, sliding down on elongated fingers. It would be better, I decide, for me to come to the point, because I won’t have him thinking I’m scared.
‘Presumably, what you’re really interested in is the … fire and Tiffany and all that?’ My voice catches on that word and stumbles.
He blinks twice and swallows. ‘No. Not really. The book I’m writing is a political commentary, or the biography of a group of people. I’m not looking for scandal, but I do need to look at the people I write about from all different sides, so I can show the truth about them.’
‘Oh really, is that what journalists do? They reveal the truth?’
He sits back in his chair, smiles, shakes his head.
‘Maggie, perhaps you don’t think much of the media, but all journalists are different and some do important jobs. Some journalists even die for what they do.’
‘Only in the same sense that some shop assistants get run over by buses.’
‘Isn’t it really a bit easy to criticise the media?’ he says. ‘I could do the same. Most of my colleagues do. But strange though it may seem, I happen to believe in the value of what I do.’ The waitress arrives with his sandwich, which smells of hot bread, and basil and olive oil, and he starts to eat it with his knife and fork, cutting neat squares in the crusty bread.
‘But how can you be so sure that people want to know the truth?�
�� I say. ‘There are plenty of facts which happen to be true but are better kept private.’
‘Do you think so? I’m not sure I agree. I think people aren’t damaged by what they know, only by what they don’t know. It seems to me that people are attracted by the truth. They may try not to recognise it, and they may take time to accept it, but finally it’s all that they want.’
My mind moves around that idea and stores it for future thought. I hadn’t expected him to say anything interesting, because I always assume that good-looking people aren’t intelligent. For me people divide into those who might say something which interests me and those who definitely won’t. He just might fit into the former category – a rare find.
‘And behind all the opinions,’ he says, ‘there are facts, don’t you think?’
‘No, actually, I don’t. You know, when the police carry out interviews ten minutes after a crime even the people who were standing right there can’t agree on the basic facts. And – you know – I studied history at university and that’s the same. You think it’s about facts but it isn’t. It’s about the nature of evidence. Who’s telling the story, and why?’
I don’t know if I believe what I’m saying, but I’m measuring the dimensions of his head. Around us sounds become distinct like separate notes on the piano – the rustle of a newspaper, the scrape of a chair, the clatter of a plate. He keeps me enclosed in his unblinking eyes. His face is strangely transparent – thoughts gather and disperse across it like clouds on a windy day. And OK, so he is good-looking – but I don’t want to fall for the old trick, I want to be more original than that.
