Sing Me Who You Are, page 17
How much could she believe? How much of all this stemmed from his sense of obligation, of guilt? Even if he planted a million damned trees and they all waved their heads in the deserts the wind would blow through them with a single accusation. What was he after all but a bloody old Irish romantic? A million trees to pay for the life of a son. How did he see himself? Marching at the head of a host of green waving lances against the shifting sand, the stony wilderness, the blinding sun? And how would she figure, playing Sancho Panza to his Don Quixote? Why should she be bulldozed by this old man? She could feel his willpower stretching out to claim her; the bus, Gregg, the field of mustard could all disappear in a puff of his cigar-smoke. She forced her mind away from this possibility and said:
‘It’s a bit much all at once. I’ve only just moved in, I—’
‘But you’ve no job? You’re not working now? In fact, you’re doing nothing?’
‘That’s right,’ said Harriet. ‘Nothing. And I’m enjoying it.’
They gazed steadily at each other.
‘Well,’ said Captain Malone. ‘I’ll be over again at Christmas. You could fly back with me for a holiday. No promises. After all, you’re not a prisoner.’
Eighteen
The first sound Harriet heard as she drove past the Everetts’ farm and on up the lane was the rhythmic thudding of someone chopping down a tree.
Her mind had been so full of planting trees – she had brought back from the British Museum a list of books she would consult in Cambridge on the whole dizzying subject – that this steady chopping sounded to her like an infidel’s cry of defiance to a crusader. She stopped the car abruptly and got out. The cats had settled down on the back seat on an old blanket, so she closed the windows and went off in her only decent pair of London shoes, stepping out at right angles to the lane.
Plunging along the soggy field by the hedge she followed the sound. There were shouts in the distance and then they stopped. Silence. She headed towards the tongue of woodland that stretched like a peninsula into the largest field of all, now under winter barley. As she at last squelched her way to the first low bushes and slender beech trees she heard a creaking noise.
‘Pull over here!’
It was Everett’s voice.
As she stepped into the clearing she saw that there were several people there, all in gumboots and duffle-coats. Gregg leaned on an axe by a pile of wood-chips, some wedges and a hammer. Everett, with one of his boys, had got a rope up among the topmost branches and was pulling on it. Gregg raised his axe to give the tree another cut. It was a straight, well-grown beech. Magda stood watching, her eyes on the sway of the higher branches, but as Harriet came between the trees she caught sight of her and at once moved in warning.
‘Stay where you are, Harry. It’s going to fall.’
The men turned in surprise and Everett, his attention momentarily wandering, gave a startled pull on the rope.
The tree fell awkwardly, not in the direction they had planned. The branches crashed among the topmost boughs of other trees – they grew very close together in this spit of woodland – hesitated, lurched to one side, hovered.
Gregg called out sharply, ‘Magda, move! Go back, quickly!’ But even as he moved the tree came down and as the waving branches threshed into stillness she was no longer there. It seemed as if she had been engulfed.
When they reached her she was pinned by a large branch, which had knocked her on to her back on the ground. The lesser branches held her legs in an amorous tangle.
‘Don’t move,’ said Harriet, dashing forward, wading through the fallen branches and leaves. ‘We’ll do the moving. Gregg, saw through this branch as quick as you can. Steve, run and telephone for a doctor in case she’s broken something.’
Gradually they hacked through the springy, living branches and Magda tentatively moved each leg.
‘They’re all right,’ she said at last. ‘It’s my ribs, I think.’ Luckily an elderberry bush had broken her fall, but she had taken the full force of the blow just below her breast. When the men lifted the last of the dead leaves and bits of bark and broken twigs off her, she tried to get up.
‘For God’s sake stay still or you’ll pierce a lung.’ Gregg had gone a muddy grey colour. He took off his coat and eased it underneath his wife, in between her and the wet ground. Harriet unfastened the toggles of Magda’s thick sheepskin jacket. The bulk had cushioned her against any lacerations, but the force of the blow had reddened the skin and later it would bruise badly. There was no way of telling whether any ribs were broken and when Harriet wanted to probe Gregg spoke sharply.
‘Leave it, Harry. Leave it. Keep her covered. I’ll go to Everett’s place and see whether the doctor’s corning. Keep her warm. Everett, come with me and ask your wife for some blankets and some hot tea.’
As they went off, crashing over shrubs and grinding through beechmasts, Harriet realized that no one had thought to say hullo to her. Now, as she took off her top coat and tucked it around her cousin’s legs she smiled down at her and said:
‘I seem to have arrived at an opportune moment.’
Magda, growing white now that the immediate shock had passed and the greater shock beginning, said weakly:
‘You idiot, Harry! It would never have happened if you hadn’t suddenly sprung out at us like that. Out of nowhere! Felling trees is a delicate job.’
Serves you jolly well right, whispered the ghost of a much younger Harriet, sulky at being blamed, unwillingly aware of being in the wrong. Mutinously she felt herself to be the agent of a much-abused Nature hitting back at Magda.
When Gregg reappeared, followed by Mrs Everett, Everett, and the two eldest boys who were carrying a long stable door, Harriet sensed that it was not only Magda who blamed her. Mrs Everett could scarcely bear to look at her; even Gregg spoke to her evenly and coldly.
‘They’re sending an ambulance. Let’s get her on to the door and carry her to the road.’
As Mrs Everett tucked Magda around with blankets and the two men lifted the improvised stretcher, Harriet stared at the pile of wood-chips and thought them as white as the cut flesh of a roast chicken. There was a curious solidarity about the little group as they moved slowly away along the track through the wood. Harriet watched them go with a feeling of pure isolation. What, after all, had she to do with them? They were all strangers to her. Standing in the wet wood beside the fallen tree, squelching in her ruined high-heeled suède shoes, she felt a pull of panic as overwhelmingly as on that first day in the spinney.
Was there ever a last place? Or was there only borrowed time, Magda’s time? Following slowly, like some leftover retainer trailing a royal litter, Harriet saw with clarity the number of times she had watched Magda being borne away by devotees. Into sports cars, waving back. On to planes. Into taxis. Followed by a wake of dogs, young men, employees. Some women’s lives were like that.
Taking off her shoes and soaking stockings, she picked up her muddy coat from the ground where it still lay, bearing the pressures of some careless boot, and padded back, mud oozing comfortably up between her toes. When she reached the lane, the ambulance was already there. Magda was just being stowed away inside. Courting a rebuff, she went up to the doors. Should she go with her to the hospital?
‘Don’t worry, Harry,’ said Magda, catching sight of her uncertain face. ‘Gregg’s coming with me. You get on home; the bus will be damp after all this time, the rain—’
Harriet nodded, moved to her car. As she got into the driver’s seat Gregg came up swiftly, put a hand through the open window, touched hers on the wheel, said, as his wife had done, ‘Don’t worry, Harry.’ Then he added, ‘I’ll let you know later.’
As she drove away she saw the ambulance backing into the Everetts’ yard to turn, and there were the Everetts busy as ants about a disturbed nest.
In the bus there was the indefinable smell of damp that always sneaked back in whenever she wasn’t there to drive it out with warmth and light. She crumpled up the London midday edition of the evening newspaper she had brought back with her and laid a new fire on the raked-out cinders of the old one. She waded through the great wet overgrown clump of mint at the back to turn on the Calor gas. Then she let the water run until the taste of plastic pipe was gone. She set the kettle on to boil. All these things done in the familiar order set the pattern right, made panic out of place. But when she took her mug of tea and sat down to look out of the five wide windows at the harrowed dun-coloured field, the dull green landscape under low clouds, the view failed to move her. It had imperceptibly withdrawn. It crossed her mind that you never returned to the same place twice.
Creatures had moved into the bus: two earwigs ran over the tea-caddy, a spider had spun itself a snug web by the cups. A fieldmouse had nibbled the soap left in the dish. Harriet opened cupboards; even her clothes smelt musty.
She had lighted the lamps, and her sleeping-bag was unzipped and airing at the leaping fire when Gregg at last arrived. She was slumped in the chair, barefoot, with the cats on her lap, drinking tea and gazing silently into the fire when she heard his step. The door opened and closed behind him.
She looked up and reached out to pour him a mug. He shook the fine rain off his coat and sat down on the divan. He started to speak, but she interrupted him.
‘Well, was it my fault? Do you blame me?’
Carefully Gregg reached out and caught a daddy-longlegs wavering near one of the lamps. Without thinking, he crushed it in his hand and dropped it to the floor, rubbing off a thin filament of leg from a bruised knuckle. He noticed Harriet’s shoes near by, stuffed with paper, her stockings hanging from a wooden airer over the fire.
‘Trees are awkward things. Sometimes they fall wrong. Everett gave a tug at the wrong time. He was startled, we all were – but of course, I—’
Why didn’t she ask how Magda was?
‘Trust me,’ said Harriet. ‘Appearing like a demon of the woods. I’m sorry, Gregg.’
It hurt to say that she was sorry. It spoilt her homecoming. Having to apologize set her apart again, a stranger to their doings.
‘She’s all right,’ he said, unaware. ‘A couple of broken ribs, one more suspected cracked. They’re strapping her up and keeping her in for a few days. Nothing serious. God, this is welcome.’
He drank his tea, watching Harriet, and thought she looked wretched. London hadn’t agreed with her. Good.
Harriet gazed into the fire. She saw Magda in bed, in a private room, of course, looking fragile, inviting care, turning her head on the flat pillow to smile at a nurse. Tomorrow the flowers would start to arrive, her room would be full of them. Another bower.
Gregg looked down at the crushed insect and rubbed it into the blue-and-white matting so that it quite disappeared.
‘I thought you’d gone off for ever without a word. Whatever happened, Harry? Was it the Guy Fawkes party? You didn’t come up to the house afterwards.’
He did not like to approach her, to kiss her. London and her unexplained journey made her a stranger to him and the cats had claimed her, their paws stretched right up to her neck. Their pointed faces lay on her bosom.
Harriet had forgotten about the Guy Fawkes party. What had happened? Something. She looked across at Gregg and suddenly laughed, stretching out her hand to him as if there he was suddenly, and she knew him. He caught it and held on to it strongly.
‘Get rid of those damned cats and come over here,’ he said. ‘They’re your familiars. That’s better,’ as the cats fell away from her body and clawed their way back into the warmth she left in the chair as she moved. ‘Harry darling, where the hell have you been? And who have you been with? And why didn’t you telephone? All locked up, this place, I couldn’t keep a fire in for you …’ In between each question he was kissing her and she felt her resistance to him, to the bus, to the relentless green wetness of the countryside, soften. Soon, even the self-pity of her guilt would go. If Magda was queening it in her hygienic bower, so could she in hers, damp and insect-ridden as it was.
There was a tap at the door, and gesturing to Gregg to be quiet, she pulled the curtain behind her as she went through into the kitchen and opened the door. It was Jimmy with a can of milk.
‘Mother thought you’d like to make yourself a cup of tea,’ he said. ‘And here’s some letters. They came while you were away. The postman’s in hospital now. He’s hurt his leg.’
The simplicity of the child’s speech, his incurious gaze, reassured her. Perhaps he was not a spy.
‘Thanks, Jimmy,’ she said, not telling him that she had brought a pint of milk down with her from London. ‘I shan’t be going away again. Here’s your shilling.’
‘I haven’t earned it.’
‘Yes you have. You’re a kind boy. Good night now.’
‘Tell me your news,’ said Gregg, settling the cushions for them both. ‘And bar that door, we don’t want any more visitors. Will you come up to the house and eat with me? I’ll be on my own for a few days.’
‘Dear old Harry, wife’s bane, husband’s friend,’ said Harriet unkindly. ‘Yes, we’ll go up later on.’
She would tell Gregg about Captain Malone, but not about Ted Everett. She would tell him later, over the fire in the drawing-room; they would drink brandy and she would smoke a small cigar. Captain Malone had given her a box of twenty-five. But for the moment they would make love as the bus grew warm around them and mice and other creeping things withdrew from this territory they had tried to reclaim. Each of them had things to tell the other, but they would not tell all. Was the creation of taboos the beginning of the withdrawal of love, or did it signal a larger protectiveness, a surer affection?
Nineteen
The small stir that Harriet’s unexpected journey up to London had caused was soon forgotten in the greater one of Magda’s unfortunate accident. Three of her ribs were broken, after all, so she had to stay, strapped up, lying flat on her back in her private room at the local hospital. Dr Frampton wanted to keep her under observation, he told her.
To the many friends who came to see her and who brought flowers and fruit and magazines she generously laughed off any suggestion that it was Harriet’s sudden appearance which had caused the tree to fall awkwardly.
‘It was just unlucky,’ she would say to Lila Merrington or her other friends on the Council, and Lila raised her eyebrows and drew her own conclusions, as she was meant to do. Lying there, on the second day, Magda had time to think over her plans for the future, and that evening, when Lila visited her again, she confided to her the plan to offer the Council first refusal of the twelve-acre field, and at once Lila offered to deliver a note to the Chairman of the Housing Committee.
‘If you feel strong enough to discuss it with him, darling, it would be a weight off your mind,’ she said. ‘Harry will get over it. Good Lord, she can’t stay there for ever. I think your offer is generous enough. Have you told her yet?’
‘Oh no. She’s being very good, you see. Looking after the house for me and keeping Gregg company. There’s plenty of time yet.’
Lila hesitated. She longed to know the real reason for Magda’s decision. After all, it was perfectly good agricultural land she was giving up. Surely she knew, she must have guessed that something was going on between Gregg and Harriet? If she did, it would be a very subtle revenge, and a profitable one, too.
She said delicately, casually, ‘Does Gregg think it’s a good idea?’
‘Oh, Gregg doesn’t care one way or the other,’ said Magda, closing her eyes. ‘He doesn’t really have all that much to do with the farm. And he isn’t getting any younger.’
With which ambiguities Lila had to be content.
When Harriet came to see her, Magda asked about the London trip and was astonished, and not a little put out, when Harriet told her that it was Captain Malone she had gone up to see.
‘Captain Malone, after all these years! Captain Malone, of all people! Was that extraordinary woman with him, the one we used to laugh about, the one in oil?’
Harriet had forgotten that Magda had been in on that joke. She told her that she was dead, and out of quixotic loyalty to the dead woman, said that she had died of heatstroke in the Great Temple of Bel.
‘You don’t die straight off from a heatstroke,’ said Magda. ‘Why are the Irish such liars? Anything for a good story.’
‘She wanted people to think she died there, because it was romantic. Captain Malone told me that she really died about a week later in Damascus.’
For some reason Harriet could not bear to have Magda cast doubts on that tough old man, with his innocent lavender smell and his driving enthusiasm.
‘Go on, what else did he tell you? Did he talk about Scrubbs?’
‘Yes. And did you know, Magda, that mother remembered him on his birthday every single year? In the In Memoriam columns in The Times. The old man spotted it, but I never saw it.’
‘Neither did I. But we don’t take The Times. Well, well,’ said Magda, thoroughly entertained. ‘You know, Harry, I think he was quite keen on the idea of Scrubbs and me getting married. He once told me that he didn’t think his son could do any better, that I could keep him straight. What a marriage that would have been, keeping Scrubbs straight!’ She stared up at the ceiling, and for some reason blushed. ‘Scrubbs would always take what he wanted, or else have a damned good try. Did the old boy mention me?’
Harriet stared at her. He hadn’t once mentioned Magda. She smiled. ‘Oh yes,’ she said easily. ‘He said that you were sure to have done well for yourself.’
Magda gave a half gasp, of pain and laughter.
‘Well, I’ve come to terms, anyway. Forget what I said the other evening – you remember. I was cross. Of course I wouldn’t dream of divorcing Gregg. I don’t know what he’d do. He’d be lost.’
