A Jest of God (17 page)

“It’s lovely, Hector. I never knew you’d fixed it up so.”

“Not bad, eh?” he says, gratified. “Of course, not everyone wants the service here, but more and more do. Church funerals are going out.”

“Really? Why is that?”

“Too harrowing,” Hector says, sitting beside me. “Tend to bring up all kinds of things – heaven, hell, stuff like that.
Great strain on the nerves of the bereaved. If you believe, it’s a great strain, and if you don’t believe, it’s even worse. However you look at it, it’s a real ordeal. That’s why people like this place. Tasteful, and the service is short.”

“Yes, I see.”

“I must show you,” Hector says, his voice now beaming, “I got a really super-dooper automatic organ.”

Daftly, horrifyingly, I want to say – how splendid for you, and I hope your wife appreciates it. Once at college I heard a joke about an angel who traded his harp for an upright organ. I’d like to tell this to Hector. Naturally I won’t. Rachel Cameron doesn’t talk that way.

“It’s there, see?”

He points, and now I see the giant out-fanned music pipes, extending in a vast screen along the front wall. Each pipe is a different height, and at the top they are painted to resemble Corinthian columns.

“It plays several things,” Hector explains. “We got
Jesu Joy of Man’s Desiring
for – well, you know –”

“The carriage trade.”

“Yeh, that’s it. Some people wouldn’t know Bach from the Basin Street Blues. I wouldn’t, myself, matter of fact. But they think it’s very dignified and serious-minded, so we get quite a run on it. I won’t play that for you, though. I’ll play my favourite.”

“My God, Hector, you can’t play that thing at this hour of night!”

“Don’t you fret, Rachel,” he says. “It’s got three tones, and when it’s on
Soft
, it’s really soft and I don’t mean maybe. I can positively guarantee you it won’t be loud enough to wake the living, ha ha.”

With that, he’s off, searching for levers to press, magical
buttons to touch. He darts back, stations himself again, and slides an arm around my shoulder. I don’t protest or move away. I don’t care. We sit together on the glossy bench in the bleak blue light, and it’s gone three in the morning. Then the music rises, slowly.

“What d’you think of it, Rachel?”

“Marvellous. I think it’s the most marvellous thing I’ve ever heard.”

“You mean it?”

“Every word. Truly.”

“My gosh,” Hector says. “Think of that.”

The blue light, and the chapel purged of all spirit, all spirits except the rye, and the sombre flashiness, and the terribly moving corniness of that hymn, and the hour, and the strangeness, and the plump well-meaning arm across my shoulders, and the changes in every place that go on without our knowing, and the fact that there is nothing here for me except what is here now –

“Rachel – good Christ, are you crying?”

“It’s nothing. I’m sorry. I’m – I’ve had a certain amount of trouble, this past while.”

Hector is patting my shoulder, and making clucking noises deep in his throat.

“There, there. Never mind. It’ll be all right.”

I don’t deserve such comfort. Tomorrow I’ll be ashamed. But not now.

“Listen,” he is saying. “I don’t know why I should say this, but you know what happens to me? At the crucial moment, my
wife laughs. She says she can’t help it – I look funny. Well, shit, I know she can’t help it, but –”

I look into his face then, and for an instant see him living there behind his eyes.

“That’s –”

“Yeh, well there it is. Who would have thought it, you and me talking away like this? You better go on upstairs now, chickadee, or you’ll be a dead duck.”

“Yes.” I stand up, pull myself together, gather the fragments. “I’m – look, I’m sorry I came down, Hector. I don’t know why – I don’t know what I was thinking of –”

Go on, Rachel. Apologize. Go on apologizing for ever, go on until nothing of you is left. Is that what you want the most?

“No – listen, Hector – what I mean is, thanks.”

“Don’t mention it,” he says. “The pleasure was all mine.”

The music is paling. The mechanism has almost run its course. The tune is wry in the cold chapel, gapped with silences.

The carpeted stairs have to be climbed one at a time, only one. If she wakens, all I have to say is hush. Hush, now, sh, it’s all right, go to sleep now, never fear, it’s nothing.

H
is parents have come back. They came back a week ago and now I haven’t seen him for a week. I saw him almost every night while they were away. No – that’s not quite true. Out of fourteen evenings, I was with him for eight. But anyway, that was more than half. And now I haven’t seen him for a week. What did I say? What did I do or not do, to put him off?

I must not let myself think this way. It’s not as though I ever expected anything to come of it. He was here, and there wasn’t anyone else around, much, and I was here, and that’s all. Of course I know that. There’s never been any doubt in my mind about that.

The last time, we were sitting in the kitchen afterwards, and Jago came in. I said “Oh heavens, look what time it is – I must be going”. I couldn’t sit still and talk for half an hour with Jago there. Oh no. I had to look startled, as though there had been anything to look startled about – I mean, it wasn’t Jago’s business, was it, and what did he care? Jago, grey-haired, solid, did not say a word. He only looked puzzled. I thought it must be my presence that made him look that way, but now
I see it was my departure. How angry Nick must have been, to have me act so. No wonder he hasn’t seen me since. I could have handled the situation differently. It would have been easy. I see that now.

– They are sitting in the kitchen, the two of them, drinking coffee with rum. They don’t need to talk. They are quite happy, just like this. The boots outside the back door make a scuffling noise – someone wiping his feet before coming in the house. “Jago is home early tonight. He usually goes to the beer parlour after the movie’s over.” “Never mind,” she says, “it doesn’t matter now.” He is smiling – “No, not now.” Jago enters, makes remarks about the weather – “Due for a thunderstorm – not a breath of air anywhere tonight.” “Too hot for coffee?” – her voice is friendly, casual, unperturbed. Jago says he guesses not, if she’ll just add a slug of rum to his as well.

For a moment it really is soothing, and I can almost believe it happened that way. But the moment evaporates, and I am left with the cold knowledge of how I actually saw it happen, myself rearing up at the door sound, rising gawkily like a tame goose trying to fly. Jago saying nothing, and Nick shrugging. How could I? If only I could say to him, so he would know – look, I didn’t mean to act that way. Did he see it the same way I did, or how? If only I could explain. But I can’t. I tried last night. No – I will not think of that.

My hand is still on the doorbell, and now I realize it must have been ringing for some time. I’d almost forgotten where I was.

“Rachel! This is a surprise. Come on in.”

Calla is wearing lemon-coloured denim slacks and a violet blouse. She looks about ten feet broad. The lead-coloured fringe of her hair is standing up spikily all over her forehead. Her right
wrist clanks with a brace of bangles, and her feet, which are grimy, slap with the rubbery sound of her royal-blue toe-thong sandals. She puts a hand out to my shoulder, as anyone might, guiding in a visitor, but immediately she withdraws it, making us both conscious of this half-gesture which probably wasn’t intended as anything at all.

“I thought I’d drop in for a minute, if you’re not busy.”

“I was just taking a break,” she says. “The pause that refreshes. Coke or iced tea for you?”

“Iced tea, please. Do you really keep it on hand?”

“I put what’s left in the teapot at night into the fridge,” she says, “so as not to waste it. Then it’s always there. Here – sit down, if you can clear a space somewhere.”

Everything in her livingroom seems to be piled in the middle of the room. The turquoise chesterfield; the glass-topped coffee table; a confusion of books and letters; two unthriving potted pink geraniums; pictures done by her class last year on huge sheets of newsprint with poster paints – clumsily intricate castles and ocean liners; innumerable unemptied ashtrays; a brown pottery bowl of coffee sugar with a brass spoon bearing a gargoyle’s leering face and the words
The Imp of Lincoln Cathedral;
a square cushion with a yellow fringe and an ivory satin cover painted with a towered church and the lettering
The Turrets Twain – St. Boniface, Manitoba.

“It’s slightly a shambles,” Calla says without apology. “I’m painting the walls. Like them?”

They are a deep mauve-blue.

“It’s an unusual colour.”

“I never knew it would turn out quite so strong a shade,” Calla says, “but it’s still wet. Maybe it’ll lighten when it dries. How have you been, Rachel?”

“Oh, fine, thanks.”

I’m not afraid when I am with him, but when I’m not with him, it seems to return. I didn’t intend to do what I did last night. Women shouldn’t phone men. Anybody knows that. But it had been a week, nearly. If only I hadn’t phoned him. Or if he’d been out, away, not available. I had to wait until Mother was asleep, and even then I wasn’t certain, and sat in the hall beside the phone, guarding it, guarding myself, listening towards her door. I thought (why, I don’t know) that he would be the one to answer. But he wasn’t. His mother said “Who is speaking, please?” I wanted to say ex-Queen Soraya or None-of-your-business, but I’m not very composed over these things, so I said my name. He came to the phone. He said “Yes?” Just like that. A business reply. Don’t phone me – I’ll phone you.
I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem, by the roes and by the hinds of the field, that ye stir not up, nor awaken love, until it please.
I had to go on and explain, didn’t I? You must have thought I left rather suddenly the other evening – I’m sorry if I gave the impression – etcetera, etcetera. And then he said, laughingly, as though trying to figure out what I was talking about, “Why no, darling, I didn’t think that at all.” His voice was so present that I believed him, but now I don’t know again. It might have been the easiest way of dealing with me, for him. “I’ll give you a ring, eh?” he said.

Calla is sitting opposite me, spread brawnily on to her one armchair while I insist on perching at the chesterfield’s edge as though to make certain that I’m looking so temporary she won’t be surprised if I take off at any moment.

“The summer’s more than half over,” she is saying. “It doesn’t seem possible that it’s August already. I’ve been terrifically busy.”

August. That’s what bothers me the most. At the end of the month he will have to return to his work, and go away,
and how is it that we can waste this time now? If I could be with him all the time, all the remaining time, it would be –

“Have you? That’s good. What with?”

“Painting, mostly,” Calla says, holding out her blunt hands and examining them. “I’ve become a real interior decorator. You wouldn’t believe it. I’ve hardly had a moment to spare, all summer. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed it, though, I must say.”

I find such difficulty in focusing on what she is saying, but something of her voice’s belligerence cuts through to me.

“That’s good.” How can I say it convincingly enough? “That’s – I’m awfully glad.”

“Yes. We finished painting the Tabernacle a week ago. It turned out a great success.”

“Oh – fine.”

“Yes. We did the walls in eggshell. Teams of four. Any more don’t get things done, you know, they just gab. Trimming and woodwork in moss-green. It’s a real improvement, I must say. I got so good with a roller that I’ll never use brushes again for walls. Or ceilings. I did most of the ceilings, because I’ve got a head for heights, not that you might think it, to look at me.”

Now there is something so unassuming about her that I wish I could talk to her. But I can’t talk about him to anyone.

I got the curse this week. I was – of course – relieved. Who wouldn’t be? Anyone would naturally be relieved, under the circumstances. It stands to reason. You hear of women waiting for it, and worrying incessantly, and then when it comes, they’re released and everything is all right again and that anxiety is over for the moment and for a while one need not think
What would I do? What would become of me?
I was terribly relieved. It was a release, a reprieve.

That is a lie, Rachel. That is really a lie, in the deepest way possible for anyone to lie.

No. Yes. Both are true. Does one have to choose between two realities? If you think you love two men, the heart-throb column in the daily paper used to say when I was still consulting it daily, then neither one is for you. If you think you contain two realities, perhaps you contain none.

If I had to choose between feelings, I know which it would be. But that would be a disaster, from every point of view except the most inner one, and if you chose that side, you would really be on your own, now and forever, and that couldn’t, I think, be borne, not by me.

What are we talking about, Calla and I? Where did I leave her? Painting the Tabernacle. It’s all right. Only an instant has elapsed, I guess.

“I’d like to go and see it some time.”

“Would you,” she says, “really?”

“Why, yes. Yes, of course. It sounds very nice.”

Nice. The most useful word in the language, the most evasive. Calla isn’t taken in. She’s brusque, sometimes, and her taste in furnishings seems so horrible to me that it creates a kind of horrible snobbishness in me and I go to the opposite extreme to admire her larkspur walls. But she’s not stupid. She knows.

“You don’t have to,” she is saying, quite kindly.

“No – I’d like to. I mean it.” I have to say this, now, have to go on protesting my sincerity. Yet I can’t think of that place without dread. The abandoned voices, abandoned in both ways – their owners bereft and because of it needing to utter with that looseness. And the one voice which can’t be forgotten. But it was a momentary thing, a lapse, an accident. It couldn’t happen again. I don’t think that sort of thing could ever happen again, could it?