Blaming (Virago Modern Classics) (6 page)

“It’s good of you, Maggie,” James said. “But it wouldn’t do, surely? She might interfere about the children.”

“She never has.”

“Two women in one house,” he said restlessly. He felt pain and guilt about his mother, and could see no solution to his problem.

“There’s the possibility she might want to be on her own.” Maggie said, trying to keep wistfulness from her voice.

“Well, I rather think she might – for a time, that is. And there’s Ernie.”

“Yes, I was overlooking Ernie.” Maggie brightened, and clouded. “But will she be able to afford him?”

“Father was a good business man. I should be surprised if he hasn’t left her fairly comfortably off.”

“Well, as long as she knows that she is always welcome here. She could come on an indefinite stay to see how we all get on.”

“She might get on your nerves with her sadness.”

“But if she
is
so sad, isn’t it better to be with people who love her?”

“
Do
you love her?” he asked in surprise.

“No, I suppose not really. But we both know how
to behave. And
you
love her, and the children… certainly Dora does.”

“Let’s leave it for the moment. I do think an indefinite stay is a bad idea, though. How could one ever ask her to go away?”

“That’s true. A week, then. Goodness knows how one will find things to say to her. I can’t imagine what it can be like.” And then she found she could, and began to weep. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” she sobbed, her hands covering her face.

“Don’t cry. Or cry if you want to,” he said.

He knew she was weeping for herself, not for his mother. She had never been much drawn to her – no cosy women’s chats; but in spite of lack of warmth, their relationship was exemplary. It was her father-in-law she loved (for she still thought of doing so). Amy was simply his guardian, companion, the one who had so often made barriers to protect him, even from this family. Her life was null, otherwise, Maggie considered. She did nothing for anyone but Nick, and nothing like as much as he had done for her. The wrong one had died.

“We will make some good plans,” James said reassuringly. “it is nice of you to care so much. Certainly a long week-end some time can’t be too terrible a strain on anyone.”

So nothing was done.

To the children, first thing next morning, Maggie said, “I’m afraid dear Grandpa has died.”

“And gone to heaven.” Isobel said, as if her
mother had left something out.

Maggie slightly inclined her head, not to be caught telling a lie by the God she did not believe in.

“And-Gone-To-Heaven.” Isobel shouted, standing up, outraged, in her little bed.

“Yes, of course.”

“Not everyone goes to heaven,” Dora, who was older said. “Egyptian mummies didn’t go. Or stuffed fishes.”

“No, fishes never go,” Isobel agreed. “Sometimes I eat them. Chickens can’t go, nor.”

“I don’t really know about heaven,” Dora said in her considering way. “We haven’t done that at school yet. But I know they must go somewhere, or we’d be too full up here. People coming and going all the time.”

“Being born,” said Isobel.

“Well, I’m afraid that you won’t see Grandpa again,” Maggie said, thinking that her message was being lost in vague conjecture. “But you will remember him in your minds, and we shall talk about him often, but perhaps not to Grandma for a while. We shall let her decide when she wants to.”

“When are they coming?” Dora asked. And it was then that the truth hit her. She turned her face against the pillow, and tears poured into it.

Isobel snuggled down in bed. She took her thumb from her mouth and said in placid anticipation, “I don’t know what present they have brought me.”

“It’s time for getting up,” Maggie said, with a sense of defeat. Downstairs, she said to James, “I even wonder if they have realised. I found that I could
not quite say, ‘dead is dead’.”

Widowhood began. Amy tried to get through it, as if it were a temporary affliction. She had little to do but that, apart from long talks with James and solicitors about business matters.

Sometimes she thought about Martha and wondered what she was doing, and from curiosity borrowed one of her novels from the library. It was very short, but all the same she skipped through it – and thought what a stifling little world it was, of a love affair gone wrong, of sleeping-pills and contraceptives, tears, immolation; a woman on her own. Objects took the place of characters – the cracked plate, a dripping tap, a bunch of water-sprinkled violets minutely described, a tin of sardines, a broken comb; and the lone woman moved among them as if in a dream. The writing was spare, as if translated from the French.

Once, Martha telephoned when Amy was out shopping. She left a number with Ernie, but Amy could not bring herself to ring back. She did all that for me, and I never want to see her again, she thought in shame. I shall say I mislaid the number, and by some means she soon managed to.

For must she not be getting on with being a widow?

“Time will heal, no doubt,” said Ernie.

It will take more than whatever years I have left to me, she thought.

Silly things upset her. The grandfather clock on the landing had run down, and because it had been Nick who had always wound it, she left it as it was,
but glanced at it in annoyance when passing. She did not even know how to pay cheques into her bank, for Nick had always done it for her. Ashamed of her helplessness, she tried to hide it, even from Ernie. He was another who did not help. Everything was taken from her, all what he called ‘the chores’, apart from some special little jobs she had always insisted on doing herself. She did them conscientiously. For what? For whom? she wondered, feeling herself being watched by Ernie. When she glanced at her watch, as she so often did, it seemed that the hands had stuck.

Sometimes, James came after work, renewing his invitations without sweeping her off her feet. Nothing definite, but just that she should always know that she was welcome. Maggie dropped in, bringing Isobel. “Come whenever you want,” she would say on departing. Amy did not want.

And the Vicar called, with condolences and chosen phrases.

The Reverend Patrick Padstowe’s church was built on the site of an old one bombed in the war. It was across the road from the back of Amy’s house, away from the river. Slabs of bright yellowish pitted stone made it look as if it were built of shortbread; coloured glass windows were heavily riveted. In the churchyard broken tombs remained and twisted trees with blackened trunks, under which old people seemed content to sit, passing time, looking at the evidence of mortality, or at pigeons, or nothing. Amy never gave them or the church a passing glance.

In her sitting-room on the afternoon of the visit, she sat and waited for the Reverend Patrick Padstowe
to go away, listening to him with deep hostility.

“I believe you’ll find that you’ve learned something from this,” he said, referring to Nick’s death.

Such an intrusion she could barely suffer. It would have to be tears or rudeness, and she chose rudeness. “I’ve learned a great deal, but not about any God if that’s what you mean.” And then she underlined the rudeness by saying off-handedly, “Sorry, if that was rather childish.”

“Your courage has been given to you as a precious gift,” he said softly, having mistaken her indifference towards him as stoicism.

He wouldn’t for the moment take her silence as his dismissal. She was his parishioner, although not a church-goer. He tried to do his duty to all, although he had got round to this particular one rather late in the day. His church-goers offered no challenge; they were all gratitude for his visits.

Amy obviously didn’t know the first thing about this kind of call – that material comfort, such as tea or sherry, should be offered in exchange for the spiritual sort. She could easily have rung a bell for Ernie to bring something, but instead she bowed her head, steadily looking at her wrist-watch.

At last, he stirred and rose and she rose, too, very quickly. Saying goodbye at the front door, which Ernie could rarely reach in time, the Vicar lifted his hand in blessing. “It is not always easy to remember that God’s works are for the good,” he said, and he went down the steps, – and such was the nature of the man – without a sense of failure.

Dr. Gareth Lloyd called one evening after surgery
to take her out to dinner. Getting ready, before he arrived, she could not zip up the back of her dress, and had to go down to the kitchen for help from Ernie. She stood with her back to him, eyes shut, as his limp hands touched her bare flesh. “Your hair looks smashing, madam,” he said. “Very rewarding.”

“What should I do without you?” she said impatiently, and wondered why she hadn’t waited until Gareth had come. She had wanted, she realised, to avoid the smallest physical intimacy with one, who after all, in surgery hours, had explored the most secret recesses of her body.

Gareth came. They went out to dinner and talked of their dead spouses. There was some comfort in it.

When he said goodbye, he put his hand on her shoulder, as if to try to give her courage. He knew what it was like, climbing the stairs to that too-wide bed.

“I was waiting up to undo you,” Ernie said, hovering.

I believe I shall never wear this dress again, she thought.

Undressed, she lay down on what she still thought of as her side of the bed, and she wondered where her dreams would take her this night. I feel too tired to go on any more journeys with this poor anxious woman, she thought, dreading sleep.

Sometimes, she dreamed about Istanbul, lost in a maze of noisy, crowded streets, filled with a desperation about something she could not understand. Often she dreamed about Nick, as she always had done. There were erotic dreams – and for years she had had
none but with him in them – and she would awake with a feeling of shamed distress, as she did when, on the other side of her dreaming, she had spoken angry, bitter words to him. But the worst of all was when she simply dreamed the truth – that she had lost him, came with relief from such a nightmare to realise bleakly that it was not. It was a bad way in which to face a day. She would lie still, trying not to panic, often at a time when light began to come at the window, and furniture took shape. The light was enough to fade out the luminous hands on her bedside clock, but not enough for her to see them naturally. But from long practice she could tell what time it was. In an hour she might get up.

“I am consumed by a desire to see your house,” Amy read. “Laurel House, Laurel Walk sounds so English.” Martha’s spidery, American hand-writing. Ernie, bringing in a pot of coffee, asked, “Everything all right, madam?” His new teeth clicked badly. If they were to do it for ever, she felt that she could not bear it.

“Yes, yes,” she said. She knew that he always read her letters, and wondered why he bothered to make such enquiries.

She re-read the letter for the third time, wondering how she could decently prevent Martha from coming, who could recreate the nightmare, letting slip place-names, which must never be mentioned to her again; but she knew that she could not decently prevent her, after all that she had done. She had already behaved too badly– the very worst behaviour of her life, she was sure. Perhaps delay her, though. A little later, she wrote to Martha. “I should love to see you here, and hope to.” She paused in desperation, and then wrote, “It just so happens” (that opening phrase of liars) “that I am off to stay with my son and daughter-in-law for a while. No specified time on either side, but it will be a change which perhaps I need. When I return, may I write again to ask you to come to my English house? You were good
to
me and
for
me, and your unselfishness I shall always remember.” More like a farewell letter than one of promise. Tears often came to her eyes when writing insincere letters, and they
came now for a moment. Then she got up and telephoned Maggie, her daughter-in-law. “Why, that would be simply lovely.” Maggie said in a resilient voice. “James and I and the little girls will be delighted.”

“I am going to stay for a day or two on Campden Hill.” Amy told Ernie, who pouted.

It was a morning of autumn beauty, with sun on the yellow leaves, and she went for a walk along the towing path. How to pass her time was her problem, and she wondered about other women alone in their houses, wishing their lives away. Crisp leaves were blown across the river from the trees on the ait. It was a swirling, dancing day. She passed cottages and rather grand villas crowded together, a clapboard-fronted pub, Nick’s old haunt. The river was brown and scummy. Schoolboys shot by, sculling.

At the end of the walk, by the bridge, she turned and, looking at her watch, found that she had passed hardly any time. Perhaps it’s a good idea to go to Maggie’s, she thought; but her spirits did not lift at the idea. Unwilling to go in from the bright air, she sat for a while on the low riverside wall outside Laurel House, looking down at the water. The river was less polluted these days, she had been told, and she could certainly see small, shadowy, darting fish.

She looked up quickly, as Ernie, above her, opened her bedroom window and shook out a duster. She smiled and lifted her hand. He nodded, as if preoccupied with duty.

I love our…I love my house, she thought. Like the pub, it was weather-boarded, painted white. Above her bedroom, was a great jutting-out casement, which
was the window of Nick’s studio. One day, she would go up there again, as his gallery tactfully urged her to. Perhaps tomorrow I will, she sometimes thought.