Everything Will Be All Right (41 page)

Martha came back. her summer of research work in the archives had gone well (this was for her book on women and politics in eighteenth-century America). She was surprised to find Pearl still around. Simon had told her on the phone that she was staying, but not for how long. Martha was less warm with her than she had been when Pearl had visited once or twice before for the weekend. She moved some clothes and bits and pieces out of his flat back into her own. When they made love it was at her place, and then Simon didn't want to sleep the night there; he said he didn't like to leave Pearl on her own.

Martha sat up in bed with the sheet over her breasts and smoothed her hair back behind her ears. Her hair was thick and very dark, as near as brown can come to black, with rich red lights in it. She wore it long, curling loose halfway down her back. She gave him a glance deep with accumulated questions; her eyes were brown too, almond-shaped and slanting (she had a Portuguese grandmother).

—It strikes me, she said, that Pearl is perfectly capable of looking after herself.

Simon sat up too, so as not to be at a disadvantage.

—I think I ought to be there.

She waited as if for more explanation, but none came.

—What on earth does she do all day? What ever is she up to?

—She's working almost full-time, Simon protested.

—Yes, but what kind of work? I mean, what are her plans? Aren't you worried for her future?

He too had felt at first that Pearl's life, without books, music, study, goals, had nothing in it, and this vacancy had produced in him an anxious desire to fill it up. Now, when Martha complained, he found himself thinking differently. He had come to look on Pearl's idleness almost with envy. It would be possible to see his own zeal for improvement as a part of a whole history of cultural bullying, rooted in puritan self-punishing; to see Pearl's resistance to it (her hours of telly watching, her days of sleep, the indifference with which she sold herself to the chain store for those long pointless sessions) as an irrecoverable freedom.

—I don't think she has plans, he said.

Martha gave an impatient shrug of her naked shoulders. Her long tapering back with its hanging luxuriance of hair was poised and upright; she went to dance class twice a week. She was certainly not going to plead with him to stay.

*   *   *

At home alone one night, he fell asleep waiting for pearl to come in. He dreamed fitfully. One horrible dream was of a miniature flamingo, tiny and pink as a finger, sprawled and damp, unconscious. He was cutting off its little wings, pressing with his fingernail for a joint as if with a knife. He had forgotten that the creature might not be dead; it lifted its head and its neck writhed, so he dropped it and stepped down hard on it with his shoe, to put it out of its misery or out of its knowledge of what he was doing. He woke up covered in disgust.

He didn't know whether Pearl had come in while he slept or not; he got up and wrapped himself in his bathrobe to check. Her bedroom door was closed, but he couldn't remember whether it had been ajar before. He stood hesitating, not liking to open the door just in case she was in there with Lozzy. He heard a subdued moaning. He thought for a moment this could be sex and gathered himself for retreat; then he was sure that Pearl was crying. He knocked and opened the door. In the light from the hallway he saw she was alone, and awake, pushed up on her elbows to see him; she reached over to switch on the bedside lamp. The room flooded in pink light (she had put a red bulb in). She was wearing her usual grubby nightshirt (surely it was time that went into the wash?). Her face was blotched and wet with tears; there was makeup smeared on her pillow.

She was not beautiful. Martha was beautiful: five foot ten, slender and muscular, her cheekbones and jawbone sharp as if carved from flint. Pearl was too indefinite; her face seemed to change shape and character according to her mood and efforts, and her figure when she was older would grow soft and shapeless like Zoe's mother's. Her looks touched him, though, as if they were part of himself.

—What is it? he whispered awkwardly.

He had not had to comfort her since she was a small child; he did not know how to do it.

—Should I go away?

She shook her head in her hands, sobbing.

—It's nothing.

He sat down on the side of the bed, tried to pat her hair.

—Well, evidently it's not nothing.

—Lozzy took me out in his car after work.

The words were broken up by the weeping erupting painfully from inside.

His heart clenched, his blood pulsed thickly. She was going to tell him the story he dreaded, that lurked in the lower levels of his imagination: of a violation, an abuse of her tender youth, some obscene thing done to her that she hadn't wanted.

—Well, it's not actually his car, it's his brother's. But he knew we were borrowing it, he was cool. And it was great to get out, you know, from the city? Lozzy's good like that, he really appreciates nature, he knows these fantastic places to go, woodland walks and country pubs and things.

So, not a violation. An accident? An arrest? They'd been done for possession of drugs? He was all ready to mobilize his authority, as a middle-class parent, as a member of the university. He would be cleverer than the police, he would rescue her (and even Lozzy if need be).

—Then we saw this dead fox beside the road.

—And?

She renewed her sobbing.

—You see, I knew you were going to say that. That's all. It was just this little fox. It was only a baby. You couldn't even see where it was damaged. It was just laid at the side of the road with its snout on its paws and a little frown wrinkling up its nose. It only looked as if it was asleep. Lozzy did get out to see if it was dead, though, and it was; it was cold, although it was still perfect. So we had to leave it there. And now I can't stop thinking about it.

Simon sat utterly perplexed. What reassurance was he supposed to produce, in response to this crisis? If she'd asked him about the gas chambers, or the massacres in Rwanda, or nine-eleven, he might have had some form of words ready.

He noted, at least, that Lozzy had not been able to console her.

—There are so many of them, he said, in what he hoped was a voice replete with adult confidence in ultimate meanings. There will be plenty more baby foxes.

—But not that one. I just can't stop thinking. It was alive this morning! And now it's not. And what about its mother? She must be wondering where it is.

—Coincidentally, Simon said, remembering suddenly, I had a dream just now, just before I got up to see if you were home, that was about hurting an animal.

She grew more quiet.

—Did you? What kind of animal?

—A bizarre little dream creature. Like a tiny bird. I was crushing it. When I woke up I felt disgusted with myself.

She put her hand on his, and squeezed it, and leaned her head against his chest so he couldn't see her face. He put his arm round her.

Her voice was muffled and reluctant, so he knew that what was coming now was the true core of her confession.

—What I can't bear, Daddy, is what's going to happen to the fox now. That it's going to turn to rot.

—Someone will take it away. Crows will eat it. They'll pick it clean.

—They don't always. We saw others. Sometimes they just turn into a bag of brown rot.

Words of explanation ran in his head but they were nothing, he couldn't speak them.

—It'll be all right, he could only say to her. Everything will be all right.

—Don't be stupid, Pearl said crossly. No it won't.

Ending

They have telephoned from the retirement home. Uncle Dick has died, aged ninety-six.

Joyce spoke to him only a few hours ago. He “went peacefully, in his sleep,” they tell her, although the last few weeks have been far from peaceful. Dick has tried to escape from the home several times; he has grappled with the cook in the kitchen, accusing her of hiding his tin of Epsom salts, and rattling through her cupboards for it with his stick; one of his visitors found him sitting in his bed in soiled pajamas; he has been phoning Joyce at three, four, five in the morning, to beg and plead with her to help get him out from where he is being held prisoner. He seemed to think that he was somewhere in South Africa, and he could see the tall masts of the ships in the harbor from his window. If only he could get on board one of those ships, he confided urgently, he could sail home to his wife and children. Joyce has taken to unplugging the phone before she goes to bed. She and Ann have been dreading that the nice-ish retirement home (at least there is someone playing the piano sometimes; at least the garden is lovely and the doors unlocked) will say they cannot look after him any longer, that he needs to move on to one of the other kind of places, with nursing care. Ann, who is brave about this kind of thing, has looked into those other places.

—You don't want to know that they exist, she says. Little wizened no-sex creatures batting back and forward in their chairs screaming for Mummy. One crawling on the floor around my feet.

And now instead, thank goodness, release. (Though there's still Vera.)

Joyce phones Peter. This will mean extra sessions with his therapist. There have been reconciliations of sorts, Peter has visited his father once or twice a year for the last few years; he will have his share of the inheritance. Joyce and Ann get their share too; Dick has said often (he was prone to waxing sentimental in his declining years) that they have been better than daughters to him. (“Bloody right we have,” says Ann.) Even Martin gets something.

Joyce drives round to tell Vera the news. Vera has settled years ago for an air of triumphant righteousness at having outlived Dick's second and third wives (breast cancer and a car accident). She and Dick have often met at Joyce's, on Sundays and on all the festivals, where they have been as irritable and familiar with each other as any old married couple.

—I'd spoken to him only a few hours before they rang me, Joyce says. I'd arranged for him to come for lunch on Sunday.

She doesn't tell Vera that Dick had said he should be able to come, as long as he could clock off in time, and that he would be in plain clothes. This is not so much in order to spare Vera from the details of her once-husband's deterioration as because Vera suffers herself from lapses of consequence, and if they set each other off a discussion can spiral quickly into dizzy realms of unmeaning. (At Christmas Joyce's grandchildren were both uncomfortable and giggly when Uncle Dick kept exclaiming “Ah so!” as if he was imitating a Japanese soldier, and Vera loudly protested against his using the word “arsehole.”)

Vera doesn't seem terribly affected by the news.

She is wearing a new pale pink cashmere cardigan Peter has sent her. Joyce did not think the color was a good idea, because of spills (no doubt she will end up handwashing it); but it does look pretty with Vera's dark skin and iron-gray hair (Joyce and Ann are whiter now than Vera is). In extreme old age a new kind of prettiness is possible, nothing like the youthful one that Joyce still clings to, yearns after; it has to do with the beauty you can find in old twisted wood and patiently eroded stone.

—What about the gales? Vera says. Did you hear them?

The gales are real. Joyce lay awake last night, unwillingly absorbed in listening to them while Ray snored beside her. She doesn't mind thunderstorms, and she loves to fall asleep to the sound of rain, but she hates the buffeting of strong wind; it agitates her strangely, makes her body ache, makes her want to cry. Also, she was worrying about the garden wall at the back, which was tottery and needed repointing. If the wind blew it down, they would be able to have it repaired on the insurance. On the other hand, if it fell down while someone was passing in the lane that ran behind and someone was hurt, it would be their fault; she would never be able to forgive herself. So she lay tensely, listening for footsteps in the lane. When she tried to wake Ray up to go down and see if the wall was in danger, see if he could push it over anyway—it would be better if it was just
down;
then she could sleep—he snapped at her crossly that she was being unreasonable.

—Some big branches have come down off the trees on the heath, Vera says. They've taped a lot of areas off from the public, for safety. You know that crooked Monterey pine that grows over the path, so that they've built a wooden support under it? Well, the tree's fine, but the support's down; it's broken in several pieces. Isn't that an irony? The tree stands, but the support is broken.

—How d'you know all this? Joyce asks suspiciously. Vera hasn't been up to the heath for months. (Joyce really ought to take her, to see the daffodils.)

—One of the girls told me: Pammy, Polly, one of those. She cycles into work that way.

—Penny. The one with the short dark hair.

—Whichever. I don't know, I can't keep track, they come and go so often.

(Actually, Penny has been working there for at least eighteen months.)

—Ann and I will have to arrange the funeral. I suppose we'll have some sort of do afterward, at our place. Peter can stay with us. I wonder if he'll want to bring any of the children?

—Typical of Dick to go like that. Vera chuckles.

—Like what? (Peacefully in his sleep: typical to have it easy at the end?)

—With all that banging about, says Vera. All that wind and bother. Making such a to-do. Slamming on the windows, battering at the doors, howling away.

Joyce chooses to interpret this as a metaphorical association of ideas.

—Yes, isn't it typical? She laughs. Never one to manage things quietly.

Probably, though, Aunt Vera has really got them muddled up, her husband's passing and last night's disturbance, as if what happens inside human lives is leaking out in her imagination into the texture of impersonal real things.