Gordon Williams (5 page)

“Jean Knapman says the birds have eaten all the berries,” she said to George, knowing how little he was interested in such trivial things. He tried to show some enthusiasm but she knew his mind was on something else. That was one of their troubles – when he was being trivial she wanted to be serious and
vice versa
.

George Magruder was glad she had not asked him to go on the
holly hunt. Louise’s brother Jeremy and his wife Sophia and their children were arriving the next morning from London and he knew how little work he would get through during their stay. Not that there was any great panic about finishing the Branksheer book but he liked to hold to his working routine as firmly as possible. It was the only discipline available to him here.

Yet when he sat at his desk he felt too disturbed to concentrate. Why hadn’t he been able to lift the dead cat? What kind of man could be
paralysed
by the sight of an animal corpse? He poked about on the wide window ledge among the various piles of typed sheets of research notes on Branksheer (B’s Three London Trips... Lydia’s Letters... B on Farming... B on the Village). Lying on top of them were some small blank gift cards which Louise had put there for him to fill in. He tried to think of original – and witty – inscriptions. He was not in a Christmas mood.

There had been a time when Louise had made him feel particularly manly, in a way that no girl or woman had done before. Perhaps it was her Englishness – she had a softer voice than most women he knew. She was a good listener, something you didn’t find too often among American women, especially intelligent ones. Femininity – that was it. She couldn’t even drive a car.

But what kind of pattern was emerging now, after nine years of marriage? Pessimistically he thought they might be proving a classic case of opposites attracting each other only, after marriage, to switch direction. The cat had brought it home to him. He’d made her capable. She’d let him become soft. He’d taught her to drive.

The inference that anybody with brains would have to draw was that subconsciously he wanted her to relieve him of the responsibility of masculinity. The classic American syndrome – which he had
always felt so glad that he did not suffer from.
She
had organised the move from America,
she
had done most of the house-hunting,
she
had taken care of all the details,
she
had arranged Karen’s schooling – she had done all the things he ought to have been responsible for.

That damned cat!

What good did it do a man to know he had brains? How could academic knowledge make up for loss of
maleness
? This was what had attracted him to Branksheer in the first place, that drunken old poxridden lecher, at home with Ovid or a London whore, a
complete
man.

He decided to write the gift cards. Louise had also left a list of Christmas gifts for Jeremy and Sophia and the three children, Roger, Kevin and Amy. For Roger, he noted again, they’d brought a baseball bat which he’d said was stupid considering the boy would never be able to use it. Louise had said it would be a novelty.

He tried to think of something funny to put on the card but his mind kept going back to days when he was that age and life’s great worry was whether you could swing that bat well enough to make the Little League team in Shore Park.

He felt like heaving his typewriter through the window.

As they searched the thick, overgrown hedges for holly with berries, Louise tried to tell Karen something of what it meant to her to be walking once again in an English country lane at Christmas-time.

Karen listened dutifully but she didn’t really care.

“Mother, do I have to go to this party?” she asked, when Louise had just finished describing the magic Christmasses of her girlhood.

“Why Karen, you’ll love the party. All the boys and girls from round about will be there. It’s a chance for you to make some new friends. Don’t you want to go?”

“I know I won’t like
their
party.”

“But whyever not?”

“They only play with each other. They don’t like me because I’m American.”

“That’s nonsense, Karen. It’s just that you’re new, you’ve only arrived. They take time to make new friends in the country.”

“I wish we were back home. I
hate
Bobby Hedden.”

So she still hadn’t got over that, Louise thought. They’d enrolled Karen at the Compton Wakley primary school, to which a bus took the local children every morning. Bobby Hedden and two other older children also went in the bus to Compton Wakley, where they got a service bus to the County School. One night Karen had come home crying. It was difficult to get it out of her but eventually she’d said that Bobby Hedden was a bully and tormented the younger children. She said he’d kicked her ankle.

“Why didn’t you tell the driver? Mr. Hodgson would stop Bobby if you told him.”

“He doesn’t care to tell Bobby Hedden
anything
.”

This had happened a second time and Louise went to see Mrs. Hedden, thinking this preferable to George’s suggestion that he should have it out with Tom Hedden. Bobby’s mother was a harassed, tired-eyed woman struggling to make dinner for her large family. The farm seemed to Louise to be in a ruinous state and the small, low-ceilinged kitchen in which the Heddens apparently spent most of their time was a terrible mess, with clothes lying in heaps on every flat surface, hungry cats lurking and darting under the table, several blackened pots pouring out steam from an old-style range.

Louise might have still had the courage to mention Bobby’s
bullying but while she was thinking of a tactful way to bring the subject up little Janice Hedden had thrown a tantrum.

She’d been sitting at the table, a girl of Karen’s age, dirty hair in straggly plaits, jam on her cheeks, snot under her nose, licking her fingers each time she pulled them out of a jar of raspberry jelly.

“Janice, you’re makin’ a right mess,” Mrs. Hedden said occasionally, without taking away the jam jar or wiping the girl’s face. Louise had heard that Janice Hedden was, as they said in the village, afflicted, although she didn’t know what this meant exactly. Suddenly she threw the jam jar across the table. It rolled over the edge and smashed on the stone floor. Louise had never liked the sound of breaking glass and she had almost cried out.

“Oh Janice!” said Mrs. Hedden, wearily bending down to pick up the pieces and wipe up the jam, at which one of the cats was already licking.

As though she had been struck violently little Janice began to scream. Her face contorted, her eyes closed, she filled the dark kitchen with piercing screams. Louise blinked. The noise seemed to cut right through her head. Mrs. Hedden dropped the glass fragments into a bucket. Only then did she attend to Janice.

“Stop that silly yellin’ now,” she said. Janice screamed even louder, drawing in great breaths, her little body heaving in a way that made Louise feel like crying. Mrs. Hedden picked her up and carried her through a doorway which Louise presumed led to their bedrooms. Through the small window over the kitchen sink she could see the roof of her blue Zephyr. She felt embarrassed. Mrs. Hedden came back from the other part of the house, Janice’s screams still faintly audible.

“Will she be all right? I’m afraid I must have frightened her, I know what they’re like at that age with strangers.”

“Oh, it wasn’t you,” said Mrs. Hedden, weary yet patient. “It’s one of her fits, that’s all.”

“What causes them, do you know?”

“The doctors called it somethin’, I can’t remember the right name of it. She’s never been right like. They say she might get over it in time – I don’t think they know no better than we do. Tom wanted her put away in a home but they said she ain’t bad enough to go in one of they places. Sometimes she’s all right. You get used to her.”

It was impossible to bring up her complaint about Bobby. Louise left. No reason for her visit was given or asked. The next time the bus came for Karen she had a word with Mr. Hodgson, the driver.

‘Them Heddens is all the same,” he said, shrugging. “I know what I’d
like
to do to them.”

“But you will try to see Bobby doesn’t bully the younger ones?” Louise asked. “It’s too bad, I can’t have my child coming home crying.”

“Kids are always fighting or something,” said Mr. Hodgson. “I tell ’em but they take no heed.”

Still, Louise thought he would probably try to keep an eye on Bobby in future – and there was always the happy thought that Bobby was leaving school at Christmas. She persuaded George that it would be ridiculous for them to stop Karen using the bus because of what was only childish bickering. George had been very bad-tempered.

“If it happens again I’ll go to the headmistress,” he said. “And if she won’t do something I’ll drive Karen to school myself. What’s wrong with these people, they think children are cattle or something?”

“It’s important Karen isn’t made to feel different from the
others,” was Louise’s clinching argument. She knew George. Like most Americans, even sophisticated ones, he had a
horror
of that sort of thing.

When she did see a few berries the birds had missed, Louise tried to jolly Karen into some kind of enthusiasm, but neither of them could reach the branch through the tangle of thorns.

“I’m sure you’ll soon grow to like it here,” she said to Karen as they walked home through the snow. Even as she spoke she noticed the sun had disappeared in a thick, dull sky.

“Mother, who would do that to our cat?” Karen asked.

Louise had hoped this had been forgotten.

“I don’t know, darling, we can get another cat. I’ll race you to the house.”

After lunch, which they ate quietly, each seemingly pre-occupied, George said he was going back to his study.

“I thought we’d wrap up the presents,” Louise said.

“You and Karen can do that, I really must work,” said George, rising from the kitchen table.

“Can’t you leave silly old Branksheer for an hour or two – at Christmas?” she replied, irritation in her voice. It was like him, to disappear whenever there was any unpleasantness in the air.

“He isn’t silly, honey,” said George, with his annoyingly pleasant voice, the one he used when he was at his most sanctimonious. “He’s our whole reason for being here.”

“He isn’t
my
reason. I’ve got a lot of things to do for Jeremy and Sophia coming. If you don’t want to wrap presents why don’t you and Karen take a walk up to the Knapmans? I said we’d collect our turkey today.”

“I’m behind with my work as it is, Louise, I –”

“Oh God, can’t you forget your work for
once
? It’s Christmas on Friday, or had you forgotten?”

“Of course I haven’t forgotten, honey. I’m going to lose three or four days’ working time as it is, I really should get on with –”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake! Can’t you behave like a normal father and forget that damned book of yours!”

“So that’s what you think? Branksheer’s some kind of joke? And what d’you mean, behave like a normal father? Don’t you think I’m a normal father? I was a normal enough father before we stranded ourselves in this God-forsaken hole!”

The row flared quickly and violently. Each thought there was something irrational about the other.

“I know why you wanted us to come here,” George said, his mouth tightened, his anger channelled, as usual, into heavy sarcasm. “You think you’re getting old, you’re suffering from some delayed adolescent fantasy, aren’t you, let’s go back to England and re-live the jolly old past. Let’s look for romance!”

“What’s that bullshit supposed to mean?”

“Karen – you go on out and play or something,” said George. They waited till she left, Louise wondering if a good slap on the bottom would shake her daughter out of this unnatural solemnity. What was
wrong
with her?

“Now then, Louise,” said George, looking set to play the heavy husband. “I’ve told you about using that kind of language in front of Karen, I –”

“You’ve told me! Who do you think you are, you pompous bastard? I’ll swear if I bloody well like.”

“Not in front of Karen. It doesn’t become you, anyway.”

“Become me, become me! You sound like Queen Victoria.
Hmmph, for a so-called professor you’ve got a very old-fashioned imagination, haven’t you?”

“A so-called professor! That’s better than being a so-called poet. I suppose you’re just eating your heart out for that fat slob.”

“Are you referring to Patrick Ryman? If so, I –”

“Who else would I be referring to? That’s why you wanted us to come to this precious little country of yours, isn’t it? Romantic fantasy. Did you think he’d come riding up the lane and carry you off? Come to England, I want to show you
my
country! Horseshit! All you wanted was to indulge some sordid little romantic daydream.”

“Oh, clever, clever. You found another word for fantasy, You’re improving.”

“Fantasy suits you.”

“Suits
me
? You live in a great non-stop bloody fantasy and you think everybody else is the same. God, you’re
sick
.”

“Now look here, I didn’t start all this, what do –”

“You didn’t start it, oh no, you’re too damned clever for that. You provoke me into starting it, don’t you? Very clever.”

“I didn’t provoke you! I was perfectly happy, I –”

“Were you hell! You’ve been brooding all bloody morning. What’s eating you now then, your virility problem or whatever the stupid American euphemism is?”

“What do you mean, stupid American? Listen to me, Louise, what’s all this really about?”

“It’s about you keeping your nose buried in that dreary old book you’re supposed to be writing and me having to try and amuse
our
daughter. You’re her father, remember? I suppose you think it’s beneath your masculine dignity to take an interest in your own child.”

“I do take an interest in her.”

“Not like a proper father –”

“Not like an English father, you mean? Listen to me, Louise, I –”

“Why do you always tell me to listen to you? I’m not some idiot student on a football scholarship, you know.”