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Authors: Margot Livesey

BOOK: Homework
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That evening we went to bed at our usual time; I was tired, and it seemed pointless to resist. We were in the bedroom, undressing, when Stephen said, “Jenny asked me today if people who weren't married could have babies.”
“What did you tell her?” I asked. I froze with my hands on the top button of my shirt.
“I told her the truth, that babies were the result of making
love, not of marriage, but that usually people waited until they were married before having a baby. She knows all this—Helen's sister, Barbara, had a baby without the slightest sign of male intervention—but the biology doesn't really make sense to her yet, so she asks me to repeat it one more time.”
“And what did she say?”
“She asked what making love was. I said it was something grown-ups did in bed together. I'll have to get her a book soon.”
“Did she ask you to be more specific?” I wanted to get down on my knees, to beg him to repeat every syllable of their conversation. Stephen was telling me an amusing story, and I was in fear of all my life and happiness.
“She said, ‘In bed at night?' and I said, ‘Yes.' Then she asked again about people having to be married. I know that Helen's boyfriends used to sleep at their flat, but I'm not sure Jenny ever took in that there was a difference between her having a friend to stay and Helen having a man to stay.”
In bed we made love. I knew his body so well that it was not hard to comply. Afterwards, almost immediately, he fell asleep, and I lay there. The shadowy outline of Jenny's plan was growing clearer; it loomed over me, huge and dark, but still I could not see it clearly.
I must have fallen asleep. Her hands were groping across the bedclothes, over my body, touching my face—a soft pattering not like any human touch I had ever known, more like a small animal, a rat, running over my skin. I cannot describe the feeling of horror that it gave me. I felt as if I were being excoriated, the skin peeled back, until every nerve lay exposed and writhing. Yet I kept still. I was determined not to give her the excuse to wake Stephen. Then she touched my eyes, very delicately, with the tips of her fingers, and I cried out.
Stephen said drowsily, “What is it?”
At once Jenny spoke, as if she were the one who had cried out. “Daddy, I couldn't find you. I thought you'd left me.” She withdrew her hands.
Immediately he was alert. He hurried to her side. “Jenny, it was only a dream. Look, here I am, I won't leave you. I'm right here. There's no reason to cry.”
As I lay waiting for him to return, I remembered, almost as if it were an event in my own life, the night when Angel Clare sleepwalks with Tess in his arms. At first she is glad, thinking that he has forgiven her, then she discovers that Angel believes himself to be carrying her corpse; as far as he is concerned, she is dead.
Next morning as the bus bumped slowly up the hill towards George Street, I suddenly thought, Stephen and I are finished. She is invincible. All the way to my stop I entertained the notion quite calmly; I considered what we would do with the house, whether I would return to London. I walked down the familiar street and climbed the stairs to my office. Only when I was settled at my desk did I fully realise what it was that I was thinking. Then pain seized me, like a hawk its prey, and began to shake me back and forth.
 
The following night, Jenny did not come into our room, but when I woke and found that it was morning, I was not reassured; too often in the past I had been lulled into a sense of security. Now I thought of the troops outside the beleaguered city who take time before the final battle to wash and shave, to smooth sweet-scented oils into their limbs, to put on fresh linen, to listen to music, to savour what they know they are about to accomplish.
Even when that night's peace stretched into a second's, and a third's, my fear did not diminish. On Friday evening Stephen and I went out to dinner. I drank with determination; it was the only way I knew to be cheerful. We came home around eleven. While Stephen escorted Charlotte home, I
went into the bathroom. I removed my lenses, brushed my teeth, inserted my diaphragm. By the time I came out of the bathroom, Stephen was back. He took only a few minutes to get ready for bed.
Our light was still on, Stephen was on top of me, when I heard the slightest of sounds. Turning my head, I saw the handle of the door move very, very slowly. I could do nothing. Degree by degree, the handle turned. Stephen was in me, utterly absorbed. I had always thought of our lovemaking as a kind of conversation, conversation at the deepest level, where comprehension was sure and almost instantaneous, perhaps not so much a dialogue as a duet. Now I saw how fanciful this notion had been, for here we were, joined but entirely separate. I was in terror, and he was oblivious.
The door came open, and around it appeared Jenny's head. As her eyes met mine, her father groaned, “Oh, God.” I shut my eyes and turned my head away—thinking, there is a tiny chance that she will retreat without speaking, thinking, oh, protect me.
“Daddy?” she whispered.
I felt Stephen jerk, as if electrified. “Jenny?” He was out of me, pulling the sheets up to hide the slightest glimpse of flesh, all his grace gone into clumsiness as he struggled to sit up, to retrieve his pyjamas, to dispel the faintest odour of sex and darkness.
She had been miscalculating; thinking that making love and sleeping were simultaneous activities, she had been investigating our behaviour in the middle of the night, when it seemed that something so secret was most likely to occur. She stood there rubbing her eyes. “I don't know what's happening. I was having a dream. I woke up and you were making a strange noise.”
“It was nothing,” said Stephen. He got out of bed. His pyjama trousers were already on, and as he walked around the bed towards her he bent to pick up his dressing gown
from the floor. He took her by the shoulder and propelled her from the room. I heard him saying, “Go back to bed. I'll get you some water.”
I pulled the sheets up over my face. As I began to cry, I breathed in the smell of our bodies, a commingling of scents, unique and indescribable, which had grown as familiar as my own skin, but which soon, I knew, I must leave behind.
When Stephen returned to bed, I pretended to be asleep.
In the morning the click of the bedside lamp woke me. The first thing I saw was Stephen's back as he got out of bed. While I lay watching he put on his dressing gown and began to gather up his clothes. His movements were stealthy as a thief's, and never once did he glance in my direction. He was almost at the door when I spoke his name.
Then he turned to look at me, a shirt in one hand, and although in the dim light it was hard to read his expression, nothing in his mien invited intimacy. If only he would come and put his arms around me, I would know what to say, but in the face of such tangible reluctance, words fled. At last I said lamely, “Is everything all right?”
“Of course. I didn't mean to wake you. Would you like some coffee?”
“I'll get up,” I said. I had arrested his departure, but only for an instant; the words were barely out of my mouth before he hurried from the room. I heard the bathroom door close.
I rose and dressed in the first garments that came to hand. In the bathroom mirror I looked coldly at my reflection: my eyes were dull, my skin pale, and my features still misshapen from sleep and the lack thereof. By the time I entered the dining room Stephen and Jenny were already in their places. The room smelled of toast, and the radio was tuned to the Saturday morning show. It was after nine o'clock, but the sky was barely light. I poured myself some coffee and sat down.
“Do you know what day it is?” Jenny asked, looking at Stephen and me in turn.
“The first of December,” said Stephen.
“Yes, so I can start my calendar.” She jumped up and fetched her Advent calendar off the sideboard. Joyce and Edward had given it to her on her most recent visit, and she had been waiting impatiently to open the first of the twenty-four doors. Without hesitation she opened the door marked “1.” She showed the picture to Stephen. “It's you getting ready for Christmas,” he said.
She moved around the table and offered it to me. “Look, Celia,” she said.
I stared at the dark-haired girl playing with a doll and nodded.
“Our concert is less than a week away,” Jenny announced.
“Are you nervous?” asked Stephen.
Jenny thought for a moment. “Yes,” she said, and giggled.
After breakfast Jenny and Stephen went off to do the shopping. I walked around the house, from one room to another. In the living room the curtains were still drawn. A newspaper lay open on the rug before the fire. Jenny's room was strewn with books, toys, clothes, the walls were thickly covered with posters—just as a ten-year-old girl's room ought to be. When I went into our room I saw that Stephen had made the bed. If only, I thought, the turbulence of the night before could be smoothed over as easily as the sheets and blankets. I looked around the room. Everything within these blue walls had been chosen by Stephen and me, and yet my eye rested on nothing with which I felt any kind of kinship. Only Tobias, sleeping on the end of the bed, was dear and familiar. I bent to stroke him, and he pushed his golden face against my hand.
In what sense, I wondered, was this house my home? It was Stephen who had made the down payment, using the money from the sale of his flat; at the time there was so much good
will between us that any arrangement had seemed fine. Now it occurred to me that I could move out as easily as I had from Malcolm's, in fact perhaps more so, for I would not have to worry about finding a replacement.
I went over to the bedroom window. It had rained heavily during the night, and the sodden landscape seemed to mirror my gloomy thoughts. Beyond the wall at the end of the garden, the slate roofs of the houses in the next street merged with the leaden clouds. A volley of pigeons was circling the spire of Saint Columba's Church, and I found myself remembering the pair of pigeons that had lived on the window sill of Stephen's old flat and filled our bedroom with their soft cooing. A movement in the garden caught my eye. I glimpsed Selina. I did not remember Jenny going to feed her this morning.
I put on Wellington boots and a jacket and went outside. Selina was sheltering in her hutch, but when I reached into the run to lift out her dish she appeared in the doorway. I filled the dish from the sack of pellets in the tool shed and carried it back to the run. She hopped over and began to eat. As I watched her nose twitching with pleasure, the rain ran down my face. I stroked her damp fur. “Selina,” I said softly. She stopped eating and looked at me with her pale-blue eyes.
When Stephen and Jenny returned, I was sitting at the dining room table, making lists of people to send cards and gifts to. Jenny went off to watch television. Stephen put away the groceries, then came and sat down at the opposite end of the table. I kept on checking through my address book. Suddenly he said, “Celia, I spoke to Jenny, and she's absolutely definite that she doesn't want to go to Paris for a weekend.”
I looked up in surprise; it had not occurred to me that he would pursue the matter. From Jenny's first protest I had known that there was no chance of her going. In some mysterious way, her behaviour had become transparent to
me. Her defeat in Paris was inevitable, and however much she missed her mother, there was nothing to be gained by a visit. Like a wise general, she was employing her forces where they could be most effective: to keep control of her single remaining parent. All this was clear to me, but I was curious to learn how Stephen interpreted her refusal. “Why doesn't she want to go?” I asked.
“She said that she liked living with me—with us, that is.” He smiled. “I was so glad. All along I've had the feeling that she was unhappy here and that I was just a poor substitute for Helen. Now it's clear that she thinks of this as her home.” He spread his hands in a gesture of welcome or inclusion. “None of this would have been possible without you, Celia.”
He stood up and came around the table to hug me. At first I resisted, then I clung to him. He was so warm and solid, and for a brief moment, within the circle of his arms, I hoped that everything might still come right. “About last night,” I said.
Immediately I felt Stephen stiffen and pull away. “She was asleep. She doesn't remember anything.”
He was retreating towards his end of the table, when suddenly he stumbled. “Damn,” he exclaimed. From beneath his feet Tobias fled with an indignant cry.
“Sorry. I think I'll go to the corner shop to pay the paper bill.” He left the room. I heard him say goodbye to Jenny, and then the front door opened and closed. Looking down at my list, I saw Mrs. Menzies' name, and on impulse I decided to write her an early Christmas card. I told her about the garden and the neighbours and that she was missed. I wanted to recapture the wonderful ease with which we had bought the house, the sense I had had of all the difficulties in my life dissolving, and the pleasure it had given me to feel that the happiness she and her husband had shared still lingered here. I was reading over what I had written, wondering what to tell her about Stephen and me, when the door opened. Jenny hovered on the threshold. “What are you doing?” she asked.
“I'm writing to the woman we bought the house from. She and her husband lived here for fifty years. He was called Stephen too.”
“Like Daddy.”
“Yes.”
Jenny came fully into the room, closing the door behind her. She went and stood in front of the gas fire; it was turned to low and made only a slight hissing sound. I waited with my pen poised over the card.
“Celia,” she said, “can we go shopping sometime soon for Daddy's Christmas present?”
“How about next Saturday? Would that be a good time?”
“Oh,” she said. She looked down, and I followed her gaze to where one of her small slippered feet scuffed back and forth across the carpet.
“Are you doing something else on Saturday?” I asked.
“I don't think so. I wasn't sure you'd be here then.” She spoke in quiet, sad tones.
“Of course I'll be here,” I said automatically, and was about to ask if she had any idea what she wanted to buy, when the implications of her remark dawned upon me. Christ, I thought, and then in terror, could think no further.
She raised her head and looked directly into my eyes. For a moment I stared back at her. Then she smiled. “Couldn't we go after school on Tuesday? The shops won't be nearly so crowded.”
“All right,” I said.
“Goody.” She skipped out of the room.
I rose and walked over to take her place in front of the fire, trying to warm myself.
 
Each day was shorter than the one before, and I came and went to the office in darkness. For months, I had been inching my way along like Ariadne, assuming that the thread I followed through the dark passages led out into the light. Now
I had reached the end, and I found myself in a cave darker and more remote than any I had imagined. Day by day Jenny was severing the woof and warp of the many ties that had linked Stephen and me. I remembered the conversation we had had the day after we learned that Jenny was coming to live with us; Stephen had claimed that it was impossible to lie to someone you lived with. I watched him closely, trying to decide how much he knew, but he seemed happier than he had ever been. The only sign he gave of his distress was in bed, where he never turned to me save in the deepest hours of night. Then I would wake to find him taking me in a kind of frenzy.
 
On Tuesday we went shopping. Jenny knew exactly what she wanted to buy—a tie from Marks and Spencer's—and the expedition did not take long. When we arrived home she announced that she was going to hide the tie in the tool shed.
“Won't it get damp out there?”
“No. It'll be safer,” she said, and hurried out of the back door.
We ate pizza for supper in front of the television. Afterwards Jenny asked for my help in devising her costume for the school concert. Her class had written a play about a rich, bad child who was lonely and unhappy and a poor, good child who gave away the little he had and was amply rewarded. Jenny was a needy street sweeper who gratefully received a pair of gloves. We found a dark, gathered skirt of mine and adjusted the waist; on Jenny it reached the floor which seemed appropriate for the Victorian flavour of the enterprise. With it she wore a plain white blouse and my grey shawl. She covered her hair with a kerchief. When she was dressed she went to look at herself in the mirror in our room.
In a couple of minutes she returned to the living room. “Do you think I could borrow your earrings?” she asked.
“But your ears aren't pierced.”
“I mean the ones from Egypt. You don't need to have pierced ears for them.”
“Oh, the amber ones. It's true they have clips, but no one will see them. You'll be too far away.”
“They go with my costume, though. Come and see.”
I stood up and followed her to our room. The blue box containing the earrings lay on top of the chest of drawers. “Let me put them on for you. They're a bit awkward,” I said. I lifted out the earrings one by one and gently clipped them onto her small lobes.
She stood in front of the mirror, studying her reflection. The effect of the earrings and the costume together was to make Jenny appear, even more than she usually did, to be a miniature grown-up. “They're brilliant,” she exclaimed. “Can I borrow them, please, Celia?”
I did not have the strength to argue. I nodded a minimal assent and immediately Jenny headed towards the door, still wearing the earrings. “Leave them here for now,” I said. “I'll give them to you on Friday morning.”
“I have to take everything to school tomorrow. Miss Nisbet is going to check through the costumes to make sure they're okay.”
“The earrings aren't really part of your costume.”
“I promise I'll be careful of them. Please.” She looked at me appealingly.
I shrugged. “All right,” I said, “but don't lose them.” Before I could change my mind, she ran from the room. Tobias padded in; he stared at me for an instant, then disappeared under the bed. I drew the curtains and left the door ajar so that he could leave when the spirit moved him.
 
After Jenny had gone to bed, I fetched myself a glass of wine and settled down beside the living-room fire. The events of the evening, harmless in themselves, hung over me like the sword of Damocles. I stared into the glowing coals and
thought how deftly Jenny had organised me to do everything for which she needed my help. Now that my usefulness was over, there seemed no lengths to which she might not go.
I drank some wine and cast around for a means to extricate myself from the web of fear which Jenny had spun around me. I could not dwell upon the present nor contemplate the future. Only the past seemed to offer refuge. I found myself remembering the year when I too had been involved in a Christmas play. Soon after Guy Fawkes, my teacher, Miss Dobbey, had announced that we were going to write a nativity play; everyone must bring a Bible to school.

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