Praxis (7 page)

‘Be quiet, Judith,’ said Henry. ‘There’s no need.’

‘Yes there is need. What’s true is true. And to see her twisting those poor girls’ minds. Who was she, anyway, to turn up her nose at us? She was no better than she ought to be. Living with a man she wasn’t married to, bringing children into the world with no name: passing herself off as a widow when all he’d done was walk out on her. And then when I get into my bit of trouble, carrying on as if she was the Virgin Mary. Polluting her girls! Who did the polluting, I’d like to know?’

‘Hush, Judith. Don’t listen to her, Pattie.’

‘Pattie! Friendly, aren’t we. Fancy her, do you? Like her mother, is she? At least this one’s got a pair of boobs on her: Lucy was as flat as a board!’

Judith’s words stopped, as if caught mid-air like a ball in flight ‘Sorry,’ she said flatly. ‘Sorry. You think you don’t mind but you do. All those years, when she had you, and thought you dirt. Not Pattie’s fault. Hope I didn’t let too many cats out of the bag.’

Henry walked Pattie, as she now thought of herself, to the tram-stop. Pattie, Judith, Henry, all much of a muchness. Except that Pattie had a mad mother and was a bastard too. Four embossed bars bouncing on a nice young bosom, couldn’t anywhere near counteract all that.

‘Where have you been?’ Hilda asked when Patricia came back. ‘It’s nearly blackout. I got the cheese ration. We’ll have Welsh rarebit. You can make it go further by adding flour and water. A Ministry of Food leaflet tells you how.’

Hilda was in a good mood. Sometimes, rarely, she was. Patricia neatly disposed of her good humour.

‘I’ve been to see Henry and Judith.’

‘How did you know where they were?’

‘I waited for the tram from the recruiting office. Then I followed him.’

‘Mother wouldn’t like it. They’re common. Nothing. Why do you want to have anything to do with them? She’s a scarlet woman; you know what she did. And under mother’s own roof.’

‘Scarlet? She always seemed kind of black and hairy to me,’ said Pattie, forlornly.

‘I hope you told them nothing,’ said Hilda sharply. ‘We don’t want people poking and prying into our business.’

‘I don’t think people are all that interested in us. They only think about themselves.’

She was not going to tell Hilda what she knew. Not yet. Perhaps never. The way to deal with Hilda was to agree with what she said, while believing none of it, and doing nothing to aggravate her. Patricia was frightened of Hilda, as she had never been, quite, of her own mother. Lucy’s madness had been a deviation from maternal love: Hilda’s was an intensification of sisterly hate. Pattie locked her room that night and for many to come, and sat up late at the darkened window, watching the searchlights and the pattern of distant aerial conflicts reflected on the water.

Pattie found out the whereabouts of her mother by looking up Area Health Board Hospitals in the post office, and ringing them up in turn until one finally acknowledged having a Mrs. Lucy Duveen on its books.

She went along to the Poole General Asylum the following Sunday. She put on lipstick in an attempt to make herself look older, lest she be refused admittance. She felt wicked so doing.

The porter at the gatehouse unlocked bars to let her in. Blank eyes followed her. Women sat isolated and remote on benches, lining corridors. All seemed old: all had thick lisle stockings, wrinkling down over slippers, as if suspender belts were unknown. Pattie was frightened. What manner of life was this?

A male nurse, keys jangling, led her to a cubicle, and there, peering through, Pattie saw Lucy, in a strait-jacket.

‘Mother,’ shrieked Pattie.

‘Quiet now, quiet,’ said the nurse. ‘They don’t feel as we do, in this state.’

Lucy seemed quite quiet, but when she saw Pattie she began to struggle and her face contorted.

‘You upset her,’ said the nurse. ‘Come away.’

Pattie suffered herself to be led away. Lucy, seeing her, had been animated by hate and anger, not love and despair, yet this must be some sort of comfort. Better for her mother, worse for her.

This was the manner of life; and had been for a long time. What was good for Lucy was bad for Patricia, and vice versa.

Lucy was in bonds, so Pattie could go free.

‘I went to see mother,’ she said to Hilda, boldly enough.

‘You shouldn’t have done that. It would only upset you.’

‘It did.’

‘It’s bad enough for me, and she quite likes me. She hates you, though. It’s her illness. The doctors said you shouldn’t go. I don’t know why they let you in.’

‘No one knew who I was, I suppose. Anyway, I don’t think they have much time to think about things like that.’

‘They’re wonderful people: don’t talk against them. It’s all your fault she’s in there, you realise that.’

‘Why?’

‘You were perverted, weren’t you. It upsets her.’

‘I wasn’t.’

‘Don’t pretend. You’re just disgusting. Sneaky and sly.’

Hilda went to bed early, up the stairs in brown lace-up brogues, yellow prefect’s sash making a sack of her navy pleated tunic. She was nineteen. Her sallowness had disappeared: her skin had a smooth yellow-to-pink glow: her waist was slender: her receding chin made her mouth pouty and provocative: her eyes were clear, steady and censorious. Her life was passed in a female world, bounded by examinations: whole weeks would pass in which she would talk only to women. Even the tram conductors were female now: the men passed in noisy clumps of uniform, vulgar, frightening, leaving a litter of gum wrapping and beer bottles behind. Soon Hilda would go to University on a scholarship, and her life would open out. People assured her it would.

Hilda did not know what was to be done with Patricia, but did not doubt the arrival of some sudden event, for good or ill, probably ill, which would make the consideration immaterial.

Hilda stopped visiting her mother, on the recommendation of the funny farm staff. In the early days of her confinement, Lucy’s rage and spite had been directed against Patricia—later it came to focus upon Hilda as well, and could be felt as uncomfortable even through the cool shell of the elder daughter’s part-acquired, part-native indifference.

Pattie went to visit the Reverend Allbright. She called at the back door, as seemed natural, and not, as in earlier days, at the front. She found him in the kitchen, with his new young wife, making wine. The house smelt warm and sweet, as was his life. He had married one of his young parishioners, a girl with downcast almond eyes, and a sensual mouth, and a devout nature. She would kneel naked by the marital bed, saying her prayers until he could bear it no longer and flung himself upon her, tumbling her over face downwards on the bed. He felt God would understand. God can be worshipped anywhere, the Reverend Allbright avowed, in Sunday sermon after Sunday sermon. In a night bomber (so long as it belonged to the Allied forces), in a submarine (likewise), in a Scouts’ Hall (where services were now held, since the church had been bombed out) or in the marital bed. The congregation joined in shaking their fists at a vengeful sky, from which destruction raged; they were united in love and hate. The birthrate soared.

‘My mother’s in a strait-jacket,’ said Pattie, to the Allbrights. They sat her down to help make wine. Now she too was stripping petals from dandelions; her fingers were already dyed yellowy-green. No amount of washing, even with the strong, grainy, wartime soap, would remove the discolouration: only time would help it. Pattie, yellow-fingered. ‘She has to be,’ said the Reverend Allbright, ‘for her own safety, and that of other people.’

‘But she can’t be in one for ever. A person can’t live in a strait-jacket.’

The Reverend Allbright suspected that if the staff of the asylum had anything to do with it, they would.

‘Poor soul,’ put in the new Mrs. Allbright, with the easy pity of the young for the old. ‘My husband—’ and with what pride she used the term—‘used to visit regularly, but his visits did seem to upset her. They said it was better for him to stay away.’

Both the Allbrights were bare-armed: while Mrs. Allbright stirred the bruised dandelion petals in warm water, Mr. Allbright added golden syrup from a height, for the delight of seeing it fall. How bright-eyed they seemed: how happily arrived at the place they ought to be.

Mr. Allbright’s children by his first marriage were still away at boarding school. Consideration both for their safety and for his new wife’s peace of mind had led him to taking this step. The eldest Allbright was only a few years younger than the new Mrs. Allbright, a fact which rendered Mr. Allbright uneasy in his daughter’s presence.

‘We must abide by the decision of the staff,’ said Mr. Allbright. ‘After all, they are the experts.’

‘I think she’s in a strait-jacket to save them trouble,’ observed Pattie.

‘That’s a wicked un-Christian thing to say, Patricia,’ said Mr. Allbright.

Mrs. Allbright laughed. ‘Why should she say Christian things if she’s Jewish. You are ridiculous, Stephen.’

‘Hush,’ said Mr. Allbright.

‘Shouldn’t I have said anything? I’m sorry.’

Confused and pink, she stirred the sweet, warm brew. He was angry, so she made matters worse.

‘I don’t see why I shouldn’t say what’s true,’ she persisted. ‘It can’t be anything new to Pattie, after all. Is it?’

Pattie shook her head, although it was indeed new.

‘Anyway,’ said Mrs. Allbright, ‘there’s nothing wrong with being a Jew. I’m sorry for them, that’s all, because Jehovah seems such a fierce God to have, compared to Jesus, but I don’t look down at them one bit. And I know you don’t, either, Stephen. You always wanted to have a Jewish quota at the golf-club; you thought healthy outdoor exercise would do them good, though I can’t say it seemed to help the one they did have, who ran off with the waitress.’

‘Hush,’ said Mr. Allbright, and added, ‘in any case it’s neither here nor there since the Army has now taken over the course and the tanks are ruining the greens altogether.’

But it was no use. No one was listening.

Mrs. Allbright had her pretty yellow-stained hand to her mouth.

‘My father,’ said Pattie, flatly. ‘You mean my father was a Jew and ran off with a waitress?’

‘Idiot,’ said Mr. Allbright to Mrs. Allbright. He was to say it to her many times in years to come, and she grew not only to believe him but not to mind him saying it. But this time tears sprang to her eyes. Mr. Allbright watched and marvelled. The first Mrs. Allbright had never wept; never had to. All the same she had died young. One tear fell into the dandelion wine, and he feared lest the addition of salt might interfere with the delicate fermentation process. ‘He married her according to the laws of his religion and the law of the land. He left your mother and yourselves provided for.’

Pattie left.

‘She asked for bread and you gave her stones,’ said Mrs. Allbright, staring at her husband, pink-eyed, red-rimmed, flushed. Wisely, he poured what was left of the golden syrup over her to cheer her up, and the resultant stickiness of both of them was the cause of much joy and marital merriment. The Reverend Allbright felt he had regained his childhood, which the first time round had not been up to much, but now was rapturous, innocent and amazing. He was obliged, if only for cleanliness and comfort’s sake, and in a spirit of remorse, to suck the stickiness from her every crevice.

‘You can’t look after everyone in the world, I suppose,’ observed Mrs. Allbright, forgivingly, naked, splay-legged and golden on the floor. ‘Let alone half-mad, half-Jewish, half-grown parishioners who never even go to church.’ He blocked her mouth, astonishingly, before she could voice any more uncharitable thoughts and thus imperil her soul.

Such acts were unthinkable, unimaginable; except they happened, and once they had happened could happen again, at any rate when imports of golden syrup allowed. The dandelion wine was excellent. Sweet and powerful, quite unharmed by Mrs. Allbright’s occasional tear, and popular with parishioners young and old.

Pattie did not tell Hilda what she had found out. Perhaps, in any case, Hilda knew already. She hid the sharpest kitchen knives, however, away from Hilda, afraid of what she was not quite sure.

Her mother’s madness, she now perceived, lay in her telling of the truth. But was it madness? If a mother shrieked Jewess, bastard, pervert at her own daughter, and all these things were true, then she might be accused of unmaternal conduct, but hardly madness.

Pattie lay on her bed at night, and thought of kisses, mother’s, father’s, Louise Gaynor’s, anyone’s. She lay still, hands neatly folded over her smooth midriff. Pattie had a white, clear skin. Who will ever marry me, Pattie wondered. Who would ever want to? Jewess, bastard, pervert. Daughter of a mad mother: insanity in the blood, running strong. See it even in Hilda’s eyes: in her own now, reflected back from the Reverend Allbright’s.

The American servicemen were in Brighton. Local girls came in from towns along the coast to meet them. They laughed, drank, cuddled and kissed; more, even, in the bushes at the bottom of 109 Holden Road where the garden abutted the pub alley. The fence palings were so rotted that a well-shod service foot would easily collapse them, and often did. Pattie watched from her window. Knickers off, hands in, trousers down, whispers and giggles, pant and heave, in and out. Some times money changed hands: sometimes addresses. Sex! The force at the heart of the universe. It hardly seemed sufficiently important.

I
T WAS NOT UNTIL
September that Mr. Robinson the children’s officer arrived, knocking at the front door. The knocker was stiff with disuse—visitors seldom came to the house. The brass door-furniture, so beloved by Lucy in the days of her youth and sanity, had not been cleaned since Judith’s dismissal. Paint and plaster peeled and flaked; last year’s leaves mouldered in the corners of steps: grubs scuttered away at the fall of Mr. Robinson’s brown boots.

After the fashion of the young, Hilda and Pattie cleaned what was beneath their eyes, but seldom went searching for dust or decay. They washed the dirty cups, but not the shelves where the cups were kept. They made beds, they even washed sheets: but they never turned a mattress or shook a blanket. They turned their eyes resolutely away from peripheral grime and grease, and focused on their books, their homework, or, on the good days, on the heavens and higher thoughts. Their noses had grown accustomed to the smell of the cats which came in through the broken scullery window to get out of the cold or away from the noise of aerial warfare; and to the stale water in the flower vases, where last autumn’s chrysanthemum stems had long ago rotted away to slime: and to dry rot, wet rot, woodworm, decomposing bins and decay.