The Backward Shadow (34 page)

‘No, and you know why? Because we never told anyone. We just kep her with us. She wasn't mad, you see, she was just crazy. Didn't want to hurt nobody. Wanted to be different people. So we let her be whoever she wanted, and we kinda—loved her, and after a bit … she came back. And nobody ever knew.'

‘How long was she like that?'

He shrugged. Time never meant a thing to John. ‘Dunno. A year—two years maybe. Yeh, it must've been two years, with the time it took her to come back. That took a long time, till she was really Mama.'

‘It's funny,' said Dottie. ‘Even when I was at my worst—' she glanced at me, and away again, ‘I never wanted to be anyone but me.'

‘You got a different kind then, I guess,' said John placidly.
His brilliant shirt stood out fantastically against the worn, darkened floral linen of Addy's old armchair, like a bird of paradise in an old apple tree. He settled his back more comfortably, took a big swig of his drink, and grinned at Dottie. ‘Me, I kinda like crazy people. Now, you take Doris. She wasn't at
all
crazy. But Mavis was a little, with all those things she had in her room, and the cat and all that. And as much as she was crazy, I liked her. And Toby. That cat was real crazy—wasn't he, Janie? In them days when we was all together? That was a crazy time, and I was never so happy like them.' He shook his head, fondly and reminiscently.

‘I wish I'd been with you in that house,' Dottie said suddenly.

‘Yeh man, that was a time all right!' He smiled tenderly at me, and then jumped up. ‘Hey though! Where is he—that baby you had in you belly, where's that crazy baby shared all them good times with us?'

When he saw David, he carried on as if he'd never seen anything like him in the whole of his life. He danced, he shouted, he capered and sang; he lay down on the floor and rolled about, just as he used to roll on my rug in the L-shaped room. David fell in love with him—all of him, his woolly head, his black shining face, his expanse of teeth, his pink palms, his Caribbean clothes. We couldn't drag them apart. John had to carry David to bed at last, and I didn't even get a goodnight. I left them alone in David's room, John singing and playing the bongo drums on David's tummy, to his utterable enchantment.

I went down to Dottie, who was lying on the sofa smoking and looking quietly at nothing as she often did. But she turned to me the moment I came in, and smiled one of her old, vivid smiles.

‘What a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful person,' she said. Her voice, for the first time, sounded completely normal.

So Dottie got better. As John said, it took a long time till she was really Dottie. I helped, David helped, John helped, time
helped—and in the end, she began to help herself, and at last one evening she came into the kitchen, put on an apron briskly and said, ‘I'm making supper tonight, you must be whacked.' I was; I'd been in town in the morning, and in the shop all afternoon. But still I was doubtful, and she saw it, and said, ‘Look at me, and don't worry any more. I'm cured.'

‘Still. Take it easy.'

‘I don't want to. When I was well, I never took it easy. If I take it easy now, I won't feel I'm well. And I've got to feel I'm well. One can't be a nervous wreck forever.' We looked at each other, she with an odd shyness which I had never seen in her before, and I searchingly, trying to see if this long-dreamt-of recovery was real or only a phase of the illness. And then suddenly we were hugging each other in the rather embarrassed, awkward way of women. ‘All right then,' I said. ‘The steak's in the fridge.'

‘Have we any champagne?'

‘No, sorry. I didn't have notice you were going to be cured today.'

‘In that case, I'll stay crazy until opening time tomorrow.' We both laughed; I felt a surge of wild relief. At last, at last she was better! And hot on the heels of that unselfish thought, came the selfish one—at last I'm not entirely alone!

During that meal, which was a celebration even without the champagne, we talked as we had never talked before about the shop. I say never before, because in the early days it was all one sided, Dottie had all the enthusiasm, all the ideas; I was simply a sounding-board. Then, when in recent months I had desperately wanted to talk to
her
, she hadn't been there properly. Now at last some of her interest revived, we could begin to exchange true—and literal—shop-talk. I had so much to tell her; once I started, I couldn't stop. I put her to sleep eventually, poor girl. And after she'd gone to bed, and I was still lying awake, feeling terribly excited and stimulated, I had a wonderful vision of what was ahead for us—the first really cheerful, hopeful thoughts I had entertained for longer than I could clearly remember. Dottie and I would be real partners
now; I had served my apprenticeship and could work with her on an even footing. The business now mattered to me as much as to her, and I knew almost as much about it. There seemed no reason at all why we shouldn't make a real success of it between us. And as for our mutual personal problem—to wit, men—in that elevated moment of anticipated happiness, there was no room for doubts. My old conviction returned to me full force—once one achieves self-reliance, once one has overcome the
need
for men, that's when they come, usually in droves. I laughed into my pillow, fell asleep and dreamed of David, grown tall and handsome, making love to me … horrors! But I woke the next morning laughing because it was so obvious and Freudian, and I felt so happy suddenly, I felt that I, too, had been cured …

This lovely feeling went on for several days—a week. I shared everything with Dottie, every titbit, every tiny incident to do with the shop, all the stored-up bits of gossip about the various suppliers' personal lives—I never seemed to stop talking, and Dottie listened, as I had once listened … Our roles were completely and exactly reversed. Dottie was now the stay-at-home partner, cooking the meals, looking after the baby, taking phone-calls (we had a phone in the cottage now) and occasionally going to see people, though she said she didn't feel very good at that yet and I didn't encourage it. And I was the active one, rushing hither and yon all day and bringing my work home with me at night. I was only waiting for the day when she would volunteer to come with me to the shop, I could hardly wait to show her all I had done there, and for the delight of seeing her properly back in harness. I felt certain that as soon as she stepped inside the doors, her old passionate involvement would grip her again and she would instandy begin to flash round the place in her old way, upbraiding me for missing possibilities, re-arranging everything, asking all the questions that she still hadn't, somehow, asked … Only when she did all this, would I be convinced that ‘Mama had come back'.

After about a fortnight, I could stand it no longer.

‘Today you're coming with me to the shop,' I said one morning over the usual hasty breakfast.

She stopped eating and looked at her plate for a moment, and I felt a physical qualm of uneasiness amounting to fear; not mine, but hers. Then she looked up with a quick smile and said, ‘All right. It's time, isn't it?'

She was perfectly silent during the drive. I thought, she's worried about the changes, about what I'll have done to it. I rattled on, ‘Look, love, don't be afraid to tell me where I've gone wrong. I've learnt a lot, but I'll never have your touch. You'll probably have to set the whole display to rights. I won't mind—honestly.' She didn't respond, and somehow my heart sank.

When we got to the shop, I didn't open up at once; we stood in front of the window, gazing in at the window-dressing, or rather she gazed at it and I gazed at her, trying to gauge her reaction. Her face was bleak; nothing came alive in it, neither satisfaction nor annoyance, and no excitement either, not a flicker. ‘What do you think?' I asked at last, with forced cheerfulness. ‘Not bad for a beginner? But you must re-do it.' She turned away from the window abruptly. ‘Let's go in, it's cold out here,' she said, with a little shiver.

I unlocked the door and there was a whole silly shambles about who should go in first. I felt my nerves getting more and more on edge. Finally I walked in past her, and she followed slowly, looking round. ‘Just wander round, get the feel of it again,' I urged her. She moved round indeed, but with a timid air, and when she touched things it was tentatively, without a trace of her old authority, rather like the sort of customer who has to buy a present for someone and hasn't a clue what to get. After a bit she turned to me and said, with a little sharpness, ‘Please don't stand there looking at me. It makes me nervous.' I at once went into the back and busied myself there; I unpacked some new stuff, and when I had it dusted—and, incidentally, had made some coffee—I called her in.

‘Dottie! Come through and see something.'

When she began to walk through, I realised suddenly that I hadn't heard a sound from her, not a footstep, since I left her; it was rather uncanny, as if she hadn't moved at all. Her face looked a bit white as she came in, and she didn't look at me directly. ‘Look!' I said.

She approached the table slowly and picked up one of the pieces. It was the latest of Ron's things, now rapidly developing into one of our most exciting lines. ‘I didn't tell you because I wanted to surprise you,' I said. ‘But Ron's stuff is among the most successful at Heal's—they're crazy about him. He's quit his job in the factory and gone into this full-time—spent his savings in his own little foundry. I went up to see him not long ago. I so agree with you about him. He told me his wife nearly ran away from him when he left his steady job, but she's dead proud of him now he's doing so well—he's selling stuff privately too, and beginning to get overseas orders.' Dottie still said nothing, but stood turning the smooth glass round and round in her hands. ‘You did that,' I said quietly. ‘You brought him out and made him an artist. You've done that to quite a lot of people. Aren't you pleased with yourself? Don't you feel satisfied?'

Suddenly I saw that she was crying. ‘My God, what's the matter?' I asked in dismay.

‘I don't—feel—anything,' she managed to say, with great difficulty. ‘That's all. Even about this—even this. Nothing, Jane. Just—sad, sad, sad.' She put the glass piece down and turned away, holding her face in her hands. I went to her and held her. ‘It's gone,' she sobbed. ‘That lovely excitement, that purpose and direction—I remember it, but now it's all left me. I've gone cold on it. I've even lost that! Oh God, I'm so lonely!'

I forget now which of us made the suggestion. Perhaps neither of us had to actually say it. It was hanging in the air between us for a long time, anyway, before it was mentioned. And then, suddenly, we were talking about it, and Dottie was showing animation for the first time in many long, weary,
empty winter weeks.

‘But it's your money,' she kept saying. ‘Addy left it to you. How could I take it?' And yet, she spoke without conviction, for the sake of form, and I knew even then that she would take it; it was as if she had received some sanction which I knew nothing about. Because when I finally said, ‘I'm sure this is what Addy would want,' she fell silent and looked at me gratefully, as if she had been waiting for me to understand something.

I was much more concerned about how she would manage over there on her own. Once I wouldn't have thought twice about it; I might rather have worried about how New York would stand up to her impact. Now she was undeniably changed; she was weaker, less sure of herself.

‘What will you do over there?'

‘I can't tell you yet. But something will present itself.' There was a graininess in her voice that reassured me a little. It was important that she felt a strong urge to go; it was the lack of strong urges in her life that had been, for these past weeks, the principle cause of her underlying fear and inability to come to grips with anything.

I watched her preparations to leave with a heart of solid lead. Glad though I had to be that she had found something she really wanted to do, I could not help crying inwardly after the hopes I had had for her partnership, companionship and help; nor could I completely withstand the terror of being left all on my own to run the business without her. I didn't in the least see how I could; I would have to find someone else; but at the moment, the mere thought of doing that was as untenable as the thought of re-marriage is to a widow at the funeral.

And ironically, it was only now that I suddenly saw Dottie doing all the things I had hoped for as far as the shop was concerned. Gradually roused from her lethargy by the notion, and then the definite prospect, of going to New York, she began one day to reorganise everything; she rearranged the displays from top to bottom, saying as she moved about in her
old decisive way, ‘Do forgive me, Jane; it's not that yours aren't wonderful; but they're
yours
, and if I'm ever going to get work in New York I have to be able to show people something that's
mine
' What she was doing, then, was setting things up for professional photographs; and when these were taken, she put her hands on her hips and said, ‘There! Now let's put it all back the way it was.' ‘No! Are you crazy?' I asked. ‘It's ten times better like this.' ‘Look, Jane,' she said quietly. ‘“Us and Them” is yours now. It's all yours. You can do it, I know you can. Only you must do it in your own way, not by copying me.' And she forced me to let her put it all back. And that was the last time she ever set foot in the shop.

She left a week later. She went by boat, the cheapest way possible, in order to save money to live on when she got there. She travelled on an immigrant's visa so that she could get work. That was the only reason, she said. ‘Good lord, can you see me turning into an American?' I couldn't, but if I had been there with her these five years, I would have been able to watch the process; in two more months she is taking out citizenship papers.