The Book of Evidence (7 page)

considered bringing up the main matter straight away —

money, that is — but thought better of it. As if she had an inkling of what was
in
my mind she glanced f r o m me to the papers and back again with amusement. f turned away from her, to the window. O u t on the lawn a stocky girl in jodhpurs was leading a string of Comiemara ponies in a circle. I recalled dimly my mother telling me,
in
one of her infrequent and barely literate letters, about some hare-brained venture involving these animals. She came and stood beside me. We watched in silence the ponies plodding round and round. U g l y brutes, aren?t they, she said cheerfully. T h e simmering annoyance I had felt since arriving was added to n o w by a sense of general futility. I have always been prone to accidie. It is a state, or, 1 might even say, a force, the significance of which in human affairs historians and suchlike seem not to appreciate. I think I would do anything to avoid it — anything. My mother was talking about her customers, mostly Japs and Germans, it seemed — They're taking over the bloody country, Freddie, I'm telling you. They bought the ponies as pets for their spoilt offspring, at what she happily admitted were outrageous prices. Cracked, the lot of them, she said. We laughed, and then fell vacantly silent again.

The
sun
was on the lawn, and a vast white cloud was slowly unfurling above the sweltering beeches. I was thinking h o w strange it was to stand here glooming out at 44

the day like this, bored and irritable, my hands in my pockets, while all the time, deep inside me somewhere, hardly acknowledged, grief dripped and dripped, a kind of silvery ichor, pore, and strangely precious. H o m e , yes, h o m e t
IS
always a surprise.

She insisted that I c o m e and look the place over, as she put it. After all, my boy, she said, someday all this will be yours. A n d she did her throaty cackle. 1 did not remember her being so easily amused in the past. There was something almost unruly in her laughter, a sort of abandon. I was a little put out by it, I thought it was not seemly. She lit
up
a cigarette and set o f f around the house, with the cigarette b o x and matches clutched in her left claw5 and me trailing grimly in her smoking wake. T h e house was rotting„ in places so badly, and so rapidly, that even she was startled. She talked and talked. I nodded dully, gazing at d a m p walls and sagging floors and mouldering window-frames. In my old r o o m the bed was broken, and there was something g r o w i n g in the middle of the mattress. T h e view from the w i n d o w — trees, a bit of sloping fields the red r o o f of a barn — was exact and familiar as an hallucination. Here was the cupboard I had built, and at once I had a vision of myself, ^ small b o y with a fierce frown, blunt saw in hand*

hacking at a sheet of p l y w o o d , and my grieving heart wobbled, as if it were not myself 1 was remembering* but something like a son, dear and vulnerable, lost to nne forever in the depths of my o w n past. When I turned around my mother was not there. I found her on the stairs, looking a little odd around the eyes. She set o f f again. I must see the grounds, she cried^ the stables, the oak w o o d .

She was determined I w o u l d see everything, everything.

O u t of doors my spirits rose somewhat. H o w soft the air of s u m m e r here. I had been too long under harsh southern skies. A n d the trees, the great trees! those patient* quietly 45

suffering crcaturcs, standing stock-still as if in e m b a r -

rassment, their tragic gazes s o m e h o w turned a w a y f r o m us.

Patch the d o g — I can see I am g o i n g to be stuck with this brute — Patch the d o g appeared, rolling its m a d eyes and s q u i r m i n g . It f o l l o w e d silently behind us across the lawn.

T h e stable-girl, w a t c h i n g sidelong as we approached, seemed on the point of taking to her heels in fright. H e r n a m e w a s J o a n , o r J e a n , s o m e t h i n g like that. B i g b u m , big chest — o b v i o u s l y m o t h e r had felt an affinity. W h e n I s p o k e to her the p o o r girl turned crimson, and wincingly extended a calloused little p a w as if she w e r e afraid I m i g h t be g o i n g to keep it. I g a v e her one of my special, s l o w smiles, and saw m y s e l f t h r o u g h her eyes, a tall, tanned hunk in a linen suit, leaning over her on a s u m m e r l a w n and m u r m u r i n g dark w o r d s . Tinker! she yelped, get o f f !

T h e lead p o n y , a stunted beast with a truculent eye, was e d g i n g sideways in that dully determined w a y that they have, n u d g i n g heavily against m e . I put my hand on its flank to push it a w a y , and w a s startled by the solidity, the actuality of the animal, the coarse d r y coat, the dense unyielding flesh beneath, the b l o o d w a r m t h . S h o c k e d , I t o o k my hand a w a y quickly and stepped back. S u d d e n l y I had a vivid, queasy sense of myself, not the tanned pin-up n o w , but s o m e t h i n g else, s o m e t h i n g pallid and slack and soft. I w a s a w a r e o f m y toenails, m y anus, m y d a m p , constricted crotch. A n d I w a s ashamed. I can't explain it.

T h a t is, I could, but w o n ' t . T h e n the d o g b e g a n to bark, rushing at the p o n y ' s hoofs, and the p o n y snorted, peeling back its m u z z l e and s n a p p i n g its a l a r m i n g teeth.
My
m o t h e r kicked the d o g , and the girl hauled the p o n y ' s head sideways. T h e d o g h o w l e d , the line o f ponies p l u n g e d and whinnied. W h a t a racket! E v e r y t h i n g , always, turns to farce. I r e m e m b e r e d my h a n g o v e r . I needed a drink.

46

Gm first, then s o m e sort of a w f u l sherry, then successive j o r u m s of my late father's fine B o r d e a u x , the last, alas, of the bin. I was already half-soused w h e n I went d o w n to the cellar to fetch the claret. I sat on a crate amid the must and g l o o m , breathing gin f u m e s o u t of flared nostrils. A streaming lance of sunlight, seething with dust, pierced the l o w , c o b w e b b e d w i n d o w a b o v e m y head. T h i n g s thronged around me in the s h a d o w s — a battered rocking-horse, an old high bicycle, a bundle of antique tennis racquets — their outlines blurred, greyish, fading, as if this place were a way-station where the past paused on its w a y d o w n into oblivion. I laughed. O l d bastard, I said aloud, and the silence rang like a rapped glass. He was always d o w n here in those last m o n t h s before he died. He had b e c o m e a potterer, he w h o all his life had been driven by fierce, obsessive energies. My m o t h e r w o u l d send me d o w n to look for him, in case s o m e t h i n g m i g h t have happened to him, as she delicately put it. I w o u l d find h i m p o k i n g about in c o m e r s , fiddling with things, or just standing, canted at an o d d angle, staring at nothing. W h e n I spoke he w o u l d g i v e a great start and turn on me angrily, huffing, as if he had been caught at something shameful.

B u t these spurts of animation did not last long, after a m o m e n t he w o u l d drift o f f again into vagueness. It was as if he were not dying of an illness* but of a sort of general distraction: as if one d a y in the midst of his vehement doings something had caught his attention, had beckoned to h i m out of the darkness, and* struck, he had turned aside and w a l k e d t o w a r d s it, with a sleepwalker's pained, puzzled concentration. I was, what, t w e n t y - t w o , twenty-three. T h e l o n g process of his d y i n g wearied and exasperated me in equal measure. Of course I pitied him, too, but I think pity is always, for m e , only the permissible version of an u r g e to g i v e w e a k things a g o o d hard shake.

4 7

He began to shrink. Suddenly his shirt collars were too big for that w o b b l y tortoise-neck with its t w o slack harp-strings. Everything w a s too big for him, his clothes had m o r e substance than he did, he seemed to rattle about inside them. His eyes were huge and haunted, already clouding. It was s u m m e r then, too. Light was not his m e d i u m any more, he preferred it d o w n here, in the mossy half-dark, a m o n g the deepening shades.

I hauled myself to my feet and gathered an armful of dusty bottles and staggered with them up the d a m p stone Yet he died upstairs, in the big front b e d r o o m , the airiest r o o m in the house. It was so hot all that week. T h e y opened wide the w i n d o w , and he m a d e them m o v e his bed f o r w a r d until the foot of it was right out on the balcony. He lay with the covers thrown back, his meagre chest bared, giving himself up to the sun, the vast sky, dying into the blue and g o l d glare of s u m m e r . His hands.

T h e rapid beat of his breathing. His —

E n o u g h . I was speaking of my mother.

I had set the bottles on the table, and was clawing the dust and c o b w e b s o f f them, when she informed me that she did not drink n o w . This was a surprise — in the old days she could knock it back with the best of them. f stared at her, and she shrugged and looked a w a y . Doctor's orders, she said. I e x a m i n e d her with renewed attention. There was something w r o n g with her left eye, and her m o u t h d r o o p e d a little on that side. I recalled the o d d w a y she had clutched the cigarette b o x and matches in her left hand when she was conducting me around the house. She shrugged again. A slight stroke, she said, last year. I thought what an o d d term that is: a slight stroke. As if a benevolent but clumsy p o w e r had dealt her a fond, playful b l o w and accidentally d a m a g e d her. She glanced at me sidelong n o w w i t h a tentative, a l m o s t girlish, m e l a n c h o l y little smile. S h e m i g h t h a v e been confessing to s o m e t h i n g , s o m e peccadillo* trivial b u t e m b a r r a s s i n g . S o r r y to hear it, old thing* I said, and u r g e d her to go on, take a d r o p of wine, the d o c t o r s b e d a m n e d . S h e s e e m e d n o t t o hear m e .

A n d then a really surprising thing h a p p e n e d . T h e girl, J o a n or J e a n — I'll c o m p r o m i s e , a n d call her J a n e — g o t up suddenly f r o m her place, with a g u l p of distress, and put her a r m a w k w a r d l y a r o u n d m y m o t h e r ' s head, clutching her in a sort of wrestling h o l d , and l a y i n g a hand a l o n g her b r o w . I e x p e c t e d my m o t h e r to g i v e her a g o o d push and tell her to get off, b u t n o , she sat there, suffering c a l m l y the girl's e m b r a c e and l o o k i n g at me still w i t h that small smile. I stared b a c k at her in startlement, h o l d i n g the w i n e bottle suspended a b o v e my glass. It w a s the strangest thing.

T h e girl's great hip w a s beside my m o t h e r ' s shoulder* and I t h o u g h t irresistibly o f the p o n y pressing against m e o n the l a w n w i t h that s t u b b o r n , b r u t e r e g a r d . T h e r e w a s a silence.

T h e n the girl, I m e a n J a n e , c a u g h t my eye, a n d blenched, and w i t h d r e w her a r m and sat d o w n again hurriedly. H e r e is a question: if m a n is a sick animal, an insane animal* as I h a v e reason to believe, then h o w a c c o u n t for these small, u n b i d d e n gestures of kindness and of care? D o e s it o c c u r to y o u , my lord, that p e o p l e of o u r kind — if 1 m a y be p e r m i t t e d to s c r a m b l e up a n d j o i n y o u on the bench for a m o m e n t — that we h a v e missed o u t on s o m e t h i n g , I m e a n s o m e t h i n g in general, a universal principle, which is so simple, so o b v i o u s , that no o n e has ever t h o u g h t to tell us a b o u t it? T h e y all k n o w w h a t it is, my learned friend, this k n o w l e d g e is the b a d g e of their fellowship. A n d they are e v e r y w h e r e , the vast, sad, initiated c r o w d . T h e y l o o k up at us f r o m the well of the court and say n o t h i n g , only smile a little, w i t h that m i x t u r e of c o m p a s s i o n and s y m p a t h e t i c irony, a s m y m o t h e r w a s smiling a t m e n o w . She reached 4 9