The Ice is Singing (18 page)

We used to sit around the table a lot. I’d be reading my bland teenage fiction, or the paper. Or the small ads. There was a fight over the local paper every Friday night when it arrived. I
was trying to remember when it started – I think when Vi’s bike was stolen and I was looking for a new one for her. People sell such strange things: antique diving helmets, used
corsets, gold-plated bath taps (‘unwanted gift’). Ruth found one of the all-time gems; ‘Priceless Chinese-style vase. £5.’ They would snatch the paper from each other
to read them out, and we would all giggle helplessly.

When I closed the door behind me they went quiet.

‘I – would you like a drink of coffee?’

‘Yes please, Mum. Is the radio too loud?’

‘No. It’s fine. It’s nice to have it on. I seem to forget it’s there.’ I made coffee and sat at the table. Ruth got on with her homework. Vi idly showed me a
couple of fashion photos in her magazine, and asked if I liked them. Gareth had given her some money for new clothes – she was going shopping with Linda. One of the twins started to cry
again. I got up.

‘Mum – we might get the next bus, actually,’ said Ruth. ‘I mean, we were quite late last night and it takes forty minutes on the bus.’

‘You could stay the night,’ I said. ‘If you wanted. I mean, there’s plenty of sheets and blankets.’

‘It’s OK thanks, Mum. I’ve got to take my violin to school tomorrow anyway and it’s at ho— at Dad’s.’

‘Of course.’

‘You must be tired, with these two – you probably want to go to bed early too. Don’t worry, we’ll let ourselves out. See you.’

‘Yes, see you Mum.’ Vi not looking up from her magazine. They would be embarrassed if I kissed them.

The one that was crying had a full nappy, again. I changed it and got it back to bed. I could hear the radio still playing softly. But when I hurried back to the kitchen, the radio was playing
and the light was shining in an empty room.

Wed. March 5

It’s still raining. The snow diminishes slowly. I’ve been here since Monday, it’s a quiet, comfortable place, although my room is cold. The dining room has ten
tables but there are only four of us staying at present: a couple who are house-hunting and spend hours at the table poring over local papers, maps and estate agents’ notes – and a
solitary, wretched-looking man, perhaps a salesman of some sort. There is a fire in the dining room, and I have taken to sitting by it after my meals, watching the coals collapse and the flames
leap. My money will run out soon. There is £84 left of the £500 I took out before I left. I could take out some more, but I don’t think I will. She is only charging £11 for
bed and breakfast and evening meal – and the petrol tank is nearly full.

I sat by the fire after breakfast this morning to drink my second cup of tea. The couple crackled their papers and muttered together, and planned their route of inspection for the day (they
don’t look wealthy. I wonder if they are agents for someone else?) The wretched man messed with his breakfast then left it. I sat staring at the fire and sipping hot tea and when I next
looked up the couple had gone too. It was nine o’clock but barely light outside, and the rain streamed down the window so continuously that it was as if we were submerged in some great river.
I heard a slight noise and realized that the landlady was clearing the breakfast tables, very quietly and efficiently. She smiled at me then carried on with her work as if I wasn’t there.
After a while (she’d washed up, I suppose) she returned with a bucket and cloth. She didn’t even glance in my direction this time – just made straight for the wide plate-glass
windows at the far end of the room. Through the streaming glass there is a view of a small grey garden, the muddy rawness of a building site, and dim wet hills in the distance. She wrung her cloth
in the bucket, and began to clean the windows. I think she had forgotten that I was there; she moved loosely, easily, with no self-consciousness. She is a big woman, tall and well built, with faded
blonde hair. In her late forties, I should guess. She looks used to plenty of exercise. I watched her stand on tiptoes and reach to the tops of the windows, making huge rounds with her arms. Then
she turned, stooped, dipped and wrung the cloth. She was wearing baggy trousers which were gathered at the waist, and a man’s shirt. She wasn’t fat but she had a rounded tummy – a
clearly defined, rounded little pot belly, swelling under the gathered waist of her trousers – and heavy, slightly drooping breasts, outlined against the window as she raised her arm to sweep
across. She reminded me of primitive figures of women, with round ripe bellies and breasts; childbearing women, symbols of fertility. There was something innocent and unashamed about her body, she
did not try to disguise it, she did not care that it was not like a model’s. And the shape it had, came from the use it had been put to; it had worn to a comfortable shape.

A childbearing body. The children grew in it, I fed them. Even the twins grew in peace, were delivered safely into the world. Even though I was at my wits’ end, my body fed them. Went on
making milk mechanically, knew what to do, despite me. Oh Sally, I’m sorry.

March 6

I’ve spent the morning reading all this. From the beginning – Sun. Feb. 2, when I first set off in the car, in the snow – till yesterday. A month of fun with
Marion. I think it’s more than enough.

You haven’t finished the list.

No – but there’s no end to the list, that’s obvious now. It would go on for pages – for years, for as long as my life. Unless it is complete the list is a distortion, and
the only way to complete it would be to write continuously.

The others are finished: David and Amanda, Alice Clough and Ellen, Leonie and Gary, Sally Clay. Their stories are complete. Thanks to me: I’ve sewn them up tight. Drawn significances,
illustrated their beginnings, signalled their endings. I made their shape, I made them. Paper children, I made them.

Much more than my self-willed flesh-and-blood children. Poor paper children under my control. Fragile, tissue-thin, tear-absorbing children whose lives are confined within the white
coffin-rectangles of the pages where I have set them down. I made them unhappy.

But in transferring pain to them, I exorcise it for myself. Isn’t that how it’s supposed to work? David loses the daughter he loves too much. Ellen Clough’s possessiveness
destroys her daughter’s life. Leonie knows the only way to protect a child completely from an evil world is to kill him. Sally thought she was in control, and that motherhood is an
instinctive state of grace.

Oh Marion! How neat! How sweet and trim as apple-pie neat. Nothing like someone else’s troubles indeed! What a ham. And the corners she cut! The sleights of hand she used. The bloody cheap
tricks, the creaking scenery. Was Alice dead, at the end of her story? Where was she? What happened next? It doesn’t matter, says Marion loftily. Whether she was dead or alive is irrelevant,
the story has made its point.

Oh yes? And when your story has made its point, my dear – whatever that may be – do you think it will matter to you if you’re dead or alive? Or will that be irrelevant?

And Sally; did she die? Anorexia is not easily curable, but if circumstances changed . . . Perhaps six months later she moved to a new job, and started an Open University course, and was so
exhilarated by the change of scene and intellectual stimulation that she forgot to starve herself, and became plump, well-balanced and powerful. Or maybe a man (could even be
he’s-only-a-sex-object-Alistair) was kind to her, and after a decent interval of time, discussed with her the idea of living together and sharing responsibility for a child in the
time-honoured way; and she had a cheerful second pregnancy, and a lovely baby, and everything was fine. Until she fell in love with Alistair’s sister and he wanted custody of the child, and .
. . and . . . so on.

Leonie. I can see her now, not dead, nor imprisoned, nor insane. She’s sitting with one of her grandchildren on a bench in the park, reading him a comic and feeding him Jaffa Cakes from
her big tartan shopping trolley. They laugh together when a greedy duck flaps out of the pond and waddles across the path to beg a biscuit. She doesn’t put flowers on Gary’s grave.
What’s the point?

All right then. Cheap tricks. False endings. Crude shapes. Where’s the good in it? What have you been doing, Marion, all the time you’ve sat with a pen in your hand and words
uncurling methodically across the page behind it?

Making patterns. Exercising control. Rewriting the world so that its knocks are well timed and tragic. Instead of being so destroyingly continuous that they merely numb.

Lists are not tragic. Ruth and Vi and Paul and Penny and I, we are never at the end of the story, I am not allowed to grieve.

And when it is done, all over and done, and a story-teller, picking over the bones of my life, sees a clear pattern, a rounded story – then you will know (who will know? you’ll be
dead) what a lie the story is, and how neat, and satisfying, and necessary are the lies of fiction, which impose order on the world, and punctuate it, and save us from these bloody awful lists.

Tell me a story. I told them stories all the time. From known starting points: Winnie the Pooh, Peter Pan, Red Riding Hood, Alice. All my stories were sequels. They liked characters they knew,
and so did I. Hop o’ my Thumb was a great favourite, all through one winter, only deposed by the Borrowers, who were just as small but pandered to their growing desire for realism (in detail,
at least). I liked Hop o’ my Thumb, I liked him a lot. I still know his original story by heart.

Hop o’ my Thumb

Once a poor woodcutter and his wife had seven sons. They were all fine strong boys except for the youngest, and he was tiny – no bigger than his father’s thumb. So
they called him Hop o’ my Thumb. His brothers used to mock him for his puny strength. ‘What use will that fellow ever be?’ they cried, and laughed till the little house shook.

The woodcutter and his wife were very poor, and one winter they could not feed their sons; there was not a scrap of food in the house. The couple sat up all night worrying about what to do, and
at last decided to lead their sons deep into the forest and there leave them to their fate. ‘Anything would be better,’ said their mother, ‘than watching them starve to death
before our very eyes.’ Hop o’ my Thumb heard that his parents were in serious discussion, and so he hid himself beneath his father’s chair and listened to their plan. Early next
morning he filled his pocket with white pebbles from the path, and when the family set off into the forest, Hop o’ my Thumb dropped a pebble behind him every few paces. When at last the boys
realized that they were lost, and their parents gone, they began to wail and cry. But Hop o’ my Thumb said, ‘Don’t worry, brothers, if we follow this trail of white pebbles we
shall soon be safely home.’ And this is what they did.

The parents, in the meantime, had been repaid some money that was owed to them, and had been able to buy enough food to stock every shelf in the larder. Bitterly did they regret abandoning their
children; each began to blame the other for so foolish a plan. How happy they were, when their sons, led by little Hop o’ my Thumb, arrived home safe and sound that night.

Clever little Hop o’ my Thumb, smallest of children, knew so much better than his parents did. No wonder the girls liked him. Hop o’ my Thumb at school. Hop o’
my Thumb gets trapped in the fridge. Hop o’ my Thumb and the pirate ship. Tell me a story.

Paper children. I used to play with paper dolls. There was a craze for them when I was a child; fold the paper, draw an outline doll with hands touching the edges of the paper, and cut around
the shape. You need sharp scissors, to cut through all the folds. Unfold, and there’s a string of dancing figures holding hands. I became good at it, cut intricate hairstyles and frilly
dresses, even cut little diamond patterns in their skirts. When I made a chain of them for Ruth as a toddler, she was delighted. I spread them on the table in front of her and she pored over them.
Then she grabbed a crayon from her box and began drawing eyes and grinning mouths.

‘What are you doing?’ I cried.

She just beamed at me – it was a silly question. But my dolls had always had blank faces, I never drew on them. I couldn’t help feeling Ruth was spoiling them. It wasn’t what
you do with paper dolls.

March 7

Ruth and Mum.

She had the first stroke when Ruth was thirteen. After a few weeks they sent her home. She’d lost the use of her legs but there was nothing they could do. Dad wanted to look after her, and
the district nurse came in to give her baths. I took days, adding up to weeks, off work.

She didn’t know how to be an invalid. She hated it. I used to send Dad out – shopping, for a walk, over to see the neighbours – anything to get him out of the house for a break
– and as soon as he was gone she would start.

‘I don’t know why you let me go on like this, Marion. If I was an animal, you’d have me put down. You wouldn’t let a dog live the life that I do.’

‘Mum,’ I said brightly, ‘don’t be so daft. Don’t talk so silly. You’re still alive and we’re all glad. What will Dad do if you die? You talk as if
there’s nothing you can do – you’ve still got your mind, that’s the most precious thing – you can enjoy other people, read, watch telly – you can knit and
–’