The Stone Angel (17 page)

“I’ll be just fine,” I say. “You run along.”

“You’re sure?”

The fool, how does she think I can be sure? Or she herself, for that matter? She might conceivably drop like a shot partridge from a heart attack in the Super-Valu, and expire among the watermelons and the cress. Oh, I’m gay today, and flighty as a sparrow.

“Yes, yes, I’m sure. I’ll just sit quietly.”

    The girl behind the wicket at the bank seems awfully young to handle so much cash. How many ten-dollar bills must rush through her fingers in a day? It doesn’t bear thinking about. What if she questions me? Asks why Marvin isn’t bringing the check in this time? I’m all in a lather, and can feel the perspiration making my dress sodden under the arms. I’m not used to so much standing. The woman in front of me is taking such a long time, and seems to have a dozen transactions to perform. All kinds of papers she’s handing in, pink ones and white, green checks and small blue books. Shell never be finished, never. My legs hurt—it’s the varicose veins. I despise those elastic stockings and won’t wear them. I should have worn them today. What if I fall? Someone will cart me home, and Doris will be so cross. I won’t fall. I refuse
to. Why doesn’t the wretched woman hurry? What’s the bank girl doing, that takes her so infernally long? What if she questions me?

It’s my turn, suddenly. I mustn’t look agitated. Do I appear quite steady, confident, casual? I know she’ll look at me suspiciously. I can just see the look she’ll give me, the minx—what does she know of it?

She doesn’t even look up. She takes the check and counts out the bills and hands them over without a murmur. What a civil girl. Really, a most civil girl, I must admit. I’d like to thank her, tell her I appreciate her civility. But she might think it odd. I must be careful and quiet. I take the money and go, as though this sort of thing were a commonplace. I don’t even look behind to see if their eyes are following. There. I did that quite well. I can manage perfectly well. I knew I could.

Now the hard part. If only my legs hold out. I took a two-ninety-two before I left, from Doris’s hoarded stock, and so the awkward place, the spot soft as a fontanel under my ribs, isn’t acting up too badly. The bus stop is right outside the bank. Doris and I come here when we go to the doctor’s. I’m sure this is where we catch the bus to downtown. It must be. But is it?

There’s a bench, thank God. I sit down heavily and try my level best to compose myself. Let’s see—have I got everything? The money’s in my purse. I peek, to make sure, and sure enough it’s there. I’m wearing an old housedress, beige cotton patterned perhaps a little bizarrely in black triangles. A good dress was out of the question. Doris would have wondered, and besides, this one’s more suitable for where I’m going. I have my special shoes on, hideous they are, with built-up arches, but they do give good support. I’ve worn my blue cardigan in case
of chill. It has a mended spot on one cuff, but possibly no one will notice. My hat’s my best one, though, shiny black straw with a nosegay of velvet cornflowers blue as a lake. Everything’s all right. I think I’ve got everything I require. When the bus comes, I’ll just ask the driver where I can get an out-of-town bus to—where?

Drat it, the name’s gone. I shan’t know. He’ll say
Where?
And I’ll be standing there like a dummy, without a word. What shall I do? My mind’s locked. Easy, Hagar, easy. It will come. Just take it easy. There, there. Oh—
Shadow Point
. Thank the Lord. And here’s the bus.

The driver helps me on. A nice young man. I ask the crucial question.

“I’ll let you off at the bus depot downtown,” he says. “You can catch the bus for Shadow Point there. You alone, lady?”

“Yes. Yes, I’m alone.”

“Well—” Does he sound dubious? “Okay, then.”

He’s not starting the bus, though. He looks at me, even after I’ve managed to sit down in the nearest seat. What is it? Will he make me go back? Are others staring?

“The fare, ma’am, please,” he quietly says.

I’m humiliated, flustered. I open my purse, and grope, and finally thrust it into his hands.

“Yes, yes. I’m sorry. You’ll find the money there.”

Whistling through his teeth, he picks a bill and puts back some change.

“Okay, here you are.”

Rigid as marble I sit, solid and stolid to outward view. Inwardly my heart thunders until I fear other passengers may hear. The ride is interminable. Buildings rush by, and cars, and each time the bus stops and starts it jerks me like a puppet.

“Depot,” the driver intones. “Okay, lady, here you are. You just go in there. The ticket wicket’s straight ahead. You can’t miss it.”

In the bus depot millions of people are yelling and running, toting suitcases. Everyone knows where to go, it seems, except myself.
Shadow Point
. Whatever happens, I must not forget. Where is this wicket he spoke of?

“Excuse me—” It’s a girl I speak to, for I’d not have the nerve to approach a man. “Can you tell me where the wicket is?”

She’s very young, and wears her hair coiled on top of her head—how on earth does she keep it up there? It looks as though it’s built around a mold, or a wire frame, like Marie Antoinette’s. And yet her face is not unlike my Tina’s—a tanned skin, clear and free of blemishes, so simple and vulnerable. Maybe all girls her age look that way. I did myself, once. And wouldn’t she be horrified to know that? Perhaps she’ll glide away, with that haughtiness only the young can muster, not wanting to be bothered.

“Sure,” she says. “It’s right over there. Look—that way. Here—come on, I’ll show you.”

She takes my arm, shrugs in the same embarrassment as the driver, when I try to thank her. She doesn’t know she’ll ever be in need, but something unacknowledged in her knows, perhaps. And off she goes, to heaven only knows what events, what ending.

Now the ticket is in my hand, and paid for, and I board a bus, having been steered by someone, I don’t know who. I’m getting rather tired. It’s taking so much longer than I thought it would. I sit, at last, and rest.

Whoom!
An explosive noise, and whirr of wheels. What’s happening? And then I see the bus is whirling
along a road, and we’re on the way. I doze a little, and after a while we’re there, at Shadow Point.

Deposited by the roadside, I stand and stare after the bus. I’m here, and astonished now that the place looks ordinary. And yet—I’m here, and made it under my own steam, and that’s the main thing. The only trouble is—can I find the steps, the steps that lead down and down, as I seem to recall, to the place I’m looking for? The sky is a streaky blue, like a tub of water that a cube of bluing has been swirled in. I’m here all by myself.

A service station beside the road has a small store attached to it. How fortunate I happened to notice it. I must have provisions, of course. As I push open the screen door, a bell clonks tiredly. But no one appears. I select my purchases with some care. A box of soda biscuits, the salted kind—Doris always buys those bland unsalted ones that I don’t like. A little tin of jam, greengage, my favorite. Some large bars of plain milk chocolate, very nourishing. Oh—here’s a packet of those small Swiss cheeses, triangles wrapped in silver paper. I like them very much, and Doris hardly ever buys them, as they’re an extravagance. I’ll treat myself, just this once. There. That’ll do. I mustn’t take too much, or I won’t be able to carry it all.

A dun-haired and spectacled woman slouches in from some back room and stands waiting behind the counter. She has deplorable posture. Someone ought to tell her to straighten her shoulders. Not me, though. I must watch what I say. Already she seems to be looking at me half suspiciously, as though I were an escaped convict or a child, someone not meant to be out alone.

“That be all?” she inquires.

“Yes. Let’s see now—yes, I think so. Unless you happen
to have one of those brown paper shopping bags, the kind with handles—you know the sort I mean?”

She reaches out and now I see a pile of them directly in front of me on the counter.

“They’re a nickel,” she says. That be all, now? That’s three fifty-nine.”

So much for these few things?

Then I see from her frown that a terrible thing has occurred. I’ve spoken the words aloud.

“The bars are twenty-five apiece,” she says coldly. “Did you want the ten-cent ones?”

“No, no,” I can’t get the words out fast enough. “It’s quite all right. I only meant—everything’s so high these days, isn’t it?”

“It’s high all right,” she says in a surly voice, “but it’s not us that gains, in the smaller stores. It’s the middlemen, and that’s for sure, sitting on their fannies and not doing a blame thing except raking in the dough.”

“Oh yes, I’m sure you’re right.”

In fact, I haven’t the foggiest notion what she’s talking about. I hate my breathless agreement, but I’ve no choice. I mouth effusive thanks, unable to stop myself.

“Don’t mention it,” she says in a bored voice, and we part. The screen door slams behind me. It creaks open again immediately, the bell jangling.

“You forgot your parcel,” she says accusingly. “Here.”

At last I’m away, and walking down the road. The shopping bag feels heavy. The air is uncomfortably warm with that oppressive mugginess we get here in summer, close to the sea. In Manawaka the summers were all scorchers but it was a dry heat, much healthier.

A sign with an arrow. To
The Point
Well, there’s a sign that’s very much to the point. The silly pun pleases
me and lightens my steps. My legs are holding out well. It can’t be much further. How shall I find the stairs? I’ll have to ask, that’s all. I shall simply say I’m out for a walk. There’s nothing odd about that. I’m managing admirably. I’d give anything to see Doris’s face when she gets back from shopping. I have to chortle at the thought of it, for all that my feet are hurting rather badly now on this rough gravel road. A jolting sound, a cyclone of dust, and a truck pulls up.

“Want a lift, lady?”

Fortune is with me. Gratefully, I accept.

“Where you going?” he asks.

“To—to the Point. My son and I—we’ve rented a cottage there.”

“Well, lucky for you I happened by. It’s a good three miles from here. I’m turning off at the old fish-cannery road. Okay if I let you off there?”

“Oh yes, that would be just fine, thanks.”

That’s the very place. I’d forgotten, until he said it, what the place was and what it used to be, but now I recollect Marvin’s explaining about it that day. Doris said it still stank of fish and Marvin said that was just her imagination. It couldn’t, he said, for it hadn’t been in use for about thirty years, having gone out of business in the depression.

“Here you are,” the driver says. “So long.”

The truck bounces away, and I’m standing among trees that extend all the way down the steep slopes to the sea. How quiet this forest is, only its own voices, no human noises at all. A bird exclaims piercingly, once, and the ensuing silence is magnified by the memory of that single cry. Leaves stir, touch one another, make faint fitful sounds. A branch rasps against another branch like a
boat scraping against a pier. Enormous leaves glow like green glass, the sunlight illuminating them. Tree trunks are tawny and gilded. Cedar boughs hold their dark and intricate tracery like gates against the sky. Sun and shadow mingle here, making the forest mottled, changing, dark and light.

The stairway’s beginning is almost concealed by fern and bracken, tender and brittle, green fish-spines that snap easily under my clumping feet. It’s not a proper stairway, actually. The steps have been notched into the hillside and the earth bolstered at the edges with pieces of board. There’s a banister of sorts, made of poles, but half of them have rotted away and fallen. I go down cautiously, feeling slightly dizzy. The ferns have overgrown the steps in some places, and salmonberry branches press their small needles against my arms as I pass. Bushes of goatsbeard brush satyr-like against me. Among the fallen leaves and brown needles of fir and balsam on the forest floor grow those white pinpoint flowers we used to call Star of Bethlehem. I can see into cool and shady places, the streaks of sun star-fished across the moist and musky earth.

I’m not weary at all, nor heavy laden. I could sing. I’m like Meg Merrilies. That’s Keats, and I can remember parts of it still, although it must be forty years or more since I laid eyes on it. If that isn’t evidence of a good memory, I don’t know what it is.

I see some blackberry bushes here. They have berries on them all right, but not swart enough, I fear, and they won’t be changing from hard emerald for another month. As for her wine, those roses must’ve been a giant breed. You’d not quench your thirst to any extent by sipping dew out of the wildflowers that grow hereabouts.

Then it strikes me suddenly, a stone pelted at my gaiety. I haven’t brought any water. I haven’t anything to drink, not a mouthful, not even an orange to suck. Oh, what was I thinking of? How could I have neglected that? What shall I do? I’m nearly at the bottom of the steps. There must be several hundred of them, in all. I can’t face climbing them. I’m all at once tired, so tired I can barely move one foot and then another.

I go on, step and step and step, and then I’m there. The gray old buildings loom around me. I don’t even look at them closely, for the full weight of my exhaustion presses down upon me now that I’m really here. I’m limp as a dishrag. I don’t even feel specific pain in my feet or under my ribs now—only a throbbing in every part of me.

A door’s ajar. I push it and walk in. I set my shopping bag on a floor richly carpeted with dust. Then, unthinking, unaware of anything except my extremity of weariness, I hunch down in the dust and go to sleep.

I waken famished, and wonder for a moment when Doris will have the tea ready and whether she’s baked today or not, for I seem to recall her mentioning that she intended to make a spice cake. Then I see beside me on
the floor my summer hat, the cornflowers dipped in dust. What on earth possessed me to come here? What if I take ill?