Under the Rose (35 page)

Connors ignored the reproach. Off on a different tack, his mind was cutting through a tangle of shy, willed confusions. He recognized that what he felt for Dan was love or something closer. Far from being his enemy, Dan was a part of himself. Luminous alter ego? Partner in father- and grandfatherhood? Closing his ears to his companion’s sermon, he looked out to where Phyllis and Dickybird had caught up with the golden Lab, on whose back the child kept trying to climb. Shaken off, he tried again: a rubbery
putto
, bouncing back like foam. The wild Lydon heritage had skipped a generation and here it was again.

Excited by the whirling spray, the puppy scampered through its prism while the infant held onto its tail. The child’s hair was as blond as the dog’s, and in the rainbow embrace the two gleamed like fountain statuary. They were Arcadian, anarchic, playful – and propelled by pooled energy.

‘It’s a terrible thing to happen,’ Connors conceded. ‘But I wouldn’t blame Lydon. Blame the American candidate or the Italian state. Hypocrisy. Puritanism. Pretence. Lydon’s innocent of all that. Blaming him is like, I don’t know, blaming that dog out there.’ And he waved his glass of whiskey at the golden scene outside.

Under a furze bush one day – they were taking a pee – Madge broke with Rosie Fennel. She was ashamed – which was why she chose such a moment.

‘Look, Rose,’ she said, ‘I’m afraid I can’t play with you any more. I might
catch
something from you. It’s not your fault and I like you still, but … it’s the way your family lives. You see that, don’t you?’

‘Yeah,’ said Rosie.

They both crawled from under the bush and stood up. Rosie had blonde, naturally curly hair, abundant as an aureole and alive with lice. She had a mouthful of bossy teeth and a foamy laugh. Madge had been her friend for three years – since they were ten. Rosie was good gas to play with: game, a tease, a liar. She went bare-legged in winter, to bed, swimming or to the movies at whatever hour she chose, and was free from the rules that plagued Madge who stood before her now, feeling ridiculous in her gym slip, woolly bloomers that – she had just noticed – snapped pink welts on her stomach, and childish-looking pigtails.

Rosie laughed. ‘Well!’

‘Well, good-bye, Rosie.’

‘Cheero.’

Madge ran down the hill, her laced boys’ shoes clattering like hooves. (‘Like a horse!’ said the nuns in school. ‘Hoyden!’ ‘Lice!’ they had said. ‘Aren’t you ashamed? A doctor’s daughter! You should have your head shaved!’)

Madge ran in her own gate, down the path, up the stairs and burrowed under the bed where she gibbered to herself in
the dark for maybe half an hour, scrawling the springs above with her nails, gabbling that she had been awful. Awful! A filthy stinker! She hated herself! And the worst of all was that Rosie hadn’t seemed to mind. But she could never look her in the eye again. Never.

She kept away from the village all day, but next morning her mother sent her up to the pub for cigarettes and there was Rosie outside the lounge door, watching the men play pitch-and-toss. (Rosie laughed at their cheek, knew how to give back as good as she got.) She waved at Madge:

‘Howaya doin’?’

‘Fine,’ said Madge and fled. She had to pass Rosie’s house where three younger sisters sat scrabbling in the dust – there was no real floor, just earth – and Joe, the father, neither drunk nor sober, hands on knees, stared before him with eyes like wet pebbles. He called something but Madge pretended not to hear.

She rushed down the street for fear of being hailed and maybe questioned about what she had said to Rosie by one of ‘the village’. (‘The village’ were people who lived in houses like Rosie’s; others were what Madge’s mother called ‘people like ourselves’.) They would think her stuck up. ‘I’m not really stuck-up at all,’ thought Madge. ‘Not really. Not inside.’ But felt branded.

She moped for weeks after that; read a school book in the bus for fear someone might talk to her and, in the end, struck up with Bernie O’Toole whose father owned the village pub and who, like herself, attended the private convent school in the nearest town. They were the only two kids from round about who did. (‘Kids’ was Rosie’s word who liked Americanese. ‘
You
’, the class nun told Madge when she heard her use it, ‘may like to fancy yourself as related to goats!
We
prefer to believe our charges are at least human!’)

Bernie was a bit of a stick. She was from the country and shy, but there was a free flow of raspberryade from the pub to the
O’Toole kitchen so Madge took to doing her homework there.

The O’Tooles weren’t quite ‘people like ourselves’ either. They didn’t visit Madge’s parents or their friends. (‘Though they could buy and sell us,’ said Madge’s mother.) Mrs O’Toole flapped about her dark kitchen like a downcast bird in flowered aprons, made cakes and chatted endlessly with her skivvy – none other than Rosie’s elder sister, Bridie, whom Madge, of course, knew well. She and Madge eyed each other and talked over-politely for a week after Madge had started coming to the O’Tooles’, then one evening Bridie – she had been handing Madge a glass of lemonade – bounded backwards and shouted in a very grand voice:

‘Eugh!
Deugh
excuse me! I wouldn’t want you to
catch
anything!’

Madge went red – she could feel herself – to the tips of her ears. After that it was war to the knife between her and Bridie. Which was more comfortable really. You knew where you were.

‘Here’s Miss Madge,’ Bridie would yell when Madge arrived. ‘Her ladyship has come!’

‘Bridie’s got a tootsie,’ said Bernie slyly, being on Madge’s side, and giggled till her pale eyes watered. They were like raw eggs at the best of times. Wettish. Slightly loose. ‘The milkman’s her fella!’

‘A tootsie! A tootsie! Hee, hee, hee!’ The little girls giggled while Bridie banged saucepans about. Bernie’s brother, Pat, giggled too and clattered his spoon on the tray of his high chair. He was strapped into it though he was too big and his thighs bulged against the sides. ‘Gloughgh!’ he howled, and slobber fell on his bib. ‘Gluggle!’ He had a pale, plump face so peppered with freckles that they formed a small saddle on the bridge of his round-nostrilled nose. His eyes were slanted and he had a puffy look like a stuffed cloth doll. He might have been eight or nine.

‘What is it, Pat? Now what set him off?’ Mrs O’Toole ran
in to wipe off the slobber. ‘Tell Mummy, pet! Gluggle,’ she said too for she claimed to be able to make out what the child said, and talked back to it with the same noises. ‘Pat’s my boy,’ said she and wiped off his saliva.

‘Can she really make out what he says?’ Madge asked Bernie when her mother had gone.

‘Seems.’

‘Listen, what’s he like – the tootsie?’

‘Hee, hee,’ said Bernie. ‘You jealous?’

‘Silly galoot! What I mean is: what do they do anyway?’

Bernie shrugged. ‘Go for walks on the beach. Ma saw them go into the cave.’

‘Jeez, that’s dangerous. Did you know that was an old copper mine? My Daddy says they had to stop working it because of earth slides. There are passages going right under our hill and …’

‘Well
they
don’t explore any passages you may be sure!’ Bernie was contemptuous. ‘They just neck!’

And then – being unavowably inquisitive – the girls said no more.

Bridie was a fattish girl with an enormous bosom that shook like clotted milk inside her overall. She wore no bra and, from standing over the O’Tooles’ cooking stove, gave off a stew of heavy odours. There was, Madge remembered, only a yard tap for her and Rosie to wash at.

‘’S a wonder she hasn’t creepiecrawlies!’

‘She
had
! Ma combed them out with a finecomb!’

‘Phew!’ said Madge. Then – for hadn’t she caught them herself from Rosie? – ‘Poor thing!’

‘That Bob Cronin didn’t mind!’ Bernie sniggered. ‘Nor the milkman. Ma says she’s man-mad!’

‘Seven o’clock! Jeepers, I’ve got to fly!’

‘See you tomorrow.’

‘Bye.’

Rump uppermost in the O’Toole yard, Bridie was washing
clothes in a bucket. Her thick thighs and glossy pink knickers struck Madge as offensive.

‘I’m off,’ she told the rump.

‘Eugh, Madam Madge!
Good
-bye!’ came from the bucket.

A group of ratty-looking youths held up the pub wall, sharing a cigarette butt and staring, it seemed to Madge, with foolish insolence before them. She sprayed them all with her imaginary water-pistol, containing, she decided, sour milk. But felt unassuaged. Like a volley of spittle from her mouth, the one word ‘BOYS!’ crackled with sudden ringing scorn.

They gaped and the next thing she was racing down the macadam, ears burning, eyes blurred with shame.

‘Cretin!’ she scolded herself. ‘Half-wit! Dope!’ Inside her own gate, she flopped against the post. ‘Jeez,’ she gasped. ‘You’re a real loony! They’ll have to tie you up, Madge Heron!’

Saturday was Bridie’s half-day and Mrs O’Toole said the girls would have to take Pat for a walk.
She
had things to do. Madge was fed up the minute she saw him. He was pinned into an enormous scarf, snotty as per usual and looking like – well like what he was. By now, however, she’d accepted too much O’Toole raspberryade to protest. Still she promised herself, they could at least avoid the main roads. She wasn’t going to let anyone she knew see her walking out with
that
!

‘What about going to the beach?’ she proposed to Bernie.

‘Bet Bridie’s there with her heart-throb! We might see sights!’

‘You’ve a dirty mind, Bernie O’Toole!’

‘Go on! Pretend that wasn’t what you were thinking of yourself!’

Madge scrabbled at the loose plaster in the O’Toole yard
wall. A colony of albino insects raced. ‘That’s right,’ she said. ‘It wasn’t.’

Flies patrolled the veil Mrs O’Toole had thrown on her meatsafe. Who else used outdoor meatsafes any more? The O’Tooles were that stolid! Bernie had the same round nostrils as her brother: punctures in a boneless nose. ‘Her whole face is like his,’ Madge noticed, ‘all puffs!’ In school the nuns never had a thing on her. Slyboots! ‘If she giggles now,’ Madge thought, ‘I’ll hit her.’

‘I’m fed up with double-meaning talk!’ she told Bernie.

‘Oh yeah?’

‘
Yeah!
What’s it to us if Bridie smooches or runs after fellows? If you want to know why we’re going to the beach, it’s’ – Madge, on impulse, dredged up a half-shelved dream – ‘to explore that cave! No boys have done it. Nobody. How many kids our age have a chance like that? All those passages. Empty for years! Centuries maybe. Anything could be hidden there. We’ll need’, she recalled, ‘a bicycle lamp and candles to test the oxygen.’

‘What about Pat?’

‘He can wait outside.’

‘I’m going into no dirty old cave,’ said Bernie. ‘You know as well as I do that trippers use it for a lav!’

‘
You
can wait outside if you want. That way if I get into some scrape you can give the alert.’

This echo from the
Girls’ Crystal
began to work on Bernie.

‘I don’t mind cadging lamps and stuff,’ she wavered. ‘Though if anything happens to
you
I’ll be the one to be blemt!’

‘Pooh! They’ll all know it couldn’ta been
your
idea!’

All the way downhill they discussed the cave, astonished suddenly that they had never tackled it before. Madge said she wouldn’t be surprised if the Germans – who were known to have landed money and radio equipment along this coast – hadn’t hidden stuff there during the war. Most had been caught the minute they landed but you never knew.

‘There might be unexploded dynamite,’ said Bernie.

The cave, hidden by a curve in the cliff, had to be reached by scrambling past rocks and rock-pools where slime and algae covered dormant crabs. The girls took turns carrying Pat and were puffed by the time they reached the great cleft itself. It was fringed by a growth of greyish marine vegetation and its base was moist with rivulets of reddish ooze.

‘
I
’m going no further!’ Bernie, an image of country caution, plonked herself on a rock.

‘You can
look
in, can’t you? Jeez, you might come to the
opening
!’

‘That’s the stinky part!’

‘Not now it isn’t! The tides wash right in at this time of year!’

Placing their feet on dry spots among the issuing scum, the two approached.

‘Pat,’ his sister told him, ‘you stay where you are!’

He had settled on an apron of dry pebbles between two rocks. Crooning to himself, his blunt, starfish fingers clutched, dropped and again clutched at smooth pastel stones. Sandy-haired, freckled and pale, he was almost invisible among the mica glints of the brownish-whitish rock: a dappled animal returned to its own habitat.

The girls stepped some way into the cave. Its upper vaulting was lost in darkness; the black gullet, piercing the interior of the hill they had just descended, presented no contour. Under the beam of Madge’s lamp, a stretch of inner wall sweated a red liquid which gathered in darker trickles.

‘Blood!’ Bernie whispered.

‘Copper!’ Madge reminded her. ‘It’s a
copper
mine!’

Growing used to the dark, they were able to make out boulders and, in the far end, a slit of richer, velvety black.

‘The passage!’

‘Shshsh! There’s someone there!’

To one side of the passage were two shapes. On a spread macintosh, a man and a woman lay with their heads tilted towards the interior of the cave. Madge was astonished that she should have missed them before for they were pitching and surging in a repetitious undulation, disagreably similar to the agony of grounded fish. The woman lay uppermost and her skirt, rucked up to her waist, showed a patch of shiny pink.

Madge felt a rush of nausea. ‘Let’s get out of here.’

‘What do you bet it’s Bridie and the milkman! The dirty things! I’m telling Ma!’

‘Come out, willya!’ Madge began to back away.

Bernie caught her arm. ‘Half a mo’! Look at Pat!’ she whispered. ‘Jeepers
look
at him! Pat!’ she whispered urgently. ‘Come here!’

The child had crept in behind and around them. Now he was half-way across the cave, making for the still jouncing couple.

‘Blawchlee!’ he gurgled happily. ‘Blawdee!’

‘Leave him,’ Madge whispered. ‘They’ll have fits if they think
we
saw them! Bridie’s fond of him,’ she reassured Bernie when they were outside. ‘We’ll pretend we didn’t see him mooching off.’

‘We could call him!’

‘OK!’

‘Pa-a-at!’

‘Now give them time to send him out.’

The girls sat on a rock. ‘Pa-a-at!’ Bernie yelled again.

Madge found a linty twist of paper in her pocket with a bull’s-eye and acid drop welded together. She tried to prise them apart but they fell, bounced off the rock and rolled into a scummy pool. ‘Hell’ she cried. ‘Everything’s the same today! Spoilt! Everything!’ Biting her nails, she stared into the water where a sea anemone waved delicate fretted tendrils, enfolding its flower-like heart against the danger. ‘Stupid slow
thing!’ said Madge. ‘If those sweets had been something dangerous it would be dead by now!’

‘Don’t they shoot poison?’ Bernie wondered. ‘Pat!’ she began to call again. ‘Pa-a-at!’