A Stairway to Paradise (15 page)

Alex also thought of Barbara, for whom the waiting—as a conscious, active, lively state—was done. To think of Barbara, now, was intemperately to invite mere hopeless anguish. Alex, these days, avoided thinking of Barbara.

‘After all, it’s not our fault,’ said Andrew, ‘that we’re ignorant and inept—it’s the way we’re designed, basically. Not our fault.’

‘No, you’re right. Not our fault at all. Even we can see that far into it.’

‘After all, as a species, we’re still in the experimental stage.’

‘I would have thought so.’

‘It’s obvious. Haven’t clocked up so much as our first million years, even. Not even our first
half
million, by all accounts.’

‘No.
Long
way to go.’

‘Hope they’re going to appreciate what we’ve gone through for them, we prototypes of
homo sapiens
.’

‘Probably won’t. Probably just take their perfect lives completely for granted.’

‘Absurd, isn’t it? Probably won’t even be speaking English.’

‘Oh, come now: of course they’ll be speaking English. In a somewhat altered form, no doubt. But it’s absolutely bound to be English.’

‘You think?’

‘Sure of it.’

‘Think they’ll play cricket?’

‘Of course.’

‘Football, obviously.’

‘Obviously.’

‘Still, they’ll never know—’

‘No, they never will.’

They each thought about what these remote successors would never know.

‘Hardly worth being human, really, in that case,’ said Andrew, after a while.

‘No,’ said Alex. ‘Utterly pointless, really.’

49

Marguerite, at the great age of eleven, a reserved and rather fragile-looking child with dark brown hair, knew many things.

A large proportion of these many were unaccountable, were phenomena which, having no evident heads or tails of cause and consequence, were unclassifiable. She hardly knew or remembered how some of them had come to her knowledge—some of them, indeed, seeming to have arrived there entirely unbidden.

All such unaccountable matter, whatever its origin, having been turned over as well as could be managed, was thereafter filed away in the hope that it might be elucidated in due course: such marvels as sexual intercourse (why should anyone, ever, want to do
that
?) or the Trinity (how could anyone, whomsoever, believe what could not be understood?). And others, nearer to home, such as, that her parents did not love each other and would quite certainly—but when?—be divorced.

This item—which had come to her well over a year ago—was taken occasionally from the file marked ‘to be elucidated’ and pondered afresh, but to no avail. It was knowledge which must be harboured, simply, in silence and fear—fear, not so much of the eventuality itself, as that Percy too might awaken to it: for she did not consider that Percy would be as able as was she to accommodate it. Percy was not only younger but more erratic than she. You never knew what Percy might say, or do.

Percy’s appearance was rather similar to his sister’s. He had the same dark brown hair, the same thin, almost fragile, face: but his was adorned with a pair of wire-rimmed glasses of which he was rather proud. On first trying them on, he had been invited by the optician to look in the mirror and see how he liked them, Claire, who had taken him there, standing by. Percy gazed steadily for several seconds at his new reflection. Then he pronounced. ‘They’re good,’ he said. ‘They make me look as old as I feel.’

Percy was nonetheless forbidden to come home from school without Marguerite: forbidden so much as to leave the school grounds alone, because there was a five-to-ten-minute walk between the bus stop and home, and Percy was not to be in the streets alone—not until he was ten. Because, as Claire pointed out, over his protests, ‘You’re not as old as you feel.’

The two children generally walked home from the bus stop in silence to begin with, Percy, as he had lately learned to do, sauntering, his mind at work. Today, early in the new school year, his saunter slowed to an almost indolent gait, and he hunched his shoulders, casting his features into a morose expression. He was doing his new form teacher.

Marguerite turned to him. ‘Come on, Percy.’

He shrugged, returning to his own person, and quickened his pace very slightly, drawing almost level with his sister. ‘I say, I’ve been thinking,’ he announced.

‘Have you?’

‘Yes. Listen. I was just wondering—do you think they’ll get divorced this year?’

Marguerite stopped walking for a moment: there was a nasty lurching feeling in her stomach. ‘Who’ll get divorced?’ she said.

‘Mum and Dad, of course. You know. Claire and Alex.’

‘Oh.’

The shock began, but very slowly, to abate.

‘Well,’ said Percy, almost impatiently, ‘
do
you?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘No, of course you don’t
know
, but do you
think
?’

The thing was, Percy’s tone betrayed no distress, or even anxiety: he seemed simply to want to
know
: that was all. Glancing at his face, she saw the same Percy. Marguerite still felt a sort of trembling in her chest as she spoke, but she tried to seem quite as detached, quite as cool, as her brother. ‘I don’t know whether they’ll get divorced this year, or any other year,’ she said.

‘Oh, they
will
get divorced, some year or other,’ Percy assured her. ‘I’ve been expecting it for a while. I was just wondering
when
, that’s all.’

‘I see,’ said Marguerite dazedly. She was still trying to accommodate herself to this revised Percy. You never knew, indeed, what Percy would do, or say.

‘I mean,’ Percy expanded, ‘they probably
should
get divorced, sooner or later. People do.’

‘Not all people.’ Marguerite still felt it best to respond as if quite ignorant, as if the topic were an absolute novelty. That did seem safest.

‘Yes, okay, not all. But
they
ought to. I think they
will
.’

‘Why do you think that?’

He seemed almost surprised at her asking, and almost stopped walking. ‘Well, I dunno,’ he said. He was now standing still, thinking; he was considering his parents. ‘They’re much
nicer
,’ he said at last, ‘when they’re not together.’ That was an indubitable, long-demonstrated, fact. There was no fun, no laughter, to be had with either but when the other was absent. It was like living in two—or rather, three—worlds, turn and turn about. Time with Claire; time with Alex; time with both of them present—he remote, she impatient—in the sober high-ceilinged house, where you knew, always, what came next.

‘Yes,’ said Marguerite, ‘I suppose they are, actually.’

Percy glanced quickly at her face. Had she really never considered all this before? Could she really be so ignorant? You couldn’t be sure, with Marguerite: she was liable to conceal her feelings, her thoughts. ‘I mean,’ he urged, ‘they just don’t
get on
; they annoy each other. They get on each other’s nerves. You must have
noticed
.’

‘Yes,’ said Marguerite, ‘I suppose I had, sometimes.’

‘
So?
’

‘So what?’

‘Shouldn’t they get divorced?
Won
’
t
they?’

‘I suppose they might, one of these days.’

‘Well—
when
?’

‘How could I know?’

Percy thought for a minute. They were almost home. ‘Perhaps we’d better ask them,’ he said.

‘We can’t do that.’

‘Why not?’

‘I don’t know—we just
can
’
t
.’

‘
I
can. I
will
. I want to know.’

She could see that he did, indeed. Oh, so did she—but—

‘Percy, you
can
’
t
. They wouldn’t like it, I’m sure they wouldn’t.’

‘Why ever not?’

‘I don’t know—I just don’t think they would.’

‘Oh, I won’t ask them both together, I’ll just ask one. I’ll ask Claire, while we’re having tea.’

They were turning in at their gate now, going up their path, ringing their doorbell. ‘Perhaps she isn’t there,’ said Marguerite, desperately. ‘Perhaps she’s still out, perhaps it’s only Mrs Brick.’ When Claire was delayed, she would telephone Mrs Brick—if it was one of Mrs Brick’s days—and ask her to stay on and mind the children until she got home. Oh, God, prayed Marguerite, let it be Mrs Brick. Then with any luck he might have forgotten about all this by the time Claire gets home. Please, God: please let it be Mrs Brick.

Percy pushed open the brass mail flap and peered through the slot to see whose feet should come down the hallway. ‘Well, if it is Mrs Brick,’ he said, still watching to see who was coming, ‘I’ll just have to wait until Claire gets home, that’s all. What’s the odds?’ Then he saw, at last, who was coming. He straightened up, and turned to the terrified Marguerite. ‘Guess who it is!’ he said. ‘Quick—guess who?’

But it was too late to guess: the latch clicked, and the front door began—but slowly, heavily—to open.