Joan Makes History (10 page)

I heard them laughing when I got back, and was in no hurry to enter the squalid room where the fire would be smoking, choking on itself, and Sid would be knees apart on the stool before it, toasting his hands and boasting of this and that, and I knew that they would all gab at me for vanishing into the prickle for a whole afternoon.

Burchett was speaking out of the slit in his face when I went in with my armful of wood for the fire. For an astonished moment as I stood by the door I thought he was crying, so odd and choked were the sounds he was making. I nearly dropped the wood and leaped for joy, for what was sad for Burchett could only be glad for me. But, clutching at sticks as they began to fall from my arms, I saw that what was happening was stranger even than Burchett crying: it was Burchett laughing, and I saw too
that Madam's hard face was also broken up, in a way that was frightening, by mirth.

I felt fear then, because Burchett and his Madam would laugh only out of some wickedness done, and I knew that I would not be laughing with them if I knew what they were finding so funny. I was chilled as I crossed the room through their hideous humour, hearing Burchett say:
See the way they were grinning away, too stupid and savage to know any better.
Madam laughed a raucous laugh like a cockatoo triumphant over a grub in a tree, and shouted in her hilarity:
And didn't they think they was that clever, lifting it from under our very noses!
Chill prickled and goose-fleshed me then and I could not leave the room quickly enough, stifled by the possibility of understanding what it was they found so funny.

But out in the cold kitchen, where Sid sat, as I had known, smoking his hands like small hams at the smoulder in the hearth, it was no better, for Sid was gabbing to dull Will, and I was forced to bustle over pease and pork so that I could not escape to anywhere else. No matter what a clattering and banging I produced with pots and pans and iron spoons, I could not help hearing Sid telling Will what I did not want to hear:
Them dumb blacks,
Sid shouted, and Will grinned and goggled.
Three bags they made off with, plenty for all them thieving heathens to go to Kingdom Come and back!

I could not eat the vile food I cooked that night, could not even make a pannikin of tea go down my throat, clenched tight against the images in my mind's eye. They were all in fine fettle, though, those other human beings I shared my life with, and gorged themselves, knowing the plenty of summer was coming, even Burchett cramming great forkfuls of pork into his mouth
until the grease ran down his chin. They ate, and gulped at their tea, and were full of joy, knowing that out among those tiny lascivious flowers, under bushes full of thorns, in gullies of trembling ferns, that woman and her tribe, whose wallabies had made the saliva gush into our mouths, were in agony, with their bellies full of damper poisoned with our hatred and fear.

In the white tight hospital bed I was weightless, my head as airy as something that might float up and out at the top of the window. I had felt light before, on the bed at home waiting in vain for the poisonous blood to stop seeping from me: that had been a lightness of head, yes, but a malevolent heaviness of every limb that made me hardly care when at last they lifted me onto a stretcher and put me down in this hospital bed. No, the airiness I felt now was strength returning along every vein, filling again with that bright blood I had seen altogether too much of: the airiness was having the heavy hand of destiny removed from the back of my neck so I could turn to the left, to the right, go backwards or forwards as I pleased: I was free.

I lay watching shadows move across the wall and listening to the foreign sounds of life outside my window: out there I had seen a red brick wall with dustbins, a sprawled dog with bald elbows, and the amputated-looking limbs of a leafless frangipani: from my bed I could hear dustbins clank, feet walk, the dog bark, children rush and shriek and the unending hum of the city's life beyond. I lay comforted by life outside my window, that life I would soon join again in my full strength, and I rehearsed my destinies. Prime Minister! Discoverer of the atom! Thinker of
great thoughts! All these futures were open to me again now: my mind was filling like a hole in the sand by the sea, with visions of futures for myself.

I was sad, too. I was airy from freedom, but also from emptiness: there were times when they seemed to me to be hard to distinguish, when my freedom gaped like a hollowness within me. At those times I choked with my own lack of substance: I was nothing more than a speck of fluff lost in air. I was attached to nothing at all: I had no past, no future, and a present of no importance: my being had come into existence and would flicker out in the blink of an eyelid. The universe would not as much as register that I, Joan, had ever been.

That was fear I could find no words for, only a hopelessness and the isolation of spinning off forever in a cold void.
I have looked on the face of death,
I reminded myself pompously.
And would be lacking soul if the experience had not shaken me.
I pulled the chilly hospital covers up to my chin and tried to think of the sunshine outside.
Of course I am a little gloomy, I have just now nearly died.

As for that other creature, who had looked on the face of death and been snatched away by it before its time: I mourned, and was confused by my grief, for it had never been more than a faceless thing, not a person for me (I had never in the end, worked out just what a matinee jacket was): and even as I mourned, I rejoiced to be again one person, Joan alone once more.

It was odd, then, to find myself at one moment with slimy tears running down my cheeks in despair, and the next to be craning to see out my window to catch a glimpse of two little girls becoming shrill over the last chocolate frog. I, Joan, found
myself now to be a confusing matter, where I had always before known what was what.

When Duncan came to see me, the garish roses in his hand made his face sallow. I had never before seen Duncan in the grip of grief, had never before seen his face with no laughter in it at all: this man gazing at me, his flowers laid on the bed against my knees, was no one I knew. He sat down on the unwelcoming hospital chair looking at me with a sad stranger's face, and out of a long silence said at last:
I should have looked after you better,
and coughed as if he had not heard his voice for a long time.
I should not have let you do so much.

What had I done? I had sat, and strolled, and admired sunsets and horseflesh: the most vigorous thing I had done was to mix scone dough in a bowl and laugh myself silly later, taking the rock-like knobs out of the oven.
Next time I will take more care of you,
Duncan promised, and I did not like the sound of that at all: for one thing I was in no hurry to embark on a
next time,
and for another I did not care for the idea of being hovered over and trapped on a chaise longue for nine months, forbidden to do anything of interest.

Fit as a fiddle,
the doctor had declared.
Tight as a drum. All shipshape and Bristol fashion.
It was not I who had needed the reassurance, but Duncan, haggard by the bed.
She will be all right, then?
he asked, wanting to hear again:
There is no reason why next time your confinement will not be a complete success.
Duncan's face had lightened, he gripped my hand so hard it hurt, and I had not been able to look into his optimistic face, for the disloyal thoughts of Samarkand blossoming in my own heart. I could see him planning our future again: the insects would continue to hum away in the afternoons out on the property, as they always
had, and the scornful birds would continue to taunt with their slow cries of ennui. Heat would shimmer, the roof would creak under the sun: all would be as it had been before, and the idea filled me with weariness.

We will take a holiday,
Duncan promised now.
What do you think, Joanie, we will go to the sea, or the mountains, whatever you would like.
But I knew that no holiday was going to cure what ailed me, and I did not reply, taking refuge in my convalescent status to lie and allow the silence to accumulate while Duncan mused.

I could not imagine Duncan's thoughts, but assumed they were not too different from my own. He mourned, but mourned for something that had never become a person, and he rejoiced in the idea of a holiday, a time of ease, untroubled by the anticipation of a stranger arriving. Unlike me, of course, he looked forward to the eventual arrival of that stranger, who would join us at some point in the future: it was not he whose body would be host to that parasite and it was not he who would have to lie like someone with the vapours for so long: it was not his beckoning destinies that would have to be forgone.

Imagining all this in Duncan's mind, I was not prepared for the sounds I heard from him now as he sat in the quiet of this room. It was nothing as solid as words: it was small noises of pain like humming, as if he was setting up a vibration in his head so there would be no room for thoughts.
She is gone, she is gone,
he began to whisper at last, and I saw his sandy cheeks glistening with tears, and even I, cold Joan, who was born to make history and not to sway in the blasts of feeling, was shaken, looking at his guileless grief.

It was nothing,
I tried to say.
It was just a few cells, it was no one,
although I had seen it, and knew better, but he cried out more loudly then:
No, no, that is not true!
and I was silenced, because in my chilly self I could find none of the passion he felt.

Seeing his rough sandy face distorted by tears, feeling my own eyes itchy with dryness behind their lids, I saw in that moment's cold clarity that this man was too good for me. Duncan was not the man I had thought he was, slapdash, a rollicker through life on the backs of fine horses and the fronts of fine women, a cheery shallow man full of jokes and benign lusts. He was a man of feeling, a man of heart, more subtle than my shallowness could understand, a man full of the mystery of goodness, a man not ashamed to be human. I fell silent in shame, seeing what an empty shell of a person I was, and how far removed from Duncan, for all that he was the man whose body had penetrated mine, and his was the voice that had sighed into my ear on so many hot nights.

We sat in a long silence, avoiding the sight of each other. It seemed impossible that our skins would ever touch again or our eyes meet, for Duncan was lost in feelings I could not guess at, and I was hollow, lying like a dry husk on the bed, brittle, rattling in the wind.

Of course it was Duncan who gestured first across the space between us. He took my hand in both of his, so that I felt the rough skin of his palms on mine, and the warmth of his innocent blood, that was making me so ashamed of how inept I was in the face of life.

He took my hand and crushed it between his and looked into my face, but I could not meet his eyes.
Joanie dear,
he whispered, and although I could not watch, I felt him lift my cold and loveless hand to his soft mouth.
Joanie, it was only one, we will have
another, there will be another,
I felt him covering my hand with kisses, my brown forearm felt his cheek soothe itself against my hand, and at last I felt heat behind my eyes, and tears there, because I knew that I was not good enough for this good man, and although he would doubtless become a father some day, I did not think it was I who could make a father of him.

I could not say anything of this, though, and had to lie bleak and numbed, a hypocrite, congealed with the knowledge that some part of me was missing, or numbed, or stunted, that I could watch so coldly as two people exchanged sounds through their mouths.

Duncan loved me, and I deserved no such thing as the love of a good man.
I thought it was just lust,
I said aloud, surprised to hear my voice vibrating in my head, for I had not intended to speak my thought. Duncan shifted in his chair and his face blossomed into a smile.
Oh yes,
he said, showing his pink tongue,
there has been any amount of lust, too, Joanie, my word yes.
He took my hand but then thought better of it, thinking perhaps I would misunderstand and expect lust then and there, and put it back where it had been lying on the sheet.
You know, Joanie,
he said from the chaste distance of his chair,
Your body has always been like a red rag to my bull.
He sat smiling at me and at his fancy, and although the smile faded soon and left his face sad, I could see that his anguish had lifted now, and he was thinking not of the child he had lost, but the one he would soon make.

Duncan, I do not deserve you,
I said, feeling my lips dry, wondering if the syllables were shaping themselves right, or if I spoke that other language of my infancy. I rubbed the back of my hand across my mouth and felt my lips move, and knew that I must have spoken, but Duncan sat watching the flowers on the bedspread,
his large hand lying beside them stiffly.
You are too good for me, I am soiled,
I said, and took that hand, which did not look warm, but was, full of the warm loving blood of a good man. He stirred himself out of some gloomy dream then, shifted in his chair, squeezed my fingers, and gave me a look that was an attempt at a smile.
Well Joanie, I do not know about that. We are none of us perfect.
He thought for a while and turned my hand over, running a finger along the lines of my palm as if he knew what they meant.
Or we are all perfect in parts, is that it?
he said, and laughed in a sad sort of way.

Not so long before I had been a giddy girl with my life tame in my hand; a giddy girl spinning all alone with ribbons and scarves of infinite possibilities swirling around her in gaudy kaleidoscope patterns. Now, lying here nodding while Duncan comforted himself making plans for us, I saw that all those ribbons were anchored now: I would never again dance with my life on my palm like a jewel: I was attached now to this man, and to the short but significant history we shared. I was responsible—I recoiled in the bed from the idea and drew my knees up as a barricade—I was responsible now not just for myself, but in some degree for this other human, who could not fail to be affected by anything I might choose to do.

Now that was a prison!