Passing On (18 page)

‘I don’t know why you bother doing all this by hand. Half an hour with a drum of selective weed killer and a spray and you’d put paid to that lot for good and all.’

‘Plus much else.’

‘What? Oh, the wild flowers.’ Ron smiled indulgently. ‘A year or two and they’d be back. But you wouldn’t catch me sweating my guts out like that when there’s an easy way to set about it.

Take advantage where you can, that’s what I say.’

‘I’m sure you do,’ said Edward.

Ron looked at him narrowly. There was a brief silence. ‘Well,’

said Ron. ‘I’d better be off — Pauline’ll be after me. And remember, any time you feel like changing your mind about what you’re going to do with this place, let me know. I’ll be ready and waiting — put a cheque in your hand any time you want it.’

Edward sighed. ‘I’ll remember.’

He listened to Ron crashing his way out of the Britches. At last there was silence. A robin began to sing, and presently a chaffinch. The light was fading and it was getting cold; Edward decided to pack it in. But first he would have a few minutes of self-indulgence. He sat down on a log and tried to perform what he thought of as the vanishing act, whereby you became insofar as it was possible a part of the surroundings: breathing, seeing, hearing only — merely an aspect of the place, a dimension, like the robin or the moss-covered log or the leafmould on which his feet rested. You tried not to think or to feel — just to be. Whimsy, as he well knew — an affectation, even — but satisfying nonetheless.

There he sat, and the Britches darkened around him.

For Helen, all that week, Saturday shone like a distant sunlit hilltop. She was in no hurry to reach it — contemplation was almost as satisfactory as arrival. Anticipation is one of the choicest forms of pleasure; it was a long time, she realised, since she had experienced it. Conditioned to observe, she noticed what it did to her; the feeling of vigour, the brisker step, the tendency to be nice to others, to talk to those whom one usually avoided.

In the library she negotiated a cease-fire between Joyce Babcock and the new trainee, a girl fatally endowed with enthusiasm both for books and for people, and therefore threatening the entire ethos of Joyce’s empire. The girl, Lorna, announced her intention of applying for a transfer: “I don’t know how you’ve stuck it with her so long, I really don’t.’ Helen replied enigmatically that it was all just a question of experience.

Monday gave way to Tuesday, the day on which she did not go to the library. She walked to the village shop to collect the bread and was waylaid four times and treated to opposing viewpoints on the two current matters of local dispute. Helen, neutrally listening, anaesthetised by her state of uplift, thought that they nicely illustrated the condition of the place. One controversy was about visual amenities; the other concerned noise. Both had implications about prosperity and the power of cash. Someone had applied for planning permission to knock down an old cow-byre in his garden and build a bungalow; the environmentalists raged at this further desecration, the laissez faire element saw no reason why people shouldn’t do what they wished with their own. The village youths had taken to roaring round and round of an evening on highly powered Japanese motorcycles from which the silencers had been removed; those distressed by this were invoking the law, the youths laughed, their friends and relations pointed out that they’d paid their road tax, hadn’t they, like anyone else? Words like freedom and rights were bandied around on both sides.

‘Your mother would have been with us,’ said one of the waylayers with a touch of reproach, presumably sensing Helen’s lack of commitment. He was right. Dorothy, in her time, had been an active member of an organisation called the Noise Reduction Society, which had campaigned valiantly and indiscriminately against lawnmowers and jet aircraft. It had disintegrated (in despair, one assumed) many years ago, but Dorothy continued to bawl furiously at passing vehicles and to write letters to the commanding officer of the local airbase, who returned each time the same duplicated reply of infinite courtesy and obscurity.

What is at the bottom of all this, thought Helen, is that people — some people — have inappropriate expectations. This is the country. The country is supposed to be peaceful and beautiful.

Traditionally people — some people — have retreated to it in search of spiritual solace. Others, of course, have seen it quite differently — as a source of income or a place of work. These points of view are now fatally and perhaps finally opposed.

Money and technological advance intensify the problem.

She considered all this as she listened to the heated opinions forced upon her outside the shop (where the throbbing engine of the Findus delivery van obliged everyone to shout), on the corner by the church and at two other points on her route back to Greystones. And at the same time, behind her own thoughts and over the faces of those who spoke to her there hovered the mirage of the distant sunlit hilltop: promise and expectation. ‘How are you, Helen?’ people said, without waiting for a reply, and silently she answered: I am really quite extraordinarily well, thank you, I have something to look forward to, I believe I am happy.

Edward was crossing the hall as Helen came down the stairs. He halted and stared at her. She had put on a pale green dress that she seldom wore. She had added a largy floppy white collar bought in Spaxton, and one of her few pieces of jewellery — a Victorian cameo on a gold chain. The effect of the collar and the cameo were remarkable, as Helen herself had dispassionately noted a few minutes before in her mirror: they made her look softer, prettier and younger. She saw this again in Edward’s stare.

‘I’m going out,’ said Helen defensively. ‘I’m having dinner with Giles Carnaby. I told you.’

Edward snatched off his glasses and began to scrub them. He peered again at Helen. She could see fly across his face a whole sequence of emotions and responses. ‘What shall I eat?’ he enquired petulantly.

‘Anything you like. There are fish fingers in the fridge. Or some ham. Or tins in the cupboard.’

He put his glasses back on and rallied, with dignity. ‘What time will you be back?’

‘I’ve no idea.’

‘I won’t lock the front door, then. I hope he isn’t going to expect you to listen to him singing again.’

‘Don’t be silly, Edward,’ said Helen.

He looked at her bleakly and turned back into the kitchen. As she put her coat on she could hear him rattling about in a conspicuous way with pans and dishes, and talking to Tam. Just as she was about to leave he came out and complained that he couldn’t find the tin-opener. ‘Try the right-hand drawer,’ she said.

‘Where does he live?’

‘In Spaxton. I told you that, too.’

‘It’s pouring with rain.’

‘I’m intending to drive there,’ said Helen. Not walk.’

Edward returned to the kitchen, banging the door. Helen, ruffled but in control, hurried into the car.

By the time she reached Spaxton her control was a little less certain. She stood paralysed for several moments on Giles Carnaby’s doorstep. Her mother stood behind her, giving tongue: ‘He’s got you on the end of a string, that fellow, hasn’t he? Like some silly schoolgirl. You’re fifty-two, Helen. I don’t know what you think’s going to come of it. Riding for a fall, I’d say.’

She rang the bell, and there he was, suffused in the warm golden light of the hall, his sleeves rolled up, pushing that silver forelock back from his eyes. There was the smell of meat roasting. They both spoke at once: cries of welcome from him, apologies for lateness from her (she was, by sixteen minutes). He drew her inside, removed her coat, shepherded her into the sitting room. ‘So here you are,’ he said, beaming. ‘What a becoming dress, if I may say so.’ He glanced at his watch, became distracted: ‘Forgive me just a moment — kitchen duties.

Make yourself comfortable. A drink? On the side there. Oh, I have been looking forward to this evening. .

He went. She sat. Then rose and strayed around the room.

She looked again at his wife, securely smiling behind the glass of her photograph. She noted the flowers agreeably disposed in a vase on the mantelpiece, the recent issues of magazines arranged upon the table, the Radio Times open upon the desk with a programme encircled in red biro (a talk on Handel operas). An orderly man. I know nothing about him, she thought, nothing at all; he could have robbed banks for all I know.

He came back into the room. ‘All is well. I tend to panic unnecessarily. And you haven’t given yourself a drink. Sherry?

Vermouth? Sherry — right.’

No, country solicitors don’t rob banks. But there are other offences, less conspicuous. The point is, I seem to be past caring.

‘And what has your week been like?’ he said. ‘Mine has been unspeakably mundane. By the way, we progress a little with the Probate Office — but I’m not going to talk business tonight. That will do for another time.’ He came to sit beside her on the sofa; she felt him look at her, intently.

‘I’ve had a good week’, Helen said. She told him about dissension in the library, about the village feuds. He appreciated; he laughed; he pressed for further details. She was made to feel

witty and entertaining. She expanded like a plant turned to the sun; she flourished and was gay. The room enclosed them both: exclusive and private.

The door bell rang.

‘Oh, my goodness!’ he said. ‘The Watsons. I’d almost forgotten about them. You know them, I daresay? James Watson who’s headmaster at St Bartholomew’s and, urn, Julia.’ He hurried out.

She heard the opening of the front door. Greetings. The closing of the door.

The Watsons. Ah. No, I don’t as it happens know the Watsons.

He never said, she told herself, that it would be just you and him. Never once. So why did you assume that? You have not been misled. You can’t complain. So continue to smile and be gay.

The evening progressed. They moved from the sitting room to the dining room. They consumed avocado pears followed by roast lamb followed by a fruit salad and assorted cheeses. Julia Watson, who evidently knew Giles quite well, insisted on popping in and out of the kitchen to help; laughter and exclamations could be heard from beyond the hatch. James Watson told Helen about unrest in the teaching profession, at some length.

They moved back into the sitting room and drank coffee. Julia, a dark woman in her early forties, asked Helen in a kindly interested voice about the extension plans for the library. Giles offered brandies; Julia said, ‘Giles, you are a wicked man, you know I can’t resist — be it upon your head if I have a hangover tomorrow.’ Giles said, ‘My dear, we shall suffer together.

Helen?’ Helen replied that she had better not, since she had to drive.

The Watsons eventually rose, and Helen with them. Giles made no attempt to restrain her; he said, ‘You’re all going . . In the hall, he helped her on with her coat, his hand resting on her shoulder for a moment — or so it seemed. The Watsons got into their car, and Helen into hers. She had to drive to the end of the street to turn round; when she passed Giles’s house on the way back the door was closed.

She drove home through further rain. Her mother rode in the back seat — silent, exuding complacency.

As soon as Helen had gone Edward was overwhelmed with self contempt. Bleakly, he sat at the kitchen table eating spaghetti bolognaise out of a tin. Tam watched, drooling. Half way through Edward gave up, scraped the rest into Tam’s food bowl and put the kettle on for a cup of tea; behind him, Tam slurped as though rescued from the brink of starvation.

Edward, leaden with gloom, waited for the kettle to boil; as he did so he watched the steady progress of a wood-louse across the wall behind the sink. There were many wood-lice at Greystones; the wood-louse is a kind of prawn, surprisingly — hence its preference for damp places. In an age of central heating and renovation Greystones presumably featured as a rare unspoiled habitat. Dorothy had persecuted the wood-lice, in Edward’s view; she stamped on them, swept them up and even poured boiling water upon whole colonies of them. Edward, observing the patient journey of this one (from whence? and why?), experienced a momentary consoling detachment. He put his reading glasses on and looked more closely at it; there were, he knew, dozens of different kinds of wood-lice, all classified, all named, distinguished by minute anatomical refinements, small but significant differences in the antennae or the genitalia.

Goodness only knew what this particular one was, toiling down towards the crack behind the sink, but it seemed profoundly satisfactory that it should have the dignity of documentation.

Even more important was the fact that people had devoted their lives to establishing the identity of such creatures; that for someone the original distinction between Porcellio and Armadillidium had been a matter of life-consuming importance. Edward envied such people.

Those who knew of his predilections often wondered why he had not become a botanist, an entomologist, a biologist. At school, the few masters who had noticed him at all had tried vaguely to direct him towards science. In fact, Edward did rather worse in scientific subjects than in others. He was not systematic;

formulae and calculations confused him. Presented with a diagram of the alimentary canal, he tended to marvel at its artistry rather than study its efficiency. As an amateur ornithologist he knew himself to be far behind those people who could identify from a snatch of song or flicker of a wing. He could never remember the names of rarer plant species.

The kettle boiled, spurting scalding water everywhere, as usual. The wood-louse had vanished, and with it Edward’s temporary distraction from his gloom. He felt alone. He felt a recurring flash of resentment towards Helen. Tam brushed against his leg in passing and Edward leaned down to pat him but Tam, replete, was staggering towards his favourite sleeping place by the cooker — he shrugged Edward’s hand off and collapsed with a noisy sigh. Edward observed him with a certain bitterness; such simplicity of need could seem enviable.

He switched on the radio. The kitchen was filled instantly with a loud snuffling noise, interspersed with grunts; Edward, perking up, poured out his tea and listened attentively. After a few moments the snuffles and grunts were overlaid by a voice explaining in sympathetically conspiratorial tones that we were listening to the sounds made by mating koalas in the Pilliga Nature Reserve in New South Wales. The koalas faded and their place was taken by a studio discussion about threatened habitats and imperilled creatures. The pig-footed bandicoot, the trumpeter swan, the scimitar oryx, the sperm whale, the cheetah, the bower bird … the list went on and on. Such has been the destruction of the Brazilian rain forests that only about two hundred of the golden lion tamarin survive in the wild. Their relative, the cotton-top tamarin, fares little better. Edward, who had seen both of these creatures on the television screen, pictured the tiny animals, with their sad wise old men’s faces framed by silky manes, their long, long tails, their agility. A few hundred of them, and five billion human beings. The tamarin will be preserved, in all probability, only if zoos throughout the world cooperate in breeding programmes. The programme concluded with a snatch of birdsong, a low trill, repeated several times before dwindling into silence; this, the presenter announced, was the song of the dusky seaside sparrow, a species of which the last survivor had died a few days before in its aviary at Disney World in Florida. This sound would never be heard again on earth.