The Day of the Scorpion (52 page)

‘I wondered,’ Sarah said.

‘Everybody wondered, didn’t they? Well, that’s the answer. I didn’t. I thought I was in love a score of times, but knew I wasn’t really, not inside where it’s supposed to matter, and
that
frightened me too. It proved there wasn’t anything inside, but I didn’t want to go on being alone. I can remember it as clear as clear, the day I thought, why wait? Why wait for something that’s never going to happen? I’m not equipped. Something’s been left out. And I was always good at hiding what I felt, so I thought well, I’ll get away with it and nobody will ever know. Whoever I marry will never know. And there was poor Teddie. He walked straight into it, didn’t he? I married him because I quite liked him and I thought there probably wasn’t much to him either. But I think there was. Yes, I think there was. He almost made me feel there might be something to me, in time. But he had a rotten honeymoon. Rotten.’

She turned, looked straight at Sarah and said:

‘Not because I was scared or because he didn’t
try
to make things different, but because I’d nothing to give him. That’s why he was so pleased when I wrote and told him about the baby. He’d married a girl with nothing to her, but she’d given him something to make up for it. And having it to give him could have made
me
something, couldn’t it? Who do I give the baby to now, Sarah? There isn’t anybody. And I’ve nothing for it, except myself. And it’s odd, awfully odd, but now when I think about what any of us could give it I can’t see the answer.’

She hesitated, but held herself very still, and for a few seconds a half-formed picture came to trouble Sarah of Susan as a child holding herself like that, with the gritty surface of a faded red brick wall dark behind the halo of light on her hair; but the picture would not come more vividly or significantly to life and she could not say whether it was an Indian or an English memory.

‘No,’ Susan repeated. ‘I try and try but I can’t see the
answer. I suppose the trouble is that people like us were finished years ago, and we know it, but pretend not to and go on as if we thought we still mattered.’ Again she hesitated, then, looking full at Sarah again, asked, ‘Why are we finished, Sarah? Why don’t we matter?’

Because, Sarah thought, silently replying, we don’t really believe in it any more. Not really believe. Not in the way I expect grandfather Layton believed – grandfather and those Muirs and Laytons at rest, at peace, fulfilled, sleeping under the hummocky graves, bone of India’s bone; and our not believing seems like a betrayal of them, so we can’t any longer look each other in the eye and feel good, feel that even the good things some of us might do have anything to them that will be worth remembering. So we hate each other, but daren’t speak about it, and hate whatever lies nearest to hand, the country, the people in it, our own changing history that we are part of.

But she could not say this to Susan. Instead she asked, ‘Why do you say
we
?
We
may be finished or not matter, or whatever it is. But you matter. I matter.’ She wished she could believe it with the simple directness with which she said it. ‘There’s too much of it. Too much “we”. Us. One of us. Oh I agree – one of us, I don’t know what
we
are any longer, either. Stop thinking like that. You’re a person, not a crowd.’

Again Susan studied her, calmly, but not – Sarah decided – unenviously, although the degree of heat generated by envy was slight, and said, ‘How self-assured you are,’ in a tone that reminded her – as a blow might remind – of that afternoon on the houseboat in Srinagar when she had looked at that old woman and heard herself say, ‘What a lot you know.’ What a lot you know. How self-assured you are. But I am not, not, not. Had
she
not been, that old fragile poised little lady, one of whose hands (she suddenly recalled) rested casually with faded Edwardian elegance on the little pearl buttons of a cream pleated blouse? Well, no, perhaps she had known nothing either, and been certain of nothing except that the years of belief were over and those of disbelief begun.

Sarah shook her head.

‘I’m not self-assured at all. But I do know this – the baby
matters too.’ She meant, but did not say, that Susan had a duty to it. She did not want to use the word. There had been, still was, altogether too much talk of duty, almost none of love.

‘Yes, I know,’ Susan said. ‘Everything must be done that can be. And if there’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you. Mother said that if you do it, Aunty Mabel will agree.’

‘If I do what?’

‘Ask her. About the christening clothes.’

‘What do I have to ask about the christening clothes?’

‘Whether she’ll lend them.’

‘What christening clothes are those?’

‘Yours. Mine got lost or something. But she still has yours. Barbie told me. She saw them in one of Aunty Mabel’s presses when Aziz was doing it out.’

‘How did Barbie know they were mine?’

‘She asked Aunty Mabel. And that’s what Aunty Mabel said. And Mother told me she remembered Aunty Mabel was given your christening gown because it was made up mostly of lace that had belonged to Aunty Mabel’s first husband’s mother, and of course Aunty Mabel never had any children so the lace wasn’t used and she wanted it to be used for you.’ Susan paused. ‘I thought perhaps you knew. Hasn’t Aunty Mabel ever taken it out and shown you and said, “Look, this is what you were christened in?”’

‘No, never.’

‘I thought perhaps it might have been a secret you had with her.’

‘I never knew Aunty Mabel and I had any secrets. Wasn’t the gown used for you too?’

‘No. I had something modern, so Mummy said. And it got lost, or didn’t last. Not like the lace. I’d like it if the baby could wear the gown you were christened in.’

‘I’ll ask Aunty Mabel. But it might be old and a bit smelly.’

‘No. Barbie said it was beautiful. And that Aunty Mabel must have taken special care of it. There’s something else I have to ask. I mean about the christening. Will you be godmother? Mother says Aunt Fenny will expect to be asked, but I don’t want that.’

‘I shouldn’t make a very good one.’ Sarah hesitated. ‘I don’t believe in it.’

To say this she had averted her eyes and in her mind was an image of Aunty Mabel kneeling by a press (as she had never seen her kneel) and holding (as she had never seen her hold) the mysterious gown, inspecting it for signs of age and wear as though it were a relic the god in whom Sarah did not believe had charged her to preserve against the revival of an almost forgotten rite. And glancing back at Susan she thought she saw the convulsive flicker of an ancient terror on the plumped-out but still pretty face.

‘I know. But if anything happened to me you’d look after the baby, wouldn’t you?’

‘Nothing’s going to happen to you.’

‘But if it
did
.’

‘Well, there are plenty of good orphanages.’

‘Oh, Sarah – not even as a joke.’

‘Then don’t ask silly questions. Of course the baby would be looked after.’

‘That’s not what I’m saying, not what I’m asking. Looked after, looked after. I’m asking if
you’d
look after it, not just to say it would be looked after.’

‘Something might happen to me too.’

It was unkind, she thought, the effect that embarrassment had. Of course she would look after the baby.

Susan turned her head, seemed to stare at Teddie’s picture. She said, ‘Yes, something might happen to you. It will. You’ll get married. You’d want your own children. Not mine and Teddie’s.’

‘You’ll get married too.’

‘Oh no. Not just to give the child a father. Not again, like that, without really loving. And how can I learn that?’

‘You’ll love the baby.’

‘Shall I?’ Susan faced her again.

‘When you’ve got the baby it will be all right, and after a while someone like Dicky Beauvais will ask you to marry him.’

‘Not someone like Dicky Beauvais.’

She made it sound as if one phase of her life had ended.

‘No, all right. But someone.’

‘I shouldn’t want to be taken pity on and that’s what it would be I expect. Poor Teddie Bingham’s widow, a child herself really, how will she manage?’ Again she glanced at her dead husband’s portrait, searching perhaps for something in his hallowed face that showed not pity but compassion for those he had, without meaning to, left behind to manage as they might.

‘I think,’ she said, ‘that after all it would be better if you wrote to Captain Merrick for me. You could thank him so much more kindly, make him understand how much the Laytons are
beholden
to him for what he tried to do for Teddie. Whatever it was. Whatever it was.’ She frowned, getting it seemed no clearer picture from the picture of Teddie of the unwanted gift he had made her of his death; and Sarah – catching the frown, considering the tone and rhythm of that repeated qualification,
whatever it was
– became aware of an element of doubt about the death that had entered for both of them.

‘Well if you prefer it,’ she said and then wondered: But what shall I say? and felt a little surge of resistance to the idea of saying anything, as though the act of writing would count as a surrender, proof that in the end he had succeeded in making her approach him – as herself, for herself, and as a Layton, for the Laytons.

‘You could say I’m not fully recovered from the shock,’ Susan went on, ‘and tell him about the baby. Remind him, rather. He must have known about the baby. Teddie must have told them all about the baby. I expect they made one of those men’s jokes about it. Ragged Teddie I mean, about him becoming a father. Perhaps he won’t want reminding, but you’d better mention it, use it as one of the things that excuses me from writing to him myself. But I want him to know, I do not want him to know that I am beholden.’

It was a word that apparently fascinated her. Spoken, it created, almost, a cloistered air of peace, of withdrawal from the fierce currents of an angry shock-infested world; it did not lay balm to the little wound of doubt, but the wound nagged less. Beholden, beholden. It was transcendental, selfless, forgiving.

‘Who knows,’ Susan asked, turning to Sarah with that kind
of expression on her face, ‘perhaps he’s lying somewhere, feeling it, feeling it badly, that he was bad luck for Teddie. Last time it was only a stone, this time I suppose it was a shell or bullets, but they were together again. I want to find out. I think I want to know. I think I want to know because I owe it to Teddie to know what happened, otherwise it’s just like someone going out alone. But Captain Merrick will know, then he can tell me. Then Teddie may know I know. Do you think—’ but she broke off and had to be prompted.

‘Do I think what?’

‘Do you think it would be nice if we asked Captain Merrick to be godfather?’

‘No, I don’t.’

‘Why not?’

‘I don’t know. I just don’t think it would be.’

‘You mean perhaps he doesn’t believe in it either. But he did perform a Christian act, didn’t he, and it’s that that counts, not going to church and making a fuss. It says in the letter, rendered the utmost assistance in spite of being wounded, rendered the utmost assistance and stayed with Teddie until the arrival of medical aid. He was trying to save Teddie’s life. Not just for Teddie’s sake, but for the baby’s probably, and mine too. So I think we ought to ask, and not care what people like Aunt Fenny would think.’

‘What would people like Aunt Fenny think?’

‘They might think he wasn’t suitable, a suitable sort of person.’

‘Because he isn’t one of us?’

‘Yes.’

But, Sarah thought, remembering the night of the fireflies, in a way he is, is, is one of us; the dark side, the arcane side. But at once recollected the question she had asked herself on that occasion: Why should I question his sincerity?

Her resistance ebbed and yet still, as she said, ‘Well I shouldn’t worry about what Aunt Fenny might say’ – thereby implying her approval of the way being opened to god-relationship with him – she felt the backlash of that strange dismay which the thought, the remembered impact, and the new notion of him as the dark side of their history filled her with; and he became at once inseparable from the image of
the woman in white, of someone – anyone – who found it necessary to plead with him for an alleviation of suffering of which – if only unintentionally – he had been the cause.

‘It can be done by proxy, can’t it?’ Susan was saying. ‘If he agrees. He can be godfather without actually being at the christening.’

‘Yes, I think so.’

‘And it might help him to get better, to know we wanted him for that. Teddie said he used to be sorry for Captain Merrick before all that bother he caused at the wedding. He never got any letters, or almost never. I think that’s as much the reason Teddie asked him to be best man as the fact that they shared quarters. Teddie was very upset about the stone. But he had a tender heart.’

‘Well, and so have you.’

‘Oh, no.’ She looked down at her hands. ‘I have no heart at all.’ Again she looked up. ‘Will you do that for me, Sarah, then? Write for me and find out where he is?’

‘Yes, I’ll do that.’

But there was no need for that particular letter. The day following there was a note from Captain Merrick himself; a note to Sarah, which Sarah showed to Susan. And when Susan had read it she cried out because she was convinced from certain signs and portents in the note that Captain Merrick no longer had the use of eyes or limbs.

143 British Military Hospital

AFPO 12

17 May 1944

Dear Miss Layton,

By now I expect you will have been told that Teddie was killed, just three weeks ago, but in case there has been some error or delay I’ve thought it wiser to write to you and not to Susan. Perhaps I would have done so in any case. I’m not very good at expressing myself on paper and would find it difficult to write a letter to her. You will find the right words to convey my feelings to her, I am certain, feelings of sympathy and, I suppose, helplessness in the face of what I know to her
must be, for the moment, overwhelmingly sad circumstances. I am as you can see from the address and perhaps the handwriting which is that of one of the nursing sisters here,
hors de combat
, but my improvement is, I am told – and feel – steadily satisfactory. Perhaps someone from the formation has already told Susan this, but in case not – I must tell you that I was with Teddie at the time. That of the two of us it should have been I who came out of it strikes me as supremely illogical – for there was Teddie with everything to live for, and I – comparatively – with something less than that. It should have been the other way round that it happened. Yes, indeed it should.