The Story of My Face (26 page)

Another rumour is that Paul Leverson is so thoroughly behind Mark's Island idea, now called Anderton's Island idea, that he is prepared to start the fund with a thousand pounds of his own savings. Anthony Thwaite, on the other hand, is completely against; he and the McAllisters left supper early yesterday to go for a walk together and talk things through. . . .

‘Someone could fall off and bang their head or something,' I point out. ‘Whose fault would that be?'

Everyone is waiting.

When's Barbara going to come?

My legs start kicking again.

Both halves of the caravan's stable doors are closed. The still air inside glows amber from the roof-light. The pale wooden cupboards, flip-down table and orange upholstered benches press into the small central space where Barbara and John stand, perhaps eighteen inches apart. John looks up, curious, and a little afraid, at his frowning wife. Stray hairs of hers touch the roof of the van. She is biting on her lower lip. She is beautiful still, unsettling and attractive at the same time.

‘What is it, Barbara?'

‘I don't want to stand up in the field and say this. I want to tell you, just you,' she says, taking his hands in hers.

The way her eyes shine, he could almost think it was something wonderful she was about to tell him: a pregnancy, a vision. But he knows it's not. ‘The truth is, John, that since shortly after she died I have kept a photograph of Ruth, and I take it out and look at it whenever I can –' She says this in a quiet, steady voice that is impossible to mishear or disbelieve. ‘It is just the one picture, John. It hasn't made me seek out others. I am sure they're wrong about that.' Then she says she is very sorry, at which he puts his arms around her, pulls her to him. His hand presses into her back, the other cradles the back of her head. She bends down into the embrace, returning it. They pull each other in as close as possible, feeling the push and heave of the muscles that draw their separate breaths in and let them out; the world outside of them vanishes.

You are still there!
Barbara thinks, astounded. And it feels, as breath follows breath, his, hers, his, hers again, as if everything might still, somehow, be all right. Perhaps she has after all been wrong, and one thing need not be bought at the expense of another? Perhaps this is the moment when he will change, for her. Perhaps all that was needed was for her to be brave enough? She moves her hands up and down his back, pressing. In a low voice, she tells him over and over how much she loves him.

Minutes pass, and then, gradually, he pulls away. Still holding her, he examines her face, as if looking for some physical sign that he has missed all these years, something that, had he seen it, might have told him that this would happen in the end. . . . He shakes his head gravely from side to side. ‘We must go to the field,' he says.

‘No –' she tells him.

He takes her hand in his, holding it rather too hard.

‘I can't', she tells him, ‘confess. I'm sorry about hurting you, I'm sorry about lying to you, to everyone, I don't mind saying that. But I am not sorry about the photograph itself. That was my daughter! I don't –' She stops, and her face, the whole of her freezes a moment as she realises what she is about to say: ‘I don't want to be forgiven!'

‘Where is the Likeness?' he asks. ‘Is it here in the caravan?'

‘Of course not! John: I'm hoping that you might be able to see –' He sits there like a stone, growing heavier as his rage builds.

‘Is it at home, then?'

‘Well, yes,' she tells him, ‘but listen: I want –' Suddenly she is shouting at him, ‘I want you to understand that I needed it!'

‘Where is it?' he shouts back. Their voices smash at the flimsy walls of the room. Then it's quiet. They are no longer touching. She sits down, rests her head on her hands. She thinks of her sister-in-law Rose, twelve years ago, outside the crematorium; she stood close with one arm around Barbara's waist, and slipped the envelope into her hand: ‘I don't know if this is the right thing to do, Barbara. You needn't look. You can always throw it away. . . .' Though when it came to it, of course she could not. And because Rose and probably Adrian too knew that she had accepted this thing, she had to keep away from them and so, too, that whole lazy, honey-scented afternoon in their sunny garden – including the moment when Rose, who'd gone in to get the tea, must have picked up her camera, focused hastily on the baby in her sister-in-law's lap, pressed the shutter and then slipped the camera back into the kitchen drawer, pushing it to, catching her finger-tip just as Barbara looked up – that whole afternoon vanished. Only the photograph, in its white envelope, remains. Barbara has risked everything for it – and, it seems, she has lost.

John sits on the edge of the table, too close. ‘Well, where? Is it in the bedroom, our bedroom?' he asks. Though it can't be, his voice sounds like someone drunk.

She shrugs, looks beyond him, up through the round-cornered side window, at the washing-line, the glimpse of trees and hills beyond. Above these, just inside the frame, the soft, fat crescent of the waxing moon hangs in the sky. It is quite possible, Barbara thinks, that the two men who have been walking on it are right now looking back at the earth and thinking of the people on it, but she's certain that they would never, ever guess what is happening to her, here in this caravan in Harris's field. In all the vast strangeness of whatever it is that we live in or upon or amongst (with or without God, because He might be there still, hiding in the cracks and crevices of it all, different from what she's been led to imagine or not imagine, but there); in all of it, it seems to her, there is not one single person who could tell her what it's best to do now, or what will happen in the end.

‘I don't know', he says, ‘why you are smiling!' Then there's a single sharp knock on the door.

‘What are you doing?' I call in to them.

‘Paul Leverson wants everyone there before we start,' Mark adds.

Barbara lets us in.

‘What is it?' Mark says.

‘Your mother,' John tells him, ‘has just confessed to keeping a photograph. An image, which she –' ‘I look at it,' Barbara says. ‘It's true, I do that. But I haven't
confessed
. I've just –' ‘It's a picture of the baby that died. I knew that already,' I say, realising from the look on John's face that I've made things worse than I meant to. I sit down on Mark's bunk; he sits next to me, and I move away a bit. It seems to me that they are all taking this more seriously than they need to.

‘God will forgive her,' I point out.

‘She refuses to go to the meeting!' Mr Hern says.

‘It's not a sin,' she says, and you can hear all the small noises everyone is making, their breathing and swallowing and the rub of cloth on cloth and cloth on skin.

‘What are we going to do now?' I ask after what seems like a long silence.

‘We're going home,' John says, addressing me and Mark. ‘To find the photograph,' he explains, as if it was the most reasonable thing in the world.

‘I don't want to!' I tell him.

‘We must,' he says.

‘Natalie,' Barbara says, holding out her arms, her face wide open as if she has just returned from a long journey, during which she missed me every minute of every day, ‘come here, darling.'

She and I put the caravan to rights while Mark packs away the outdoor cooking equipment, the water bottles, washing-line and so on. The crowd that's gathered stand a certain distance away, as if that makes some kind of difference. In the main, they just watch, silent or talking in whispers amongst themselves, but Elsbeth Anderton calls out to Mark: ‘Please give your mother my love!' Her husband comes up, stands close to him as he packs saucepans into a box and insists in a low, confidential voice that he must go inside now and tell his father and mother to change their minds; they really must stay. Now, he says, is the point at which everything could change for the better, and if only they will stay –

‘He just wants to find the photograph,' Mark explains.

‘But really, that isn't important,' Paul Leverson says, again with surprising gentleness: ‘the photograph will still be wherever it is at the end of the week. . . .Whereas to join with us now –

' Mark smiles, shrugs, continues packing enamel breakfast bowls and mugs into their box, wipes some dirty spoons, wraps them together in a cloth.

Barbara allows Jean McAllister in, though she earlier turned down Edith, who kept saying over and over again that she knew something was wrong all the time and only wanted to help.

Inside, the two women embrace and Barbara says, ‘Thank you.' On her way out, Jean stops, waits for Mark to get to his feet and then shakes his hand, formally, as if they were wearing their best clothes and attending some kind of reception. She wishes him good luck.

He piles the washing-line and still-damp clothes on top of the crockery box and picks it up.

Now, there is nothing left to do but hitch up. Barbara is wearing sunglasses and has changed into her striped dress. She pauses briefly at the passenger door to say that she is sorry for upsetting everyone, then slips inside. Mark and I get in the back. John shakes hands with Paul Leverson, claps Anderton across the shoulders, takes a few of the offered hands and embraces, promises that he'll see everyone at Service in the Gardners' house the next week.

It takes three attempts to get the engine started. More people are gathered at the gate. The twins, their faces open and oddly childlike, bang on the window, signalling to Mark: unwind. He keeps it closed, then they gesture at me, the hand signal for fucking, but I look at them in a way that makes them stop. Harris's yellow tractor is coming down and we have to reverse back down the straight part of the lane to the farm entrance.

Finally, we are on the road.

Twigs slap the sides of the car, insects burst in silent profusion on the windscreen. Behind us the caravan jerks around the bends whilst in front, the engine, still in second gear, roars its protest.

‘Please, take it easy, John,' Barbara says.

‘Ask your father to please be careful,' she tells Mark, a few minutes later.

‘She's got a point, Dad,' he says eventually. ‘It isn't worth dying for.' After a moment, John shifts up a gear. We turn onto the main road, where the regular swish of overtaking traffic and the stream of oncoming cars marks some kind of return to normality.

Though things are not at all the same: I sit with my right foot hitched over the opposite knee, to make a bookstand for Envall's
Confessions
. One hand keeps my place, the other holds the end of my plait, circling the tip round and round my forefinger, or sometimes it cups my chin. Or else I sniff the tips of my fingers, searching for traces of a scent that I wish I could remember. Now, Mark's the one who wants to talk, but I won't let him.

‘Ssh,' I signal, putting my finger to my lips.

‘John,' Barbara says, as he slows down to accommodate a truck, ‘Rose took the photograph, without me knowing –'

‘John,' she begins again, ‘I know you've said, many times, how the faith would help us cope with Ruth's death. Well, it didn't, and I can't explain it, but somehow I'm sure of this – if that photograph had been on the mantelpiece all these years, if it had really been there, instead of hidden, if it had been out there – then life would have been –' he glances rapidly at her while she searches for the word: ‘Easier. Better. What can be wrong with that?'

‘I can't discuss this now,' he tells her.

‘You might try!' she says; then, a moment later, turns around in her seat, smiling brightly.

‘Please don't worry, darlings, either of you,' she says. ‘It will be all right in the end.' She pushes her sunglasses up so that we can see her eyes, which look sore, but still shine; I still believe her.

‘I don't understand,' I say. ‘Now that you've admitted it, why aren't you forgiven?'

‘It's not enough, yet,' Mark explains. ‘She is still attached to the imitation.' His voice has a light, non-committal tone to it, just short of sarcasm. He reaches over, touches the book, pulls a hank of pages towards him, taps with his finger: ‘Chapter Five.' His other arm brushes mine. The words are there, but he doesn't need to read them: ‘When I speak to you of sin, remember that I do so always as one who has sinned. When I speak of the particular sins involved in the making and worshipping of the likeness of any thing that is upon the earth, I have perhaps sinned more than any one of you. Yet, still, I can find myself in a state of grace –'

His voice goes thin, comes back at the wrong pitch. Cars overtake us, speed by. The astronauts hurtle towards earth, asleep. Cows graze in fields. I don't want to go home.

29

Because it is hand-written, arrives at the community centre, and is marked ‘Lecture', I open the letter without a second thought: