The Whirlpool (7 page)

F
leda, breathing heavily because of the long, steep climb, returned from the whirlpool late in the morning. At the top of the bank she leaned her back against a fir tree which grew out at an angle over the drop. She could feel the roughness of the bark push its way through her cotton clothing, and with one hand she absently caressed this uneven texture while she waited for her heartbeat to return to normal. When it did, she placed her two palms against the tree behind her and levered herself into an upright standing position. Then she walked over to the tent to search for her diary.

David had repaired the makeshift desk at the edge of the bank so Fleda, journal now in hand, headed in its direction. When she arrived she pulled up a suitable stump, fastidiously removed one or two bird droppings from her workplace, and placed the notebook on the weathered planks. Taking a pencil from her pocket she began to write.

Fleda lifted her head and tightened the muscles in her neck, shoulders, and back. In this alert posture she resembled a small animal who was trying to ascertain the level of danger in a distant, barely discernible sound.

In fact she was not listening to, or for, anything; had merely startled herself by what she had written.

The little boat, “Angel,” had not returned, or if it had, she had completely failed to notice it.

L
ate in the afternoon, Maud Grady decided to take the child out for a stroll in the garden. Downstairs, at the back of the house, the workshops were silent, the men having left over an hour ago to preside over a procession and interment.

She had spent the better part of the afternoon with the child, this being the housekeeper’s day off, and had tried repeatedly to capture his attention. It was no use, however. Regardless of her actions, of the brightly coloured objects that she dangled before him, he remained bent over a small toy rabbit, now almost lacking in woollen fur, stroking it rhythmically. Finally, emotionally drained by the effort, she collapsed in the armchair with the
Ladies’ Home Journal
and grimly waited out the rest of the afternoon. Until this moment when she decided that they both might benefit from some fresh air.

They left the building by a side door situated closer to the street than to the garden and began to walk along the edge of the house. The child, still clutching the rabbit in his free hand, walked in a stiff-legged fashion like one whose limbs have been confined to braces for a great deal of time and who is only now beginning, once again, to be mobile. His eyes remained lowered as though he were concentrating on each footstep. But a closer examination of his line of vision would
have revealed a fixed scrutiny of the ground before him, rather than his shoes.

Everything about him was locked into a stiff, unbreakable pose: the unchanging angle of his stare, his straight knees, the hand which his mother held, the fingers which refused to grasp. Only the area of his body directly surrounding the toy rabbit was soft and unmechanical. There, his fingers curled into the remaining plush and his elbow and shoulder bent to harbour and protect.

Halfway along the outer wall of the building they passed a screen door, the wooden frame of which was painted white to match the trim of the rest of the building. Partially blinded by the sun in front of her, Maud was able to make out only a single gas light behind it and the odd hulking form of a partially constructed coffin. Before he had been called into duty, the carpenter had obviously been at work on yet another casket. Maud’s exertions with the child earlier in the afternoon had left her so exhausted that she could not now muster curiosity enough to wonder whether or not there had been a purchaser for this item. Business, for once, was not occupying her thoughts.

Still holding the child’s hand, she entered the garden and looked past the grass and rockery and flowers, down to the end of the property where several tall beech trees threw shadows so long they almost reached her feet. Between these, and trapped in their early summer leaves, was an intense, copper wealth of sunlight which had so transformed the contents of the garden that each shrub, each flower, appeared to be illuminated from within. Even the wire and wooden fence at the back stood altered; magnificent, its surfaces etched and clear, while in the vegetable patch directly in front of it, humble early lettuce assumed the grace of great sculpture. Beyond her own property, Maud could see the stones of Drummond Hill Cemetery glowing like white teeth on the horizon.

Unexpectedly, she was filled with awe for this small world which included only that which she could see – this landscape of garden and graveyard where no streetcar trespassed; filled with wonder that she had created some of it herself, caused, for instance, the grape arbour to exist on the left side of the garden, the roses to decorate the centre. Even the grass, each blade of which was now standing as sharp as the cutting instrument for which it was named, had been coaxed into lushness by her diligence concerning the removal of weeds.

The child had removed his hand from hers and was, once again, engaged in stroking the rabbit, over and over, as he stood silently at her side. Maud looked down at the top of his head which almost reached her waist. She noticed he was beginning to rock slightly as he caressed his toy.

“Gar-den,” she said to him slowly, moving her hand at the end of her arm with the palm turned upwards, back and forth across the lot behind the house. “Ga-a-a-r-den.”

The child gave no indication that he was aware she was speaking to him.

Maud sighed and, taking the child’s hand again, she led him over to the area of the garden which was filled with rocks and the small plants that people habitually place in such a locality – miniature shrubs of unnatural shades and textures, tiny rubbery leaves of grey or white, or scratchy purplish growths that seemed to be formed of sands and gravels. The rocks themselves looked as if they had been magically transported from another planet, formed out of substances quite foreign to the earth. Or as if they had been frozen in the process of a strange evolution which left them filled with holes and bubbles. In order to break the odd moon-like surface of this portion of the garden, Maud had planted some tulip bulbs the previous fall and now at the end of their season, they had dropped some of their petals into the rockery. The intense, raking light caused these small pools of colour to blaze there and the rock garden, in contrast, to appear even more ominous than before. Maud had a brief childish fantasy about being an
insect in such a landscape. She multiplied the size of each plant while walking through a jungle of them towards the still sea of the fish pond. This was to remain empty offish, filled with leaves and algae, until the end of June.

The child, she knew, would respond to the fish, if she were to take him into the heated carriage house where they were kept for all but two months of the year. He would stand stiff-legged with his hands against the glass tank. He would watch them move around and around in the gloom.

She remembered the time he had disappeared for an afternoon, how the entire household had been raised into a frantic search, how it had been she, herself, who had finally found him, standing perfectly still in the carriage house, watching the fish in their long tank, the only light in the place coming from one small, dirty window. The coffins stored all around the tank made it seem to be just another model of the species, its rectangular shape as regular as the others. As she approached him, she realized that the child could see the reflection of his own face on the wall of glass in front of him. The fish, the bubbles, were like the thoughts that moved back and forth through the liquid of his untouchable mind.

Now she scraped her boot over the stone in front of her. “Rock,” she said, half-heartedly, not really expecting a reaction. She reached forward and gently pulled the dying blossom of a red tulip closer to the child’s face. “Flower,” she said.

This absurd naming of objects had become one of the rituals of the day. When Maud ate breakfast with the child while he was being fed by the housekeeper, she found that she automatically identified each object that she held in her hand. “Spoon,” she would say, just before she placed it in her mouth. “Coffee, cup, bread, jam, butter, milk….”Then it was a calm methodical exercise, requiring little effort, something that had entered the realm of habit. But now, no longer confined by walls where the number of objects to name is finite, the enormity of the task confounded her.

“Tree,” she said loudly, to no one in particular, as if the child were not there at all. “Fence, sky, cloud, grass, watering can, spade.” Then, reckless in the face of the futility of it all, she began to shout in anger the names of objects and entities that were not there. “Snow, train, desert, ocean, dog, shopping bag, roast beef, plum pudding, mop, lamp!”

The child had returned to the rabbit and was now focused on one of its ears, which he rubbed softly with two of his stiff fingers.

For a brief moment, Maud stood outside herself and witnessed her own performance – a young woman standing in a garden with a totally unresponsive child, shouting nonsense into the air. Her first inclination was to be amused. But the heat of the sun on her back reminded her of the heat of her anger… directed now towards the child, his unwillingness, his refusals, his total withdrawal. He was like an invisible wall that she ran into daily, bruising herself with each contact, until the very knowledge of its existence brought her only a memory of pain. And anger in the presence of pain.

Suddenly this anger spilled out of Maud’s heart and into her body, adrenalin rushing like fire through her veins. Turning around with one whirling gesture, she grabbed the child by the hair. Now they were facing directly into the sun and Maud became blinded, both by its strength and the strength of her own emotion. With her fist in his hair and her other hand under his chin, she jerked the child’s face up from its downcast attitude. As he began to struggle, he dropped the toy rabbit into the grim landscape of the rock garden. Maud pulled his small body closer to her, firmly securing his hips between her knees, keeping a strong grip on his hair, his face, as he squirmed and his stiff arms flailed in a struggle to escape. With her elbows she pinned his upper arms to his body. She could feel the fear in his chest, practically hear the thrashing of his heart. Amazed at her own strength, she moved two of her fingers down from his scalp and peeled back one of his eyelids. Then she screamed the word “SUN!” directly into his left ear.

Everything about the small creature that she held was in a state of explosive, violent withdrawal.
“SUN!”
she screamed again, looking, herself, right into the centre of the burning orb, allowing the pain of this vision to penetrate behind her eyes. She forced the child’s eyelid further open, noticing that the other eye was completely, stubbornly sealed. She roughly adjusted once again the angle of his face.

“SUN!”
she shrieked.
“SUN, SUN, SUN, SUN!!”

A desperate, rusty sound began to issue from the child’s mouth, which, until this moment, had been frozen into the shape of a silent howl. The noise was that of a hoarse cry to which, at first, Maud paid no attention. Then slowly, her fury subsiding, she perceived that his small body had relaxed in her grip and was now convulsing. From his lips came an almost unidentifiable sound, more like the moan or low growl of a terrified cornered animal than anything human.

“S-a-a-a-w-n,” he groaned, followed by a long, slow, sob. “Sa-a-a-w-n!”

In astonishment, Maud let go of him and as she did, the other eye opened and the child took in all of the light. The sobs shook his entire body. Still he did not remove his eyes from the horizon which was filled with an agonizing radiance.

“S-a-a-awn!” he roared, unlocked now, stamping his feet on the grass, pounding his hips with his small fists. “S-a-a-w-n, s-a-a-a-w-n!”

Maud placed her hands on his shaking shoulders and turned him gently away from the blinding fire.

That was his first word.

Those were his first tears.