Towards Another Summer (19 page)

The next day when I went to school I looked contemptuously at Margaret Wilmot as if to say (it was easiest to think and say what one’s mother and father had thought and said)

—You’re a show-off, a skite!

 

I was promoted to Primer Two. A few weeks later I skipped up to Standard One, Mr Ryan’s class.

—Pay attention, Mr Ryan said, and he strapped me. Why did they always talk of
paying
attention?

Then the news came.

—Another shift, Mum. Up north. To Oamaru.

—Oamaru? Where’s that?

—In Otago.

—Up Central?

—No, the Coast.

—They have earthquakes in Oamaru, don’t they? I’ve read of them in the
Wyndham Farmer
. And the sea’s eating away the land.

My mother could put such terror into the universe, merely by saying a few words, widening her eyes, putting her hand
on her heart, or looking swiftly over her shoulder at an unseen enemy, in this case the earth’s ‘bowels’, the ‘sea’s hunger’.

—Look up Oamaru in the map then. Dad, where’s the
Atlas
?

—Which
Atlas
? First I heard of an
Atlas
. There’s a map though in
Pears’ Dictionary
but you won’t find it there, oh no, just places like Europe, Africa, America. Oamaru’s not there!

My father sounded secretive, as if it were he who had hidden Oamaru from those who sat in their office in London, choosing important places for the
Atlas
.

Hurrah, a shift, a shift!

 

My father played golf on Sundays and we unravelled the golf balls to see what they were made of; and my newest sister was crawling round her box doing mess like cooked cauliflower in her nappies, and I had worms. Worms. I saw them! I looked down after I had finished one day and there were little white things wriggling and crawling in it, and I said, Mum, there are all little white things in it, wriggling!

—Worms! my mother said, in a horrified voice.—Worms!

She frightened me. I made up my mind to keep my mouth shut in future.

—The child’s got worms, my mother said to my father.

My father exclaimed, looking fiercely at me,

—Worms?

Guilty, alarmed, I whispered,—Please may I leave the table, and I went outside and sat among the daisies and dandelions in the grass, all by myself, because I had worms.

 

 

 

 

Noel is singing. It is morning again. Philip and Anne and the children are getting up. I hear them downstairs now. It must be ten o’clock in the morning, Sunday. Why stop at God? Why make Him lid, blanket, roof of human mythology? Because, reaching God, we are wordless, why grow afraid and stop in
our journey, why not continue, singing at first, as Noel sings when he awakes, the unintelligible words that one by one will blossom into the new language?

Grace prepared her speech.

—By the way, I think I’ll go back to London this afternoon. I intended to stay until Monday but I find I’m missing my typewriter, I’d like to be working again . . . you know?

By the way. I’m afraid. You know . . .

Bacon cooking, bathroom taps being turned on, off, cisterns flushing, movements up, down stairs, children’s voices pleading (for food); yawns, sleep-filled exclamations; silence.

Certain of the accuracy of her Sunday morning judgment, Grace got up, washed, dressed, waited ten minutes counting the seed potatoes in rows from the right, in rows from the left, then walked slowly downstairs to the warm kitchen; anticipating the scene there - the children, dressed and fed, playing quietly with their books or toys, Philip and Anne sitting at the table, the breakfast ready -

—Good morning. We’re just about to begin. You chose the exact moment to come down to breakfast. Not every guest has an instinctive sense of timing . . .

She heard herself answering,

—It’s practice. I’ve learned to live edge to edge with Time, fitting each moment as pinked not ragged seams are fitted; no frayed moments. It’s an art, that is, a necessity; don’t you think so? Even for those who are not migratory birds like myself. You know I’m a migratory bird? A sooty shearwater, godwit, swallow, common thrush - I heard the thrush singing on a Spanish island in an olive tree with the light lying in patches of snow upon the smooth grey stones.

The restriction of the delights and dangers of overlapping oneself, obscuring each pointed moment, have been replaced by the perfect view one gets, beyond Time, if one tailors one’s
movements and needs to fit it.

Now they were answering, with admiration at her wisdom,

—Yes. True, true, true.

And she was saying,

—When our thoughts revolve we are so often deceived into supposing that their violent movement is an indication of their vigorous originality, the upheaval of prejudice and fixed ideas, when all the time it is more likely that the machine which contains them is only an elaborate cement-mixer, and when the thinking is finished, those whirling thoughts are smoothed into the unchanged conventional mould and seeing them set solid enough to dance, to build, to travel upon, we would never dream of their first deceit, of the hope once roused by their apparently violent reorganisation . . . Then Philip, leaning back in his chair, pushing his empty plate aside, was saying,—Let’s talk of this. Let’s talk. A little less . . . pompously perhaps, but do you know, Grace, do you know . . .

—Yes, yes, Grace was saying eagerly,

—Let’s talk. Let’s talk of Time, of pinked seams fitting edge to edge, of cement-mixers on building sites, let’s go far out where images dangle and float, let’s peg them to concepts, make a circus, a Sunday morning circus: the lion, the tiger, the fat man with his laden table in front of him, the barker or placard explaining, Do you know how many pounds of food the fat man needs each day? Enough for a man, his wife, three children to feed upon - and more! And more! See the table sway with the weight of the food, try for yourself, eat a fat man’s meal, free admission for those who undertake to eat a fat man’s meal . . .

—Isn’t this rather . . . extravagant, for Sunday morning, Anne was saying.

—It rains, a gale rises, the big top collapses, fire breaks out, panic, people trample their neighbours to death as faced with the prospect of dying they make the decision, now, swiftly, who matters most. I matter. I. I. I matter. Philip, Anne, Noel, Sarah, listen to me. I matter. I fly alone, apart from the flock,
on long journeys through storm and clear skies to another summer. Hear me!

 

 

 

 

When Grace entered the kitchen she found Anne feeding Noel his breakfast while Sarah played with her doll. There was no other food upon the table; nothing was prepared. Philip was nowhere to be seen.

Feeling that retreat was out of the question, Grace sat awkwardly at the table.

—Good morning, Anne said.—Would you like a cup of coffee before breakfast?

—No, no thank you. I’m afraid I’m much too early. I have no sense of time. I thought . . . I don’t know . . . It’s dark at night here isn’t it . . . different from London. By the way, I think I’ll return to London this afternoon instead of tomorrow morning. I think I’m homesick for my typewriter. I’d love to stay until tomorrow morning but I
really am
homesick for my typewriter . . . it’s been wonderful here, I’ve enjoyed it so much, thank you for asking me, I . . . I . . . I . . .

—Well if you feel you have to, but you’re welcome to stay, but if you feel you have to.

Oh, Grace thought. I should have waited until she and Philip were together. Now I must repeat my excuses to Philip. Oh dear, oh dear.

Philip came in, dressed in his best suit.

—Good morning. Did you sleep well?

As on the previous morning, Grace was embarrassed by his question for his insistent glance seemed to expect a detailed reply, perhaps an account of dreams dreamed. He looked dissatisfied when Grace said merely Good morning; yes thank you. There was silence while he waited, smiling, encouraging, eager to
know
.

Grace said nothing. Anne, releasing Noel at last from his high chair, looked across at Philip.

—Grace is returning to London this afternoon. She’s eager to get back to work.

Spoken by others, one’s excuses never have the kindly camouflage provided by one’s own speech; they emerge sharply outlined, unmistakably recognisable as excuses. Horrified to hear her own words being put about, so uncared for, so unplanned for, with no attempt to disguise or pamper them, Grace seized them, rearranged them, thrust them urgently towards Philip,

—I’m enjoying myself very much here, but I do really think that I’ll return to London this afternoon. I feel that I need to work at my typewriter. I do. Really. I’d love to stay. I’d love to stay.

Philip looked disappointed and hurt.

—But there’s my study upstairs. You can go there any time, use my typewriter, stay up there as long as you like; you don’t have to go back to London. Use
my
typewriter.

—But it’s not the same, it’s not the same, Grace said, her voice rising to drown her own guilt.

—It’s not the same, she repeated, this time in a shrill bantering tone, trying to sound gay and humorous, but feeling foolish and depressed when Philip’s response came, neither lighthearted nor understanding but chilled with brevity and fact and his sense of having failed as a host,

—Well if you must go then . . . I’ll look up the trains. But you know you can use my study, and stay as long as you like.

—Of course. I don’t want to leave. I want very much to stay. It’s just that I’m homesick for my typewriter.

The subject was dismissed. Philip was ready for church.

—I’m away now, he said.

—Daddy, can I come to church with you?

—Not this morning, Sarah. There may be a family service later in the day. You can come then.

Philip went to Anne and gave her a brief kiss while Grace looked at them out of the corner of her eye, noting the absence of outward feeling in their kiss. They had so coded their love that they could express it in one simple commonplace gesture, as a painter who has practised his art for years is able without
loss of dignity or skill to produce for public inspection a canvas composed of one straight line or painted wholly in one colour. As those who study the painting are at first and perhaps for ever undecided whether it is a simple concentration of nothing or of something, Grace mused on the apparent and real feeling expressed by the kiss, but the galleries of love retained their secret. When Philip and Anne invited her for the weekend they did not promise to give her a catalogue of their still and moving life in flesh and spirit.

 

 

 

 

Grace had her breakfast alone. Then she and Anne drank coffee together. Noel was tucked to sleep in his pram outside, Sarah was nursing a towelled spoon-angel while baby Jesus, out of fashion, lay on the floor.

—Do you like cooking? Do you cook for yourself in London?

—Yes, I like cooking. I don’t bother much, on my own.

—I had a friend over from New Zealand, I went to London to see her, and here she was in this Earls Court bedsitting room with a poky gas ring in the corner. She asked me to have a meal. She threw everything into one pot - vegetables, meat, everything, broke an egg into it, and served it as it was, water and all. Water and all!

—Oh yes, Grace said excitedly.—I know. I know. I knew someone with a tiny electric ring in the corner of the room. She used to get up at about three o’clock in the morning to put the kettle on, to have it boiled by breakfast-time at seven o’clock. That’s a slight exaggeration . . . of course.

—But the water in all the vegetables! And margarine, not butter, blobbed in it!

—I know, I know!

—And I’ve another friend over from New Zealand. She comes to stay with us. She burps. It sounds ridiculous but she burps, in quite an uninhibited fashion. It’s the strangest sound
I’ve ever heard. She claims not to be able to help it. She does it everywhere, everywhere at any time.

Anne tried to give a demonstration of her friend’s peculiar noise.

They laughed together.

—Philip was very brave to take her to Holy Communion in Relham Cathedral.

Grace felt a stab of jealousy.

They were silent for a while.

—You don’t mind my staying here in the kitchen? I like being here. It’s warm, and it’s nice, just talking. I noticed upstairs in your father’s room - bagpipe music. Does he play the bagpipes?

—He used to play. He used to walk up and down the passage playing the bagpipes.

—Up and down the passage? But my father did too! He used to play us to sleep at night. But when we shifted to Oamaru he didn’t play the bagpipes any more, only the chanter-

—Oh yes, the chanter. Dad’s got his chanter here with him, but he doesn’t play it any more.

—‘I haven’t the wind’ my father used to say. ‘I can’t play the bagpipes any more, and now not even the chanter’ . . . Did your father wear a kilt?

—He had one. He didn’t often wear it.

—My father was a Highland dancer. His sisters danced too.

Anne sighed.

—I sometimes wonder if we’ve done the right thing by bringing Dad over here to live with us. But when my mother died we thought-

—He had a sheep farm?

—He lost it in the Depression. He never recovered from losing the farm. He couldn’t bear to live in town in a house on a quarter-acre section. He used to stand at the gate, looking out; just looking. Do you think you’ll go back to New Zealand?

—I don’t know. I don’t know.

—Those incessant tea-parties in the afternoon! I couldn’t!

 

Their lives diverged; Grace had never known tea-parties in the
afternoon - although there had been one, when she came out of hospital after all those years and someone wrote her a letter, Dear Grace I’ve read your book. Do you remember me? Will you come to tea with me one afternoon? Yours Katherine. Oh, Katherine! Grace remembered her, a third-former with rosy cheeks and blue eyes. Her father had recently died and she had been surrounded with mists of romance and envy - how wonderful to have a dead father! - and she had begun to write poetry about gardens, and there was a song she sang at the Music Festival,