Towards Another Summer (20 page)

In spite of the vague botany, it was, Grace knew, a
lovely
song; but lovelier was

When Katherine sang that song she was singing of her dead father, singing in pleasant enjoyment of her bereavement. A strange girl, Katherine! She left school early to sell buttons and elastic; she stopped writing poetry.

Therefore, ‘Yes, I’ll come to tea,’ Grace had replied, and spent a stiffly embarrassed afternoon trying to eat chocolate cake in a strange house full of tapestries and beautiful furniture; Katherine still cared for things of beauty. Grace said,

—I remember you sang Schubert’s
To Music
.

—Did I? I’ve forgotten. I hated school.

—You sang about the garden, too - ‘there’s a beautiful garden by the side of a stream.’

—Oh? We learned so many songs. I was glad to leave school.

Finding there was no place to unload her memories, Grace sat quietly trying to eat her chocolate cake; admiring the baby, the tapestries, the heated greenhouse. Katherine drove her home, to within a few hundred yards of the house. As she was saying goodbye Grace could not understand what prompted her to ask (drowsed, perhaps, in some far-off paradisal image of childhood, bountiful farms, orchards),

—Would you like a dozen eggs?

She said it suddenly, irrelevantly.

—No thank you, Katherine said, coldly astonished.

They said goodbye, and both promised to meet again, knowing that neither would keep the promise.

 

 

 

 

—I haven’t had much experience with tea parties.

—I got so tired of them . . . Aren’t Englishmen young? Compared with those at home, I mean. I thought Philip was no more than a schoolboy when I first met him.

—Yes, they’re young. It’s the sun over there, I suppose.

—Quite likely it’s the sun.

(I wonder, Grace thought, if I can lever in a hint that I’ve had some experience with men?)

—I noticed that about the people in the Spanish islands, Grace said.—The effect of the sun, I mean.

—Oh, you were in the Spanish islands? Did you stay there long?

—Not really. Some months.

(Not yet, Grace said to herself. Almost it’s time, but not yet.)

—I suppose you wrote a book when you were there?

—Yes I did a bit of writing. I’m afraid though-

Her heart began to thud, she succeeded in controlling the breathlessness in her voice, and said casually,

—I spent most of the time having an
affaire
. We parted of course. It was interesting though as I haven’t had much
opportunity to have bed-experience with men.

—Oh I’m sure you enjoyed it!

—Oh yes. Something to talk about when I’m old and in my rocking chair.

There was a collapse of barriers between them; they smiled at each other, secretly, knowingly.

—Well, Anne said in a lighthearted way,—I’d better prepare dinner. It should be ready by the time Phil comes home from church. We don’t want you to miss your train.

—I’ll go upstairs to peep at the study.

 

Before going upstairs Grace went to the sitting room to replace a book. Last night’s fire lay dead in the grate. The room was deserted, the empty chairs drawn close to the fire; scattered sheets of Friday’s and Saturday’s newspaper spoke, as surely as trampled bus tickets on a wet street, of the aftermath of journeys among people. Grace sat in one of the chairs. The door opened softly and Sarah came in with her spoon-angels and her baby Jesus restored to favour. She had come to attend the ceremony which children love but which they have few opportunities to experience - the Private Conference with the Visitor. Sarah sat down, carefully, and put her babies on the chair beside her.

—There’s nobody in this room now, she said, emphasising their privacy.

—No.

Both knew that she meant
other
people.

—Mummy and Daddy sit in here at night when we’re in bed but there’s nobody here now. Do you like my angels?

She held for Grace’s inspection the two teaspoons wrapped in their piece of ragged towelling; their oval faces shone where she had polished them.

—I don’t know. I think I like them. Are they asleep?

—No, they’re awake. They’re in bed but they’re awake. Baby Jesus is asleep.

—Is he?

—She.

—Sorry, I mean she. Well I meant he but if you say so it’s she. She looks fast asleep.

—She is, fast fast asleep . . . Are you going away today?

—Yes, in the train, this afternoon.

—Are you coming again to stay with us?

—Well - I - I suppose-

—I want you to come and stay with us again. Will you come to stay with us again?

—Yes, Grace said quickly. Her heart was beating fast with gratitude, love, sympathy, and the extra pleasure provided by a conference ritual carried out by a cunning little strategist, as expert in diplomacy as a General wining and dining with the enemy on a battlefield strewn with corpses.

—Yes, Sarah repeated.—I want you to come here again.

 

The conference was over. Gravely they went from the room, shutting the door carefully behind them and Sarah, running on ahead to the kitchen glanced back at Grace with that metallic abolishing look which children have when contact has been made, treaties signed.

Upstairs in the attic Grace wondered at the nature of those who allow others to enter a room where their deepest secrets lie.

She sat before Philip’s huge desk, considering the drawers and pigeonholes crammed with papers and letters and the Imperial Portable typewriter on the desk with a sheet of paper thrust in it,
naked
for all the world to see! Somewhere in one of the drawers perhaps Philip’s novel lay typed and bound. How could he dare to give a stranger permission to enter this room! Or was this room not the repository of his secrets? Perhaps he himself had no access to his treasures; perhaps he hoarded them elsewhere without ever recognising them; perhaps he discarded them one by one without ever having known them?

Telling herself that in spite of temptation it is not kind to explore the papers of another whether or not they are admitted secrets, Grace turned her attention to the window which was small, overlooking the golf course and the rigid death-posed trees that stood in their monumental anguish like the thorn trees that are the suicides in hell.

The room, Grace decided, would be a perfect place to write in, although not because of the view, for in writing the studied landscape is not the Holly Road back garden, the Winchley golf course; nor the Old Brompton Road, the car salesroom, the jet cotton-trails in the sky; it is some mysterious place out of the world’s depths where the waves are penetrated by the faint gleam of the drowning sun and the last spurts of light escape like tiny sparkling fish into the dark folds and ceaselessly moving draperies of the water; it is the inner sea; you may look from every window - in Winchley, London, New Zealand, the World, and never find the Special View. Yet here, in the attic, Grace decided, little effort or encouragement would be needed to draw
aside the curtains of the secret window, to smash the glass, enter the View; fearful, hopeful, lonely; disciplining one’s breath to meet the demands of the new element; facing again and again the mermaiden’s conflict - to go or stay; to return through the window whose one side is a mirror, or inhabit the blood-cave and slowly change from one who gazed at the view to one who is a part or whole of the view itself; and from there (for creation is movement) when all the mirror is a distorted image of oneself, bobbing in the dark waves with stripes of light like silver and gold bars imprisoning one’s face and body, to pass beyond the view, beyond oneself to - where? Not to the narrow source that a speck of dust, a full-stop, an insect’s foot can block for ever, but to some bountiful coastline with as many waves as beginning fish or sperm before the choice is made, the life decided, and the endowed drop of water shining with its power and pride perfects its lonely hazard under the threat of dust, full-stops, insects’ feet; only a multiplicity of wave provides a horizon, a coastline, a land; beyond the view, beyond the narrow vain chosen speck of life to the true source - the boundless billionaire coastline of eternity; from ceaseless rivalries and rhythms and patterns of beginning, to silence and stillness; no wind in the trees - no trees; no sky or people or buildings; to reach there one may need the extreme discipline of breathing: that is, death.

A migratory bird may fly there, Grace thought, and felt herself immediately there with the touch of airless space upon her feathers; in the skyless world she felt neither leaden nor buoyant; where before in the world the wind curved and ruffled her feathers moulding them into subservience, separating their fronds into trembling fountain-shapes through which the sun, believing them to be the movements of water, hung rainbows; where before the wind guided her flight or sustained her motionless poise, now a surge of nothing enfolded her feathers, as if a cloud were being knitted to enclose her body; yet there were no boundaries; stone-falling, she would fall for ever; the land was for ever.

She longed to return from the source, the speck, the View, to climb through the glass into the attic, and at once, as in
dreaming, she was there, with the desk in front of her, the Imperial Portable typewriter (Mine’s an Olivetti, she thought. Philip likes Spaghetti Bolognaise; My brother has never been able to eat egg, for years he has never eaten egg), the golf course and trees through the window. She felt cold. She made a last observation of the room - noting in one corner the rucksacks, windjackets, boots waiting to be used for the Highland Holiday. She remembered Philip’s words about a visit to the Highlands soon after he and Anne returned to Great Britain.

—We walked everywhere in those days. Remember our first trip up there? You were carrying Sarah at the time, though you didn’t know it.

While Philip was speaking Grace had a sensation of walking upon golden stones beneath slow elephantine shapes of cloud trumpeting their light; then suddenly the vast Highland skies had become close, domestic, confined, blue as the best china plate, and Grace felt a movement inside her: Sarah.

 

In the centre of the attic, piled high, were months and years of literary weeklies and other magazines already brown at the edges, with brown stains on the covers as if Damp (here they talk of him with dread: Damp has got into the house) had come to life and leaned his wet hand upon the paper.

—Now I know where literary weeklies go, Grace thought, with the interest of someone who has solved the problem of flies in winter, pins from a packet, and other such mysteries. A bookshelf near the magazines held Anne’s Training College and University books and miscellaneous books belonging to Philip. In this house books had no boundaries; they overflowed, flooded; you had to stand on the roof waving for help, thinking regretfully of your best cherished furniture already ruined by the rising, seeping ideas . . .

—Are you up there, Grace? There’s coffee.

—Oh yes, thank you. Coming!

In the tradition of someone leaving a room Grace gave a ‘last lingering look’ about her; there was an envelope addressed to Philip; typewritten letters, handwritten letters; suddenly she
was aware of his life, his activities, letters coming for him, his reading and answering them. I’m not there, she thought. I’m not there. I’m nowhere. She felt the world go dark with sudden exclusion and she was beating her wings against the door of the dark but no one opened the door; indeed, no one heard.

Wait. It was this way, she said. I remember it was this way.

So we were shifting to Oamaru and the shift entailed a longer journey than we had ever known, far more than a few station-puffs in the train, a daylong journey across an endless number of rivers through tussock and cabbage-tree country, moonscape of rabbit warrens overhung with clouds of white dust; railway houses, railway huts, clothes-lines, level crossings in a jangle of warning; sheep, crops; and near Dunedin the dark terrifying lake described to me by Isy as ‘bottomless’. We looked out of the window at it; we shuddered, knowing that if we should fall in (how fragile the bridges were across all rivers) we should disappear for ever.

—The Taieri Flats, my mother said, and her voice sounded like doom. A waste of grey mud heaving with buried mammoths which kept moving, surging with life-currents over hundreds and millions of years, as easily as small insects and animals flicker with seconds of life after their heart has stopped beating.

Dunedin, and our direction changed, the train seemed to move backwards, we seemed to be travelling the wrong way, going home again to Wyndham. I was sick and I lay with my face against the leather smoke-smelling seat and they covered me with a coat.

—We’re going due north now, my mother said, and again her voice sounded like doom. Why, by saying
due north
instead of
north
could my mother give the impression that the end of the world was near?

Due north
. I breathed slowly and deeply at the appalling inescapable reality of it.

—See, kiddies, the Southern Alps!

We looked at the snowy peaks set in an almost unbroken line along the horizon like foam along a sky-sea, and they followed us all the way to Oamaru where they stayed, unmoving now, against the sky beyond Waimate, Weston, Waiareka, and the other places whose names were new to us.

 

 

 

 

In a week we learned to say it, chiefly as a protection against the many strange neighbouring children. It wasn’t Ferry Street Wyndham Southland any longer, it was Fifty-six Eden Street, Oamaru, North Otago, our house having a number because there were so many other houses in the street, more than I had ever seen in my life, and rumour said that the street was one of the longest in the town, starting at the seafront, cutting through the main street, gently sloping to our house, past our house, sloping more sharply around the corner to the right, still climbing higher until it reached the Town Belt.