Towards Another Summer (5 page)

Grace ate her slice of pear, rubbed clear the misting window and gazed out at the neverending rubbish dump which was the landscape approaching the Midlands but which, as they travelled further north, was obscured by continual snowfall until at last the train moved in a white translucent landscape, as if they journeyed on the face of the moon.

The other passengers in the carriage, their emotions not having been unexpectedly released by the threat of being ‘taken off at Derby’, maintained their private silence, but the woman chattered freely to Grace, and when her companion, having overcome the difficulty of the Derby threat and being presented with a new more formidable one of wanting to smoke in a non-smoking carriage, excused himself and went to the end of the corridor to light up his Nelson outside the lavatory, the woman explained to Grace that he was her brother-in-law, a steward on the train, who had that morning travelled, working, to London,
and was now returning, in state as it were, to their home in Relham. The fact that he knew the railways by heart made it inexcusable, the woman said, that they had boarded the wrong carriage. She herself had been staying in Devon with her sister; it had been snowing in Devon ever since Christmas.

—You going to Relham too?

Grace made the mistake of adding to the Yes, she was going to Relham, the information that it was her first visit there, it was her first visit to the Industrial North.

The woman looked at her with pity and wonder.

—You won’t know your way around then, she said insinuatingly.

—Oh no, Grace said.

—Relham’s a big place if you don’t know your way around. Here, the woman said, rummaging in one of her shopping bags and finding a bag of sweets,

—Have a sweet. Go on.

—No thank you, not really.

—Go on, you’ll be hungry by the time you get to Relham.

Grace accepted the sweet, rewiped the window-space and looked out, and the woman, taking her gesture as a sign of unfamiliarity with the landscape and uncertainty about her destination, said reassuringly,

—Don’t you worry, I’ll let you know when we get to Relham. Here - her voice was full of pity -

—Have another sweet.

—Oh not really, well, all right, thank you.

Later when the woman’s brother-in-law returned from his smoke outside the lavatory the woman informed him in a loud voice which caused one of two passengers to look their way,

—She’s never been to Relham before! This is her first visit to Relham!

Branded, Grace blushed, sucked hard at her sweet, and stared through the window. Snow was still falling; occasionally street-lights threw a buttery glare upon the new bread-white snow; at intervals along the railway lines golden-red coke fires gleamed, throwing Santa-red shadows on the snow, while upon the
carriage windows congealed snowflakes flew and were trapped like pieces of festive cotton-wool. The world seemed buried deep in snow and sleep, with pillows and sheets of snow stacked against the dark sky. Grace leaned her head against the window, closed her eyes, and slept, and when she woke, with her cheeks hot, her eyes grinding and heavy with grit and soot, the woman whispered to her, gathering her luggage in preparation,

—This is it. A few more miles and this is it.

—Oh, Grace said coldly, not caring.

—You’ll be all right? the woman asked anxiously, as Grace pulled her bag from the rack.

—Someone’s meeting me, Grace replied formally, in the hope of ridding the woman of the St Pancras to Relham myth which she had established and which (from the glances of the other passengers - it’s late, if she hasn’t been to Relham before she might be lost) was beginning to spread through the compartment.

—Someone’s meeting me, Grace said again, in a louder voice.

Oh, she could have wept, why did she always seem not to know where she was going, why did strangers always take upon themselves the responsibility of caring for her, arranging things for her, supervising, guiding? What was it in her appearance and behaviour which caused people to want to explain to her, to talk to her in simple language as if she might not understand?

—Yes, someone’s meeting me. It’s quite all right, Grace said, meaning once more to sound remote and calm, but at that moment the train jerked, stopped, lurched forward again, and Grace’s words emerged in an undignified cry which might have been construed as Help. A stout man who had been sitting back to back with the woman’s brother-in-law leapt forward and took Grace’s arm.

—Are you hurt?

—I’m all right thank you.

Relieved, the man made his escape, choosing the other end of the carriage. Waiting for someone to open the carriage door, for she could never understand how to manipulate the leather strap
that opened the window that allowed access to the door-handle, Grace stood watching the hustling pushing people jabbing with their suitcases where their bodies were ineffective as ramming instruments. At last someone opened the door. Grace climbed down and hurried along the platform, surrendered her ticket, and looked around her, waiting for Philip Thirkettle. Oh God, she thought, I can’t survive the weekend, I can’t go among people for three whole days, talking to them, sharing meals with them, having to decide when to join them and when to leave them alone, when to go to bed, when to get up. What would they say if they knew I had changed to a migratory bird? I can’t face it. What shall I say, how shall I make sentences, link words, subject, verb, predicate, while they are listening? At least, she thought, relieved, there are no children, or Philip hasn’t mentioned them. Children can be so confusingly direct; they stare, how they stare! At that moment it seemed to Grace that the most frightening thing in the world was a child standing, not speaking, staring at her, staring accusingly, knowingly, pityingly, mockingly, with an understanding which, as a child, he had not yet limited or quelled or destroyed.

In her mind, from the slight information given by Philip, Grace had sketched the Thirkettle ‘pattern’. Husband, wife, father-in-law. Philip unable to spend much time with his wife while his wife’s attention was turned too often to the care of her father, the former sheep-farmer, miserable, nostalgic, gazing from the windows at the North of England chimney pots instead of at Antipodean sheep and sky and mountains. In an attempt to prepare for the events of the weekend Grace had imagined herself arriving -

—You’ll have a drink? Sherry?

Anne beautiful, sophisticated, educated at one of New Zealand’s ‘private’ schools where, Grace remembered with the truth of persecutory desires, all the pupils were ‘snobs who spoke haw-haw English’ . . . The father-in-law sitting mournfully in a chair by the fire, dreaming of the Canterbury plains and the Nor’wester ‘nosing among the pines’. Philip, frustrated, jealous of his father-in-law, wanting to be alone with his wife . . .

—Yes, I’ll have a sherry.

Grace’s conversation was witty and sparkling, intelligent, memorable; they flushed with pleasure at the beauty of her sentences; her ideas (so original, clearly expressed, profound) excited them so much that they confessed that after her first night spent with them they had lain awake talking, philosophising in a frenzy of imagination.

—Yes, I’ll have a sherry.

Considered thus, the fearful prospect of the weekend receded. Why, there was Grace talking enthusiastically about liver fluke, footrot, pulpy kidney, while Philip and Anne, happily alone for the first time in years . . .

As Grace thought of her unselfishness and kindness it seemed that she was not on Relham Central Station but on a cherished allegorical beach, out of danger from all tidal-waves of apprehension, standing, being gently sprayed with ‘goodness’; cool and comfortable in spite of the burning sun.

When the weekend was over, the Thirkettles would be grateful to her; she would have brought Philip and Anne renewed happiness.

—Come again, they would cry.—Do come again!

And Grace, used to compromise, glowing with the success of righteousness, that second-best spear in the thrust of love, would feel moderate happiness, promise to ‘come again’, say goodbye, and finding her corner seat in the train stare mournfully out of the window with her eyes filled with tears and soot.

Dried words like drops of blood surrounded her on the platform. Who had spilt them? As far as she knew, no arrow or shot had pierced her feathered breast, and the soaring station roof protected her from wounds made by the sky. She took her handkerchief and rubbed fiercely at the gritty surface surrounding her, then she crumpled her handkerchief, tucked it inside her sleeve, and walked carefully one or two paces, swaying, breathless, unable to escape. There was still time to return to London to the flat, to withdraw in merciful solitude, to sit at her typewriter sending out noisy signals to herself, which was her style and intention in writing. Part Three of her novel waited in its Boa File (‘grips like the coils of a Boa’). There was the routine of her working which she used to gain power over her daydreaming. As a last resort there was a sleeping-pill, a tiny white full-stop tasting like poisoned schoolroom chalk. The door to the other world stood wide open. The contents spilled on to Relham Station. Feverishly Grace sank to her knees and began to scrape at litter.

—Lost something? I’ll get a cab.

There was Philip, duffel-coated, taller than she remembered him; his hair was yellow, like tussock at the edge of the sea; his eyes were the same colour, darker perhaps, flecked with brown driftwood.

He took her bag.

—Did you find what you’ve lost?

—Who does? she said neatly, pleased.

They stood in the queue and after ten minutes’ waiting they were in the taxi heading for Holly Road, Winchley, ten miles out of Relham.

—A good journey?

—Yes thank you.

—What do you think of St Pancras Station?

—All right, thank you.

—Did you have to wait long?

—Oh yes, Grace said excitedly, proud to be able to communicate some details about herself.—Oh yes, I
always
have to wait a long time. I’m constitutionally
early
; hours and hours early. I don’t think I’ve ever missed a train in my life!

Her eyes were shining, her face was flushed. Oh how wonderful to possess an identifying characteristic! Late, early, tidy, untidy, I’m fearfully slow, I’m always ready on time, I’m so good with children . . .

Children? What was Philip saying about children?

—Anne’s the opposite, she’s never early. It’s a case of rushing to the train, bundling in the kids, leaping on board, slamming the door . . .

Kids?

Philip turned to her suddenly, laughing gaily.

—I don’t suppose you mind, having a couple of kids swarming around?

—Oh no, Oh no!

Grace wondered if her heart hadn’t sunk through the floor of the taxi. There’s still time, she thought wildly, there’s still time to escape: children, staring, mocking, pitying, understanding - that was worst - understanding; they would know everything; perhaps they would come up to her and say, What is the pineal gland? Describe your flight feathers. Define Coriolis force.

Trying to calm her mounting panic Grace said bravely,

—How old are your children?

As she spoke she knew that she was not only afraid of the children, but she was jealous of Anne for sharing the repetition of someone as exclusive as Philip.

—Sarah’s two and a half, Noel’s fourteen months.

Not dangerous ages, Grace thought, with relief. They could be worse.

Yet she felt like weeping. Why hadn’t Philip told her about the children? She remembered the times she had said to herself, after her first meeting with Philip, Of course they haven’t any
children. Of course. Saying it with nasty satisfaction, feeling safe because it was so, constructing a strange imagination of herself as a lost piece of jigsaw that would fit in to the Thirkettle pattern.

—You’ll miss Dad, Philip was saying.—He’s up in Edinburgh for a three-week’ holiday.

—Oh I’m sorry, I wanted to meet him.

So there’ll be no escape, Grace thought, through talking about liver fluke, footrot, pulpy kidney. She almost sobbed. She wished she hadn’t come to Relham, she wished she were back in her London flat listening to the weather report and the news, then switching it off, retreating to the corner by the bookshelf where she had placed her typewriter and parts one and two of her novel in their Boa File. And there would be the Standard Lamp shining its pale white light directly over the keys of the Olivetti; and the rows of books on their shelves on the left, buttressing her against intrusive influences from the Examining Board - she did not know what they examined, or when, or why, but beneath the sound of the traffic outside Grace could hear next door the subterranean murmurous examining, interrupted from time to time by a thumping, shifting sound, as if new standards were being set.