Another part of the wood (18 page)

‘Now now, Mrs – ’ Joseph faltered. ‘What’s your name?’

‘Gosling. Mrs Gosling. Isn’t it a funny name?’ She laughed, bringing her head up, feeling with her hand the heat of her face.
‘Sounds like a duckling.’

‘It’s Jewish,’ George said.

May thought she saw the whites of his eyes, luminous in the blacked-out hut. ‘Do you think so? Jewish … A bit, you mean … I’ve
often thought that.’ She tried to sound polite and chatty. ‘His nose, you know … His grandmother was called Rebecca. I do know
that. And that’s Jewish, isn’t it? It’s in the Bible.’

George said, ‘He’s a
Michling
.’

‘A what?’ she tittered.

‘The Nazis had a definition for quarter-Jews,’ said George. ‘Originally they were exempt from the gas chambers.’

He had a thing about the Jews, that was obvious. May supposed you had to get obsessed by something, if you were like him.
He’d probably have a heart attack if someone kissed him.

‘I’m a Catholic myself,’ she said. ‘A lapsed one … but still a Catholic.’ She felt quite intelligent, talking like this to
two invisible men. ‘
Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi
,’ she gabbled, proving her point. ‘
Christe, audi nos
.’ The words had a strange effect on her. She curled up on the sofa and closed her eyes, feeling she was a child again, fearful
of the probability that Christ did hear her. What if He had heard what Lionel said last night? Lionel’s worry, not
hers. ‘I’d love a double-barrelled name,’ she said aloud, opening her eyes again and looking in the direction of Joseph.

He didn’t reply. She could hear him breathing, soft and hurried as if he were running.

‘I’ve got Lionel’s blasted penny in my pocket,’ she said, glad to confess.

‘You’re a bit of a bitch,’ Joseph said.

Lionel entered with the lamp.

‘It was on the floor,’ he lied. ‘Just near the door. Fancy that. Sorry to be a bore about it, but it means a devil of a lot
to me, and I just couldn’t rest until I had it again.’

‘Quite,’ said Joseph, humouring him. ‘Mrs Gosling’s quite a little linguist,’ he said, drawing his pencil aimlessly across
the square of writing paper, waiting for May to squeal, to pat her hair into shape.

‘
Fides quid tibi praestat?
’ she murmured modestly, on cue.

Lionel wasn’t really paying attention. She would have to give him back his precious token. Later. ‘Lionel, you’re not listening.
I was speaking Latin.’

‘You were?’

‘I was.’ Nasty brutish man tickling his moustache not hearing a word she said.

‘What’s it mean?’ asked Joseph. He looked expectantly at her, and she fidgeted on the sofa, smiling, wondering if she knew.

‘It’s the baptismal thing … what the priest says when you’re a baby.’

‘A baby,’ cried Lionel. ‘Ah, a baby!’

That had moved him, thought May. He was imagining her in a long white dress with a shawl over her bald head. He was impossible.
‘The priest says “What dost thou look for from the Church of God?” and the reply is “Faith”, and then he says “What doth Faith
assure thee of?” and someone says “Life eternal”.’

‘Dear God,’ Joseph said. ‘Life eternal, what a drag.’

‘It’s true,’ May said defensively.

Joseph was quite patient, quite polite. ‘I don’t doubt some
believe it to be true, nor do I doubt they’ll be bitterly disappointed. All this love thing is an appalling delusion.’

Lionel wagged a finger at him, speaking with assurance. ‘Now, now, love does exist, old boy. It really does.’ He mightn’t
know about architecture, but love – well, he did know about that. ‘You may not have been as lucky as myself, but when it hits
you … ah well …’ He shook his head, baffled, as if still dazed by the blow.

‘I have been hit by it,’ said Joseph. ‘Many times as a matter of fact.’

‘Ah yes, but really. I mean, really.’

‘What do you mean, “really, really”? How real can you get? All I know is it passes off. Right off. Sooner or later.’ Joseph
made a gesture of departure with his hand, slicing the air dogmatically, looking from Lionel to May and back again as if to
say their time would come.

Lionel would have none of it. ‘I’m a business man myself,’ he asserted modestly, ‘and I know what I’m talking about. When
it hits you, you know. It’s no use giving your feelings where they’re not appreciated. It pays no dividends. Give them where
you will receive an appreciable rate of interest.’ He endeavoured to adjust his expression. Try as he might, his mouth widened
in a smile. He felt the kind of self-satisfaction and benevolence befitting a man who knew who he was and to whom he belonged.

‘Do you believe in love, George?’ May asked maliciously, propping herself on her elbow, gazing at the giant on his chair.

‘Tolstoy,’ observed George, paying no attention to her, ‘said that life is all right while you are intoxicated.’ He thrust
the palms of his hands together, looking at Joseph enquiringly, as if setting a riddle.

‘Yes … well?’

‘When you sober up it’s impossible not to see it’s a fraud.’

‘Here’s another one,’ said Joseph. ‘Nothing lasts, absolutely nothing. Neither fear, nor love for one woman.’

‘Plato?’ suggested Lionel, half fearful.

‘No, Marlon Brando.’

Lionel laughed nevertheless, thwacking the side of his leg to show that his sense of humour really knew no bounds.

‘Where, oh where, is Dotty?’ cried his wife, swinging her legs up and placing the black soles of her feet down again squarely
on the rough floor. There was an atmosphere in the hut that made her feel irritable. It was as if they had all been plucked
up out of nowhere and set down with the express purpose of being amusing or interesting or something, and they had all been
found wanting. It was so embarrassing, not knowing what way to be, Lionel in a tiz about his Co-op penny and Joseph attempting
to be profound. She longed for Dotty to return and give them some distraction – ask questions, undo shopping, explain the
delay.

George said, ‘I’m anxious about Balfour. I feel he may be ill.’

‘I shouldn’t worry,’ said Joseph. ‘Dotty can cope.’

‘His behaviour of the last few days has been strange. Unlike … He has been less than himself … or more. A preparation perhaps.’

‘He hasn’t seemed very strange to me,’ said Joseph. ‘What way do you mean?’

‘There are currents,’ George said. ‘Changes … attitudes … certain deviations from normal behaviour … preliminaries … an increasing
impediment in speech.’

‘Oh aye,’ said Joseph, giving up.

Lionel said he thought he would go and listen to the stock-market closing reports. ‘You’ve got a radio in the car, old boy,
haven’t you?’

Joseph said he had, that the car wasn’t locked, that the knob of the radio was on the floor by the clutch somewhere.

Lionel found himself a candle and a box of matches. When he opened the door of the hut he was too troubled by the loss of
his coin to look back at his sweetheart. Like a swimmer, he threw himself from the step of the porch into the field, breast-high
in mist, and began to wade to the distant Jaguar.

Though still liable to sudden fits of trembling, Balfour walked without help. The breeze tore free a corner of paper wrapped
about the joint of meat. Flap, flap, it went in the night. Slap, slap went his feet on the smooth surface of the road. After
a time Dotty could see shapes and grades of darkness – line of hedge, rise of field – even the outline of Balfour’s face as
he walked at her side.

She wondered if Joseph was worried at her absence. Angry, most likely. She thought she would put in her farewell letter that
Balfour had kissed her behind the hedge, that she felt life was exciting. In truth, the embrace of the delirious Balfour,
swift though it had been, had only depressed her, illustrating as it did how unexciting life was without Joseph.

‘I expect they think we’ve been boozing,’ she said. The road dipped gently down to the stone bridge, to the weeping willow,
unseen, rising up out of the stream. The noise of the water coming down from the rocks was deafening.

Then they were climbing the hill again. One more turning to go and a short stretch of road before they came to the gate into
the field.

‘I’d rather you d-didn’t say I’ve been ill,’ said Balfour.

‘Don’t be daft. What else can we say? It must be nearly midnight.’

‘I don’t c-care for old G-George to know.’

‘Well, I don’t care for old Joseph to think we’ve been doing anything else.’ Dotty was quite cross and assertive, fortified
by their intimacy of half an hour ago. Balfour walked stiffly, with the joint of meat held to his chin. He would just make
it back to the hut, to the barn. He would have to sleep there for the night.

‘Oh, all right,’ she relented. ‘I’ll say we went to the chippie or something, or that I felt sick. I don’t suppose he’ll be
up anyway.’

Behind the gate the hump of the haystack rose above the two cars. Inside the Jaguar burnt a little light, orange against the
blue leather of the seats. Lionel, plump as a Buddha, sat holding his candle aloft, listening to a voice on the radio. They
waved at him. He made signs and attempted to wind down the window. They climbed over the second gate, heading towards the
hut and were swallowed up in the mist.

In the centre of the field Dotty searched for and found Balfour’s hand. Like lovers they stumbled through the damp air.

All alone in the little cabin Lionel sat listening to the market trends. A liturgy of big business, a rosary of abbreviations
and percentages, gilt-edged and gold-leafed. Some things were up, some down. Some shaky, some sound.

Awkwardly, with the stub of a pencil he wrote down figures on the back of an envelope. He would wait until the shipping reports,
till the announcer said ‘Good night, gentlemen’. One gentleman to another.

Dotty put chairs outside the hut and clapped her hands. ‘A photie. Everyone must have their photie taken.’

It was such a perfect morning, she thought, straight out of some woodland scene in a pantomime – a backcloth of shimmering
trees, azure blue sky, birds singing. May, encased in white shorts, jaunty as a principal boy, came running from the barn.

‘Oh, I hate photographs. I always come out looking ghastly.’ Still, she sat herself on the centre chair, rocking alarmingly
on the bumpy ground.

It was important to Dotty that there should be some record she could keep of this last time spent with Joseph.

Joseph assembled them on the chairs, Lionel next to his sweetheart, Dotty to the right, clad in her flowered coat, Roland
on her knee. Behind, in a row, with arms folded, stood Balfour, Kidney and George.

It wasn’t right. After a little thought Joseph asked George to lie down in the grass at their feet, full length, feet crossed
at the ankles, his head propped on his hand. In the background, though obviously not included, stood the little timber cabin,
windows glinting in the sunshine. With a click of the shutter the images were recorded: the winsome little woman with her
smooth knees pushed together, jovial Lionel, Roland with his chin raised and his eyes following the flight of a bird.

Balfour remembered all the other photographs taken of himself by friends of George, copies of which he had never seen. He
scowled as Joseph prepared for another shot. Though feeling exhausted, he was no longer ill. George had put him to sleep in
the barn the previous night, had removed his shoes and wrapped him in blankets. Throughout he had shown a degree of tenderness
that had only registered when Balfour awoke that morning. He found himself unable to look directly at George. George had spent
the night in the second cubicle, with the door wide open, so as to be better able to hear Balfour if he cried out. The problems
of night travelling, coupled with the technical difficulties of lighting the paraffin lamp, had obliged Lionel and May also
to stay in the barn. Their mattress was filled with straw and May had complained of lying awake the entire night.

When Joseph had finished taking photographs they all said that they never looked good in snapshots. Each of them secretly
hoped that this time would be an exception. It gave Dotty an odd feeling to think of them all cramped on that little roll
of yellow film, stamped together for ever on the wooden chairs, never to get up again. She went indoors with May to make coffee.

George told Balfour he was to lie quietly in the shade for several hours. Balfour said he would do that. George fetched a
pillow from the barn and placed it on the grass within the angle of the hut. ‘Lie down,’ he said, and Balfour rose and lay,
pushing his face into the cushion and shutting his eyes.

After a moment George stopped standing over him and walked away down the path.

Balfour turned over and looked up at the summer sky. A wasp droned somewhere above his ear. He got to his knees. The women
were still within the hut. He walked a few paces into the bracken near the barn, undoing the buttons of his trousers. A twig
snapped. He straddled his feet wider apart. There was a low murmuring in his ears, a dense rise of dust, sunbeams. He flung
his arms about his head as if avoiding a blow. A sound like a cat mewing came from between his lips and he spun round, crouching
there with his arms held up stiffly on either side of him.

George, walking back along the path, was in time to see him in just this position and Lionel springing upon him, apparently
pummelling him about the head with clenched fists. May ran to the doorway of the hut, brought there by the sound of Lionel’s
voice. It was she, not Balfour, who screamed. She shrank
backwards, the round hole in her mouth plugged by her pink-tipped fingers.

The men laid Balfour down with his neck on the pillow and examined his face and chest. First they had to bring his bent arms
from about his ears.

‘My head,’ he said. ‘My head.’ He felt the skin of his scalp contracting, as a thousand winged insects burrowed into his hair.

‘Nothing on your head,’ George said, partitioning the black hair, seeing with revulsion the swellings beginning on the pimpled
neck. He removed Balfour’s shirt and bathed the wasp stings with TCP.