The Circle (12 page)
Authors: Elaine Feinstein
The cat put out a clawed foot and the mouse squealed.
–He’s being very cruel, she said shakily. More cruel than I would have been with a stone, she thought, if I’d
had the nerve. And now it was worse, she had to get that bleeding piece of pain out of the house and she did not see how. Made herself walk towards the two animals with a broom. As the cat lifted its face towards her. Bending forward she could just unlatch a door to the outside world. And did so. Helping no pain but her own, she noted coldly, as she thrust the small, tailless, bleeding thing into the path outside (it was nearly dead that was certain). And let the cat follow it. Shut the door on both.
She found Michael sitting very soberly at the kitchen table.
–Our cat is a murderer, he said. He didn’t seem shocked or offended or upset, as she expected. It was just a fact about the cat. She felt weak and humble before his cold clear eye.
*
One day Lena showed her an elegantly coloured plan.
–This is how the kitchen is going to be, she explained. And she’d crayoned the walls in hard clear colours. She even had an alternative drawing; set them side by side for Lena’s judgement: what do you think? And Lena marvelled at her slender wrists. She had never seen any creature with such slender bones. And at the fine precision of the sketch.
–You have real talent, she said, at last. But surely you don’t intend to paint all this place by hand yourself?
–In my own time, said Lisa. No hurry. As I can.
*
As Ben got better she tried to explain how moving she found such a lonely pursuit of beauty, but he insisted: what she was noting was just an ordinary
feature of humanity; a talent everyone had, and only they were deficient in.
Now Ben could talk normally the visiting shouldn’t have presented such difficulty; but there it was. It was pointless to deny the silences they both felt. Sometimes Ben asked: How is the money situation? And she said, as always. And he said, I don’t like the sound of that.
There was no animation in their exchanges. And no doubt it was her fault, her own reticence. But also it seemed to her it was because in some bizarre way the whole world outside the hospital had ceased to exist for him. He only spoke with enthusiasm of the other patients, and their visitors. Who seemed more real to him than she did. He knew all the details of their lives, they fascinated him. And he even spoke cheerfully about the hospital meals, four a day. Very good, he insisted.
–Four kinds of cheese, he explained. Bel Paese.
–I’ll get your favourite one when you get out, she promised.
–One? But you miss the whole point. It’s the trolley coming round and offering a
choice
every day. You could never manage that.
–Well, it would be expensive done on a household scale, she agreed dryly.
She had to face it, he
liked
being in hospital. And when she suggested this to him, he didn’t repudiate it.
–Well, it has a structure at least, he said.
And when the first of many tentative dates was set for his return home, she could see he made no pretence at excitement.
–You don’t fancy falling into my hands again, she said, as jovially as she could manage.
–You could say that, he agreed. But she knew it was much more than that, and it made her weep into her pillow at night with longing to disprove what he felt.
It was as though he couldn’t see what it was he would be coming out
for
. Or
to
. And for the first time she longed to give thought to it; what it could be; that was worth coming out into the world of the living for.
Certainly the children’s visits were no encouragement. For one thing, a hospital rule meant all their encounters had to take place in that mean little waiting-room she had sat in on the first night of his admission. And Ben came along the corridor slowly, in his dressing gown, with a curious screwing movement. His head straightly aligned with his back, stiff as a ruler all the way down, and his walk askew with that strange sideways motion. As though not to disturb the straightness. And then he sat uncomfortably on his left hip, while the two boys looked at him. Silently.
–Well, Alan. What are you doing at school?
–Oh. Nothing much. His face sulky and yellow, and his hair uncombed.
–He came bottom in Geography, Michael suggested.
–Bottom?
–Well, he did very well in other subjects. Very well indeed, began Lena.
–Sssh, I want to talk to Alan. You can’t imagine, said Ben glumly, that I’m very surprised to hear that. You were never, he nudged Alan, given much
encouragement
.
–It’s boring, said Alan.
–Shouldn’t be, said Ben. Knowing your way about the world. Knowing people. Should be interesting.
–Well, we don’t
do
that.
–What about you, Michael? Are you going on with the violin?
Michael was silent.
–I see. Well, it’s complicated, he sighed. Organising your own life.
–He goes every week to play his guitar with a group workshop, began Lena again. I’m sorry. He didn’t seem to take to the violin.
–Didn’t
take
the violin, most likely, said Ben. Wasn’t that it?
–No. Said Michael. The teacher didn’t turn up every week, if you want to know. Sometimes he did and sometimes he didn’t. So.
–You gave it up. Exactly, said Ben.
Michael said: Can we go now, Mum?
–But we’ve just come, Lena would say desperately. Really the room was like a cell, it was like visiting a prison, no wonder the kids looked dour and sour and lifeless. Alan’s face like a banana. Michael mutinous and rude, and god knows what he would say in a moment.
–They’ve been very cheerful at home, she said. They made a bonfire with some friends at the end of the garden and roasted potatoes and sausages in it. Didn’t you? she encouraged them.
And Ben would say: That’s all right, I’ve got a fairly accurate memory of weekends in the old home, love. I don’t suppose they’ve changed much.
And she wanted to tell him about the bonfire. Because it had been magical. Down by the old brook between stones, lit with sweet smelling willlow twigs. And the children carefully tending the slow flames. Wrapping sausages in silver foil, picking out the burnt potatoes with delighted fingers. Everything tasted smoked, even the butter tasted smoky; and Michael loved it most of all. His great eyes shone with the joy of the fire and his own control of it. When he came in his face was black with soot.
–You must have got IN the fire, said Lena and took him to a mirror. What do you look like? A coal miner? But he seemed to like what he saw, smeared the
blackness
further down his cheeks, as though it pleased him.
–You know, Mum. I’d like to be a tramp.
–A tramp?
–Yes, I’m sure I’d survive somehow. Maybe when I grow up. I’ll just take off and live out somewhere in the wild ground. I’d be all right, he said seriously. I just feel it. I’d make fires, live under hedges.
–What would you live on?
–Sausages and potatoes, he retorted triumphantly.
–What will you do? Steal them?
–Of course not. Dig them. Out of the ground. The fields.
–Same thing.
He thought about that and agreed perhaps it was.
–Well then, he demanded. What can I be where I can live like that all the time?
She thought about it. There didn’t seem to be room for any such life in the economy.
–There must be, he argued. Didn’t grandfather leave school at twelve and go round with a barrow? I could do that.
–That was
then
. Silly bugger, she said affectionately. It ought to be possible, it ought to be like that: but it wasn’t, or she could not see how to make it so.
–Perhaps we’ll all take off together, she giggled at him.
–Daddy wouldn’t like it.
–Now there, she said. You’re wrong. A bit of him would find that made more sense than what we do now. And she gazed mournfully round the blank interior they moved in.
–Only a bit, he said, shaking his head. What about all his
things?
What would we do with those?
*
One or the other. At least, she wanted to tell him I’ve
been learning. I’ve been learning. People can even make a life alone, surely we can do it together? But she could see his scepticism and the memory of so many false attempts. How could she resist his suspicion of what it would be like? And how much effort they had spent trying the wrong things.
The wrong things. So many of them. Once they’d crossed England on an expedition to. A festival was it? She had urged him to it. It was going to be
fun
, she’d promised. And neither of them knew clearly what that would mean. And it had rained. A desolate cold rain that got in their shoes on the way to the station; a bitter cold rain, stronger than any they’d had that year. Splashing up in great gouts of icy wetness at their knees and ankles.
And as they paid for their train tickets, walking away, he wondered it out loud: what was he coming
for
? There was some kind of go-slow on the rail service. A result of the rain. So they’d had to take a gloomy coffee and toasted cheese in the station café.
–Some time you must explain it to me, he said. I’m very bad at these things. Where do we economise? You know, sometimes I look at a book I want for seven and sixpence, and I don’t buy it, because we’re broke, or I
would
have, if it were five bob. And what sense? Does all that make? When we take a journey like this half way across England?
And it was a train that stopped many times. The coffee tasted like burnt matches in her mouth all the way, as she listened, agreeing. About the structureless unchosen nature of their lives. And then he lapsed into reading a paperback and she slept, feeling stupid and ugly and ill. And occasionally he would lift his face from the book to say. (The train they were on stopping and stopping in the mad flooding rain.)
–We must be mad. We must be really mad. Or I must.
*
And she supposed the festival had been: what? an offering to Ben. To take part in her life, her life away from him? Perhaps she had even at some point made the mistake of saying that. So that she was responsible for the gloom, for every bad performance, even obscurely for the rain. And certainly for the people. The young aimless drunken people, who had come to hear the not very good jazz in a dark cellar, the desultory eddying movement of people who could afford to drift about because they were young. Because Christ knows anyway they hadn’t crossed England. And at every conversation she tried to open and failed, at every encounter that foundered she watched Ben grow more irritable. And at last they were left at a table with two fairly talkative people. One was a young poet she
recognised
, couldn’t remember his name. He was out of his mind, she could see that at a look.
His pale face was rounded with innocence: small round eyes, nose, chin. And he told them his name saying: I am the greatest poet in Europe. And staggered. With the peculiar graceless stagger of an old meths drinker in a skid row movie. He had to think about every limb to get himself on a chair.
–What
is
that stuff he’s on? Lena whispered.
Was told it was all legal. On scrip. Took about three to give you a buzz.
–How many have you had? asked Ben. And was
interested
, for a moment.
–Eight, the boy said, or six.
His girl had white net stockings and little black knickers; a well cut band of a skirt; and eyes like a frightened zoo animal. She was telling Ben how they
were lucky, only two weeks in gaol, and how ridiculous it was the kind of tests they’d had to take.
–The police planted all this stuff under our bed, she explained.
–And a needle! Scornfully the boy showed the size of it. In court this geezer asked. Do you fix with that?
–And I said, do me a favour, look at the bugger will you? It’d take six months to heal.
–Course, they just try to humiliate you in the prison, the girl took up the story. All ridiculous really how they try and do it. Come in and look at your bed and say it isn’t done properly just to put you down. And everyone’s lesbian, and you have to wear these awful clothes. And then some psychiatrist comes round and gets you to say who you loved more your mother or your father honestly it was funny like they thought no-one had read the books and then they gave tests. Like I came out very intelligent, and they said you know: would I promise to go and live back home.
–But yeah we were lucky, really, the boy said. Lucky.
And he spoke slowly as though his lips had gone numb. And I didn’t care what they said on account I knew what to do. I just crawled. I said, right you buggers, that’s the only way you understand, so that’s the way I’ll play it. You know crawled.
And unsteadily, as he was getting off the table, the crab motion of his legs and one arm swinging, caught an unfinished bottle of beer. He watched it totter and fall, all very slowly, putting out his hand too late to stop it. As the liquid ran over the table on to the floor. Tried to dab at it with his hand hopelessly. And then sat back into his chair, his face muscles motionless, his eyes fixed.
Ben tried mopping at the rolling liquid with a bar paper napkin.
–Are you wet? he asked the girl friend politely.
–Gosh no. I’m sorry. She smiled at them both like old friends. Look, I guess I’ll just get him home to bed.
And Ben quite enjoyed all that. Though he couldn’t resist making the obvious and humorous point: is this the community?
–Part of it, part of it, she said, depressed. They saw some good films that day, she remembered. But mostly she remembered the floating. The clear knowledge that both of them were outside the stream of people and whatever was happening; were both wholly onlookers.
–Parasites, Ben called them.