The Seven Sisters (37 page)
Authors: Margaret Drabble
It’s a long time since I tried to climb over a railing. Not since I climbed in to St Anne’s after an evening escapade with Julia Jordan. But I did it.
You might think I might feel foolish, standing on the wrong side of a railing, holding a small dead tree. But I didn’t feel foolish, I felt triumphant. I think it would all have been all right if people hadn’t tried to be helpful.
Of course I’d hoped that nobody would see me, and I’d waited for the road to look empty in all directions before I’d made my attempt. But, somehow, getting back on to the pavement seemed more difficult and perilous than climbing over in the first place. I chucked the dwarf tree over, on to the pavement, and considered my position. There I was, stuck, like an animal in a zoo, and when I stepped back to take stock I backed straight into the barbed wire. From this side, there wasn’t enough room to manoeuvre. I kept getting tangled up on the wires behind me, as I tried to get my knees up on to the top of the spikes. I still think I’d have been able to manage it fine by myself, but just as I was bracing myself for another assault these two chaps appeared. I suppose they thought I was mad, but in fact they were quite polite, and asked me if I wanted a hand. I had to say yes, didn’t I? One of them gave me a leg up, from his side, through the railings, and I managed to get astride on top of the railings. It would all have been OK, but then the other one began to pull me over the top and down, and I lost my balance. I told him to stop pulling, but he wouldn’t. That’s when I scraped my leg so badly, on the way back down. And I gave one of my ankles a nasty jolt, when I landed, though I didn’t pay that much attention to it at the time.
And that’s when the police arrived. The police car pulled up just as I was inspecting the damage to my leg. Blood was slow to ooze, but it was beading up to the surface. The police must have seen some of the
incident. I suppose we did look rather a suspicious little gathering. Drunk and disorderly, at best. Well, I suppose I was a little drunk, or I wouldn’t have been clambering around like that at midnight, would I?
I ended up in the Accident and Emergency Department of the hospital down the road. That was quite an instructive experience. There was a lot of blood there. My wound was very insignificant, compared with some of the injuries I saw. I’ve had to go back to the hospital several times, to have the stitches out, and for ankle inspections. I’ve done something to my Achilles tendon, but it isn’t as bad as Ellen’s. They say it isn’t going to need surgery. I’m not booked in for Amsterdam. I haven’t dared to tell Ellen.
They do quite a good lunch in the Friends of the Hospital Canteen. I’ve made friends with the volunteer lady with the library trolley. It seems she once knew Eugene Jerrold.
Nobody got charged with anything. I suppose I could have been charged with trespass. And those two chaps could have been charged with aiding and abetting me. It looked bad, for all of us. But it ended up with a caution. I don’t think a caution counts as a criminal record, does it?
That tree is back there, back where it was, under the motorway bridge. It’s a few feet from the very place where it was when I rescued it. Somebody must have chucked it straight back over the railings, into the terrible hinterland. It will probably lie there for another three years. I don’t suppose anyone else will try to rescue it. I don’t think I’ll bother. I don’t want to be condemned to climbing over railings to rescue trees, in endless repetition, like a latter-day Sisyphus. I’m getting too old for that kind of thing. I should have taken the tree to the hospital with me, but I wasn’t thinking straight, was I? Maybe it wants to be there. Maybe that is its home.
As for me, I have no home. This is not my home. This is simply the place where I wait.
The sky, tonight, is streaked with blood above the dying city. It bleeds for me now that I bleed no more. I am filled with expectation. What is it that is calling me?
Stretch forth your hand, I say, stretch forth your hand
PENGUIN CLASSICS
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First published by Viking 2002
Published in Penguin Classics 2011
Copyright © Margaret Drabble, 2002
Cover photograph © Stuart Brill/Millennium Images, UK.
Extract from ‘Two Songs’ by C. Day Lewis reproduced by permission of Peters, Fraser & Dunlop Ltd
Extract from ‘Thalassa’ by Louis MacNeice, published by Faber & Faber, reproduced by permission of David Higham Associates Ltd
The moral right of the author has been asserted
Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser
ISBN: 978-0-14-196960-2