R.H.I. Read online

  Outside the house, on the lane where she stood, unsure whether to take steps in either direction, having neglected to fetch a hat and coat, and feeling a cold wind against her, she felt the certainty that he could see through her as she had stood in the room, and that he could still see through her now. His vulnerability, his seeing-through, these combined to fix her in what was at once a connection and a contest, as if one of them might clearly emerge with the upper hand. She was stupid, and her thoughts were stupid. She took a step or two away from the house, then back, closing her arms in front of her. She didn’t want to re-enter the house, despite the cold that was biting at her elbows.

  5. ‘I don’t understand. Are you suggesting that you could have written about anyone?’

  ‘I’m writing about her because, across the years, she grabbed me. Maybe that could have happened with anyone.’

  ‘So there is something special about her after all? Something about her that reached across?’

  ‘But she grabbed me without me knowing anything about her. So she could have been anyone.’

  ‘Did you see an opportunity to fill in the gaps in her story?’

  ‘She couldn’t fill in the gaps in her own story.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘I’m filling in gaps for her.’

  ‘How can you, a man living in New Zealand, a century later—so, worlds away—presume to do what she couldn’t do?’

  ‘We’re allies. We’re making something together. We’re working together on a mask.’

  ‘Not on what’s behind the mask?’

  ‘If so, then there’s another mask behind the mask.’

  ‘Is it the kind of mask that might be used in some ritual?’

  6. After a time, she became aware of the extent of the pact that had formed between them. It was noticeable already on the next occasion. How long had passed since she had met him? In any case it is possible that she had all but forgotten him. Then, at some outdoor party, he was there, and her assurance missed a step. They immediately apologised to each other, and forgave each other—but unlike an exchange of money for goods, the exchange of apology for forgiveness left something owing that couldn’t quite be balanced: there were always further attempts, smiles, stumbles, forming a structure of polite entrapment. It wasn’t unpleasant—it held her fast, but she was willing to be held. At the outdoor party she couldn’t leave his side for fear that she was running off with stolen goods. When they said their goodbyes, something remained. With him, the adult skin she had formed, her TRADING SKIN, was vulnerable—he had seen under it, and hooked something under it.

  He called in from time to time, and they found themselves in similar ‘circles’. Once (he had called again and asked that she might accompany him on a walk), he confessed: ‘I never liked my father’s drawings, anyway!’

  ‘Really!’ She laughed, but he was frowning. ‘Oh.’

  ‘You were quite right, back then.’

  ‘No, I wasn’t. I should have been more careful.’

  ‘If you were more careful, you wouldn’t be who you are.’

  ‘And who am I?’

  ‘You.’

  ‘How can you be so sure?’

  Why had he confessed about his father’s drawings with such a frown? Surely it was an expression best reserved for confessions of a different sort. Until she had looked sideways at him, she had imagined from his voice that he was making an offering. Then he smiled after all, and the offering was complete; though, characteristically, his frown left an echo, her ‘Oh’ meant she couldn’t quite accept the offer with grace, and something was left, undischarged.

  ‘Well, I have to like them, don’t I? But I’m not always sure I do. Sometimes—especially after you said what you did—I look at them with the eyes of a stranger, and I realise you’re right.’

  ‘I only said it for something to say.’

  He smiled. ‘Don’t lie.’

  ‘Lie!’

  ‘You can’t take it back now, what you said.’

  ‘No, I can’t.’

  They turned in through a gate to head uphill across the edge of a field. They would turn back, he said, at the top, where there was a good view of the sea. She knew the path, but pretended not to. He was also pretending: he must have known that she knew the area. She let herself be led, but something was sticking at her, like a thorn or a splinter. Maybe it was his suggestion that she had lied. He had said it in a familiar, teasing manner—was it a manner he had earned with her? What she knew, but didn’t let herself know, was the reason for his call that first afternoon, now almost a year back. A year! Unusually for her, she let herself reminisce. Had he become familiar? From meeting to meeting, his manner was constant: he became flustered often, sighed faintly, registered something with his forehead, and his hands moved awkwardly.

  No: he conducted himself impeccably. He was a lawyer through and through. Was that the problem? He behaved as if in court. He chose his words carefully. She wished he would stumble—then he might laugh with a different laugh.

  This was confusing.

  Finally, they reached the top, and like he had said, turned, viewed the ocean, and began the walk back down.

  Another, maybe obvious thought was hidden from her: that the confident lawyer did, after all, stumble. At times she thought of him as all fluster, all stuttering panic; the next moment she saw him as pure self-assurance—but she couldn’t think both at once. To her, he was two men. Her view of him wavered between the two extremes, and in between them was her blind spot: mightn’t the self-assured man stutter because of her? But how could she possibly exist in a world populated by lawyers? And if something upset her now, it couldn’t occur to her that it might be not just that he had hooked her, but that she had hooked him. His composure irked her as much as its faltering. Their ‘pact’, their conversations, kept them close and distant, and the entanglement went deeper than she was prepared for.

  7. ‘And this romance. Is that what it is?’

  8. Again, her father was away. She and her sister went out one afternoon in the dresses she had sewn for both of them. When they stepped out into the day, it was stepping out, again, into the air of the century, into the new. Sometimes Joan felt herself full of excitement, even as she kept her step measured—her excitement was in her glance, her look here and there at people and their clothes, rather than in her own body. Joan was the responsible one, meant to keep an eye on her barely younger sister. Molly did seem to want to tear away, to run ahead: she skipped a step, something Joan wouldn’t do. But they didn’t talk about their father, whose face had become strained, lined with the strain. When he smiled he looked as if he were tugging at the end of a piece of string with his teeth; he held his fists balled by his sides. They didn’t talk about him, but Joan might have said, ‘I’m worried about father.’

  Molly might have said, ‘He always comes back. He recovers.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘He’ll come back. Don’t think about him today.’

  ‘How can I not think about him? I know he’s always come home in the past, but he’s sick, he’s getting worse.’

  ‘I won’t be thinking about him. Just for now I won’t—it’s our time now Joan, this afternoon.’

  ‘What would we do without him?’

  ‘It’s our time. It’s so warm!’

  This conversation that they didn’t have was nonetheless there, in the workings of their limbs, in how loosely or stiffly they swung. Joan almost felt that the air’s excitement was a betrayal of him. Stepping out, they were leaving him behind. Maybe it wasn’t wrong to do that? But Joan wanted to summon him to her. He could unlock something, give her permission, maybe even permission to skip the way Molly had done. She envied Molly’s light step, wanted to become herself, and know that to do so she would have to become someone else. (With him absent, she was absent from herself.) If she ran ahead, she wouldn’t turn back. People walked so slowly: others on the strand were walking slowly. Why were they walking like that? Why d
id they keep turning to look down at the beach and out to sea? Why were their conversations like that? Why did they have to grin and wave at one another? Didn’t they see themselves walking, hear themselves saying ‘Oh really!’, hear themselves laugh? And was that Evelyn over there? No, it was someone else. And she herself, and her sister by her side, also walked slowly, also laughed and grinned. What was wrong with her?

  9. London’s streets had seemed to bustle in a celebration of their marriage. Everything had to bustle: the people walking or taking carriages here and there; soldiers; shop windows dressed with clothes or books. She had wanted to step out of herself and run alongside. Part of her would, then, join the celebration, unknowingly join, the way that the fat boy over there, who had not even noticed her, had unknowingly joined, or the man walking in the opposite direction. All this was part of it, and her at the centre. The ride through the streets to the church left a mark of confidence on her—a memory that buoyed her, carried her, allowing her to feel the weight of the day, the lightness of herself. At the same time, she had a cramp in her stomach.

  Her father had said that he was proud, and that Evelyn was a fine man. Her father sat with her now in the carriage. We can’t really know what either of them was thinking. Surely, her father’s words, his reassurance, must have been with her? She was confident, but something made her nervous about the wedding. Was time living up to its promise? This wedding, surely, was evidence of time. Was it evidence? Time had expressed itself in the earthquake whose wave drowned hundreds living on the coastlines of Ecuador and Colombia. It expressed itself again later that year in another that shook San Francisco. There, the air was thick with dust, as thick as, further south, it had been washed clear. Time was voiced in worries about the planned Panama Canal—what would become of that ambitious structure in an earthquake? Time was struggling to release itself. Time voiced itself through the Irishman Richard Oldham, who suggested that the Earth’s interior was molten. What did that do to our foundations? If we were to dig deep enough, what would we find? Perhaps Joan concerned herself with time in other ways: would they be late? But she didn’t seem concerned. Perhaps the wedding seemed to tie her to the past, to keep her in its web, when all around her time was straining to break out, to come into its own.

  All this was reinforced when, outside the church, a man was standing with a dog, whose eyes watered against the city’s late morning. No, its eyes didn’t water. But it was a reminder, a continued presence of the charcoal drawing and its sensibility, and all that it contained for her. Nonetheless she smiled at the dog, which was only a dog. Had her father also commended her, back at the hotel, for being brave? He seemed to rattle, these days. If he had said that about bravery, what had he meant? That he himself would soon be gone, and that, by her decision to accept Evelyn’s proposal, she was throwing her trust to the latter and no longer needed her father. Part of her thought this. Another part shivered as they entered the church—shivered joyously, and not just because it was required. Of course this wasn’t a matter of trading one man for another, or indeed of being traded by the men, despite all the talk of being given away. If, between her father and herself, one had possessed the other, surely it was her who had possessed him? He didn’t seem, with his lean, with his grimace, with the way he stopped for a second while walking, to be capable of possessing another human being. Anyway, for her part, would she have wanted to possess him? Protect him, yes, and hold him, or support him so that he might stand upright more easily. As they walked down the aisle it was he who leant slightly on her arm.

  The church opened out into its light, high space: another, enclosed world, hushed with stained glass and echoing murmurs; a world where, despite herself, she felt physically at ease, the day’s excitement calmed into solemnity, and her gait slowed, her feet rested with slightly more weight between each step. Evelyn’s eyes were roaming, wavering from side to side as if searching for her, as if she were not fully visible as she approached, until she was almost near enough to touch. Seeing him, she became matter of fact, forgot the dog outside and the drawing. Well, she wanted to hold him! He seemed newly awake and blinking. If only she could have whispered to him, ‘Isn’t this all strange?’ That small and, in the circumstances, impossible question—not a question—would have helped them to laugh a little and feel some of the humorous solidarity that they sometimes shared. Answering her own unthought question: Yes, it was strange. All these people watching, while a new life began. Not a new life. So many thoughts, she couldn’t contain them. Each face looking on reflected something different. The ritual was something to perform, to savour, to be gotten through with. She didn’t think this but felt it. Was it her, taking part? Stupid question—of course it was. But the question, at least, was asked, even if she didn’t ask it consciously of herself. What was this HER, this SHE, this JOAN R that was coming into existence, while JOAN V passed away—a new person, a stranger? Oh, all these thoughts and questions here in the one calm space in the world, the one space not tainted by the smell of an impending avalanche. What avalanche was that? There wasn’t even snow—it was hot outside, or at least warm. At one point she said, ‘Yes, I do.’ Should she have said the ‘yes’ part? The word stuck with her. Why worry about a word?

  He was sick in his—their—bed. And this on their honeymoon. He complained at the pain in his gut, and rolled onto his side. Outside, the sea. She would look out the window at the sea, which looked, from here, much as the sea did at home. He was pale. Poor creature! But it wasn’t the greatest honeymoon for either of them. She took herself off for walks on the beach, and felt herself to be apart from the people there (not only because they were speaking French)—not painfully, but enough to cause her sadness. And his apologies didn’t help much.

  ‘It’s hardly your fault, is it?’

  ‘I suppose not. But Joan, it was supposed to be nice.’

  ‘I know!’

  She herself had never felt healthier—well, unless it was just by contrast. She went off again, to leave him in enough peace that he might recover more by tomorrow. Outside, it was calm, and noises and voices seemed to drop to the ground. Secretly, was she a little pleased that he was sick? And why did she keep so many of these secrets from herself? She knew (secretly) something of what her father might have meant by ‘bravery’; but (openly) she wasn’t convinced that you needed to be so brave to be married. Instead, though she had thought about it, it had been simply a matter of following procedure. And was that what she was doing, here, overlooking the sea? Procedure seemed, for now, empty, but hardly challenging, and she sensed that it might remain that way. PROCEDURE named something comfortable, a way of being that would, she hoped, allow her something—even, strangely, a shift in the constant negotiations they had had for so long. The entanglement, the web of back and forth that thrived on some kind of uncertainty, was now changed, and to it was added the status of contract. They were married!

  Except something hit her: a concern that his pale features, the groan as he turned over, his pain, were all part of the new settlement. Asleep, he was corpselike. This active man had become inactive; what had been unsolved had at least had a principle of movement; and now there was nothing left to desire, and he lay unmoving. By contrast, the other walkers here—people passed, not so many, in ones and twos—were lively, and met her eye from time to time.

  All this wasn’t something she concerned herself overly with, but it hung about her like a coat, perhaps slightly too heavy or too hot. It might from time to time slow her steps, stop her moving further. When she returned he was upright, leaning back on two pillows, and reading.

  They had moved their lives, or life, to London. If she sewed now it was for herself, or to send something new and nice to Molly, and nothing was different after all: place and routine had changed, and underneath the streets thundered an underground train, but what did these things matter to Joan? The form of pregnancy was joy. She didn’t feel very different—not physically, or not at first. And, for now, it was only a suspi
cion, and one that she didn’t mention, even to Evelyn.

  What did it mean to say that the form of pregnancy was joy? Well, joy had always oriented itself to the future—it had always been the ally of time and movement. Now something would change. But this was only its form, and underneath it Joan didn’t know quite how to feel.

  But then, after all, one day at home, she found that she wasn’t pregnant. It came on her by surprise, the way it had sometimes done when she was an adolescent. She closed the door to their bedroom. (Here is how Jones would understand it years later: nine months had elapsed since their marriage, so the pregnancy she expected would itself have been a symbolic birth; when it didn’t come, she felt betrayed by him, as if he hadn’t held up his part of some bargain. It was important, too, according to Jones, that she first mentioned all this nine months into her therapy with him. Was the anger she felt, then, at Jones, just another sign of the same betrayal, or indeed some deeper betrayal?) Nothing was ruined—but she would keep herself hidden here for a few minutes, so that the maid wouldn’t see. Evelyn was at his office. Was this what she was left with, this room, an empty room without him, and without anything? She moved from side to side in it. With the door shut, the room seemed for a second like her only world, her own room. Who could help her? Whom could she contact? All at once, there was nothing for her—even the room wasn’t hers, but would be claimed, equally, by Evelyn when he returned home. He would come home and lie down; if he was in a bad mood he would ask her to leave him for a few minutes. Then, the world would be opened up as a house, a wider city, already dark, bereft of anything looking over it, an empty place, though filled with people, her friends, with women.