The Queen of the Tambourine (15 page)

“It's really
very
good of you,” he said. He was confused. I was behaving so normally and looking at him, I dare say, lovingly as he shifted his oily fish-and-chip package from hand to hand. It looked nice and hot. He looked hungry and cold.

 

May 14th

 

Two weeks, m.d.J., since that evening.

I have spent much of them at the window. Nearly June. What a summer coming this year. The lilacs and the syringas and the roses already some of them full out, the grass long and silky and full of daisies—I don't know where the gardener went but it's all the better without him.

But I haven't been looking only at the Month of May, Joan, I have been watching for the family of Fishes. Every car that zips by, I wonder whether it is taking Amanda to the high school after dropping off the baby at the minder's. Every black and red cap I see on any boy, I think must certainly be Lucien's. Every pram has Timmy in it, every pram-pusher is the Fishes' au pair. I have conversations with them all. I ask them all to tea. I bake a cake and get ready to walk round with it. I stop myself. I won't go back to that. The cake-making of the Church of England woman, the running between each other with pots of jam. I've tried it. It has failed.

But I went to Church again on Sunday, hoping to see at least one of them. I was trembling as I went in, like an old virgin in love with the priest. I fell to my knees and tried to pray but could not get away from the shouts and conversation going on at the clergy house. “Come on, Amanda, we're late.” “Well you don't have to go. You don't believe in it.” “We have to—for Dad's sake.” “What about Ma's sake?” “What's Ma doing?” “Feeding Timmy and reading an essay.” “Who's doing lunch?”

On and on it went, the life of the Fishes in my head. Not one of them turned up at Church, not even Nick—it was an unknown priest with an ambling grin who kept getting lost in the service and gave a sermon about the place of the United Nations in the future of Europe, which seemed a pretty small one. Instead of listening I thought about Lucien and Amanda, sitting beside me in the pew, and Timmy beatifically good in my arms, stroking my face.

So yesterday, when it had been very bad all day and it had come to evening and grown quite dark, I left the dogs and with a secret smile and a dark coat set out walking to the Common and towards the clergy-house. It was quiet along the almost empty road and I slid in through the wide gates, one off its hinges, kept to the rhododendrons along the scruffy drive, made a quick dash past the glass front door and stood concealed behind the ceanothus outside the living-room window where shone the only light in the house. I stood very still, back from the window, flat to the wall.

Discovered, and where should I be?

Soon I leaned sideways, turned my head and looked in to see Nick writing at the table among the chaos and Timmy asleep and very large upon his knee. Nick was writing peacefully. A cat was sitting on the window-ledge looking out at the night. It looked at me with distaste, jumped down and stared hard at the study door in silent command. Nick got up, holding the baby and the pen, let out the cat and stood brooding in the middle of the room. I thought, Oh lonely and sad. I saw him sigh, hitch up the baby on his shoulder, wonder whether to take him upstairs and risk him waking as he was put in his cot, saw him look longingly back at his work. The room about him was unkempt and dismal, colourless and scruffy. The twentieth-century setting for the tormented Anglican priest.

He looked up all at once and listened. Then Timmy woke and pointed at the window, and I thought, Oh Lord they've heard me.

What shall I say I'm doing? Just calling? It's nearly ten o'clock at night. I must run away. But before I could think about how and where, round the corner swooped Vanessa's car and parked right beside me at the other side of the ceanothus. Both car doors flew open as the light went on over the porch and Vanessa, eating something large, half-wrapped in paper, and Lucien, doing likewise and carrying a big cardboard box, ran forward to the glass door, laughing. Nick appeared with the baby.

Nick said “You're late. Was it good?”

“Wonderful,” said Vanessa, putting her arms round him and the baby together. “Superlative. Big Macs. We've got the programme. Here—in the box.”

“Is Amanda up?” asked Lucien. “Wake her up—there's a Big Mac for her.”

“Did you like it too, Luce?”

“Great. Great third act. Ma cried.”

Nick looked down at Vanessa smiling and put his arm tight round her shoulders and kissed her hair. “Watch out for Timmy,” she said. “Don't let him eat burger.” They all went laughing indoors. A moment later Nick crossed to the window and drew the curtains across and somebody turned on some loud music.

 

So then I stepped quite noisily out of the flower bed, Joan, and walked right up the middle of the clergy-house drive, crunching the gravel, jaunty and light. The Common when I reached it looked very black, the road along it much longer than when I had walked it less than half an hour ago and very ill-lit—a lamp-post only every quarter mile or so. I passed the old Pound where the stray sheep used to be gathered and then I took myself diagonally across the grass to the pond where a glitter of light spread in a long extending triangle behind a nocturnal duck. No sound but the traffic's far-off roar.

There were dimmish lights from some of the great houses on the perimeter of this part of the Common. I watched for the coach and horses at the wrought-iron gates but it was past eight o'clock so I'd missed them. A warm summery wind was blowing and shaggy clouds swam over the London-lit red sky. I walked down Hill Street into Rathbone Road and stood by the fridge eating the cake I'd made. It had icing on it and a cherry. The dogs watched me, desperate.

“
All
right,” and I found the leads. “
All
right.” I sang and hummed about. I set off down Rathbone Road again, my nightly patrol around the block.

 

Each paving-stone I know. Each lighted window I know. Evening after evening I walk thus—pausing and calling, stopping and waiting. First I stand before Deborah's house and salute the magnificent rocking-horse that stands in the window. No lights there tonight, but I know the flare of the nostril, the blaze of the eye, the ear pricked to the distant drum. I stand and stare from dark into dark until I can make out its prancing shape. Not long to the Fair. Not long to the Fair.

At my feet on the pavement is one of the children's toys made out of Vera's knitting, left out of doors. The dogs sniff at it. I sit it on the balustrade of the steps where it leans its flat head.

Some of the houses are flats now. Young people in sexy clothes stand about in basements. Expensive tiny television sets glare. Pine cupboards, stainless steel, sheaves of dried flowers. The broad back of a pregnant girl. She touches glittering taps with yellow plastic gloves. Farewell the sixties drama of the kitchen sink, for the Kitchen Sink is now Art. The floors are made of pale or bronzy cork. The girl turns to crush garlic in a pestle and mortar. Light falls on a bottle of Italian oil. Her boyfriend, man or husband is ironing his pink shirt.

Higher up the street, and here are the Gargerys, one on each side of a plastic-topped fifties kitchen table talking seriously over mugs. About the walls hang posters, peg-boards, certificates of merit; a piano, well-used, its keys concave with practice. It was her mother's, and the tune goes on and on. The darkened windows on the floors above conceal each a sleeping Gargery child stuffed with knowledge. As I watch, the windows all burst open and the children fly out of them and away, five Chagallic embryos. One clutches its little blanket, another a suitcase labelled “Anywhere,” one is baying at the moon. Take comfort in the cocoa, beloved Gargerys, while you can.

Not far along the road and we're at Anne Robin's mansion. It's an older house and she's grander than any of us. The light is still burning in her study. She's hard at it, creating rabbits. Above is the lighted window of the new Philippino au pair. Eastern music twangs. Solitary Anne blocks up her ears as she seeks for childhood again in the empty nest.

Up behind me now comes the little black jogger, light on his feet. He never speaks. He knows it's me. He passes each evening, but he never speaks. He's somebody's lodger.

Here, opposite my house, the house of the childless and admirable Baxters, Dulcie Baxter in full view at her desk, marking examination papers. Her beautiful white hair springs up from her head enraged by what it sees on the page. I cannot see her face for the lamp shines down, but I seem to see her firm, judicial stance. Tick, tick, cross, she goes. She doesn't look up, perhaps to avoid the sight of Anne's light. She despises Anne with almost Johnsonian thunder, hardly keeping her voice down even when they are in the same room drinking the same hostess's sherry. “Why are we all so proud of Anne Robin? Any of us could write that stuff.” The pen is the extension of Dulcie Baxter's school-ma'am fingers, her dedicated critical mind. She is reliable, over-worked, Girton, proudly uncreative. She wishes there were only dead authors. Living ones are beneath her attention. Even dead ones shuffle naked and anxious before her. Shakespeare trembles. Once, somewhere, long ago, surely some little thread of poetry touched a nerve of Dulcie Baxter? One wonders. Tick, tick, cross.

And up behind her tiptoes old Richard with a cup of tea. He sets it reverently beside her, and she nods.

I turn along the High Street and all the little shop-windows. There's an end shop that has a flattering old mirror set in the wall that has brought comfort to me over the years. But tonight I have a mazy look. I turn left. Down the line of little cottages I go, the servants' cottages of the big houses a hundred years back. A woman with a grim pony-tail is playing a violin through double-glazing so that there's no way of knowing if the music matches the passion of her widow's face. She's alone. I watch for a bit to see if she'll explode into little bits—stars and comets that stick to the ceiling like wet confetti. She did this for me last week. Then on, and round the corner I go towards home, towards the retentive darkness of the Church.

But the Church is blazing with light, and as I look, amazed, I am filled all at once with thoughts of Henry. His Church alight so late and quite without his authority—however could he bear it? He, the good Church-warden? I know all at once, too, that there is some mystery about Henry's departure to Dolphin Square with its pellucid pool, its face shut to the river, its sinister underground car-park, some mystery that I ought to be able to solve. It is perhaps something that everyone knows but I.

Now it is getting towards midnight. The little block of expensive flatlets to the west of the Church's west door is all in darkness. Across the road the artless-looking woman who is always being burgled and sits up late with a cudgel in her lap, even she is in darkness. Nearby is the house of the woman who gives little fork-lunches with her friends, to talk of their salad days, and at night pads off clink, clink with a bag to the Leather Bottle—she is in darkness, too. Glaring in on all of them in their beds are the six long windows of the north transept. The wide window of the south wall blazes down on the block of flats.

St. Saviour's is one hundred-and-fifty years old, built as a chapel of ease for the parish church which had proved to be too small for the intensity of Christianity at the time of the Oxford Movement. It represents one of the dying breaths of the Pre-Raphaelites when the Brotherhood was grown rash like Picasso in old age running about with pink toilet rolls and making them into sugar-pink doves. Our windows are mostly coloured splashes of glass so garish that through the thirties there were petitions to have them taken out. War came and the windows survived. The raspberry-red robes, the purple camels, the orange palm trees scarcely rattled when the land-mine hit Rathbone Road. Here they still shine.

And tonight, this dark night, Joan, they shone indeed. They blazed their kaleidoscope of tall slabs, basted with lead like the wrong side of an embroidery, across the black streets. As I drew near, I heard the sound of the Church organ.

I stepped inside the porch and stood. Joan—I never heard such organ playing in my life. The fabric of the building vibrated. The camels and the cacti and the rainbow saints shuddered with awe and joy. Boom, boom the music surged and rolled, ever louder, ever more tremendous, more fearful and more solemn. The dogs began to whimper and whine. They dragged on their leads. I stood there shaking and exalted with an almost sexual shuddering. Winding the two leads over my hands, I dragged the dogs towards the Church door and tried to turn the handle, but it was locked.

The music now rose higher and higher as I shook the door and I sank on my knees with my forehead on the big iron ring of the handle and I felt the Church inside fill with music as the sea is filled with tides, as a glass filled convex to the brim. The music passed through the door until I was filled up with it, too. It flooded me. I took the dogs home and ate another piece of cake, and a small pie.

Then, Joan, I knew I must go back. It's all very well to receive a religious experience but one must relate it afterwards to the world of every day. I had to know exactly what had been happening inside the Church. It was my duty as a sidewoman. I had not done any pew-dusting for weeks—no one had noticed—so there was every reason for me to be there and nowhere, I think, is it written down that we shouldn't do our Church-work at midnight. Off I set again, alone, and found St. Saviour's now in darkness and quite silent. I took the key from its place inside the south door, above the noticeboard, behind the loose stone, and I wondered why I had not remembered it was there before. Had whoever it was who had been playing, used it? Locked himself in with it? Only just put it back?

The key did not feel just put back. It felt cold, as if it had been in its little damp grave a long time, yet the only other key, except for the Vicar's, is always in the clergy-house. A third was once with Henry. Perhaps it is now with whoever his proxy is—I've never asked. Perhaps it lies on Henry's still no doubt meticulous, fastidious desk-top in Dolphin Square? Your Simon had a key once you may remember, Joan, when he was doing his first organ exams, but that was several years ago. I remember that Simon used to practise at night. There were complaints about it.