England's Lane (38 page)

This evening, however—and mercifully—it really isn't too bad at all, my now near-habitual pain. Perfectly tolerable. A sort of blessing, I suppose, because soon I just have to slip away for a moment. I don't want to, of course—honestly, I can think of nothing I would
favor less. But goodness, you just should have heard him, the tone of his voice on the telephone. It went so very far beyond just simple concern, or even alarm. Stan, I feel sure, has come now to the point of desperation. He was barely sensible. Hardly even speaking comprehensibly, and nor did he seem able to respond to any of my quite insistent interrogation. I just had to, he kept on quite manically repeating to me, come round. Come over: I just had to. And then I would see. Christ Alive, then I would see …! Well at first I had been more than concerned that all he was doing was yet once again, and perfectly unimaginably, intending to behave so very foolishly with me … but then his really quite frantic manner had quickly eradicated all those sorts of notions. I think that if anything awful had befallen little Anthony, then Stan would simply tearfully have told me. Clearly then, some or other element of Jane just had to lie at the root of all this—and had not that recent and very possibly misguided agitation of the abiding situation been solely due to my own insistence? Well: my responsibility also, then. And so—though still with considerable reluctance—I have agreed this evening to go round to see him. And of course it is Paul who is my primary concern, here—because yes I do know of course that he no longer may be said to be an infant, but still it is beyond me to help feeling so very deeply uneasy if ever on such very rare occasions I am compelled to leave him all on his own. But I see no other way. Because of course I could not possibly have gone, could I, until Jim was safely out of the way. Well could I? For Jim, you see … well I do now feel rather reasonably sure that he is, somewhere murky within his own very smudgily illegible and extraordinary nature, nurturing some or other I am sure quite wholly unspecific suspicion with regard to my recent behavior—though for Jim to have registered even so much as a scintilla of just anything at all is more than ample demonstration, I feel, of just how lately I have become
quite reckless. And always now there must remain the very distinct likelihood, an almost certainty, that a malicious retelling of Mrs. Goodrich's mad and unfounded rumors concerning whatever she imagined she might have witnessed between myself and Stan, could well—by way of the flourishing grapevine, fed by ordure and bearing bitter fruit—finally now have reached him. And so therefore, in the light of all of this, I was hardly likely, following our supper, to casually suggest to Jim that he might this evening care to just slightly delay his pilgrimage to the pub, so that he may stay to keep a watchful eye on Paul. You ask me why, Jim …? Because I am going out for a while. Where …? I feel I cannot say. Why …? Well you see, there is someone I have to speak to. Who …? Once more, I am afraid, I must be silent. No. That—not to say his predictably full-throated reaction, this very feasibly to incorporate a barrage of typically colorful and foul-mouthed accusation—would have been considerably more at present than I could easily have borne.

And Paul too … though it fragments my heart even to think it … but Paul, he too—and I now know this to be true—he too has been sensing things. He has not escaped the web's sticky wickedness, and all of my own quite meticulous weaving. Might you suppose that here is merely the self-chastising projection upon the dear boy's white and treasured innocence of my own ungovernably blackening conscience? Ah …! I would that it were … though alas, it is not. For I know my Paul, I know him so terribly well … and I have been willfully blinding myself to the very self-evident truth of it that daily has been hanging before my eyes … and yes, although it makes me ceaselessly rock with hurt, I am afraid that now I know that it is true that he found himself no longer able to remain untroubled by a myriad of unknowable little things. I have seen it in the merest fleeting furrow of his sweet little brow. The flecks of doubt that would cluster within his eyes—and then, when I glanced
at him, how they so very rapidly were darting away instead of sparklingly fusing with mine—yes, fusing with mine in the blissful bath of mutual love and the enveloping warmth of safety, just as always they used to. And although I was hourly quite terribly tortured by the conviction that now I … that now I … that now I am doing him harm … still I found myself so very far from prepared for all that he had to say when this very morning, just as I was busy clearing away the last of the breakfast things, suddenly he was speaking to me:

“Are you all right, Auntie Milly …?”

It was the inflection, of course—there was nothing to alert me in the words. Or was there here no more than simply an observation? That clearly I am not. All right. But I must be. Mustn't I? For am I not a capable woman? Am I not the anchor? So I must be. You see. I just must. But the whole of my averted face felt pained and contorted in its strenuous efforts to contain the welling of hot tears of shame: for should he at this moment see me in that way, then all might truly be lost to him.

“Why of course I'm all right, Paul. What a thing to say. Right as rain. Of course I am. Why—are you not all right, then …?”

My voice—I heard it—had been as forcedly lighthearted as that of a cornered and mendicant politician. Paul continued to hover in the area between the kitchen and the landing, as if poised upon an early escape—twisting to and fro the door handle, his eyes alighting upon anything but me.

“Well no … not really, Auntie Milly. I mean—I'm not
ill
, or anything …”

I bit my lower lip until it really did hurt me most fearfully.

“Well what's wrong then, Paul? Tell me. You know you can tell your Auntie Milly, don't you …? Tell me anything, you can. You know that, don't you Paul …?”

“I do. Well I used to. Not too sure now. Actually. Sometimes you don't sort of listen like you used to, so there's not much point. Sometimes I say something to you and you just sort of look funny at me afterward. Like you didn't hear me, or something. And sometimes … your answers—when I ask you things, well what you say for an answer … it just doesn't make much sense. Not always, I don't mean. Just sometimes, that's all …”

I rubbed my hands quite briskly on the tea towel: it was one of a bale, a bundle of six that I'd got on Saturday from Marion's. Only three-and-eleven, you know, which I really did consider to be most terribly reasonable. Each a different colored check. This one was orange. I surreptitiously dabbed at my eyes with it.

“Well look, Paul—we've got a good five minutes till you've got to go off to school. Till you go to pick up Anthony, yes …? So why don't we go next door and have a jolly good chat about it all. Hm? Yes? Good idea?”

“Oh gosh—it's nothing really. I don't really mind. I didn't want to make something big out of it, or anything. I'm only just saying, really, because you asked me …”

“Well, Paul … it is true that … well, your Auntie Milly has had a little bit on her mind, just lately. One or two things I've just had to think about. But it was very boring grown-up sort of stuff, you know, and now it's all over and done with. So from now on—I promise you: it'll be back to the way it was in the old days. Yes? How about that? And from now on you can ask me anything you like, and I'll close my eyes and stroke my beard and listen very very very closely, and then I'll give you the proper answer. Silly Auntie Milly. Haven't I been? Oh yes—and I'll try very hard not to look at you ‘funny' any more. All right? Happy now? Everything all right again?”

He nodded, Paul, though quite agonizingly slowly. And then he looked at me sidelong—his eyes still creased into a sort of confusion.

“Yes. Okay. It's just that … well, Auntie Milly … I just thought that maybe, I don't know—that maybe you just didn't love me any more …”

Never mind what I was feeling. Never mind any of that—everything I was going through, just you push, shove, jostle and shoulder all of that to the side, force it to buckle, and get it down on to its knees. Kick and stamp on it—smother it without mercy: leave it no chance to draw breath. I flung open my arms and simply called out to him. I was empty, and whooping with need.

“Come here—come over here, Paul, and let me give you a great big kiss …!”

And he rushed to me, my little angel …! His eyes were glassy, his mouth sprung open into seemingly spontaneous glee. As I hugged him that closely, my eyes were so impossibly tightly compressed—and the tears, at last, they seeped out warmly before they tumbled, and I felt then so very utterly relieved—so loose, and quite unburdened. And when he pulled away from me, still he was beaming, and so very broadly. It appeared—oh thank you, Lord: thank you thank you thank you!—it really did appear as if somehow I had stemmed the tide: averted the sea that had risen to engulf us.

“Why are you crying, Auntie Milly …?”

“Not crying. Not a bit. Just happy, that's all. Happy because I love you, Paul—I love you, I love you, I love you …! I have always loved you, and I always shall. How could you ever think anything else …? I love you more than any single thing on God's sweet earth …! And I am just so happy that you are happy too. You are, aren't you Paul? Happy? Yes …?”

“I am. Course I am. Why shouldn't I be? I knew you loved me really … I know I said all that, but I didn't really think you didn't, honestly Auntie Milly—and I was telling that to Amanda. Not long ago we were talking and I said that to her. And she said she was
too—she said she was happy too and she really likes it because her mommy and daddy, they both love her. She says they're always laughing and everything at home and there's always these really special and expensive chocolates that Mr. Barton gets. He actually gets them for Mrs. Barton because she really likes them, but Amanda's allowed to eat them as well. I think I know the ones she means—they're in the glass sort of counter thing in Mr. Miller's, funny kind of mauve bits on top, and Anthony says they cost two-and-eleven a quarter which you could get thirty-five chews or seventy Black Jacks for, which I do actually know because we both worked it out. And he laughed, Anthony was laughing when I said it's just as well Mr. Miller never lets big fat Sally from Lindy's anywhere near all those expensive chocs because she'd either eat the lot or else smash up the counter and then go and squish them all into the floor, like she always does.”

And even as I continued to hold my special boy so very very close to me … even as I still was wincing away from such poisonous barbs already pricking at and burning the warm complexion of my new-discovered joy … still, oh God help me, did I find myself most shamefully yearning for him, the smell of him, the touch of his hands all over my body: it was Jonathan still whom I longed to be holding …! I gasped—I gasped, and I stepped away quickly, in the grip of such terrible shock. I had received my boy back into my arms, and all my thoughts were just to lustily grapple with a man who is lost to me. What vile manner of unspeakable she-devil had now I become …?!

“And another thing Amanda said—and she's really right, but I hadn't thought of it before. Well I had, but I never said. It's that all of you talk the same, and it's really nice, the way you talk. I mean, you and her parents, obviously. Not Uncle Jim. Obviously. But you do, you know—you sound more and more the same.
That's what Amanda and me think. I'd sort of noticed, but not really, if you know what I mean. It was only when Amanda said that I realized. I wish I knew all the words you know. The way you and Mr. Barton sort of describe things. But I will one day, won't I Auntie Milly? Anthony says he's decided to become a famous author when he grows up, but I'd be better, wouldn't I? Don't you think? I'd be more famous, wouldn't I? Auntie Milly …? Auntie Milly …? You're crying again. What's wrong? Have I said something wrong? Didn't mean to. Don't cry … Please don't. I really do like the way you talk. Both of you. I mean it. Honestly. I really really like it …”

“School, Paul. Yes? I've just got a weepy eye, that's all—must have got some washing-up soap in it. And you haven't said anything wrong at all. Of course you haven't. Tell you what—I'll go to the Dairies today, yes? Get you some more Corn Flakes. Yes—I thought that would please you. I know we haven't finished the last lot yet—but it's just the blue one that you're missing now, isn't it? Well maybe in this new packet, who knows? There might be a bright-blue submarine, and then you'll have the complete set! Won't you? Anthony will be green! And while I'm in there, I'll get some fish fingers. For your tea. You'd like that too, wouldn't you? And a Munchmallow for afterward …? Yes—I thought you would. Now hurry off then, Paul—you don't want to keep Anthony waiting, do you? Course you don't. And say hello to Mr. Miller from me, will you? Yes? Won't forget? Good boy. Well off you go, then. One more kiss. There. Got everything? Satchel? All right, then. Bye bye, Paul. Bye bye. See you very soon. Just one more kiss … There. I love you … oh I do so love you …”

Well all that was a bit funny—bit odd, really. She keeps on crying all the time, I don't really know why. Well I sort of do, I suppose, because of what Amanda told me—but Amanda said she looked
really happy, Auntie Milly, when she saw her, so I don't really get what there is to cry about, except that ladies do that because you see it on the television in things like
Emergency Ward 10
which is on just before
Take Your Pick
which I'd really like to be on because they dole out piles of money if you don't open the box, and if you do open the box you win stuff, and then there's the yes-no interlude when if you say yes or no they bash a gong but if you don't, then they give you more money. I think it's better than
Double Your Money
though because on that you have to know the answers to questions but I like Hughie Green because he's funny.