Her Living Image (20 page)

“Six. It’s OK. I’m getting good at walking in my sleep.”

Bryony had finally found a job she liked, after various bizarre false starts, and months on social security. She was a postwoman, walking on a round that actually included their own street. It
seemed to Caro that she had probably discovered the only job in the world which was suited to her strange requirements. She wanted to be out in the open air, but excluded farming and gardening
because of the evils of chemical fertilizers, pesticides, and hybrid animals/plants which deviated from nature’s intentions. (“Nature intended them all to be small and prickly,”
Clare had pointed out unkindly in one animated discussion.) She did not want to be responsible for the reckless consumption of any of the earth’s resources in the shape of fuel, and so a
round on foot suited her perfectly. She did not want to be employed by a private, capitalist firm; the GPO was at least nationalized. She did not want to find herself in a hierarchical situation in
relation to others at work, thereby creating false barriers and reinforcing the capitalist class structure. Since she did her round alone, this was not a problem. She wanted to wear what she liked,
or at least sensible clothes and her everlasting shoes, which she could do. She wanted to have some measure of control over her own productivity – which she could exercise by walking more
quickly or slowly. And she wanted to be doing something manifestly useful. Which it was. There were problems about being the carrier of bills, final demands, and offensive advertising material, but
as far as Caro knew Bryony overcame her scruples sufficiently to deliver all mail except for a succession of very obvious plain brown envelopes, which were frequently sent to one particular address
on her route. These she threw away, rightly assuming that whoever had requested such filthy pornography would be too embarrassed to complain about its non-arrival.

Caro liked Bryony very much, now. It had taken a long time for the initial hostility and suspicion between them to wear off. Bryony was the most definite, dogmatic, and (in the defence of her
own ideas) fierce person Caro had ever met at close quarters. She was also absolutely open and honest; her integrity blazed through all the details of cranky behaviour which the execution of her
principles in her daily life demanded of her. She was intolerant and contemptuous of the majority of the human race, whom she saw as wasteful, deluded, and politically ignorant. In particular she
disliked men, because her political analysis revealed them to be oppressors, and responsible as a sex for many of the worst aspects of our civilization (war, the arms race, the stock exchange,
rape, science, motor cars, additives to food, defoliants, hospital management of childbirth, competitions, multinational companies, cosmetics, pornography and vivisection). Because she disliked
men, she did not cultivate their friendship. She was intensely loyal and endlessly kind to those (women) she knew well and respected.

They ate their toast in silence. When they had finished Bryony put the kettle on and asked again, “What’s up?”

“Oh – I don’t know. I’ve been talking to Clare.”

Bryony nodded.

“It was my fault. I was talking about children. I always forget – it just doesn’t seem to go with her, having a kid.”

“No. It does seem odd.”

There was another silence, then Bryony said, “Do you want kids?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. Do you?”

“No. Oh no – I wouldn’t want to be responsible for landing someone else in this mess.”

“Well – it’s not – like that, is it? In practice? I mean, you look after it and protect it. . . .”

“For a bit. You’re not going to be able to protect it from radiation, are you? or brain damage caused by lead in the atmosphere? or cancer caused by preservatives in
food?”

“No. I suppose not.”

Bryony busied herself making coffee. Her voice softened.

“In a way I would like to very much. But – what right have we got?”

“None. But people do.”

“Yes. People do.” She sat down again.

“There are –” Carolyn hesitated “– there have always been external dangers, anyway. I mean, children used to die of diseases which are stamped out now. Children
used to have to work in dreadful conditions, in factories and mines. There have always been wars. If everyone had waited until they could promise their children a safe life, the human race would be
extinct.”

“Yes. But – some situations are worse than others. People stop having children when the future they face is too appalling. Look at the Red Indians. If you have a child, OK, you know
it may die of illness or accident – but isn’t it different, if you know the whole world might be blown up and poisoned?”

“But you can’t be responsible for the world, Bryony.”

“Who will be then?”

“I don’t know.”

“Even on a small scale – all right? Even the things that are within your scope. A child’s education – they would teach it things I didn’t want it to learn, at
school. It would pick up all sorts of violent, sexist ideas from TV –”

“You’d want to control its life.”

“Yes.”

“But people have to make their own choices.”

“It’s not a choice, though, is it? If you grew up in a certain kind of society, you adopt its values.”

“You didn’t.”

“No. But I’m a freak.”

“Well, you might have a freakish child.”

Bryony laughed. “I might. Better not to have one, I think.” She put her mug in the sink and said goodnight. Caro waited in the kitchen till she heard Bryony’s heavy tread going
from the bathroom to her bedroom. Then she went upstairs herself.

Caro dreamed she was driving along a straight empty road. The grassy countryside was flat on either side, stretching away as far as the eye could see. The bare road bisected it
like a parting. There were no other cars. She pressed her foot down and the car leapt forwards along the road. She was going faster than the wind but nothing moved, there were no landmarks, simply
more of the same scenery. It was like running on the spot. Then there was a dot in the distance, on the left side of the road. It grew bigger with incredible speed, she was whizzing towards it. She
must slow down or she’d miss it. She took her foot off the accelerator and put it on the brake, and as the car slowed she could see now that it was a child, a toddler with a red woolly hat
on. His back was to her, he was toddling along purposefully in the same direction as her, across that bleak empty landscape. She stopped next to him but he ignored her and kept on walking. She
moved on and pulled up in front of him.

“I’ll give you a lift,” she called, and opened the passenger door. The child looked at her and climbed up on to the seat. He did not say anything. She leaned across to pull
the door shut after him and felt his warm breath on her cheek. “Where are you going?” she asked, but he didn’t answer. She thought, he’s too young, he can’t talk yet.
He sat leaning against the back of the seat with his legs stretched out straight in front of him. His feet in their little red shoes just reached the edge of the seat. He was tiny. He was wearing
blue trousers and little white socks. He stared ahead through the windscreen, his hands clasped in his lap, and she started to drive again. On and on they went, and the scenery never changed. She
didn’t know if they had been driving for minutes or days. The little boy sat still and never moved. But each time she glanced at him she felt a shock. He was so small. He’s getting
smaller, she thought, and she tried to watch him as she drove. But she couldn’t see him getting smaller, any more than you can watch a plant growing. She was convinced he was shrinking.

He was staring at the glove box now, he was too low to see out of the window. But his clothes must be shrinking too, she thought, that’s not possible. His little red hat and shoes still
fitted him.

But he was tiny now, his feet only reached to halfway across the seat, he was only about twelve inches tall. What if he vanishes? she thought. Oh no, he couldn’t, how silly. How silly I
am. She felt relieved and pressed her foot down again. In the distance now she could see a big silvery building. It was the hospital. Not long now, she thought, they’ll soon see if
there’s anything wrong with him. As the hospital grew bigger and nearer, she glanced again at the little boy and saw with horror that he was tiny. He was nestling in the crack at the back of
the seat, he was smaller than a doll, he was no more than five inches long. Desperately she pressed on but she knew with an awful certainty that he would vanish before she got there.

She picked him up with her left hand and held him clasped in her palm. She could feel him shrinking by the second. Only one thing to do, she told herself, to make sure he’s safe. And she
opened her mouth and put him inside, on top of her tongue. He’ll be quite safe now. Carefully she turned in through the wide hospital gates. She was so relieved that she had saved him. She
jumped out and ran through the swing doors and over to a desk where a nurse in a white uniform sat waiting.

“It’s a baby,” she said, “he’s shrinking but I think he can be saved.” She put her fingers into her mouth to take him out – There was nothing there.
He’d gone.

She cried and rammed her fingers down her throat. “I’ve swallowed – I must have swallowed him –” There was a bitter taste in her mouth, a dusty lumpy bitter taste
of lemons and ashes dissolving, dissolving. . . .

The nurse looked at her calmly and smiled.

“You’ve got to get him out!” she screamed, and the nurse smiled and shook her head.

“I’m sorry we can’t help you dear,” she said.

Caro woke up covered in sweat, the bitter taste still in her throat.

When Alan and Carolyn had been married for four years, Alan’s grandmother (Lucy’s mother) died, leaving him and Pamela £20,000 each. Everyone was
surprised. Lucy and her mother had fallen out years before, and the children hardly knew her. She had lived alone, with a housekeeper and gardener, ever since her husband died of a heart attack
thirty years before. To Lucy, her only child, she left nothing.

Coinciding as it did with Alan’s trainee appointment to the firm of Lark and Clarkson, Architects, back in the city where he was born, the money marked the beginning of a new era in
Alan and Carolyn’s married life. Suddenly they zoomed up the social scale. Or rather, Alan bobbed back, to float again at that level from which (in his family’s eyes at least) Carolyn
had dragged him down. They bought a house in the wealthy area to the south of the city some twenty miles away from their parents. It was “respectable semi-detached Victorian gothic”,
according to Alan. A palace, Carolyn told herself, a dream house. The roof sloped steeply, and the front of the house was ornamented with mock-Tudor black and white beams. There were four bedrooms.
In the back garden, the oval lawn was surrounded by beautifully tended flowering shrubs and bushes, giving complete privacy.

Alan lay on his back on the grass, hands clasped under his head, eyes closed. The sun was pleasantly warm on his skin. From the garden around him came murmurs of sound which
were as soothingly constant as the sunshine. He could hear Carolyn reading a story to Annie, the words coming clear at certain points then fading back to a murmur, “
UP
jumped the troll . . . I want to eat you up. No! No! mmmm mm mmmm. . . .”

He could hear the constant rapid clicking of Meg’s knitting needles, and her erratic conversation with Christopher, who was lying on the grass at her feet, drawing. “What’s
that, Chrissy?”

“It’s a rocket.”

Long pause.

“Ninety-two. Is it? That’s very good. Will you do me one to take home with me and put on the wall?”

Rustle of paper.

“Of – what?” Christopher’s serious childish voice, making that odd little pause between words, as if he still needed to think of them.

“Um – just a minute love – a hundred and ninety-four, good. Um, do one of your Mummy and Daddy for me, will you?”

Further away, intermittent, came the sound of Arthur’s clippers. He was having a go at the privet hen. The privet hen had been a joke ever since they moved in; a piece of topiary of
which the house’s previous owner had been inordinately proud. Very quickly it grew ragged and dishevelled. Carolyn had had a couple of goes at it and made it into – well, more of a
privet dodo than a hen. Now at her request Arthur tackled it, serious and silent as ever. Alan was glad he was busy. There was, even now, a strain between the two men.

“We must be going, Carolyn,” Meg raised her voice to interrupt.

“You’re sure you won’t stay for tea?”

“No love, we d rather get back before it’s late. Your Dad’ll want to pop down and see his blessed allotment before we go to bed anyway. We’ve had a lovely day,
haven’t we Arthur? And I’ve got a piece of ham that’ll spoil if we don’t eat it tonight.”

“There’s plenty of food.”

“I know there is love, I know there is.”

Annie started to clamour for the story to go on.

“Stand up a minute, Christopher, and let me measure this.” The clicking stopped and Meg muttered to herself. “There’s a good boy – oh yes, that’s plenty
long enough. Carolyn – ?”

Carolyn stopped reading again.

“I’ll get this finished this week. Will you be coming over next weekend?”

“No, it’s all right Mum. He won’t need it for a bit if this weather goes on. Anyway, I’ll be seeing you before long. I think Alan’s got a weekend course coming
up. Alan? Oh, is he asleep?”

Alan pretended to be. “I’ll find out when it is, anyway. I think it might be the week after next. I’ll bring the children over to see you then.”

“On the train?”

“Yes, if Dad’ll meet me at the station –”

“Of course he will. We shall look forward to that. Will you come and stay at Nana’s house, Chrissy? Well, let’s get ourselves sorted out.”

He heard the garden chair squeak and sigh as she heaved herself out of it.