In Another Country (24 page)

2

 

In Rhayader they went first to the solicitor's, to sign. Seth had insisted that it be in Carrie's sole name, so she signed. He cradled the baby in his arms and watched. The man was polite, punctilious; if he found a client odd he would never show it. Seth felt as remote from him, fellow humans though they were, as one star is in fact from any other. All people in professions, decently dressed, decently doing their jobs, they were moving further and further away from him. He bowed his head over the sleeping child. He prayed his wife would never go from him into the icy distances while he lived. The estate agent's was a few doors along. They collected the keys. The man was jolly, heartily wished them both good luck, extended a little finger to touch the baby's cheek. Was there anything in his manner which said he was glad to be shot of the place and rather you than me?

Rhayader looked a nice town, simple on the axis of a clock tower. The waters felt very near, and the cold breath of the hills. Carrie remembered it well enough and they shopped quickly. It was late February, the daylight would soon give out, they wanted to arrive before dark.

Seth drove. Carrie held the baby on her knees, on the open map. The road climbed the river, which was rising, they heard it roar, the tires hissed over sheets of running wet. After a while they must take a junction left, out of woodland and across the narrow reservoir, a sinuous long water whose lapping edge they clung to. So far so good. The lake seemed to double the light of the clear sky, giving them more time, a reprieve. Then, sharp right, the thin road took up with another river, doubling it exactly. Carrie opened the window. Such a din entered, the river hurtling in excess of the course at its disposal. The hills, streaked white with headlong tributaries, opened and were revealed on either side, very beautiful, terribly exposed. Seth, as so often lately, viewed himself and his enterprise with fear and pity, like a spectator. As though from high above he viewed the cumbersome white van, in which was everything he owned and loved, crawling forward at the mercy of the universe. He admired the three of them, loved them intensely, wished for their safe arrival; but remotely, as though they were fictions, actors, a lively dramatization. Carrie was in doubt. She had begun to wish it should be dark before they arrived, that he saw the place for the first time in a fresh daylight. She felt answerable, the onus on her felt as vast as the opening hills. Not that he would not like it, but that he would like it too well. Was she not siding with him against himself? Was it not a conniving in his destruction? The daylight lasted, they were far west, the stars appeared on a sky still white.

Then the road ended, they were at the dam, up under it, up against it. A stream came tumbling off the hill, the hill came steeply down in rocks, and there in the angle, between rocks and sheer black wall, on a platform reached by a raddled track, stood the house. Carrie shook her head, wondering over herself, appalled. But Seth had jumped out and stood marvelling in the cold air. He took the baby from her arms, helped her down. Home from home, he said. Well done! He was radiant. He seemed shocked back into proximity. At once he had energy, the spirits, the courage for anything. She unlocked the door, it needed a heave to open it. Never to be forgotten, the first breath of the place, the soot, the damp. The electric, he said. Can you remember where? She could. They had lights. Now for a fire, he said. I saw a woodpile. She followed him out, stood by him. He turned with his arms full of logs, faced the sheer black wall. Beloved wife, he said, I shall work here. Under the stars they lugged their brass bed from the van.

Craig Ddu was a dead end. The road stopped there, it was for Midlands Water and the few tourists. A car park, a public toilet, a phone box, all like a failed outpost. And from under the massive wall the original river set forth again, ignominiously. True, in no time at all, fed fresh water by the free streams off the hills, it had recovered and rattled along with the dam behind it like a fading nightmare. The house itself, older than the dam, a survivor of the colossal works and shoved by them into a new relationship with the world—the house itself wanted living in. There was an acre around it and forty more vaguely up the hillside and a little way downstream. But the wall was so close and towering it seemed to Carrie that at the least diminution of their resolve they must lose the contest and be overwhelmed. Again she wondered at her choosing it for Seth. Was it vengeful? But Seth went from room to room and paced the territory blessing her name. He said his love and gratitude were as vast as the backed-up waters behind the wall. So she was reassured, but still with an anxiety that his exaltation, her doing, was itself a precipitous and dizzying thing. But they had days full of appetite and savour and at nights their love was like a miracle at their disposal. The house warmed. They owned a copse of twenty or thirty shattered firs, fuel forever, so it seemed.

Carrie drove into Rhayader, to stock up. They needed blades, paint, sand and cement, as well as food. Seth watched her out of sight, a long while. After that, with little Gwen slung on his chest, he continued to discover how rich he was. He found a damp place in the very angle of rock and wall, a lighter green and lit up with celandines. It was a spring, and only wanted cleaning. In a stone barn he found a collapsed tractor; and a scythe, a rake, pitchforks, all wormy wood and rusted steel, that he would surely mend and put to use again. He fed Gwen, laid her down for a sleep, sat on the boards and leaned against the cot, dozing. He felt fuller than the rivers. He must have slept for a little while soundly. His face was wet with tears when he woke. Only grasp it, even a small part of it, make even a little of it able to be seen! Joyful commission, courage to come up to it! Gwen was waking. Together they went and sat in a mild sun, to watch down the length of the river and the road for Carrie coming home. Scores of rabbits browsed and scurried below them over their ragged estate. Benign neglect.

It was a week before they climbed to see the lake. They might have gone down through the car park to the road which served the dam ordinarily; but they had seen, with a shock, a steep path, almost a stairway, starting behind their house, near the celandines and the newly discovered spring. That was the way they must go, arduous, secret, starting from their own ground. So cold, so damp—more than damp, the hillside oozed and trickled and spurted with more water than it could hold. The rocks were soft with moss, tufted with the ferns that, in their fashion, luxuriate in chill and wetness. Seth cupped the baby's head and steadied her against him, against his chest, in the warm sling. They were in an angle, almost a chimney, close into the join of dam and hillside, hard up against an unimaginable body of water behind its engineered restraint. At first, for about half the climb, they were in a shadow akin to darkness at noon, eclipsed. Seth turned whenever the stairway allowed it, for Carrie to come up. Over the bright scarf on her head he took in their new home and beyond that the river, its recovered force, its intrusion and insinuation through the resistance of the hills. How slight and at the same time vigorous and cunning they were, to climb an intricate and precipitous stairway under a deep reservoir of water, the child pressed against him felt as brave and tiny as a wren, he felt her pulse to be infused into his own, married in, blood into beating blood. The day had grandeur, like a heroic expedition, like a myth.Then they were in the sun, the low sunshine of the dawning of the spring, it warmed and illuminated the greens and the tones of gold, they climbed with a faint warmth on their backs, felt for it with their faces when they paused and turned, like a whisper of earthly everlasting life, a breath, an intimation, infinitely delicate and poignant against the immensity of the immured waters up which they climbed.

Their arrival, a last steep haul, landed them in a grave uncertainty of feeling, with no words. It was like surfacing: there lay the level water. Come up through the depths they were level now with miles of length and breadth, the far reaches winding away invisibly in many bays and inlets and the inexhaustible hills continuously contributing. The total bulk exceeded comprehension, like a starry sky. From the far head of the lake, or rather from off the hills and harrowing softly over the face of the lake, came a cold breeze. The water lapped steadily at the ramparts under them, the water came on and on, without end, hit against the stone, each wave that ceased in its particular self being at once renewed and replicated. Somewhere in the distance, out of sight, was an infinite spawning of waves against the dam. Quite suddenly their little human enterprise seemed futile. They became anxious for the baby, the necessary energy was lapsing out of them. There was a watchtower halfway along, locked and boarded up, but they hid in its lee, saw to little Gwen and settled then without much regret on the ugly and ordinary way to climb and descend, the Water Board's metalled road. Clouds were driving up, such hurtling clouds, you might stand and watch the world occluded in three minutes.

 

What are you thinking?

About the dam.

Don't.

Not badly, I wasn't thinking about it in a bad way.

What way then?

Only about the water. How it naturally wants to be level.

Not there it doesn't.

No not there. There it wants to go headlong, and be level later. Real lakes are different. They're serene in comparison. When it's too much, they overflow. That's very gentle. But the water up there, even when it's still, all the weight of it doesn't want to lie like that. It wants to be headlong.

Stop it.

Can't stop thinking. I was thinking about the waves as well.

Kiss me instead. Love me. I want you.

 

Carrie was feeding the baby by the window. Such a view from there, away from the dam, downstream through oaks and rowans towards the little hidden town. On the draught through the sash window she could smell a bonfire. Always a bonfire, so much to clear and burn. Seth came in, went upstairs, she heard him rummaging, floorboards and ceiling were one and the same. Peaceful feeding; the quiet view, the scent of smoke. Sometimes she dozed as the baby did. Seth went out again, she glimpsed him, what was he carrying? She dozed. Then it broke in on her. Oh no! Oh no, not that! She ran out, her dress undone, Gwen's eyes flung open wide.

He held a portfolio open on his left arm and sheet by sheet he was feeding it to the flames. Carrie halted, clutching the baby tight. He was like a man on a ledge. Should she snatch at him or quietly, quietly talk him to safety? Seth, don't, she said, soft as the small rain. He turned, his face was rapt. She hated to see it. Grief, despair, would have been easier to view in him, not rapture, feeding his work to a bonfire. No harm, my love, nothing wrong, he said in the voice of some peculiar wisdom. I see my way, I see I have to begin again. Seth, for my sake, stop it. She saw sketches and drawings, beloved likenesses, herself in the little churchyard above their allotment, a warm and vivid picture of their hearth, the burnished kettle, the rug, the glossy range. I have to, he said. One folder lay on the earth, wide open, wholly empty. Soon be over, won't take long. Then we'll begin again. They're ours, she said, they're not just yours. When they're done they belong to both of us. Herself in her sixth month, peaceable. The baby newborn. How can you? There was Jonah, seated at their kitchen table, manifestly content. And again and again, there were the heroic arches of the viaduct, striding across the town. Everything? All of it? He would not be talked into safety. Carrie made a grab for the portfolio, dislodged it from his arm, spilled out the remainder on the ground. Pictures lay under the sky, half a dozen of Benjamin. Seth's face jolted and altered, as though from a stroke. Bitch, he said in a voice like a ventriloquist's. Bitch, you are in my way, you and your bastard you are in my way. And he reached for the pitchfork, newly mended, wrenched it from the earth, raised it, stabbed and stabbed at the images and rammed home all he could of them hard into the fire. Gwen was screaming. Carrie went on her knees, scrabbling together what few sheets were left. Seth leaned on the new handle, worked the prongs free, and stood back. He saw her breasts, her weeping face, what he had done.

 

Listen to the rain.

So soft.

And the streams, can you hear the streams?

All of them, near and far.

It's gone again. I'm better. I feel you have forgiven me.

I love you. Nothing else matters. I will forgive you anything. Except the one thing which you know about. Do that and I will haunt you day and night in hell.

Where is he, do you think?

Who?

Benjamin.

I don't know.

Does he know where we are?

How could he?

 

Gwen woke. Seth went naked to her room, reached down into her white cot, lifted her warm and snuffling against him. Carrie sat up, reached for her, all in the tranquil darkness. The baby's whimpering became a focussed hurry; then she settled into the blissful certainty of satisfaction. Seth stood by them in the dark, Carrie leaned her head against him. The baby had her hunger exactly answered. He went to the window, parted the heavy curtains, looked down. He could make out the water, like the ghost of the milky way, a soft luminance in movement. He could almost believe that the dam was a natural lake that has no wish to topple but in a measured fashion gives into the valley. Across the cold room Carrie said:

 

I suppose he visits his mother.

Did he say?

He said he always would.

He is very loyal. You could write to him there.

I suppose I could look for that address.

 

Seth came back to bed, obliterated his face against her, dozed, woke when it was time to carry the sleeping child back to her cot. Like a little boat, he always thought, a safe little ark, into which he laid her, in which she drifted safely on the waters of her sleep, returning, calling out in the dark when next she needed a reassurance of the close connectedness and safety of her world.