Judith (34 page)

Lilia said to the man ‘We don't want to talk to you. Why don't you go away.'

The man said ‘You two girls could be in a lot of trouble.'

I thought – Lilia, you said ‘we'!

A woman appeared behind the counter of the bar and began taking down the grille. She was a heavy-faced woman with upturned spectacles and grey hair.

I thought – She is a major-general in drag: she may start to kick up her heels and dance and sing?

The man said ‘Now tell me what you know.'

Lilia said ‘I'll have a vodka and tomato juice, please.'

I said ‘Whisky and water, please.'

The man said ‘Two vodkas, a whisky and a tomato juice.'

The woman poured out drinks as if she had never poured out drinks before. I thought – You mean she is such an obvious major-general in drag, her disguise is impenetrable, she is really a major-general in drag?

The man said ‘You were told this place was out of bounds.'

Lilia said ‘I'm meeting my child.'

The man said ‘You're meeting your child.'

Lilia said ‘Yes.'

The man said to me ‘What is the name of your film company?'

Lilia looked at me. I thought – I suppose I should find out whether or not Lilia knows about the bomb.

I said to the man ‘What do you know about this bomb?'

Lilia said ‘What bomb?'

The man said ‘What bomb?'

I said ‘We told you all we know this morning.'

Lilia said ‘I must go and look for my child.'

The man said ‘You're staying here.'

I thought – That was a mistake?

Then – But I could not not have said, could I, there might be a bomb in the battle-area –

I had the impression that Lilia might know something that I did not know: or perhaps we were both trying to tell the other – to find out – whatever it was that was hidden in the stone.

The man turned to Lilia. He had his back to me. He said ‘Now tell me what you know.'

Lilia, over the man's shoulder, said to me ‘I don't think he did want to come back and meet me here!'

I said ‘Why not?'

Lilia said ‘I don't know.'

She looked up at the staircase behind her on the left as if she were expecting someone to come down. I thought – A messenger? Jason? (Well, where in God's name were you?)

After a time the man looked up the staircase.

I thought I might smile and say – You two, have a nice time!

Lilia said again ‘I must go.'

The man said again ‘You're staying here.'

I said ‘I'm going. I'll find the child.'

I thought – Holofernes, he prefers her to me?

The woman behind the bar said ‘They say they've got hold of this radioactive material, did you know?'

There are times, do you not think, when one gives up even trying? I thought – These two people who have come in are phantoms: why should we try to understand the shadows on
the walls of the cave?

The man said ‘Have you been upstairs?'

The woman behind the bar said ‘No.'

The man took hold of Lilia's arm.

I thought I might say – Don't touch her! She's been outside!

The woman behind the bar said ‘It may be a diversion.'

The man said ‘Oh it's a diversion all right!'

I went towards the exit to the pub. No one tried to stop me. I thought – You mean, simply, that I'm the one to go?

There is that theory, is there not, that when something of importance is known to one member of the tribe, this knowledge is transmitted to other members secretly?

I heard the woman behind the bar saying ‘That one can go?'

The man like Holofernes said ‘Yes, that one can go.'

I thought – Well, bring his head along in a basket.

Lilia, of course, did look like an angel all in white: with her drawn sword above a battlefield.

I thought – It is instructions that are transmitted to each member of the tribe?

As I went out of the door I did have the impression, yes, that there might be someone looking down from a corner of the ceiling.

– Ladies and gentlemen, a fuse has blown: will you, or will you not, kindly leave the theatre?

There was almost no one left on the village green. There were cans and plastic bags and a few burst balloons. Policemen were still chatting in front of the gates of the airbase: on the horizon the noses of aeroplanes poked out above their lairs. I thought – This is the sort of landscape which depends on the chance of a bomb going off: people have to come to dead-ends in their ways through the maze.

Moving on my own, across this littered world, I had an impression of bits and pieces flying out from their box: splinters of light like flocks of birds migrating.

I was going towards the wood by the fence at the far side of the entrance gates. I had understood that here I would find whatever was left of the camp of the women. Here I also might
find Eleanor and the child. I could not remember quite why I had felt so strongly that I had to do this. A splinter of light becomes lodged in your mind like a wingbeat, flying.

I have not explained, have I (to you who bumps into this), about Eleanor. Eleanor is the Professor's wife, the old lady with black hair and bright-blue eyes that Jason talked about in his letter about the birth of the child. She was, yes, the witch-doctor of our tribe.

There has been this gap, hasn't there, of seven years. People came and went. Eleanor was not with the Professor much. She was there when you looked for her. She was like one of those eternal figures seated on the banks of the Nile.

It was not that nothing had happened to me during those seven years (there were times when what was happening to us, Jason, was like the knives of kingfishers' wings above dark pools of light). It was just that what was happening now, around and about this battle-area, was connected, I suppose, to what had happened to me that first time I was in London and also during my time in the Garden; there are these jumps, are there not, every seven years (at the end of each segment of the staircase?). You land, and you are ready to take off again; to take the lid off a further box, is it? (Where there are bits and pieces like light?)

I am so grateful still (prayers remain the same) for all of this: for the sheep like stars and the kingfishers' wings and the fishes that go back to the rivers where they were born. I am grateful to the chaos and darkness: to the sun and moon like gravity. I am grateful to you: to Bert; to the Professor: to everyone I have ever loved: to you and you who are with me now (who are you!). There are the other figures, statues, stories, around some corner. Walls fall down: birds whizz between openings in the maze.

There is myself walking through that wood; there is myself at the window writing this. The Professor is a little better today, thank you. Bert is coming to visit us. Eleanor was here the other day.

And where are you, Jason! Of course, it was right for you
to stay away. Things will sort themselves out. You will be, yes, with your child and Lilia.

But would you have written it like that, if you had not thought that you would one day come across me again!

The undergrowth on either side of the path through the wood had become trampled as if armies had passed there: among the trees there were mounds, or scrap-heaps, of plywood, plastic and sacking – the shelters of what had been the encampment of the women. I thought – Why are men so frightened of witches? is it because they fear the darkness in themselves – that of the hags in the temple, as well as that of the child?

But it is true that in those old dramas, when men came across women at their secret rituals in the forest, it was the men who were torn to pieces.

You used to say – What will happen when women come smiling out of the forest: then men will see that they have been their own terror?

I was going further into the forest. I thought – I am like Red Riding Hood going to visit her grandmother: of course Red Riding Hood knew her grandmother was a wolf! why else would she have gone to visit her?

In this strange wood there were bits of wool like knitting hung from the trees. I thought – Yes, but if women become gentle, authoritative, will there be networks like spiders' webs, like notations for music, hung from trees?

– Hullo, hullo, do you hear me?

In story-books things happen by chance, do they not?

In a further clearing of the forest there was a horse. The horse was standing with its reins hanging down. I thought – There was that figure riding on the edge of the battle-area?

Did not Lilia say that Eleanor had her horse?

At the back of the clearing in the forest was a Nissen-type hut with the door off its hinges. In the middle of the clearing there was the remains of a fire. The horse was standing by the fire with its reins hanging down. Eleanor was lying on the ground beside the horse.

I thought – Well, why should it in fact be more unusual that one set of things should happen rather than another?

Eleanor was lying on her back with her hands folded. She wore a long dress of rough material the colour of earth. I thought – Come on, where is that ring of fire!

Lilith used to lie on her rock? Brunnhilde was asleep for – what? – more than seven years!

I remember saying to you once – Don't you think it is ridiculous how travellers in novels of the eighteenth century keep on bumping into one another? and you said – Perhaps it was because there were so few travellers in the eighteenth century.

Do you think there are so few travellers in this dimension now?

Eleanor was this elderly lady with a pudding-basin haircut. I knew, yes, it was her custom to travel round on a horse. I knew she had been intending to visit the camp of the women. You see, I am on my guard: it is counter-productive to talk of luck?

I said to the Professor today – What is chance? He said – Chance is what you have techniques to observe but not to explain. I said – Such as what goes on in an atom. He said – Oh, for goodness' sake, an atom!

I sat on the fallen trunk of a tree some distance from Eleanor. If there is unheard music, and time has to pass – we can walk across a stage and sit upon ruined pillars?

Eleanor lay as if on a tomb. I thought – And a tree, I suppose, might grow out of her middle!

The Professor has been in some pain today. It was Eleanor who taught me to press upwards and outwards with my hands: to feel for the stone within the tree: to say – Is it here? Is it here?

We separate the earth from the firmament – in seven days: in seven years?

When Eleanor woke – old people, unlike children, wake as if they had never been away – she put out a hand as if to feel that her horse was there: she took hold of its bridle; the horse
raised its head, and Eleanor was lifted by this into a sitting position. She said ‘Hullo.' I said ‘Hullo.' She said ‘What's up?' I said ‘I don't know.' She said ‘I'm not surprised.'

Eleanor had these bright-blue eyes in a nut-brown face. She must have been in her seventies at this time. She journeyed on her horse: she used to pop up here and there like someone in a mediaeval tapestry. (You thought I was going to say a fun-fair shooting-range?) One got the impression from her of a unicorn round some corner.

I said ‘Lilia's lost her child. We thought he might be with you. Lilia's holed up with some official. Bert's got a story about a bomb being planted in the battle-area.'

Eleanor said ‘How's Max?'

I said ‘He's not too bad.'

‘Is the pain any better?'

‘Yes, I think it's better.'

The horse kept on pulling at Eleanor's arm as she held the bridle, so that her arm worked up and down like a pump. I said ‘And Bert got picked up by a helicopter.'

She said ‘He'd like that.'

I said ‘Yes. He'd climbed to the top of the façade of that building. I expect the helicopter belongs to his film company.'

She said ‘Bert likes to feel omnipotent.'

When one talks with Eleanor there is often the impression of topics coming to an end: as if anything further would be over the edge of the paper.

I said ‘I thought we should look for the child.'

She said ‘Yes let's.'

I said ‘He wasn't with you?'

Eleanor said ‘No. But he might have been with me.' I thought – You know the code; should you not know the message?

I said ‘Where do you think he could have gone? He was on his bicycle.'

‘You think he might have gone in to the battle-area?' I said ‘Why?'

She said ‘You're anxious about this bomb.'

I said ‘Bert used to tell him stories. He used to go there. When they were staying in the cottage.'

‘Yes.'

I thought I might say – Why are you smiling?

She said ‘Today would be a good day to go. Everyone will be out and around the airbase.'

I thought I might say – You know about the bomb?

I said ‘Bert says they've got hold of this radioactive material.'

She said ‘Why does he say that?'

I could not make out why, with the horse pulling so hard at Eleanor's arm, she did not stand up.

I said ‘We must do something.'

She said ‘Yes.' Then – ‘I'm afraid I've sprained my ankle.'

I said ‘Oh, I see.'

She said ‘That's all right.'

I thought I might say – I can't live like this! I might stamp my foot on the ground and cry.

Eleanor said ‘You could go on the horse, but I don't think he would leave me.'

I said ‘I can't leave you!'

Eleanor said to the horse ‘Will you go with this lady?'

The horse jerked its head so that the reins were pulled out of Eleanor's hand: it moved and stood at some distance.

Eleanor said ‘What we need is some form of transport.'

She tried to get to her feet. I put a hand under her arm and lifted her.

There was the sound of a car, or lorry, coming through the forest: it was in low gear, grinding, querulous. I thought – It will be some monster, I suppose, that she has called up out of her head. Then – You do see, it is difficult to be like this. Eleanor seemed to be trying not to notice the noise. I thought – You make your mind a blank, then your number comes up on the wheel: but how with your mind do you make your mind a blank? And so on. Eleanor and I stood, arm in arm, with the horse drooping its head somewhere behind us. I thought – We
are like a painting – of English country life in the eighteenth century.