Riders in the Chariot (6 page)

The abstractions made her shiver. If she could have touched something--moss, for instance--or smelled the smell of burning wood.

He continued sitting in the chair, and might even have started to relent.

So, she saved him that further humiliation by going outside, and there were the stars, swimming and drowsing towards her as she put out her hands. She was walking and crying, and gulping down the effusions of light, and crying, and smearing her cheeks with the sticky backs of her rough hands.

Long after her father was dead, and disposed of under the paspalum at Sarsaparilla, and the stone split by sun and fire, with lizards running in and out of the cracks, Miss Hare acquired something of the wisdom she had denied possessing the night of the false suicide. Sometimes she would stump off into the bush in one of the terrible jumpers she wore, of brown, ravelled wool, and an old, stiff skirt, and would walk, and finally sit, always listening and expecting until receiving. Then her monstrous limbs would turn to stone, although her thoughts would sprout in tender growth of young shoots, or long loops of insinuating vines, and she would glance down at her feet, and frequently discover fur lying there from the throes of some sacrifice. If tears ever fell then from her saurian eyes, and ran down over the armature of her skin, she was no longer ludicrous. She was quite mad, quite contemptible, of course, by standards of human reason, but what have those proved to be? Reason finally holds a gun at its head--and does not always miss.

Often in the evening as she watched from the terrace of her deserted house for the chariot of fire, the woman wondered how her father would have received her metamorphoses: probably with increased disgust, although a suspect visionary himself, and on one occasion at least, standing together at the same spot, she had actually seen him twitch the veil. Now, if she had outstripped him in experience, time and silence, and the hints of nature, had given her the advantages.

So she would wait, with the breath fluctuating in her lungs, and the blood thrilling through her distended veins. She waited on the last evening before the person called Mrs Jolley was expected to arrive. And sure enough, the wheels began to plough the tranquil fields of white sky. She could feel the breath of horses on her battered cheeks. She was lifted up, the wind blowing between the open sticks of fingers that she held extended on stumps of arms, the gold of her father's bloodstone ring echoing the gold of trumpets. If, on the evening before the arrival of a certain person, an aura of terror had contracted round her, she could not have said, at that precise moment, whether it was for the first time. She could not remember. She was aware only of her present anguish. Of her mind leaving her. The filthy waves that floated off the fragments of disintegrating flesh.

Later, when she got up from the ground, she did not attempt to inquire into what might have bludgeoned her numb mind and aching body, for night had come, cold and black. She bruised knuckle on knuckle, to try to stop her shivering, and began to feel her way through the house, by stages of brocade, and vicious gilt, by slippery tortoiseshell, and coldest, unresponsive marble.

3

THE FOLLOWING day, which was that of Mrs Jolley's arrival, Miss Hare did not dare look out of the house before the morning was advanced, for fear she might suffer a repetition of her experience the night before. She did not feel strong enough for that. Still, she rose as usual, in the dark, bumping and charging as she pulled her jumper on. This morning she lit the kitchen range with twigs she had gathered, and small logs sawn slowly in advance. She also swept a little in the room which she had decided the housekeeper should use. But she did not draw curtains until she saw a wellestablished sunlight lying on the floor. Then she waited for nothing further, but went outside, and became at once involved in many little rites, both humdrum and worshipful.

The morning glittered still with pendants of swinging light and stomachers of dew. The formidable blades of taller grasses were not yet wiped free of wet. In some cases she performed for them what later the sun would do better. But she soon gave up. It was too much for her at her age. She scattered crumbs instead, and birds came down, hobbling and bobbing at her feet, clawing at her shoulders, and in one case, holding on to the ribs of her hat. With a big pair of rusty scissors, she cut crusts of bread into the sizes she knew to be acceptable. Bending so that her skirt stuck out straight behind, she became magnificently formal, like certain big pigeons, of which one or two had descended, blue, out of the gums. All throats were moving, wobbling, and hers most of all. In agreement. In the rite of birds.

Other dedicated acts were performed in order. She drew water, and set bowls. Several days earlier a snake had issued out from between the stones of the house, very black and persuasive, with tan bands along the sides. Her eyes had glistened for the splendid snake. But, although she had stood still, at once, it had failed to sense the degree of sacerdotal authority vested in the unknown woman, and returned by way of the crack in the stone, into the foundations of the house. Every morning since, she had put a saucer of milk, but the snake remained to be converted. She would wait, and eventually, of course, perfect understanding would be reached.

Morning wore away. A wind had risen, and was slashing at things, and funnelling down her front. Then she did give a slight gulp of panic, not as the result of direct physical discomfort, but because of the remoter mental pain she must suffer in the afternoon.

To say to the woman.

Miss Hare went inside.

At least she had her house. She could show her house. Its splendours would speak for her, in voices of marble and gold, to say nothing of the lesser insinuations of watered silk. So she wandered here and there, letting in always more light, and the blades of light slashed the carpets, smoking, and pillars of gold rose up in the shadows of some rooms, where they had never been before.

In a little room which had never been much used--it was, in fact, that in which she and her mother had locked themselves the night of the false suicide--she picked up a fan, of some elegance and beauty, of tortoiseshell, tufted with flamingo, which an Armenian merchant had given to her mother one winter at Aswan.

Miss Hare held the fan, but she did not dare open it on seeing her own face in the glass.

The gust of cold panic recurred.

It was time. The light told her, not her stomach, for she was seldom hungry all day long, living, it would have seemed, almost on experience; nor did clocks signal the hour at Xanadu, for clocks had stopped, and she no longer bothered to wind them up. But light told all that was ever necessary. And now the windows were gaping long and cold, with a cold, whitish light, of later afternoon.

Miss Hare began running about, doing things, and not. She did the things to her clothes that she had seen other people do. Only, she was inclined to hit, where others might have given a pat. There was nothing she could do about hair, and besides, she would be wearing the inevitable hat.

Mrs Jolley got off the bus at the post-office corner at Sarsaparilla. It could only have been Mrs Jolley, her black coat composed of innumerable panels--it appeared to be almost all seams--over what would reveal itself as the navy costume anticipated by Miss Hare. The hat was brighter, even daring, a blue blue, in spite of the mourning of which her future employer had been forewarned. From the brim was suspended, more daring, if not actually reckless, a brief mauve eye-veil. She remained, however, the very picture of a lady, waiting for identification at the bus stop, but discreetly, but brightly, and grasping her brown port.

Oh dear, then it must be done, Miss Hare admitted, and sighed.

Mrs Jolley was all the time looking and smiling, at some person in the abstract, in the rather stony street. At one corner of her mouth she had a dimple, and her teeth were modelled perfectly.

"Excuse me," began Miss Hare at last, "are you the person? Excuse me"--and cleared her throat--"are you expected at Xanadu?"

Mrs Jolley suppressed what could have been a slight upsurge of wind.

"Yes," she said, very slowly, feeling the way with her teeth. "It was some such name, I think. A lady called Miss Hare."

The latter felt tremendously presumptuous under Mrs Jolley's glance, and would have chosen to postpone her revelation.

But Mrs Jolley's white teeth--certainly no whiter had ever been seen--were growing visibly impatient. Her dimple came and went in flickers. Her expression, which might have been described as motherly by some, became suspect under the weight of its suspicion.

"I am Miss Hare," said Miss Hare.

"Oh, yes," replied the disbelieving Mrs Jolley.

And tried to fetch her teeth to the rescue.

But the brutal wind of a cold afternoon was not prepared to allow any nonsense. It flung the mauve eye-veil into Mrs Jolley's eyes, and even bashed her black coat.

"Yes," confirmed Miss Hare. "I am she."

Mrs Jolley scarcely believed what she was hearing.

"I hope you will be happy," continued the object, "at Xanadu. It is a large house. But we need only live in bits of it. Move around as we choose, for variety's sake."

Mrs Jolley began to accompany her mentor, over the stones, in shoes which she had purchased for the journey. Black. With a sensible strap. But, even so, she thought her ankles might not stand the walk, and the fangs of the road metal were eating through her soles.

"You haven't a car, then?" she asked.

"No," said Miss Hare. "No cars."

Level with the Godbolds' shed, the blackberry canes snatched at Mrs Jolley's coat.

"We never owned a car," Miss Hare was saying. "Even in the days of my father. Naturally cars were only beginning. But horses. My father fancied horses; he was quite splendid when he drove his greys four-in-hand."

Mrs Jolley could not believe any of this. Remembering the trams, she could have cried.

"In our family," she said, "everybody has their own car."

"Oh," said Miss Hare. "No. No cars."

The sound of the two women's breathing would intermingle distressingly at times. Each wished she could have repudiated the connection.

"It is a satisfaction to a mother," said Mrs Jolley, on twisting ankles, "to know that each one of them--three girls--is each settled comfortable."

"Of course," agreed Miss Hare.

She could not believe, though. Not a bit.

Then they walked down the track which the Council had begun to call an avenue, and which led to Xanadu. Arriving at the end, the employer guided her companion through the fence, and they began the less tortuous, the longer of the short cuts.

As her responsibilities loomed, Miss Hare drew ahead. Mrs Jolley followed, occasionally hearing something tear. The silence was shocking in the undergrowth.

In the circumstances, the nascent green of oaks and elms, massed to overwhelm the scrub, issued too shrill, the grace-notes of crab and plum blossom, sprinkled at intervals on black nets of twigs, too sickeningly poignant.

Mrs Jolley remarked, "A good thing I put me lisle stockings on."

Her mauve eye-veil was less gay.

"The burrs do prick a little, but they pick off quite easily," Miss Hare thought to offer over her shoulder.

She had grown nervous, as if, at the back of her mind, there was something dreadful she could not remember.

They went on.

"We shall arrive soon now," she encouraged.

They went on.

"There!" her voice revealed.

Mrs Jolley did not answer, almost failed to look up.

They climbed the approach. Under the stranger's feet the tessellated floor of the veranda sounded hollow as never before.

But the house was hollowest.

Miss Hare had opened the front door. They had gone in. They had stood for ages.

"Well," Mrs Jolley said at last, "it is easy to see it's a long time since you had a lady here."

Nor did the voices of Xanadu protest. They agreed in all coldness of stone.

"A house is not the less for what you make it," said Miss Hare.

"Nor any more," added the darker voice of Mrs Jolley.

Neither could have offered adequate explanation of what she had just said. Each saw what she saw, or rather, Miss Hare was beginning to remember what she had forgotten. The veins in her temples were writhing. It was as if some stranger with sly eyelids had touched the real door, with a finger, and there stood the interior.

"That was the drawing-room," she said, the tense forced upon her. "And the dining-room through the folding doors."

But forced most brutally.

They were standing in the present, in the late hours of an afternoon in spring, when the light can be merciless. The white light fell amongst the furniture, where a bandaged memory awaited diagnosis.

"I have never seen anything like it," confessed Mrs Jolley, withdrawing as far as possible into her clothes.

Where time had not slashed, the light was finishing the job. Cabinets and little frivolous tables seemed to splinter at a blow. Even solid pieces in marquetry, and the buhl octopus, were stunned.

Catching on to the thread of their original intention, the two women strayed here and there, but always retreating. Now a shutter had begun to bang. Old birds' nests, lying on the Aubusson, or what had become, rather, a carpet of twigs, dust, mildew and the chrysalides of insects, trapped guilty feet with soft reminders. On one side of the dining room, where weather had torn the slates from an embrasure in the course of some historic storm, an elm had entered in. The black branches of the elm sawed. The early leaves pierced the more passive colours of human refinement like a knife. The little rags of blue sky flickered and flapped drunkenly. In places rain had gushed, in others trickled, down the walls, and over marble, now the colour of rotten teeth.

"Or places where dogs have pissed," Miss Hare noticed, and sighed.

"I beg yours?" asked Mrs Jolley, wondering.

But her employer did not answer--her thoughts were her own, whether she cared to utter them or not--so the housekeeper saved up what she believed she had heard, to let it ripen on the shelves of her mind before she took it down for use.