The Needle's Eye (57 page)

Though that, of course, was another matter. Since Christopher had come back she had been much less pleasant to the children. She had shouted more, she had made an issue out of everything, she had lost her temper several times a day. Really, there was no knowing what one should do. To yell at the children, angrily, I’m doing this for you, you fools, could hardly be good for them. Perhaps she would grow out of it. Perhaps in the end she would settle down. Live through it. Get over it. It was so embarrassing, seeing people like Simon register her ill-temper. He never missed a thing. He was over-sensitized, poor Simon, to displays such as her own. She wished she could tell him that she was feeling better this week, because Christopher was away. But how could she commit such an indiscretion, how could she betray one man to another? So many times, she had wanted to ring him, had wanted to complain, of something Christopher had said to her, of something he had done – she had wanted to
reinstate herself, through complaint, through exposure. But of course it could not be done. She and Christopher were together now, husband and wife, unable to bear witness the one against the other.

She turned to Simon. He was lighting himself a cigarette, absentmindedly: he offered her one. She declined. She had had a bad throat, for the last week.

‘What do you think, Simon,’ she said, ‘do you think one can sell one’s own soul, in a good cause?’

‘You have some archaic concepts,’ he said.

‘Yes, I know,’ she said. She had seen her soul, suddenly, as she spoke: it was dark and crying and bloody, like a bat or an embryo, and it was not very nice at all, not an agreeable thing, and it flapped and squeaked inside her angrily whenever Christopher touched or spoke to her. Let it go, let it go, strangle it, burn it. The warm daylight of love she would aspire to, oh she would make it, though her nails were torn, her knees barked with hanging on; and the harsh clanging of her own voice, the sounding of righteous brass and the clanging of the symbols of her upright faith demented ideologies, she would silence them all, she would learn to do so. The sun fell and the dust danced in it, and the smoke from Simon’s cigarette turned in it.

‘I often think I’m a foul bitch, you know,’ she said, pleasantly, conversationally.

From the hall below them, a dog barked, irritably. Another answered, then another: barks, followed by long-drawn-out slow echoing moans and howling. They both laughed, at the ridiculous melancholy sounds. Then they got up, disturbed, slightly, by the uproar, thinking of children and rabies and babies savaged in their prams by fierce Doberman Pinschers – not that they had any babies, either of them, they were long past the baby stage, but nevertheless one could not really rely on the good sense even of ten-year-olds. They stood for a moment, looking downwards, then started to descend, together, and as they went Rose told Simon about a job that she had been offered, and how pleased she was, it was a British Council job looking after all the Ujuhudanians who came to Britain and
vice versa, and he wasn’t to laugh at her for being so enthusiastic, she knew it must sound dull to him, but it was interesting to her, and not to mention it to Christopher yet because she hadn’t dared to tell him because he was sure to laugh even if Simon was polite enough not to, she really was very pleased and looking forward to it, she hadn’t even applied, she’d been offered it, through Jenny Ward, who worked at the Home Office. Ujuhudiana was becoming an interesting place at last, she said: they’d discovered copper there, but of course they couldn’t afford to mine the stuff themselves, they’d have to get the South Africans and Chinese and Americans and God knows who else in to do it for them, but they’d get royalties off it, at least, and there were people coming over already, to study engineering, hoping they’d be able to join in when they got down there, in a few years time. I might even get over there myself at last, she said. What do you think, Simon, she said, do you think it’s a good idea, looking at him earnestly, pale and washed out now she had descended from the sunny regions, her hair as dull as the dead fur round her neck, and he did not know if she meant the job itself, or her whole life, but he said yes, yes, it seemed all right to him, it seemed a good idea, an excellent idea, he would look forward to hearing about it, and he meant exactly that, he would look forward to hearing, over the months and years, the things that she would have to say.

And so they went down, to collect the children, and Emily. Emily stood up and folded up her newspaper: her coat was thick with dust, and she hit at it, viciously, with the folded paper. She had moved on from the recipes: she had been reading a piece that had upset her, about population explosions and car accidents and lemmings running into the sea. The thick yellow brown dust clung to the black fabric, and she stared at it, and said, as they moved to meet the children, who were waiting for them in the doorway with their bags of pop corn and crisps, ‘I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know. Life is real, life is earnest, and the grave is not its goal, dust thou art to dust returneth was not spoken of the soul. It’s all very well,’ she continued, thinking of Malthus, looking with distaste at the dogs and their owners, ‘but the whole
world
is turning into dust. People are like rats. Look at them, rats. We’ll start living in the sewers, soon.’

They moved out, on to the high terrace round the building. The cold wind had dropped: the sun shone. The huge yellow building stood behind them, mad, shoddy, decayed. The children begged for a two-pence to look through the telescope, and Simon gave them one. They stood there, the three adults, on the parapet, and looked at the view, and looked back at the Palace, with its odd shabby Corinthian pillar, its peeling plaster caryatid, its yellow bricks, its ugly Italian parodies, its bathos, its demotic despair, and then looked back at the view, where houses stretched, and tower blocks, and lakes of sewage gleaming to the sky, and gas works, and railway lines, effluence and influence, in every direction, all around, as far as the eye could see. It seemed that Emily was right. They felt the cold chill of her reading, and she said, leaning on the stone by the eroded perfunctory sphinx, ‘It’s not the dogs that should be shot, it’s the people. Look at it. Just look.’

‘We’ve got no right to talk,’ said Simon. ‘We’ve got three children each. We should be the first to go.’

Rose was silent. She edged along the wall, a little, away from them. She did not want to speak, she did not want to offer her hope to their scorn, she did not dare, and she did not like talk of shooting, even from Emily. They were probably right, she was almost certainly wrong. There was no knowing. I will leap off the ladder even blindfold into eternity, sink or swim, come heaven come hell. Like a rat, swimming through the dirty lake to a distant unknown shore. She shivered, the cold wind blew, her throat ached. She looked along the wall: one of the lions had been broken, since her last visit. She went up to it, to see closer. It was hollow, the lion: shabby, weathered, crudely cast in a cheap mould. Half of its head was missing. It was hollow inside. She peered inside the hole: there were two concrete struts instead of intestines, and somebody had placed carefully inside it a Coca Cola bottle, a beer can, and a few old straws. She was glad there was nothing worse. A few straws lay crossed before its noble feet. She remembered the beasts on the gateposts at Branston: elevated, distinguished, aristocratic, hand carved, unique, with curled sneering lips and bared fangs. She looked back at the shabby mass-produced creature before her: it was one with the houses, the
streets, the dog show, the people. Half its head had gone. It was one of many. Somebody had written on it, years ago, in red paint:
SPURS
, they had written, and the red paint had dripped and run, spattering its heavy jowl like old blood. But it was a toothless lion, any boy could draw on it. She peered at it, closely. It was grey, it looked as though it were made of grey brawn – small specks and lumps of whiteness stood out in the darker background, diamond-shaped flecks. She wondered what it was that it was made of – cement, concrete, plaster. And the Palace itself. What a mess, what a terrible mess. She looked back at it. It was comic, dreadful, grotesque. A fun palace of yellow brick. She liked it. She liked it very much. She liked the lion. She lay her hand on it. It was gritty and cold, a beast of the people. Mass-produced it had been, but it had weathered into identity. And this, she hoped, for every human soul.

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First published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson 1972

Published in Penguin Classics 2011

Cover photograph © Anna Tomczak / Getty Images.

Copyright © Margaret Drabble, 1972

Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

ISBN: 978-0-14-196959-6

*
These lines from Ian Seraillier’s
The Turtle Drum
are produced by permission of Oxford University Press, London.