The Stone Angel (21 page)

“She looks a damn sight better, if you ask me. Why not leave it?”

I never could bear that statue. I’d have been glad enough to leave her. Now I wish I had. But at the time it was impossible.

The Simmons plot is just across the way,” I said,
“and Lottie comes here every Sunday to put flowers on Telford’s mother’s grave, I know for a fact. Do you think I’d have her poking her nose in here and telling everyone?”

“That would be an everlasting shame, all right,” John said. “Here—take my handkerchief. I’ll even spit on it for you. That should do the trick.”

I scrubbed the angel clean, although she still wore a faint blush when I’d finished, the lipstick being more indelible than I’d reckoned. And then we left.

“Who could have done it?” I said. “Who’d do such a wanton thing?”

“How should I know?” John said again. “Some drunk, I guess.”

He never said another word about it, although he knew quite well I didn’t believe him.

    Marvin came back for his holidays to see Bram. He only stayed a few days, and he and John bickered half the time. I always hated to listen to their squabbles. It gave me a headache. I felt, as I’d done when they were younger, that I didn’t really care what they felt or what was wrong between them, if only they’d be quiet.

“You can’t stay here,” Marvin said. “Look at the number of guys going to the city to find work—Gladys’s two younger boys went months ago. Even if things were better here, you don’t know the first thing about farming. You grew up in the city.”

“I’ll be on relief this fall,” John said. “At least there’s more space than I’d have in a two-by-four room, which is where you’d like to see me—so you could keep an eye on me, I suppose.”

“What do you need so much space for, anyhow,” Marvin said, “except to make home-brew in? You could have your room at Mr. Oatley’s when Mother goes back.”

“I’m not leaving Dad.”

“You won’t have to worry about that for long, at the rate you’re going.”

“Why don’t you come and stay, then, Marv, if you think you could do so much better?”

“Don’t talk so dumb. Doris wouldn’t live here on a bet, and I’ve got young Steven to think of, and the baby coming. I’ve been with Bitemore going on ten years now and I’m sure staying as long as they’ll keep me.”

“You’ve got everything all figured out, haven’t you, Marv? You still a church usher? Maybe they’ll promote you to vestryman.”

“I’ve heard about enough out of you,” Marvin said. “I’ve worked for everything I’ve got, I’ll tell you that. How do you think I feel when I see guys laid off every week? How do I know how long it’ll be before it’s my turn? Who’s painting their houses these days? You’re not the only one who’s having a tough time. They’re using gangs of unemployed on road work right now, but I’ll bet a nickel you haven’t even tried to get on there.”

“Shut up,” John said abruptly. “What do you know of it?”

“You’re too good to handle a pick, of course. Goddamn it, I worked in logging camps and then on the docks when I got back from the war.”

“Yeh, that’s right,” John said savagely. “You were one of our brave boys, as well as everything else.”

“I was seventeen,” Marvin said in a hard voice. “What do you know of it?”

I wanted to ask him, then, where he had walked in
those days, and what he had been forced to look upon. I wanted to tell him I’d sit quietly and listen. But I couldn’t very well, not at that late date. He wouldn’t have said, anyway. It seemed to me that Marvin was the unknown soldier, the one whose name you never knew.

“Oh God, Marv,” John said, suddenly slack and stricken, empty of rage. “I didn’t mean a word of it, honestly I didn’t.”

But Marvin then could not accept without embarrassment this reversal.

“Okay, okay,” he said hurriedly. “Look, you come back to the coast as soon as you can, John, and I’ll do my damnednest to help you find something. You won’t need to pay rent at Mr. Oatley’s.”

John clenched his two hands together.

“No,” he said at last. “I don’t want to argue with you about it, Marv. But I won’t go back. I’m through with living in other people’s houses.”

    Marvin might just as well not have been here, as far as his father was concerned. Bram didn’t know him anyway. But the night he left, I heard him go into Bram’s room, and heard his low voice.

“Dad—” he said. “I’m sorry, Dad.”

Bram was awake, or as nearly awake as he ever was now.

“Who is it? What’s that you say?” he murmured fretfully. “Sorry—what for?”

Marvin didn’t answer. Maybe he didn’t know, himself.

Bram referred to me as “that woman,” like hired help, when he spoke of me to John. In the night, once only, I
heard him call—“
Hagar!”
I went to his room, but he was only talking in his sleep. He lay curled up and fragile in the big bed where we’d coupled and it made me sick to think I’d lain with him, for now he looked like an ancient child. Looking down at him, a part of me could never stand him, what he’d been, and yet that moment I’d willingly have called him back from where he’d gone, to say even once what Marvin had said, and with as much bewilderment, not knowing who to fault for the way the years had turned. I placed my hand lightly on his forehead, and found the skin and hair faintly damp, as the children’s used to be in the airless, summer nights. But there was nothing I could do for him, nothing he needed now, so I went back to Marvin’s old room where I slept.

One morning we found him dead. He’d died in the night, with no fuss and no one beside him. At the time, I thought it mattered that someone should be there, and reproached myself that I hadn’t wakened. I know better now. In death, he didn’t resemble Brampton Shipley in the slightest. He looked like the cadaver of an old unknown man, and that was all.

Marvin couldn’t get back to Manawaka for the funeral, but he sent some money to help cover the expenses. In the same letter he told me Doris had had a girl and they were calling her Christina. I was so inwardly torn over Bram’s death I scarcely gave a thought to the child. I couldn’t have guessed then that my granddaughter Tina would become so dear to me.

Bram’s daughters descended, wept dutifully, clucked over the few things which had been their mother’s and which now went to them. And then they went away. They didn’t even bother to go to his funeral, being annoyed
that he hadn’t left the place to them. Why should it have gone to them? Precious little they’d ever done for him.

The Shipleys had no family plot in the cemetery. Gladys and Jess thought he should be buried as near as possible to his first wife, but I put my foot down. I had him buried in the Currie plot, and on the red marble name-stone that stood beside the white statue I had his family name carved, so the stone said
Currie
on the one side and
Shipley
on the other. I don’t know why I did it. I felt I had to.

“Do you think it’s the right thing for me to do, about the stone?” I asked John.

“I don’t think it matters one way or another,” John said wearily. “He’s dead. He won’t know or care. They’re only different sides of the same coin, anyway, he and the Curries. They might as well be together there.”

I don’t know what he meant by that. He wouldn’t say. I don’t know, either, which of us had cared about Bram at all, or whether either of us had. I know I’d nagged at him in the past, but God knows I’d had my reasons. And yet he mattered to me. John had washed and fed him, helped him to die—to what extent, only John knew, and whether he’d done the right thing or not and in what spirit, only God knew.

But when we’d buried Bram and come home again and lighted the lamps for the evening, it was John who cried, not I.

THE SUN
needles me, and I’m awake. Why am I so stiff and sore? What’s the matter with me? Then I see where I am, and that I’ve slept with my clothes on, and even my shoes, and only my cardigan to keep me warm. I feel compelled to get out of this stuffy place and find fresh air, and yet I’m disinclined to move. Doris used to bring me my breakfast in bed when I’d had an especially bad night. If I went back, she’d do so again, no doubt.

For a moment I’m sorely tempted. I could plod up the two hundred earthen stairs, out of this pit and valley, away from the lowering cedars and the sea, find someone, explain my situation quite matter-of-factly, ask them if they’d be so kind as to escort me to the local police station—

No. I’ll not do it. How pleased Doris would be, if I went back, to say she’d known all along she couldn’t trust me out of her sight for a moment. How she’d sigh and sidle up to Marvin with her commentary. And then she’d—

Of course. I’d almost forgotten. They’d crate me up in the car and deliver me like a parcel of old clothes to that place. I’d never get out. The only escape from those places is feet first in a wooden box. I’ll not be forced. They can go hang, the pack of them, the hounds, the hunters.

Now that I’ve made my mind up, I become aware of my parched flesh. I’ve not had a drop of water since—I can’t remember how long it’s been. A long time. It’s not the way I imagined thirst would feel. My throat doesn’t burn or even seem particularly dry. But it’s blocked and shut, and it pains me when I swallow. I can’t drink sea-water—isn’t it meant to be poisonous? Certainly.
Water water everywhere nor any drop to drink
. That’s my predicament. What albatross did I slay, for mercy’s sake? Well, well, we’ll see—come on, old mariner, up and out of your smelly bunk and we’ll see what can be found.

Almost gaily, though God knows I’ve little enough reason for it, I rise with some slight slowness and put on my hat, first taking care to brush the pebbled dust off the velvet petals as best I can. I pick up my bag of provisions and venture down the stairs and out the door.

The morning is light and calm, clean and gold. The old cannery stands quiet and unalarming in the warm air, and around the boards at the sea edge I can hear the water’s low rhythmic slapping. The ground is damp—it must have rained last night. The dust is off the trees. Every leaf has been sponged by rain and now they’re displaying a mosaic of greens—half-yellow lime, bottleglass and emerald, peacock tail and pigeon feather. I marvel at such variety.

A raucous gang of sparrows with voices bigger than themselves flicker their wings, spin and dart in a burst and frenzy of high-heartedness, and I follow after them in envy and admiration. My steps are sedate, but only out of necessity. They pause and whirl and settle, and I see what they’re up to. A rusty and dinted bucket beside a shed has gathered the rain water for them. And for me. I’ve always liked the sparrows. And now they’ve led me
here, and here’s my well in the wilderness, plain as you please.

Politely as I can, I flap my arms and shoo the birds away, and they scold me from a distance. The water is murky and tastes of soil and fallen leaves and rust, but I can’t complain. Ignoring the reproachful sparrows, I take the battered pail and set it inside the doorway of my mansion. Too bad to deprive them, but if a person doesn’t look after herself in this world, no one else is likely to.

I make
my
way down the path to the sea. The air is salted, sturdy with the scent of fish. The shore is cobbled with white sea-washed stones that clatter and slide under my unsure feet. Great logs, broken away from booms and drifted ashore, lie along the beach like natural benches. The sea is green and clear. In the shallows I can see to the bottom, down where the stones which are actually dun and dull olive and slate have been changed underwater and shimmer wetly as though they were garnets and opals and slabs of jade. A dark bulb of kelp floats languidly like a mermaid, trailing its strands and frilled leaves of brownish yellow hair. A few cast-off clam shells, gutted by gulls, perhaps, jut from the watery sand like discarded saucers in a sea midden. A crab walks delicately on its pincered claws.

A short distance along the beach two children are playing. At first it startles me to see them, and I half turn, intending to blunder off into the bushes, but then I see how ludicrous it is to fear them, so I sit down on a log and watch. They’ve not seen me. They’re absorbed, deeply concentrating. A boy and girl, both around six, I’d say. The boy has straight black hair. The girl’s hair is light brown and long, bunched into an elastic at the back of her head. They’re playing house—that much is obvious. The
boy is searching for clam shells. He trots along the sand, head down, peering, stooping to pick one up here and there. He rinses them in the water, paddling in a short way in his bare feet, and then returns.

“Here,” he says. “These can be bowls.”

“No,” she says. “They’re plates. We’ve got enough bowls. Look, I’ve got them all fixed up, and here’s our food.”

Everything has grown tidy and organized under her hands. A row of clam shells and platters of bark have been set along a log and filled with delicacies—bits of moss, pebbles, fern for salad greens, a flower or two for dessert.

“This is the cupboard,” he says. “Let’s say we keep the plates here, in a pile.”

“No, it’s not the cupboard, Kennie,” she says. “It’s the dinner table, and we’ve got to put the plates all around, one for each. Here—gimme.”