The Summer Before the Dark (30 page)

“I don’t know, how do I know?”

Kate began telling things out of her past. She could not remember how they had begun on this, but soon it was how they were spending their days. Her memories were not the kind of thing that had struck her before as important or even as interesting: now she was assessing them
by Maureen’s reactions. It almost seemed as if the things she remembered were because of Maureen’s interest—Maureen’s need? It was Maureen who was doing the choosing?

For instance, once, long ago, when there had been only two children, Stephen and Eileen, two little things of about four and three, Michael had been away somewhere, and she had driven with them into the country. She couldn’t remember where, but “it was the real country you know, I remember that much, I didn’t see anyone all day. I was in a wood, and there was a stream.”

She had sat on the bank with the two children and they had done small things all day: looked at leaves, watched butterflies, seen the water rippling in its patterns over pebbles. The children had shrieked with laughter as the sun sifted through thick green which moved in a breeze, making a shaking golden pattern on their bare bodies.

Maureen wanted to hear every small detail of that long-ago day, which had been all happiness, so that even now the charm of it was strong enough to light this dark flat. For autumn was closing in; a wet autumn, and it was rain, not sunshine, that fell outside Maureen’s windows.

And Maureen asked for the memory again, so that Kate began further back in the day, saying how she had got up early, and dressed the children—Eileen had worn a yellow cotton dress with daisies embroidered on it—and how they had driven through the traffic, but soon had reached the wood, and there they had done this and that, so on, moment by moment, Kate remembering more as she told and retold it.

Or there was the time when Michael’s mother came to stay with the children—how many by then? Three? They had all been born? But at any rate, she and Michael had gone for a weekend, the first alone since the children came. They were in a hotel on the Norfolk coast. It had been a
rainy weekend, but the hotel was old-fashioned, with big fires. They had gone for long walks in the rain and sat in front of the fires and played darts in the pub with the local people, and made love.

Of this sort of reminiscence Maureen could not have enough, and she would say, as soon as the two of them had finished eating their nursery food, bread and butter, apple purée, or whatever it was, “Tell me a story, Kate, tell me a story.” And she would fall on her cushions and listen smiling, while Kate remembered.

“Tell me about when you and Michael woke up that night and thought there was a burglar and then you found it was the cat, and you sat in the kitchen and had a feast and then Stephen woke up and joined you.”

Maureen chanted this, like a song, with pauses in her chant, so that Kate could pick up her memory and go on from there. And Kate took it up: “And then we were all there except Tim, and we—that is, Michael and I—kept saying Shhh, because you see, he was so much younger than the others, but Stephen said, No, it’s not fair—because he always looked after Tim, it was always Stephen who stood up for Tim—and he went up to Tim’s bed and pulled him out and said, Quick, quick, our parents are having a party and they have asked us too. And Tim came down—Stephen carried him. Tim was about three, he was tiny, and he said, Quick, quick, we are having a party.”

“And then you sat in the kitchen and ate cake and drank chocolate and then you suddenly looked up and the sun was going to come up. And you decided it was such a lovely morning it was silly to go to bed. And you all got into the car and drove to the coast. And the sea wasn’t very cold, although it was April, and you all bathed and stayed by the sea all day.”

“But the children had to have a rest after lunch, of
course, so they lay on the beach wrapped in towels in the shade of a breakwater and slept, and then we all had tea in a café. We ate eggs and ham and toast. Then when the rush hour was over we drove back home. The children still talk about that day. Or they did, until recently.”

While their days were spent thus, searching Kate’s memory for happiness, in her sleep Kate looked for the seal, for her dream. But while she knew she often entered that dream, it slipped away from her as she woke. She was afraid that she was not able to remember the dream because the seal had died. That area of her sleep was very sad, full of loss, of pain. She would wake thinking that her feet were cut, for she could feel they were cold and painful, but it was not so, they were quite warm. She woke feeling her arms ache with the weight of the seal. Surely it was heavier than it had been? Or was heavy because it had died? Far away behind her, far below the horizon, she knew that the sun still shone. But it never rose, it had not risen in her sleep now for days, for weeks. She was still travelling north, away from the sun. Ahead of her lay winter, ice, an interminable dark.

“Tell me a story, Kate. You and Michael went to a party, and you were bad-tempered and had been quarrelling for days, but then you discovered you liked each other better than anybody else there, and you fell in love for the second time.”

“Or perhaps I could tell you about Mary Finchley. It took me a very long time to understand that Mary was really quite different from me. From every woman I’ve known. People say ‘a savage woman’—you know, a man says, ‘You’re a savage woman,’ and he is a little scared, but he admires you for it. And you are quite flattered, and you even play at being savage for a little. But it’s not true.
No, Maureen, you’re thinking, Yes,
I
am savage, I am not tamed! But you are. Mary isn’t. Something’s been left right out of her. She’s like that dog that a man has spent months training, and then he says, He’s useless, nothing takes. Nothing has taken on Mary. She hasn’t any sense of guilt—
that’s
the point. We are all in invisible chains, guilt, we should do this, we mustn’t do that, it’s bad for the children, it’s unfair on the husband. Mary isn’t, it’s been left right out of her. But on the face of it she has had an ordinary upbringing. I’ve never been able to find out what was left out of it. Perhaps nothing was—it was left out of
her
. She married quite young. The first time I was struck by Mary was when she said, ‘I chose Bill because he had a better job than the rest.’ No, wait—a lot of women may think like that or act like that, but they’d say, Because I loved him the most or because I admired him or because he was sexy. Not Mary. That
was
why she chose him. Her parents didn’t have much money. He adored her. He still does. They had a lot of sex. They still do. But she was unfaithful right from the start. I remember the shock I got. One day I was at the window sewing, and looking out and I saw the delivery man go into Mary’s house. He was there a long time. I thought nothing of it. I thought he was having a cup of tea. Next day I mentioned it and Mary said, ‘He’s good value that one.’ At first I thought she was joking. Then that she was boasting. No. That’s how she is. If she goes shopping and she fancies a man and there’s an opportunity, there you are. She never thinks about it again. All the time, when she was pregnant, when she was nursing. When I ask her about it she says, Oh I can’t do with just one man! She looks rather embarrassed—but it’s because
you
are a bit thick. I once fell in love with someone else—oh, it was very stupid, the whole thing, but it was then I
really understood that Mary was quite different. She had never been in love in her life. She couldn’t understand what I was talking about. At first I thought—as usual—she was joking. But
she
thought I was inventing it. Yes, really—she really believes that the way everyone goes on about love, being in love, is some sort of a conspiracy, the emperor has no clothes. It was about then I discovered she couldn’t read anything, or look at a play on television or anything. She says, It’s all about people torturing themselves about nothing.’ She reads detective stories, and boys’ adventure stories, and animal stories. I even thought for a while she was masculine. No. Love—all of it, romantic love, the whole bloody business of it—you know, centuries of our civilisation—its been left out of her. She thinks we are all crazy. You fancy a man, he fancies you, you screw until one or the other is tired, and then goodbye, no hard feelings.…”

“What about her husband?”

“There you are, you aren’t savage, you
aren’t
like her. You’ve been sitting there thinking, What about her husband, what about the children? Yes. Well. She had sex with other people almost from the first. But she was so casual about it it was some time before Bill believed it was really happening. He tackled her with it, and she said, ‘Yes, but I’m like that.’ Embarrassed for
him
because he wasn’t. He made rows. When he did she got sad and uncomfortable. What was all the fuss about? That was what stymied him, you see,
her
attitude. She wasn’t guilty. Then there were three children. Mary would say, Kids are all very well but they cramp your style. They weren’t cramping hers much. One day Bill came home and found Mary in bed with some man whose name she didn’t know. The baby was in the pram in the same room, and the little boy
—Cedric, he’s sweet—was playing on the floor. Bill started a divorce. He was heartbroken. So was she. He got his divorce and custody. Mary didn’t contest it, she couldn’t anyway. About a year after the divorce they got together again. He wasn’t in love with anyone else. He has said to all sorts of people that after Mary he can’t really take to a woman, ‘she’s very immoral, but she’s wonderful apart from that.’ I suppose the point is that her being unfaithful doesn’t attack him, isn’t a criticism of him. And when he is unfaithful to her, she screams at him a little and then they make love. Well, sex. During the year they were divorced, they were both quite lost, they were operating from two different sets of laws. He had divorced his bad vicious wife who was corrupting the children, but she was the victim of a crazy man. ‘Well what’s the matter with you?’ she kept saying. ‘We get on all right.’ When they married again he made all kinds of conditions, for the sake of his pride of course. He must have known she wouldn’t fall in. And he wouldn’t have married her again if she didn’t suit him. And that’s how they get on. The children are now in their teens and by all the rules they ought to be casualties. But they aren’t any worse than most. It is true that Mary thinks it is all a bit much. She says that every time she has a bit on the side then it all gets discussed by everybody on its merits. She says no one can ever get the point—that there aren’t any merits. She fancies a little bit and she has it. If the children have noticed—she does try a bit of discretion sometimes—then they discuss it, give their verdict, as it were. She says, Oh for God’s sake, leave me alone, it makes me tired all your because’s and why’s. I like sex. Her children are in and out of my house all the time—they are younger than mine but they are a sort of family. My four have discussed Mary all their lives. They like her. Every
one likes her. They got the point much earlier than I did. It took me years. They understood that she wasn’t like other women. Really not. Once she seduced my husband. If that’s the word for it. No, she fancied him, and so she had him. I was going through hell, and thinking of being betrayed and God knows what. She said to me, next time we were having a cup of coffee in her kitchen, ‘He’s all right, Michael is. He gave me a really good time.’ ”

“And so?” said Maureen. She sounded defiant. “What are you wanting me to conclude from all that?”

“I’ve never been able to conclude anything from it, except that she’s quite quite different from me. That’s all. Every time I do anything—or
don’t
do anything, that’s more it, I like the look of a man and think, I wouldn’t mind him but of course I’d never do anything about it—then I think of Mary. At one time thinking of Mary was a kind of comfort and support—I’d think I’m much better and finer-feelinged and sensitive than that irresponsible creature. But now I wonder. I really do. I sit in the theatre and see people tearing themselves to pieces about love, and suddenly there’s Mary, and she literally can’t understand what all the fuss is about. Or I sit in a cinema … sometimes I’ve been with Mary, and its like … afterwards she says, ‘What a carry-on!’ In the beginning, you know, when she said things like that I thought it was a defence, the way we all do it, but if you are with someone who really does think it is a joke, but really, from the heart—if that’s a word you can associate with Mary—then it’s odd, it changes your perspective. There are times you know when there’s a sort of switch in the way I look at things—everything, my whole life since I was a girl—and I seem to myself like a raving lunatic. Love, and duty, and being in love and not being in love, and loving, and behaving well and you
should and you shouldn’t ask and you ought and oughtn’t. It’s a disease. Well, sometimes I think that’s all it is.”

“Once I believed my mother was in love with someone else. I still don’t know how serious it was. It shattered me,” said Maureen. “It really did. I thought she was going to leave Daddy and me. I’ve never looked at her in the same way since. I know it is silly. It was the worst thing in my childhood.”

“Mary’s children, and mine, discuss her goings-on as if they were the symptoms of a disease. To be tolerated.”

When Kate told the girl about Mary she had not realised she was putting an end to
Tell me a story, please tell a story, Kate!

But so it was.

Kate dreamed again about the seal, or rather, dreamed and remembered. The seal had made restless movements in her arms; it had wanted her to notice something. She stopped, while the snow fell silently, straight down, all about her. She could see the snow: the air was lighter than it had been? Immediately in front of her there was a glimmer, like candlelight, and there all by itself in the snow, was a silvery-pink cherry tree in full bloom. Kate pushed through deep snow to the tree and pulled off a flowering twig, and held it in her frozen fingers as she walked on past the tree into the dark ahead.

She told Maureen this new stage of the dream and Maureen said, “Well, I suppose it won’t be long now.”