Ceremonies of Innocence Read online

  So she collected people. Kattie’s lame ducks, first Clem and now Dorelia called them. Her present clutch, Fergus and Hugh, fell neatly into this category: Hugh because of his total inability to cope with the mechanics of life, Fergus because of his unfortunate lifestyle and tendencies. And at this stage Angela supposed that she too was a lame duck, because she had nowhere else to go and very little idea of the next step to take.

  At this moment Angela was trying to define, very precisely, the events leading up to her decision to return to England.

  Her account given over the breakfast table to Kattie was stilted in her determination not to appear to feel sorry for herself and therefore not to lay too much blame at Billy’s door. Kattie, who had always loathed Billy because he had appeared totally unsusceptible to her charm, was coaxing Angela down the tempting path of revelation. They were both enjoying themselves.

  ‘Perhaps it was unfair of me to expect Billy to understand that painting is all I can do and therefore all I will do,’ said Angela.

  ‘Yes, but he used to spend hours plugging away at that beastly book – what did he expect you to do then?’

  ‘I’m not sure what he expected. Billy is one of those people who always know what is wrong, or what they don’t like, but have very little idea of what would really make them happy.

  ‘You remember how beautiful Les Meaunes could be? When it wasn’t too hot – early mornings and in the evenings, if you didn’t mind the insects – I liked to walk. The best place was along the river bank, by the reed beds. I’d paint down there a lot. It could be quite dangerous – there were a lot of rotting landing stages tucked into the bank in among the reeds. In fact I nearly came a cropper there once – lost several tubes of paint. But it was very peaceful, very beautiful. Very much its own place.’

  Angela started to peel an orange, heaping the fragrant skin pith side up to make a cradle for the pips and bits of membrane.

  ‘Billy loathed going for walks – of course he did, because of his leg. But he would come along with me often, complaining, rather than let me go alone. I think he was frightened of letting me enjoy something that he couldn’t understand …’

  The lemony smell of the insect repellent which did not work; her sweaty feet slipping inside loosely buckled leather sandals as she pushed the old bike with the enormous basket full of painting gear; her drawing board with a wet watercolour pinned to it, tied precariously to her saddle. Stopping to slap and scratch as the insects, attracted by her sweat, buzzed around, Angela was unable to prevent the grin of pure inward pleasure as she held what she had achieved that day, thought what she would do with the painting.

  Pushing the bicycle under the whitewashed archway, up the short trodden dirt path and into the glass-enclosed porch at the front of the villa, she unstrapped the drawing board with its still damp watercolour, the preliminary painting for a much larger work which she had now conceived. After days of skirting around the edge of what she wanted to do she now felt she understood something of the river and the reed beds. The pattern and the flow; the sense of exclusion. She had been wary about invading the secret bits of the place with a sensitivity that knew when to stop asking questions. That was what she wanted to paint.

  Well-being bathed her as she leaned back against the wall and looked happily at the small painting which she had propped up on the hallway table.

  ‘My God! Whatever is that?’

  A clattering on the ceramic tiles of the hallway was Billy emerging from the kitchen, glass of wine in one hand and a bar of soap in the other. He steadied himself against the door frame, weight on his good leg, and pulled his full upper lip down knowingly across his mouth so that his short flat moustache bristled and his broad nostrils flared. He was self-important, smirking. He took pleasure in not speaking for some time.

  ‘Hallo Angela. Is that what you’ve been doing all day? Really? That! My God, what a daub! Let’s see though, perhaps I’m mistaken. Perhaps it’s upside-down. Is it?’

  ‘Leave it alone!’

  Billy, who had swung his other leg around ready to move towards the painting, stopped clumsily and grinned at his wife who, flushed and on the verge of tears, had snatched up the board, trying to keep the paint-dimpled paper flat. A smudge of cerulean streaked across her knuckle from the paper, leaving an impression on the painting like a cold breath of wind.

  ‘Turn it up the other way, Angie. No – go on, you said this was a good one. Let’s see it.’

  As he made the awkward little movement from his hip, swinging the weight onto his good leg, Angela found herself growing cold with rage. The apology she had been ready to give withered to a sharp hard point which glittered in her eyes. She pulled herself upright and forced herself to look, dispassion making stone of her face, at the flat ugliness of his nose, the smug stretch of his upper lip.

  She felt the air thickening. A streak of light broadened on the damp paper as the paint dried. In the hallway the steady tick of La Grandmère defined the seconds. Billy swallowed and shifted heavily again. He took a gulp from his glass. Angela heard with some distaste the creak of the leather strap which bound the hollow tin leg to the bandaged stump of his knee.

  For once Billy was the first to give in – not gracefully, it must be said. ‘I’m off for a shit’ – and he stumped away along the tiled floor, thump-creak along to the bathroom.

  Angela knew that now she must redefine matters which had had their edges conveniently blurred for years and years. It is perhaps strange that the expression on her face did not alter, but how does the face of a victim look when she becomes the vanquisher?

  She picked up her work and recognition of its still imperfect wholeness sang back at her. She carried it out to the small conservatory where she had propped her bike alongside the washing machine, and leant the painting back against the wall. The colours, challenged by the rows of salmon and pink pelargoniums, proclaimed their supremacy.

  She left the painting propped up and walked back along the path which led to the reed bed, noting the change in the air. The bright direct light had given way to a soft misty haze. The warmth of the diffused sunlight bathed her bare arms and legs, was absorbed by the bright yellow of the smock she wore. Soon the orange dirt path, with its flinty stones which worked their way up to the surface to trip the unwary and scar sandalled toes, rolled gently to the reed-fringed trackways by the sluggish river. The distant haze of thunder-coloured hills folded into the collapsed intensity of light which slanted from behind a cloud onto the flat brown plain. Nearer, the landscape was broken and interrupted by the devious and treacherous windings of the tricky little river with its boggy waterways. The place smelt slightly off, an odour of tempting decay. The pathways, very muddy at the watery edges, were fringed with vegetation, much of it rotting slowly into the water, to be laved back to enrich the land. The main path lost its definition in the middle of it all.

  Here and there human claims had been staked out: makeshift landing stages, slimy pieces of wood breaking off slowly into the lapping water. Lone posts, solitary gestures of defiance, broke the surface of the river, causing little eddies as they interrupted the water’s flow.

  Angela had, in the past, accepted the dark beauty of the place as a symbol of despair. The loneliness, the refusal of the reeds, the comfrey, the yellow kingcups, the tendril-stemmed creeping water plants to pattern themselves in any way that was not their own, had caused her little stabs of distress. But earlier that day, whilst she painted, she had seen their beauty and their particular solitary quality. She had felt then that she wanted to identify with that. Now she saw the strength in the design. She clenched her right fist. Standing in that lonely landscape was a small stocky woman with a soul that rebelled and struck defiance at the heavy sky. Overwhelmed, she burst into tears.

  Angela walked back home, swearing and slapping at the biting insects which lurked hopefully among the sweet pollen of the dusty reeds, waiting for their chance to bite on flesh. Her mind could not be brought to heel. Like a
n ant whose nest has been destroyed, scurrying from untold distress, she lurched mentally from grievance to grievance, treading a minefield of pain. Billy sneering, Billy rejecting, Billy being superior. (‘Why the hell can’t you just paint what you see? – all this crap about painting feeling.’) Billy pathetic, frightened that she might know the answer to that one.

  Dusk was falling, plum-grey now, down onto the plumed reed beds. A small commotion rang from a nearby bank as a family of egrets squabbled mechanically over water, fish, space. Angela started to pull the undisciplined bits of her mind to a calmer level; she tried to watch the birds, now settling down in feathery comfort together. How often had her resentment assumed the proportion of worthwhile thought, taking over rational space, creating mean little miseries? Calmer now, she pushed through the heavy evening air, retracing her afternoon steps, breathing hard but steadily, planning new moves.

  Moving round her small kitchen, white walls, white tiles, mixing walnut oil, lemon juice and garlic, shredding lettuce, beating eggs for the omelette and breaking bread into a basket, she kept her mind to the level of the task immediately in front of her. The space she had created that evening gave plenty of time in which she would think.

  She lit the oil lamps and the special candles which were meant to keep the biting insects at bay. Unfolding a red and white chequered tablecloth, she laid it on the small table on the verandah. Opening wine, polishing glasses, laying out dishes of bread, cheese and olives, she called Billy when she saw the blue haze rise from the oil in the heavy omelette pan, indicating that the beaten egg should be poured in.

  ‘Now that’s what I call useful work, Angie,’ he conceded as they started to eat their softly lit meal. ‘Jolly good salad, delicious omelette – one thing you can do is cook.’

  She watched with a growing distaste which welled up in her, from her stomach, bile threatening to choke her, as Billy, a large coarse animal, stuffed her food into his mouth. He was so much body, spitty lips framing greasy chewing mouth, fat fringed bulging cheeks, plump fingers, giving little moans of pleasure as he gulped at the egg and cheese and swigged at his glass of wine.

  Five or six large mouthfuls and Billy’s share of the omelette was gone. Before he had finished swallowing his last piece he was eyeing her plate. Appetite gone, she handed it to him, averting her eyes from the piece of egg that was stuck to his cheek. Appetite eased, he started to eat more slowly. A thought struck him and he stopped in mid-bite, nostrils flared in amusement, brown eyes shining in pleasure (malice, she thought). Again his moustache stretched across that broad upper lip which he curled round his top teeth in anticipation of the fun he was about to have.

  ‘Tell you what, Angie. I’ve had an idea. Tell you what. You lend me your painting things tomorrow and I’ll have a bash. See if I can turn out a pretty daub like that thing you did today. How long did that take you? Half hour or so? I’ll see if I can do better than that. Always fancied myself as wassisname – Picasso. He painted a load of rubbish too, so you’re in good company.’

  Angela was beyond passion. One part of her numbed mind recognized the insecurity of Billy’s jibes, but with what was left she felt a great sadness at the rending of the fabric that had been woven over the years. Her forbearance had stayed the destruction, but – and she realized this now – so had her wilful refusal to deal with the matter honestly and with any degree of reality.

  She had, by now, closed her ears and her mind to Billy who, teeth showing white below the severely parted line of his moustache, was talking and grimacing with malicious pleasure. A series of rapid decisions were marshalling in Angela’s mind. Choices were narrowing down into courses of action and, as she was about to form them into straight lines of moves that she would make, there was a soft rapping at the door at the side of the house.

  Billy stopped talking and looked over his shoulder; no one ever came to see them at night. Angela got up to see who it was.

  At chest level outside the door, their gleaming heads haloed in the soft fluttering of the white night moths, stood two children. A boy, dark and slight, and a taller blonde girl. Standing straight, a solemn pair, with the seriousness of children who present a simple truth, they had the beauty of their age, which Angela guessed to be somewhere between nine and twelve. They gazed at her for some time before the girl spoke.

  ‘The mother sent these for you.’ She thrust forward a large bundle of freshly cut reeds, their feathery heads bleeding bright pollen.

  ‘La mère?’ Angela was completely taken aback.

  ‘Oui, la mère de la rivière,’ said the girl, holding the reeds out towards Angela in a formal way that made her look as if she was about to drop a curtsy.

  ‘They are from the mother,’ insisted the little boy as Angela automatically took the flowers.

  Angela could think of nothing to say as the solemn pair linked hands and turned to march back down the path before melting into the soft night.

  Afterwards she could remember very little of the details of the visit. She had no mental picture at all of the clothes the children wore, whether she had protested at their abrupt departure into the inky black of the evening, and as the days wore on and the incident tugged at her mind she was not completely sure if the language used had been French or English or a mixture of the two. It was the following day, the encounter of the night before weaving a strange thread into the jumble in her racing mind as she sorted through clothes and tried to compose a letter to Kattie and Clem, that she was reminded, in conversation with Madame Houbon, of a shattering fact. There were no children at all living in the village.

  Kattie gave a low slow whistle and then a shrewd sideways look through tendrils of hair as Angela told her of the ‘gift’.

  ‘What about the reeds?’

  ‘What about them?’

  ‘What happened to them?’

  ‘Oh. I see what you mean. No, they were real enough. I put them in the umbrella stand.’ Angela, diverted, giggled. ‘Ridiculous, wasn’t it? We had this ceramic umbrella stand – no umbrellas mind you. It did very well as a vase at times. They must have still been there when I left. I expect they’ve been chucked out by now.’

  Fergus sat very still at the foot of his noisome bed. His eyes, pupils dilated, goggled behind the thick lenses of his spectacles. His plump arms dangled outside legs clad in filthy jeans, settled squarely on the floor.

  He was no stranger to deep longings and yearnings, hunger for affection and for sexual satisfaction, but a long apprenticeship in solitude had taught him to cope pragmatically with feelings that could have no satisfactory outcome. So he averted his gaze from Dorelia, who was loping around his disgusting shambles of a room, poking and prodding, prying into every nook and cranny and exclaiming, without any sort of recoil but with a horrid honesty, at the filth she found. Intensely curious, absolutely sure of her welcome anywhere but especially here, in her own, her parents’ home, she had decided to visit Fergus after breakfast.

  Kattie and Angela were still sitting in the kitchen discussing the branching out and healing of Angela’s life; Hugh was lying, as drained and cold and white as a marble sarcophagus, on his sofa bed plumb in the middle of the empty ballroom, while Clem was speeding up the motorway to London and to the daily pleasures of his business life, which he found necessary to field the irregularity of his domestic arrangements.

  Fergus recognized the tugging of his spirit as a yearning for contact with Dorelia, who had invaded his room like a spinning top. He also knew that he could no more reach out to touch her than he could order his life on a different course.

  She was telling him about a party she said she had been to just three days earlier.

  ‘I didn’t realize, you see, that it was anything, well, you know, any sort of a SUBSTANCE. And, when I woke up, I was lying on this kitchen table with no clothes on and a knife – a carving knife – right across my tummy – like that!’

  She flopped, fully clad, onto the bed and patted her flat belly to show where the knife had l
ain. Fergus leant forward. He was now intensely interested.

  ‘What was it – acid, snort?’ As he became animated, on home ground, he breathed heavily.

  Dorelia wriggled and shrugged. She got up. ‘Well, you know – your bed pongs – you need to change the sheets. Or open the window.’

  ‘No. Go on – what did you take?’ Fergus was not offended.

  ‘Oh, can’t remember now. All very boring.’ She screwed her face up into an ugly pout – a crumpled pig expression. ‘Why are you living here in our house? What do you do?’ Fergus, who liked to talk about himself, drew a deep breath, ready to launch into one of his interminable anecdotes. Dorelia, sensing a great pall of boredom, prepared to flee.

  The strange balance – Dorelia tall, angular and beautiful, gazing down at the slouching Fergus with a look of doubt, Fergus curving his fingers safely into the inside of his thighs before he began a long and involved tale – was broken by a quick knock on the door. Kattie poked her head through and saw her daughter standing, stork-like, on one leg, finger in her mouth, gazing round-eyed at her while Fergus scratched his thigh, automatically shutting off contact by gazing loosely into middle distance. She was unable to justify the quick push of annoyance she felt at her daughter closeted like this with Fergus. She braced herself (as she had become accustomed to do) against the sickly smell of the room and asked Fergus if the post had arrived.

  ‘Oh yeah. Yes. Not much this morning.’ He produced Clem’s letter and a couple of circulars.

  ‘Are you coming to help with the programme?’ Kattie asked her daughter, rather pointedly, immediately feeling guilty for exerting pressure.

  ‘Oh. Yes. Right, of course. We’ll have to talk to Hugh I suppose. Goody!’ Dorelia leapt to attention and scampered out of the room leaving Fergus gloomily contemplating the scuffed patch on the carpet.

  ‘It’s terribly important that we maintain a high profile on Krane. He’s quite the most exciting of all that movement.’ Clem pacing thoughtfully up and down the mushroom pink carpet in his Cork Street headquarters assumed a new vitality. Away from Puttnam House he took on his true stature. His handsome head framed by shaggy grey hair, his strong kindly face, his bulk, existed not as part of Kattie’s domestic kingdom but as the indication of the successful businessman, the decision-maker, the artist.