At the start, it rather surprised me that my mother, who had so little to say to me, always seemed cheerful and talkative on these outings. But I soon realized it was only another manifestation of Mr Spector’s singular powers of controlling and directing all situations according to his will and prohibiting all that might be embarrassing or alarming. So convinced was I that his presence formed a guarantee against unpleasantness that it was a considerable shock to find this wasn’t invariably the case.
The Sunday I’m thinking of was one of the coldest days in the whole winter. I was very keen on skating just then, but I rather envied the pair, whom I’d left sitting comfortably by the fire when I set off for the ponds. A biting northeast wind soon drove me off the ice, and I returned to find the cottage so silent that I assumed it was deserted and that they must have changed their minds about going out. As I dutifully took off my snow-caked boots in the porch, I told myself they wouldn’t stay out long on such a day, feeling slightly peeved because they’d gone without me. Suddenly, then, I remembered a book I’d left by the fire and, to avoid restarting old arguments, hurried to fetch it, just as I was, in my stockinged feet, before they returned.
Convinced of being alone in the house, I was quite startled, on opening the door, to see the two of them still sitting there, though not precisely as I had left them, for my mother had abandoned her favourite seat to share the visitor’s sofa — or so I thought, for I hardly had time to see anything before she sprang up, pushing the hair back from her face with a distraught gesture, and, in a voice trembling with anger or some other emotion, accused me of creeping about the house and spying on her. I was still blocking the door, too astounded to move, when she rushed up and thrust me aside and then fled from the room.
Speechless in my hurt amazement, I turned to Mr Spector, who hadn’t stirred, quite unmoved, it appeared, by her extraordinary conduct. He might have been half asleep, lounging there in a relaxed pose, absolutely detached and calm. I was beyond reach of further surprise; but if anything could have astonished me more it was to hear him say dreamily, ‘You’ve got a very beautiful mother, Mark’, as though nothing else had struck him about her now. Yet I, too, in the midst of my confused feelings, had been not unaware of her usually pale cheeks flushed pink by anger or the heat of the fire and making her look extremely pretty — not that I saw any need to comment on it.
While I stood there, hopelessly at a loss, the man now signed to me amicably to sit beside him, which I did more or less in a daze. He slid his arm around my shoulders and drew me into a comfortable position, leaning against him, implying that nothing untoward could have occurred while we were sitting so pleasantly side by side.
‘There’s nothing to get upset about. She didn’t mean it,’ he said kindly, adding, ‘I’m going to talk to you now as if you were grown-up.’ After this flattering start, he went on to tell me that, in a few years’ time, I’d find out for myself that all women were liable to caprices and nerve storms at certain times, irrational moments, when it was useless to reason with them, and they just had to be humoured, being, far more than men, at the mercy of the delicate mechanism of their bodies, which had the supreme gift of bestowing life.
I was already recovering, for his total composure made nonsense of the idea that anything disturbing could have happened. The fire’s heat was almost stupefying after the icy cold out of doors. Staring into its glowing heart, I began to feel drowsy, as though this were all a dream, and when he next spoke his voice seemed to come from somewhere a long way off, far above me. ‘You’re a country boy, and you don’t go about with your eyes shut; you’ve got a good idea, I expect, of the way nature works. But your father wanted me to have a talk with you at the right time, and this seems as good a time as any.’
He had a real gift, Mr Spector, of explaining difficult or obscure matters in terms suited to his audience, and I’m sure any parent or schoolmaster would have admired his presentation of the facts of life for my benefit, getting them forth without prudery or sentiment but simply and with delicacy of feeling. At first I listened sleepily, only half attending, but by degrees my interest was engaged, as it was bound to be by so absorbing a subject. He could have chosen no better way of diverting my thoughts from my mother’s extraordinary attack. And when she came back after being out of the room a long time, we were talking as if nothing out of the usual had happened.
Whether she took her cue from us or had already decided to ignore the incident, I don’t know, but anyhow she, too, acted as if everything were perfectly normal for the rest of the visit. Nor did she refer to her accusation when the two of us were alone, either that evening or at any time subsequently.
In a way her silence was a relief, yet in another way I resented it, as indicating my unimportance to her, not even worth an explanation of such hurtful, insulting words. I was more aware after this of the coldness, and the gap between us seemed wider.
We were both on edge during the next few days, and once, when she called me Marko (she still occasionally, to my annoyance, used this babyish name, originally given to tell me apart from my father, whose name was Mark, too), I lost my temper completely, said it sounded as if she were calling a dog and that I refused to answer to it any more. Why should I, after all, when there was no longer anyone to distinguish me from?
I can still see the little nervous jerky movement she made only when she was upset, glancing over her shoulder, as if some imp might have heard, exclaiming, ‘How can you speak like that? Do you want to bring your father bad luck?’
Though I knew it was rude and heartless, I only laughed. Surely she wasn’t so superstitious? She said no more, but, giving me a reproachful look, went out of the room — though not before I’d caught the glint of tears in her eyes.
I felt mean and ashamed. But I also felt she had taken an unfair advantage of me. Why couldn’t she have got angry instead of crying, so that I could have answered back?
My thoughts kept reverting to her unwithdrawn accusation, and the unmistakably genuine agitation she’d shown while making it, which for some reason I could not fathom, disturbed me almost as much. Nor could I understand why my mind, as if of its own accord, had arrived at the conclusion that Mr Spector was much more closely connected with the incident than his judicial calm would have had me believe. In fact, the whole thing was a complete puzzle to me and a weight on my spirit.
No doubt I’d have forgotten it in due course. But before there was time for this, after an interval much shorter than usual, he reappeared. For the first time I felt slightly uncomfortable before him and was glad that he took my mother off at once to talk business, while I, the day being windless and sunny, though still very cold, announced that I’d go for a walk and retired to the privacy of the treehouse.
The word ‘business’ had for me lifelong associations with dullness and exclusively adult mysteries I neither wished, nor was expected, to understand, so that I felt excused from further attention and could relax with my unreal characters and their adventures, unperplexed by problems of grown-up behaviour. I became so absorbed in what I was reading that I didn’t notice the two familiar figures emerge from the cottage till it was too late to think of escape. Now I was in an awkward dilemma, unable to declare my presence without declaring myself a liar and giving away my secret refuge as well. I could only keep quiet and try to escape the guilt of eavesdropping by making myself deaf to the conversation below, becoming so immersed in my book that I ceased to be aware of the speakers, as I did in the car.