“So that’s why he hurried off,” her husband says. “Did you slap his face?”
“Yes,” she says, and softly laughs, “as a matter of fact, I did. And then the rain started. He was very concerned for his shoes.”
“Poor Roddy.”
Now they both laugh, not quite cruelly, and he releases her and turns to the sink and scoops into the jug what ice cubes he managed to free before cutting himself — they are flecked with his blood — and she goes to the dresser and comes back with two tumblers, and he pours out their drinks, and they drink.
So you see, old Dad, she will not love you. We are too much for them; they prefer to settle for their own kind.
Petra sits by the window binding up her wounds. Although they sting and make her bite her lip she does not think of them as wounds but as the marks of passion, love scars, kisses. She is calm; a beautiful peace reigns in her heart. In the garden the blackbird hops on to a bough and pours out its song, and all the evening seems to stand back and listen dreamily. How pale the sky is at its edges, a barely blue, and higher up a swan-shaped cloud of purest white with a soiled edge sails sedately westwards. She has a sense of the air up there, the weightless enormity of it, thin and clear, arched over the world. She is proud of the skill with which she has learned to bandage herself. First she smears the cut with antiseptic cream to stem the blood, then puts on a patch of gauze and winds the linen bandage round and round. She makes a knot one-handed and pulls it tight with her teeth. Presently the first shy spot of crimson will appear as the blood seeps through the cloth, but soon it will stop spreading and as it dries will turn to a rich red-umber, like the paint in an old picture. She sees herself in a picture, she is its centre, its focus, a girl leaning at a window with everything attending her, the bird, the cloud, the hushed, still trees. The sting has turned to a steady throbbing now. She extends one arm along the window-sill and cradles the other in her lap. She has never got even a speck of blood on the kimono, in all the years; that is another thing to be proud of.
She hears her mother on the stairs, calling for her son, for Ivy Blount. She shuts her eyes and lays her forehead on her arm. Something is the matter, something has happened in the house. The heavy silk of the sleeve is cool and slightly rough, almost metallic, against her brow. Downstairs, Rex the dog begins to bark, loud, peremptory, with measured pauses. The telephone rings, and stops after two peals as someone snatches up the receiver. Two doors open, one is slammed shut again. More footfalls on the stairs, heavy this time. Her thoughts drift, calm as clouds.
My father is chafing to be gone. All is done with here, he says, but I think not, not quite, though it is true that to make a happy ending one must stop short of the end.
Petra lifts her heavy head; her eyelids too are heavy; she could sleep, now, but we shall not let her sleep. She rises, takes off the kimono, dresses, then folds the kimono and wraps it in its tissue paper and returns it to the drawer in the wardrobe. The razor is already in its place behind the chest of drawers. She stands a moment, looking carefully about the room. Everything has been put away, everything is in order. She loves herself, a little.
From the landing she looks down into the well of the hall. There are voices, but the speakers are not to be seen. She feels faint for a moment and seems to sway. What a weight her scarred arms are, and as if they were not hers, as if they were not arms at all but something else, thick lengths of liana, or the limbs of a tree. The throbbing of the razor cuts has abated but in the night it will return and keep her awake, and she will feel there is someone in bed with her, this throbbing other.
She sets off down the stairs. Before she reaches the bottom Helen appears. They stop, the girl on the stairs, the woman in the hall. It is not fair, Petra thinks, it is not fair.
“What’s going on?” Helen asks. “What has happened?” Petra descends the last few steps and holds out her hand. Helen stares, frowning. “Ah — where did you find it?”
“In the kitchen. Here, have it.”
Helen takes the ring and turns it in her fingers, gazing at her sister-in-law, half smiling, with a quizzical light. “Who is Z?” Petra asks.
“What?”
“Z — the initial carved on it.”
“No, no,” Helen says, “it’s an A, A for — for Adam.”
“It’s not, it’s Z. Hold it like that, look.”
They bend their heads together over the ring and Helen turns it first this way, then that. “It seems an A to me,” she says doubtfully, “but I suppose—”
Ah, crafty old Dad!
Now a little posse of people comes in from the direction of the front hall, talking. Adam and his mother lead, with Benny Grace and Ivy Blount and Duffy the cowman crowding at their heels. They have the excited air about them of a band of disciples hurrying towards Emmaus. Adam’s colour in particular is high — he is tipsy on love and half a jug of gin gimlet — and he seems both eager and apprehensive. Helen makes to speak to him but it is to Petra that he turns. “Come with me,” he says to her, sternly unsmiling, “the rest of you stay here.” Petra asks no question, but follows meekly after him up the stairs.
“Where are they going?” Helen asks, petulantly; why will no one tell her what is happening? There is a tickle in her nostrils.
“It’s your father,” Ursula says distractedly, not looking at her but gazing after her son and daughter as if they were being taken up in a cloud. “I mean Adam — Adam’s father. Adam.”
“What? Is he—?”
“Ssh.” This is Benny Grace. She turns and stares at him, but he only smiles, pressing a finger as if playfully to his plump and ruby lips. Ivy Blount too is gazing after the disappearing pair — they are shoulders and heads up there, then heads only, then gone — and clasps her hands before her breast. Duffy shuffles awkwardly.
“I wish someone would—” Helen begins, but has to stop, and remains a moment motionless, her mouth slackly open and her eyelids fluttering. “Ah,” she says, “ahh,” then sneezes, a snapping bark, and blinks in the surprise of it.
But look! What beast of burden, burdened beast, is this? Adam and his sister have reappeared at the top of the stairs — they suggest an elephant and its mahout — Petra leading him by what seems a set of reins and he bearing his father in his arms. Old Adam is wrapped in a blanket from his toes to his beard; his eyes are closed; he is not dead. The two embark on a careful descent, as if from somewhere immensely high — the packed trees, the shining river, the dust and blood of ancient battle — Petra still in the lead but turned watchfully sideways and Adam following with stiff and stately, pachydermous tread. Petra is carrying her father’s feeding bottle and his waste jar, attached to him still by their rubber tubes. Rex the dog follows, waddling down the steps with his tongue out and his tail going from side to side like an untended rudder. Duffy advances a pace but stops irresolute, and Benny Grace with unsuspected agility darts past him and swarms up the steps to meet the descending pair.
“Careful!” Ursula calls, addressing at once her son, her daughter and Benny’s back. She puts a hand to her mouth. “Oh, please be careful.”
And Helen sneezes again.
When Dr. Fortune arrives he finds the front door standing open wide and fears the worst. He is tired and out of sorts after a long day in the surgery — a couple of his elderly patients have been particularly trying of late — and he does not relish the prospect now of dealing with the Godleys. It was impossible to make out what Ursula was saying on the telephone, babbling something about grace — surely she has not taken to religion? She seemed to be insisting that her husband had come round, which he considers extremely unlikely, although of course one never knows with such cases, all of them tricky and each one tricky in its own way. But what if Godley has returned to consciousness? By all the indications he should have been dead days ago — indeed, he should not have survived the stroke at all, so severe it was. Could it be that a brain of Godley’s type, exercised constantly throughout a lifetime, is tougher and more durable than the ordinary kind? That would be an interesting line of inquiry, and in his young days he might have taken it up, for he is not just a country quack and used to have a notion of himself as quite the man of science. How did it happen that he got so bogged down, and here, in the middle of nowhere? Sighing, he steps into the hall. His old black bag never feels so heavy as it does on occasions such as this.