Darkness, I Read online

  Anna was left-handed. She discarded her right hand, let it lie. As if it did not have anything much to do.

  And was she beautiful? Too soon to tell.

  No. Not too soon. She was beautiful in the way of the white-haired super-children of 1950s science fiction.

  Already she had a dressing-up box, full of fantastic dresses stitched by Elizabeth from lengths of material Althene purchased. And of course the books stacked neatly up and up beside her mattress—she had graduated from the cot long ago. Anna did not yet read the books from the library they had made in the fourth bedroom. She read fantasy books suitable for a child—of ten. Robin Hood, Atlantis, Greek Myths; books too about wolves and tigers, ancient cities.

  Althene acquired tapes of plays broadcast by the BBC on the obsolete Third Programme, Louis MacNeice, Dylan Thomas... Anna listened, bolt upright, her eyes wide. She could not understand them, surely, but they held her. She would ask for this one, that one, again. And music too. Anna liked music.

  The Scarabae had named her.

  Maybe, in those first minutes, holding her, Rachaela might have been compelled to stake a claim. Afterwards, she could recollect the emotion which swept over her, but she did not know what it was. And once Althene looked at the baby, the emotion shrivelled. Rachaela had renounced her child at once. It was no use.

  If Althene guessed at Rachaela’s reaction, she gave no sign. She treated Rachaela like a proper mother who, due perhaps to fatigue, or some unexplained other duty, could not spend as much time on Anna as she otherwise would have done.

  And Althene, obviously, was mother and father both. A better bargain even than Emma.

  It was after the cats were delivered to the Scarabae house. Althene had gone there in Reg’s car, to the turreted masonry above the common. She was away ten hours. Returning, she brought two bottles of some extraordinary champagne that Eric had accorded them. And a box of chocolates ostensibly from the adopted girl, Tray. And the name.

  That far they had called the baby The Child, the way they frequently called each of the cats The Cat. It was not complacence, more the recognition of essence. For, still, then, Anna was a child.

  ‘Miranda said something to me,’ said Althene, as they sat before the fire Reg had laid, The Child on the sofa lying noiseless and alert between them.

  ‘Something about your daughter,’ said Rachaela.

  Althene did not say, ‘Our daughter’. She said, ‘Miranda asked if we would consider naming her for Anna.’

  And at once the child rolled, looked up at Althene with her focussing eyes. It was not quite Christmas. As yet the fatal words had not been spoken (Althni, Rashla). Yet, it seemed she knew.

  ‘Anna,’ Rachaela said. ‘You mean they want to name her for the dead. The dead old woman my former daughter killed.’

  ‘They’d like us to honour Anna’s memory.’

  ‘It’s like sticking a piece of a grave to her.’

  ‘No. Only a few soft ashes.’

  ‘Well.’ Rachaela looked at Reg’s nice domestic blaze of clean non-smoking coke. She thought of the first house which burned, and how Anna burned, and then she said, ‘But it’s putting the fire on her again.’

  ‘Or putting out the fire,’ said Althene.

  ‘No. Oh, it doesn’t matter. Call her what you want. She’s yours.’

  Althene said, at last, flatly, without evident purpose, ‘Ours.’ And then, ‘They weren’t insistent. We are not obliged.’

  ‘Anna,’ said Rachaela. And the child now looked at her. It was her name.

  Despite this, although Anna spoke their names to them like a spell on Christmas Day in the morning, Anna had not declaimed her own name until her first birthday, last October. And then she set out, in her coiling, uncoordinated letters, ornamenting with the paints Althene had given her: I AM ANNA.

  Elizabeth had thriftily drunk all her coffee and was now washing up the breakfast plates and her cake-making bowls.

  Rachaela remembered that you dare not any longer lick the mixing bowl for fear of the mooted Salmonella in raw egg.

  Outside the snow cracked, and a swathe fell from a tree. Jelka skidded under the urn, lashing her tail, and a bird flew bleakly, like the last bird, to the bags of nuts.

  In the living room Anna lay in Althene’s arm, and they listened to Sibelius’ music of the Scandinavian ice.

  And in the Gulf they got ready for Armageddon.

  ‘I don’t think she should have it.’

  They stood in the slushy market, all around them the bright flags of clothing, stalls of tall green bottles, necklaces of crystal, clocks.

  ‘Because it’s the fur of a dead thing.’

  ‘Not exactly.’

  ‘Because someone will run out and lynch her. Rachaela, she doesn’t want to wear it. Do you, Anna?’

  ‘It’s not for dressing-up,’ Anna said.

  From the rail of the stall, the fox-fur hung. Its face had become pointed, like a beak, its fur was dark, unfoxlike. From its pointed face, that seemed to Rachaela sad and wise, not pitiful, yet bereft, two orange glass eyes gazed out.

  ‘Try to tell Rachaela,’ said Althene, holding the child by her hand, ‘why you want it.’

  ‘It’s my fox,’ said Anna.

  Rachaela looked down. They had dispensed with the baby-carry in which Althene had ported her; Anna preferred to walk. When she was tired, lagged, Althene simply picked her up. Any way, Anna was now too tall.

  She looks four or five. Slim and small. The long white hair, with its roots of silver flushed like soft water into the transparent white of her temples.

  A solemn little girl, who wanted a fox-fur as a toy.

  ‘It’s not a toy,’ said Rachaela. ‘They hunt them, ghastly people. And then they turn them into this.’

  ‘My fox,’ said Anna, again.

  ‘Anna,’ said Althene, ‘what will you do with it?’

  ‘I’ll hold it,’ said Anna. ‘It will sit on my lap.’

  ‘It’s not a cat,’ said Rachaela. ‘It’s not real.’

  ‘Oh, no,’ said Anna sensibly.

  ‘For God’s sake.’

  Rachaela was angry. With the slush and the grey wind, the snivelling bare trees. With the images she had seen on television—an injured civilian rushed from the site of a scud attack, helpless on a stretcher, his anxious little dog sitting on his ribs. The birds, oiled black, also helpless, drowned in a shit not their own. A cat walking over a starving sunset city, shortly perhaps to receive a limited nuclear strike.

  ‘Oh, have it then.’ Rachaela heard her own harsh mother. She snapped up her head. ‘No, I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Ruth. Yes, have it. Of course.’

  Silence.

  Rachaela looked at them. Her lover, her daughter. What had she said—

  ‘Who is Ruth?’ said Anna.

  Oh Christ, is that what I said?

  Althene, serious and rational, explaining: ‘Ruth was Rachaela’s other daughter. Ruth isn’t alive now.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Rachaela.

  ‘It’s all right,’ said Anna. Her unformed voice—Issall ride. Like a drunk. But she was sober.

  I’ve insulted her. Oh God, does she know how badly?

  Rachaela felt faint.

  The market, full of bustling people, colours, seemed to swarm to engulf her.

  But Althene did not see. Althene said to Anna, ‘It’s just like that time yesterday, when I called you Rachaela, by mistake.’

  ‘Oh, yes.’

  ‘Now,’ said Althene. And she lifted the serpent of fur with dangling paws. The stall keeper came back from his conversation and Bell’s-laced tea at the adjacent stall.

  ‘That’s smashing now. Quite the vogue. It’s all right, you see. Nineteen twenties that is. Killed before Friends of the Earth got going.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ inquired Althene.

  ‘Eh? Go on. ‘Course I am. Look good on you, that will.’

  Althene laughed. She said, ‘I prefer human skin.’

  T
he marketeer grinned. Not widely enough.

  He wrapped the fox in tissue paper, and they carried it away.

  Anna named the fox Ursula.

  No reason was given.

  She slept with the fox in one protective arm and her white rabbit in the other.

  ‘They called her the Vixen.’

  ‘Ruth.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘An old pun. To denote female degeneracy. Cervix. Cer vixen.’

  Rachaela said, ‘From the womb.’

  ‘There is an old brandy,’ Althene said. ‘They would cork it into the wombs of dead women, and so let it mature.’

  ‘This bloody war,’ said Rachaela. ‘I remember the Cuba Crisis—’

  ‘Ah. So you’ve noticed.’

  ‘It seems to be out of control.’

  Althene said, against her in the dark, ‘It will be stopped.’

  ‘What? How?’

  Althene said nothing more.

  Like a goddess, like a statue of cream flesh, she slept.

  Rachaela lay in the darkness, and under her the world turned. As it had always done. As it always would?

  Chapter Four

  She loved Tesco’s. Was in love with Tesco’s. She should, maybe, have married Tesco’s. For marriage ideally promises to bring security and pleasure, excitement and contentment both. And these things Tesco’s had always offered to Sharon Ferris, while her husband, Wayne, offered all the opposites.

  The moment she walked in through the revolving doors, Sharon’s heart instinctively lifted.

  The cleanness and the sunny light, the pretty green and white striped awnings over the greengrocery, where vegetables and fruit lay like coloured playthings. And presently the scent of fresh bread, and the heavenly desserts, the cosmetics in their own elegant aisle, the chocolates.

  However, since her last visit, a sombre angel had spread its wings over Sharon’s magical rapport with shopping. For although she detested other housework, she had always liked to shop. This was because Sharon liked food. Not unreasonably. It was her one true remaining contact with the joy of living.

  And Sharon was fat.

  She had had problems ever since she started Andrew. And after his birth, the fat had not melted away, as somehow she had always thought it would. Constantly running round after her child in addition to running round after Wayne made Sharon very hungry. And so, Sharon ate. Snacks of crisps and bubbly drinks, cakes, bananas, and, when out, McDonald’s.

  And in the evenings, the big cooked dinners must be prepared for equally hungry but rod-slim Wayne. Steak and chips, lamb and roast potatoes, cherry tart, coffee ice-cream. And afterwards, when Wayne was out at the pub, or somewhere else, Sharon ate Mars bars and Whispers before the telly. They said the taste of chocolate sent a message to your brain that was like the stimulus of falling in love. Sharon had never noticed that. But at least chocolate did not get you pregnant.

  She had conceived Andrew in a field by starlight. And as Wayne pushed inside her, hurting her, filling her with a strange sweet triumph, a line of poetry from school had come to Sharon over and over:

  In fields of light, that warm to touch...

  She had not told Wayne of the poetry, he would have sneered. She had had to tell him though, four months later, when she was beginning to blow up, not only her stomach, but all over, that she had his baby in her womb. Wayne had been going to dump Sharon. But Wayne’s dad had threatened him and Wayne was still scared of his father. Men had a responsibility. Sharon would make a good wife. Sharon was the mother of Wayne’s son.

  They were married in a registry office and Sharon looked a sight, her pink dress already too tight for her, and her hat trying to blow off. Wayne was sullen and cocky by horrible turns.

  It had not been an easy birth.

  Wayne, again by turns, was annoyed with the baby, or proud of it. With Sharon, he remained only annoyed.

  But Wayne was a TV repair man. They did not have to economize. Andrew was smartly dressed, and there was always plenty of food.

  When Sharon had to start buying a forty-two C bra, she did become a bit worried. But she could not see what she should do. She was hungry, truly hungry, all the time, and if she had to wait for food, sometimes she felt sick and giddy. As Andrew grew, when he was at home, she would also share his little-boy lunches. Beefburgers and fries. Fish fingers and alphabetti spaghetti. Andrew, she thought, quite liked her. She liked Andrew. It was not his fault.

  And he was an odd child. Sometimes he wanted books from the library, and once, when a piece of classical music came on the television, he sat enrapt, and his eyes were full of something—not tears, not thought—she did not know, and Andrew did not say.

  So then she let him choose the odd classical CD at Woolworth’s, even though Wayne jeered and called her a soppy cow.

  Sometimes Andrew would come out with long, long words. At five, he had said to her, abruptly, ‘Candelabra.’

  ‘And what’s that?’ asked Sharon, who was genuinely unsure.

  ‘A fing wiv canals in it,’ said Andrew.

  ‘What, like a river?’

  Andrew looked lost.

  She could see she had disappointed him then, just as she did his father. So she opened the freezer and got out the full-cream ices with chopped pecans.

  Sharon’s bright thick hair was cut very, and very unbecomingly, short. Someone had told her, she did not want to bother with it now, and this would make things simple. But now and then, when she caught sight of herself, Sharon wondered who she was. She had been a plump firm pretty eighteen-year-old, with a primrose mane dazzling to her waist, and she had been glad of her big breasts.

  Somehow she did not associate the process of eating her meals, her comforts, with growing larger. Fat was a malignant sorcery. Although, she did see that when they had that war, and she had been so frightened, she had had an awful lot of chocolate. Sharon had been afraid of a scud-missile attack. Wayne had told her she was insane. This did not help, but the chocolate did, it calmed her. When the war ended she celebrated, really happy, with Andrew. They had double burgers and fries and banana splits.

  Then, last month, she had had to go to the doctor with a painful swollen foot that made her chores extra difficult.

  ‘It’s a bad strain, Mrs Ferris. But you know why, don’t you?’

  ‘No,’ said Sharon, honestly, embarrassed to have failed the doctor’s test.

  ‘You’re too fat, I’m afraid. Much too fat. You’re putting a strain on your feet, and goodness knows what sort of strain on your heart.’

  Sharon and Wayne’s doctor was about twenty-nine, slim and fit with lush auburn hair. Wayne always said he fancied the doctor. Her apple-blossom skin had never been tainted by make-up and her large black-lashed eyes mocked mascara. Nature had created the doctor in an impulse of beauty and health which probably nothing short of a wilful intake of cyanide could have damaged. Yet from this rostrum the doctor was inclined forcibly to assist others less lucky to try to attain her (impossible) heights.

  ‘Here’s a diet sheet, Mrs Ferris. Follow it, and come back in two weeks, and I’ll weigh you again.’

  Sharon looked at the diet sheet bemused. And this was the treatment she received for her hurt foot.

  Ten days later, an elasticated support from Boots had cured Sharon’s strain, and she had duly begun to diet. Sharon, all her life, had done what strong-minded people told her. Even to the extent of having sex with Wayne Ferris in a field.

  But the diet was awkward. Now, instead of one big meal that Sharon could enjoy, Sharon had to make one big meal that she would have enjoyed but was not allowed, and one small meal that she hated and would presently, to the accompanying aromas of chips, pies and gateaux, try to consume.

  All day she felt weak, as if she had the ‘flu. Once she was actually sick, but perhaps that was good. Her stomach was sore from lettuce and carrot.

  She had always dreaded salad. Hard-boiled eggs made her queasy, grilled fish tasted like cardboard. She did like
fruit—cooked, with sugar and pastry.

  Worst of all, she missed her chocolate. In the long nights while Wayne was out with the women he picked up when mending their TVs, Sharon ate raw apples and oranges until she got diarrhoea.

  After two weeks she went back to the doctor.

  The doctor did not remember why Sharon had come, but when Sharon humbly reminded her, the doctor weighed Sharon. ‘Well, you haven’t lost any weight yet, Mrs Ferris. Have you been sticking to the diet?’ Sharon said that she had. The doctor frowned. ‘Well, if you’re sure. Sometimes it can take a few weeks before anything starts to happen.’

  The doctor told Sharon she was on a plateau, but in fact Sharon was in a mild, prevailing hell. She did ask how long she would have to diet.

  ‘Oh, you mustn’t think of it as a diet, Mrs Ferris. When you’re inclined to obesity, this has to be a way of life.’

  ‘You mean I’ll always have to eat salad and stuff?’

  The doctor smiled. She told Sharon, as if it were lovely news which would please her, ‘That’s right, Mrs Ferris. If you stick to these foods, you can’t go wrong.’

  And so, when Sharon entered Tesco’s with Andrew trotting by her side, her heart lifted—and fell into the abyss. She could look, but not touch. The touch that warmed...

  Sharon wheeled the trolley bravely in among the salads.

  When they were passing the hot bread, direct from some hidden oven, and Sharon felt dizzy and her mouth filled with water, Andrew came out with one of his words.

  ‘Melanie,’ said Andrew.

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘Melanie.’

  ‘And what’s that, Andy?’

  Sharon stared at her child from a tower of flesh like a slender shaking prisoner in a window.

  ‘Black,’ said Andrew. ‘Dark.’

  Looking at him, Sharon’s fallen heart suddenly stirred.

  He was six, and that morning he had had a dentist’s appointment. It was only a check-up, and there was never anything to do. Yet Andrew did not like the dentist’s. She had been the same as a child, and only got used to it after all the fillings. But, even though nervous, Andrew was controlled and well behaved. He had always been good, even when he was tiny.