After Me Comes the Flood Page 14

  Eve

  Eve…

  No. No. Let me make an account of what Hester said this afternoon. She’d been out all morning buying food, and the kitchen was full of vegetables and meat and bottles of wine as though we’re under siege. There was a dozen green apples on the table, and someone had put them in a circle around the string of cowries that Clare had brought back from the beach, reminding me of a picture I saw once of tokens in a burial chamber. Hester sat me down and gave me some disgusting medicine in a glass – like ground-up chalk stirred into milk – and said it would stop me feeling sick, and I was so grateful for her company I wouldn’t have told her what the real trouble was even if I’d known. She said, ‘I’m sorry for what you saw yesterday, out on the marshes – I wouldn’t have had you witness that for the world. Not for several worlds, indeed!’

  I had a mouthful of medicine, which was so thick it choked me, so instead of answering I settled for shaking my head and shrugging. I think she knew what I meant – she leant forward and patted my hand twice as though she were grateful and said, ‘I knew I needn’t worry – I knew you’d understand. He’s not himself, you know. A beautiful loving lad but never really free from what troubles him…’ She shook her head, and lowered her eyelids so that her whole face took on a resigned and mournful look. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something a little satisfied in her as she surveyed the aftermath of the day’s events and the unease that had prickled under my skin the night before returned. Then she got up quickly, with a dismissive sort of gesture as if she’d dispensed with that subject and was ready for the next, and started to fill the kettle. ‘He will be fine, now – none of us need ever think of it again. Let me make you tea – my mother told me it’s the thing for this weather.’

  When she returned to the table with two mugs overfull with strong tea, she said, ‘Did I see you coming from Elijah’s room the other night? I hope you didn’t find his room too odd!’ She smiled, and this time it was so frank and mischievous, and so plainly affectionate at the mention of the preacher’s name, that I forgot my unease and would’ve told her anything she asked. I said I thought it a very practical way of forecasting a storm, and that made us both laugh. Then she said, ‘Have you spoken to him much? Or have the others told you why he wouldn’t come with us to the sea, or even go down to the reservoir?’

  I told her that we’d talked awhile in his room, and said, ‘I don’t understand. How can I? I never had faith. I can’t imagine that mislaying it would be such a calamity.’

  ‘Nor I,’ she said. ‘But there it is. He’s afraid of everything, you know’ – she flung out her arms and gestured towards the window, where a bright strip of empty lawn showed below the blind – ‘Afraid of everything. Just – everything.’ Her hands dropped to her lap and fidgeted there. I said, ‘Heavens above,’ and she smiled.

  ‘Hells beneath, more to the point – though really we ought not to laugh.’

  I told her how I’d seen him on my first night, standing at the window looking up now and then as though waiting for the sky to fall in, and as I spoke I realised I’d begun to remember things as though they’d happened years before.

  ‘Yes, that’s just it – waiting for the sky to fall in!’ Hester sat up straighter and pushed back the hair that was falling into her eyes. ‘That’s just it – the sun in pieces like a broken plate. He wasn’t always like that, of course – he had that kind of faith so solid it wasn’t faith any more, it was certainty. He didn’t believe in God any more than you believe in me. I’m here, aren’t I?’ I smiled at that, because with her heaviness and with her eyes that see everything there’s something about her you could worship.

  She told me he had believed that the God who made Adam out of dust and clay knew Elijah, of Clapham, south London. ‘Believed that he’d counted the hairs on his head, watched him sleeping, helped him put one foot in front of the other without falling over.’ She shook her head. ‘He had a wife and three daughters – did he tell you that? – and they weren’t any less faithful than he was. Maybe you catch it if you breathe it in, like a virus. So there they were, just think of it – the hand of God turning the world on its tilted axis, and at the same time seeing to it that your cold improves and you can find a parking space when you need one, and you always have money for the gas bill.’

  I imagined Elijah’s arms pierced and threaded for a puppeteer’s strings and shuddered, spilling my tea. As though she’d seen it too, Hester said, ‘Oh, I don’t think of it that way, like a great eye in the clouds. I think it was more that God was everywhere, being beautiful and good, holding up the sky. I remember Elijah saying once he only needed to look at dandelions growing by the side of the road, greasy and black with exhaust fumes, and there was the evidence of God. His was the Kingdom.’ She shook her head in admiration and pity.

  I don’t know why, but I began to feel impatient with the old preacher, that he had let a fine and wise mind be broken over something so slight. What difference was there, after all? He had not seen God then; he did not see him now. I said, ‘Well, what happened, then? How do you lose God? You go out one day and he’s no longer there in the weeds?’

  Hester drew together her heavy grey brows. ‘It’s easy to laugh, of course,’ she said reprovingly. ‘I did, at first. But if you could see how afraid he is – he said to me last week: It’s the Last Times, Hester! Then he remembered he didn’t believe in all of that any more, but that was even worse. The world ending because its Maker has decided it’s high time is one thing. It collapsing without purpose or meaning is quite another.’

  Then she shrugged and went on: ‘He told me about the day it happened, though I’m not sure I believe it. I’m not even sure he believes it himself, but I suppose we all explain ourselves as best we can. Did he tell you about his study? Sometimes I think he misses that more than his family – his books and papers, the pictures on the wall, the cup he always used for tea in the morning. He had his desk against the window, so he could sit there and look out at Creation. Every morning he went to his study, and didn’t come out until the afternoon – except on Sundays, when there wasn’t time. Every week he had three sermons to prepare, or four on special weeks, and for hours he’d sit at his desk reading the Bible, or books about it. I imagine you’d believe in anything, don’t you think, if you read it every day?’

  I smiled then, thinking of one long wet summer when my brother had learnt the language of Tolkien’s elves and wouldn’t answer to any name but Celeborn. I said, ‘I think you probably would.’

  ‘He told me it happened like this. One Sunday morning he’d just finished dressing in his suit and tie and was going over his sermon notes. It had been a hard year for some of the congregation and Elijah knew his duty, and wanted to comfort them. So he found out somehow – he might have counted, for all I know – that in the Bible the words be not afraid or something like it come three hundred and sixty-five times.’ She drained the last of her tea with a gulp and said, ‘Do you understand? To Elijah it meant only one thing: thousands of years ago God had personally seen to it there’d be enough comfort to go round for every day of the year.’

  I felt again my annoyance, disappointed that a man I liked so much could have been so simple and childish in his reasoning. I said I thought it seemed to me a kind of madness, turning everything over until it fit an idea. She smiled and said, ‘But don’t we all do the same? I believe that right this minute we are circling the sun, because I have been told it’s so – I’ve no evidence for it myself. Anyway, there it was – proof he’d been made in the image of God, and the path he walked had been planned before time and was fenced off from danger. Then his youngest daughter came in – they all wore long skirts, you know, for the sake of modesty – and asked him what it was he planned to say, and he told her about the comfort of God, and the three hundred and sixty-five days. And d’you know what she said?’ I shook my head, and saw that her lips were pressed together as if she were trying not to laugh. ‘She said: What about l
eap years? What about leap years!’

  She saw I didn’t understand and, lightly slapping the table, said, ‘Don’t you see? The girl said, You’ve always told me God has ordered everything for my own good. But every leap year, when winter has gone on too long and we’ve forgotten the feel of the sun, there’ll be one day when there’s no word of comfort from God. And either he knows about leap years, and means us to be unhappy and afraid one day every four years, or he doesn’t know about leap years after all. So either he’s unkind or he’s ignorant, and either way he can’t be God, because to be God you must be perfectly kind and perfectly wise…’

  It seemed so absurd that I felt a curious mix of anger and amusement, until I remembered how grave and sad Elijah always seemed, and how he restlessly drummed on the arm of his chair. I said, ‘So for want of a nail, the Kingdom was lost?’

  ‘It was like the little tap on the glass that makes the window break. He told me she kissed him on the cheek and went out laughing, thinking nothing of it, and he went on sitting at his desk. Outside daisies were growing on the lawn, and suddenly they weren’t carefully made things there to make us good, or whatever it is he’d been telling the Sunday School children all those years, but just accidents. Happy accidents, but accidents all the same.’ She peered at the dregs of her tea. ‘He told me it was like falling out of love. He looked and looked at the weeds in the garden and the sun in the sky and so on, and tried to summon up – what: love? Awe? I don’t know – and it just wouldn’t come. It must’ve happened to you, John. We’ve all felt it. Love going for no reason you can think of; a face you thought beautiful becoming ordinary, or worse.’ She turned her black eyes on me like a light, and it was as though I were being searched. I thought of Eve’s face and of the small details that had become essential to me – the tooth that’s set a little further back from the others, the blue veins in her lowered eyelids – and could not imagine it would ever be ordinary. Afraid she’d see the change in me I stood and carried our mugs to the sink. On the windowsill someone was growing a seedling in a plastic pot; it had been left too long without water and the tips of the leaves were withering. I scooped water from the sink and dribbled it into the pot, imagining the seedling growing plump and straight as I watched. Behind me Hester said, ‘Of course he couldn’t just put his Bible under his arm and go up the pulpit steps. He might be afraid of everything, but he’s no coward. So he found St Jude’s and after that came here, and once he was over the threshold he never went out again. He’s alone for the first time in his life and he’s terrified.’

  I asked what his family thought of his change of heart, and she said, ‘Well – they’re confused, I suppose. They write. He writes. They’ll go back to London soon and he’ll join them if he can – but what then? They’re still living with a light shining on their feet and a lamp on their paths. And now he’s just like you and me, stumbling around in the dark, trying to find his way.’

  She stood up with a groan and joined me at the sink. Touching the leaves of the seedling on the windowsill with her little finger, she said, ‘One of Walker’s attempts, though I doubt it’ll survive the summer – and here he comes with Eve, laughing about I don’t know what. Are you all right there, John, or are you feeling sick again? The medicine is on the table – pour yourself another glass.’

  After that I went down to the garden again, where lawn gives way to brambles and nettles. Everywhere bindweed had taken hold, so that it looked as if all the trees were blooming at once. I crouched awhile on a piece of wood that must have sheared away from one of the pines in a violent storm, and put my head in my hands. I tried to order everything I’d heard and seen since the day I arrived, but nothing would fit, and underneath it all was that curious ache in my side, as though I’d been injured and not felt the blow. When I lifted my head and saw Alex a little distance away, I was glad: he at least seemed to see me directly and clearly, and even to have need of me – not as he thought I was, but as I am.

  As I came nearer I saw that he was crouched intently in the shade of a sycamore, with his back turned to me and his head bent. He’d taken off his T-shirt, which lay beside him in the grass, and I could see the bones of his spine and the birthmark like a shadow on his arm. The sycamore was shedding its spinning keys all around, but Alex didn’t look up – whatever it was he’d found on the ground absorbed him completely. Some distance away the cat huddled at the foot of the tree. Its eyes were swollen almost shut and it was licking its paw.

  When I reached him, I coughed once or twice so I wouldn’t startle him, and he looked up sharply like a child caught out in something they ought not to be doing. He said, ‘John!’ with surprise and displeasure, and then frowned and bit his lip, and looked down at the grass between his hands. I said, ‘I wasn’t looking for you, no-one sent me. I only came because I wanted to be alone too.’ Something in the grass moved, and I came closer. When he looked up again the displeasure had gone and he looked both guilty and wretched, but determined to continue with whatever he was doing. He muttered, ‘Go away,’ but not with any conviction, so I came closer still and crouched beside him. When I saw what he had between his hands I think I cried out, because he said, ‘I’m not doing anything to it, not any more!’, and shifted away from me a little.

  Pinned to the ground by his forefingers, a large moth struggled in the grass. It was far larger than the pale moths I’d seen in the dining room, or beating against the lamps in the room upstairs – it must have measured seven or eight inches across its wingspan, though I suppose it would have been less had it not been stretched between his fingers like a man on the rack. Its wings were thick like velvet and the colour of a horse chestnut, marked darker at the joint where they met its fat body, and with one blurry marking of white at the tip, as though they’d been touched with chalk. Its legs looked far too frail to bear its weight, and every now and then they twitched with a horrible imploring gesture. I couldn’t see its eyes, only a pair of strange flat antennae that looked like the soft furred leaves of sage. As I watched, Alex suddenly grasped its right wing between his thumb and finger as though he were going to tear it apart; the moth arched and convulsed its body and although it was silent I thought I would hear it screech, or hear the tearing of its wing like a piece of fabric. I said, ‘Stop – what are you doing – Alex, how will it fly, if you take one of its wings?’ I wanted to pull his hands away, but the moth revolted me and I turned my head so I wouldn’t see its distress.

  He gave a long explosive sigh and his whole body sagged; I thought he’d pitch forward and cover the moth with his chest. He loosened his grip, but its wings were still pinned to the grass, and the creature lay quite still for a while as if it had given up hope. Alex muttered to himself, and dipped his head to his shoulder to wipe the sweat from his forehead and what I thought might have been a tear. I said, ‘I can’t hear you – won’t you tell me what you’re doing, so I can help?’

  He said, ‘You thought I could do it,’ and gave me a sullen look that was nothing like the bright frank smiles I had come to expect from him.

  I said, ‘Let it go now, Alex – nothing good ever came of hurting even something so small,’ and all the while I was thinking, I thought you could do what – who have you been talking to? What have they said?

  He looked again at the moth between his hands, this time with a puzzled frown as if he couldn’t remember how it had come to be there, or what he might have been intending to do. He withdrew first his right hand, and then his left, with a show of care that was a little like fear, as if he thought it might rear up from the grass and beat its wings blindly against his face. It did not, only lay there twitching a wing. Alex turned his back on the moth, drew his knees up to his chest, and buried his face in his arms. His shoulders convulsed once with a sob, then he suppressed his tears and instead drew in a series of long slow breaths while I sat beside him and patted his shoulder, even putting my arm round him and pulling him against me, as if I could steady him, saying that he hadn’t done any harm,
and that of course no-one need ever know what I’d seen.

  After a minute or two he calmed himself, and lifted his head. When his eyes met mine he seemed himself again, as if he’d reassembled who he’d been the day we went together to the reservoir. But he said again, ruefully, as if he knew I wouldn’t want to hear it, but felt it should be said: ‘You thought I’d be able to do it, didn’t you? You thought I could hurt it. I did try, and not just that, I tried earlier too…’ Unconsciously he looked over to the foot of the sycamore tree, where the cat with its swollen eyes still nudged and licked at its paw.

  I felt a little cold then, wondering what he’d been doing while I sat with Hester at her table, but still I let my arm rest on his. I said, ‘Never mind that – never mind what you have done or what anyone has done – I would never think you could hurt anything else, you know. What made you think so?’

  He drew away from me then to reach for his T-shirt, which he pulled over his head. It was stained with dust and pierced with the stems of dried grasses. I stood and saw that the moth had gone.

  ‘She told me. She said she heard you say so, to the others: that you thought – yesterday – I might have done it, only not remembered…’

  I was bewildered and angry; I think I can bear anything but being made out to be what I’m not. I said, ‘Who? Who have you been speaking to?’ all the while thinking: Let it not be Eve, thinking so little of me and doing so much harm.

  He said, ‘Well, Hester, of course!’ as if it were foolish of me even to ask. He smoothed his T-shirt, and looked at me again, and I saw in his eyes a mixture of challenge and uncertainty. ‘And I remember nothing, not really, only the boat and the boy wanting to see it, and the way I could hear the water coming up through the grass and the mud and the gulls screaming like men a long way away. So I thought maybe I did hurt the boy – if John thinks I could have done, even John! – so I came here away from the others to be on my own, and thought I would try, and see if I had it in me. And I couldn’t, not really, though I think the cat might limp a while; I couldn’t even pull the wing off a moth, just an insect, so what would I be doing with a child? John? What would I do to a child when I can’t hurt even an insect in the grass!’