An End to Autumn (17 page)

“The insurance,” he said again.

And for the first time she really thought about the insurance and the house and garden it might buy her. It seemed to her that she screamed like a train in the night.

3

T
HE FOLLOWING MORNING
Mrs Mallow and Angela went for a walk down to the town. As they strolled along the street, Angela would say now and again, “I see the butcher’s has been changed to a jeweller’s and the draper’s to a confectionery shop. That, I suppose, is what one calls life.” Once she stopped and remarked, “I think if I were living in a small town like this I would know everybody and as I grew older I would meet, wheeling a pram, a little girl whom I had once known. The mortality of it would be too much for me. At least we are spared that in the city.” It seemed to annoy her that so many of the shops had changed hands, that while she had been away the town had continued its own distant life, that without her it had survived and prospered and altered.

“I remember,” she said, “that when I was here last I used to buy my newspapers at what is now that restaurant. I don’t like it at all. Not at all. Still, you have always got the sea. That at least doesn’t change.”

Mrs Murphy was waiting on her bench as usual when Mrs Mallow arrived at the small garden with Angela, and she introduced the two of them. All three then sat on the bench among the late autumn flowers.

“And which part of Ireland do you come from, Mrs Murphy?” Angela asked. “I have been to Ireland with my husband. It’s a very pretty part of the world. I used to see donkeys drawing carts, and there were a number of nuns. There was also much gorse and many stones.”

“I come from Connemara myself,” said Mrs Murphy, “though I don’t go back there now.”

“And why don’t you go back there? Is it because you grew tired of it?”

“Not at all. I have no relatives there now. The family is all dead.”

“Well, that is a good reason, I suppose. And do you like living here?”

“At times I do and at times I don’t,” said Mrs Murphy, “but we have to put up with things, and that is all there is to it.”

“Of course that is true,” said Angela glancing restlessly around her. “I myself was not born in Edinburgh though I live there now. It is very true what you have just said, that we have to put up with things. What did you use to work at?”

“I used to clean stairs,” said Mrs Murphy firmly.

“Now isn’t that interesting,” said Angela to Mrs Mallow. “It’s my experience that if you ever meet a woman on a train she has been doing something uninteresting like teaching. But to clean stairs. I’m sure you must have found that fascinating. You must have met such a lot of different people. It’s the sort of job that I myself would have liked to do if I had had the courage. It’s a useful job, far more useful in my experience than teaching. Tell me, do you have any sons or daughters?”

“Yes, but I live alone now.”

“Alone?” and Angela glanced briefly at Mrs Mallow.

“I can do what I like any time that I like,” said Mrs Murphy.

“That is one way of looking at it,” Angela mused absently, and then suddenly, “what is it like then to live alone? Do you never fear death?”

“Death?” Mrs Murphy echoed as if she had never heard of the word before. “I never think about it, to tell you the truth. I get up in the morning and I have my breakfast and I wash and dry the dishes. Then I come out here into God’s good air and I look around me a bit and I fill my lungs. Then in the evening I watch the television. In the mornings I go to Mass. I don’t think about death. Not at all.”

“You are a very brave woman. Isn’t she a brave woman?” she asked Mrs Mallow. The latter was so embarrassed that she couldn’t think of anything to say.

“I think that that is what I would fear the most,” Angela meditated. “That is, if I were living alone. I admire you a great deal.”

“There is nothing to admire,” Mrs Murphy replied.

“Oh, but there is. To remain cheerful as you so obviously do when you are living alone. That is heroic. Many have been called heroes for less.” He red cloak glittered in the autumnal day, a shield among the fading flowers.

“I wish I had your courage. To live from day to day. That is the important thing. So few of us are able to do that. We plan ahead and then the plans turn to dust and ashes in our mouths. But to live from day to day, that is the heroic thing. That is
the
thing. However it is possible that that is not the whole story. Is it the whole story?”

Mrs Murphy looked at her with a new interest as if she had sensed behind the bird of plumage a common and ordinary strength. Then she smiled for the first time,

“You are thinking,” she said slowly, “that it is lying I am.”

“No, no, nothing as drastic as that, not at all. I was merely suggesting that perhaps you are showing us your public self, that part of you which as you say is making the best of things. Perhaps you are simply telling us now that you are not afraid of death in this sunshine. Perhaps you are making yourself out to be slightly better than you are in that respect. I have had much experience of people. For instance there was a guru who seemed to me to be very strong and firm but he turned out to be a secret alcoholic. Not of course that I am suggesting that you are. Not at all. But there must be a weakness somewhere in all of us, and in those who live alone as much as in those who don’t.”

As if she had issued a challenge she waited with great interest for the answer.

Mrs Murphy still smiling said, “I know what you are saying. You don’t have to explain it to me. I will tell you the truth and no lying. When you have to do something you have to do it and that is all there
is
to it. Many people I know have lived alone and some of them have gone off their heads. Some of them have taken to the bottle and some of them are hearing voices, would you believe it? There was a woman I used to know once. She lived on her own and after a while she used to think that everybody was talking about her. When they waved their arms when they were talking that was how she used to know. Well one day she saw a policeman directing the traffic and she went up to him and gave him a piece of her mind because she thought he was taking the mickey out of her. I remember her well. In every other way, you understand, she was right as rain. She was frightened, you see.”

“And are you not frightened?” Angela asked eagerly.

“I can’t afford to be. If I feel frightened I go and clean a room.
That is
what I do.”

“So admirable,” said Angela to Mrs Mallow, “so admirable. You are a very fortunate woman.”

She seemed lost in reverie for a while and then she said, “There are so many different kinds of people in the world. Mrs Mallow is fortunate to have you as her friend.” And then as if unwilling to give up,

“Do you never find the time heavy on your hands?”

“Sometimes. Not often.”

“Ah, well You are all armour. You are all armour. I retire defeated. May I treat you both to a cup of coffee?”

“I wouldn’t say no to that,” said Mrs Murphy and together they entered a restaurant which was crowded with people, mostly women, who were in for their morning coffee.

Suddenly Mrs Murphy said to Mrs Mallow, “There’s one thing I forgot to tell you. I saw that girl Ruth Donaldson recently.”

“Oh?”

“She came up to me in the street. She apologised to me. She told me she hadn’t been feeling well. As a matter of fact, I think she has had a hard life of it.” And a strange almost triumphant smile crossed her face briefly.

“Maybe we shouldn’t judge her too hard. I took her to the house and gave her tea. She is a very miserable woman, that one. She made one mistake,” and she paused.

“And what mistake was that?” said Angela.

“She blamed the world for what happened to her. That’s no good. The world won’t take the blame for things like that. It’s like the land in Connemara. If you blame the Lord for the big stones you won’t do anything at all. I told her she should go to Mass but she wouldn’t. She’s a clever girl but she’s not a clever girl at all if you see what I mean. I knew what she was up to right enough,” she said to Mrs Mallow. “Oh, I could see right enough. But I’m not going to say any more.”

Angela glanced from one woman to another, not understanding what they were talking about but sensing its significance. She stirred her coffee with her plastic spoon.

“Oh I knew right enough,” said Mrs. Murphy again, “but she apologised. I said she could come back any time she liked. She’s a very unhappy woman. Maybe she would have been better cleaning stairs,” she added and burst out laughing so that the coffee cup shook in her hand.

There are those, thought Angela looking at her, who are strong, and there are the others who are weak. For instance, she thought that she herself was weak and so perhaps was Mrs Mallow. Unlike Mrs Murphy they had not as yet recognised the necessity and inevitability of things. It was so simple if one could grasp it: all one had to do was to go with the current, be a part of the day like a stone or a tree. But something in her said, No, that is not enough: we would not then be men or women, we would be only stones. We must flash for a little while, we must spark, send out flames. We must create the theatre of the imagination.

And it seemed to her that as Mrs Murphy shook with laughter, the tiny cup in her hand, she was like an old wrinkled Celtic goddess, who had about her the reality and clay of the earth, secretive, yet public, strong and peasant-like, yet in the end lacking in fineness, in a necessary fineness. She imagined her on her hands and knees climbing stair after stair but the stone was all that was in front of her eyes. What door had opened to her or would open to her at the top of the stair? What illuminating door?

“I think,” she said, “that Mrs Mallow and I must be going now. We have to make our lunch.” Mrs Mallow glanced at her in surprise but stood up, almost obediently.

“Perhaps some other time,” Angela said to Mrs Murphy, “I might see you when I’m in town.”

“A pleasure,” said Mrs Murphy, “a pleasure.” Already she was looking across to some people at the other end of the restaurant who were waving to her and whom she obviously knew. Mrs Mallow suddenly felt faint: after all Mrs Murphy knew the town better than she did and had other friends: she was only one among many, and the thought laid a heavy grief on her mind. How could one step into the middle of a town and be part of it? It wasn’t so easy: in fact it was extremely difficult. For instance it was very odd that Mrs Murphy had been speaking to that abominable Donaldson woman: she should have had more delicacy than to do that.

And as she left the restaurant her last sight was of Mrs Murphy rising from her table and with her duck-like walk, carrying her coffee cup over to where the group of women were sitting and laughing. It seemed as if a key had been turned in a lock: Mrs Murphy didn’t belong to her at all, it was only part of her that she knew, and deeper than her relationship with Mrs Mallow was Mrs Murphy’s knowledge of and commitment to this small town and her other friends. Bloody Catholic, she muttered to herself, with your talk of your sons, one of whom is probably not a manager at all. Bloody Catholic with your replica of the Manger and the Irish donkey and the green vulgar Irish shrine.

When she turned to Angela there were tears in her eyes.

“A remarkable woman that,” said Angela, “she can teach us all.”

“Teach us nothing,” said Mrs Mallow, and she felt a healthy terrible anger so that she could have gone at that very moment to the railway station and left the town forever. “If she can do it I can do it,” she said to herself. “Bloody Catholic.” And then, “Anyway her house isn’t as good as mine, and she doesn’t even have a garden.”

4

T
HE FOLLOWING AFTERNOON
(she had decided to leave on the next day after that) Angela suggested that everybody go for a run in Tom’s car and have a picnic. “Anyway,” she said, “Chrissie will enjoy it and so indeed will we all.” And this was what they did, driving through the autumn landscape, the trees on both sides of the road having lost their leaves, the houses silent in the ripe yet slightly chilly light, the streams pouring down the mountainside: and once not far from the road they saw a pheasant, perfectly contained in its own Elizabethan colours, a stained-glass bird, a courtier at a bare court superb in its exquisite array.

“How beautiful,” breathed Angela, “stop the car. I wish to look at him.” Tom brought the car to a quiet halt and they all sat there gazing at the pheasant which now and again lifted its tall neck and stared around it with aristocratic hauteur as if it were aware of its own stunning brilliance emerging out of the landscape with its fallen leaves and sharp stubbly fields.

Vera in particular stared at it with her own secret smile though she didn’t speak to her mother much, now and again regarding her with an almost disdainful look as if she were tired of her incessant chatter.

After they had driven for some time Angela said, “perhaps we could stop at this little bridge. We could go for a walk into the woods just for a short while. Vera could come with me and you, Tom, and your mother could take another direction and then we would pool our discoveries. Wouldn’t you like that, Chrissie?” Vera glanced at her mother with undisguised fury but Angela chose to ignore her and they got out of the car and went their ways in pairs as she had suggested.

“We will meet here in an hour,” said Angela, clearly enjoying her role of director. “Come on, let’s synchronise watches. Isn’t that what they do in all those films which have John Mills in them?”

“Sometimes Trevor Howard,” said Tom laughingly, but he did as Angela suggested as if it were all a game that nevertheless had to be taken seriously.

He sensed in an inchoate and unfocussed way that Vera’s mother was with instinctive intelligence creating a drama of her own and that all of them in this drama had their exits and their entrances, that she was plainly engrossed in her role of producer, partly for its own sake but also partly for the creation of some chosen result: and he wasn’t at all deceived by the apparent spontaneity and flamboyance of her gestures for he knew that below them was a deeply serious and perhaps unhappy woman who hung on to the joys of the world as to a raft in the middle of the sea. Thus as he entered the wood with his mother, accepting the production as for the moment at any rate plausible and, truth to tell, willing to be relieved temporarily of the undirected motions of his life, he felt the glimmerings of an unavoidable destiny as one sees at the end of a pathway in a wood the whitish mists of autumn only half penetrated by the sun.