Authors: Elaine Feinstein
But for she and Ben to have conversations along such lines. In that house. Was the extremest edge of fantasy.
*
They were both ill-dressed to the point of absurdity.
And it was not simply a matter of money, though she remembered how in those years they spent nothing on clothes outside jumble sales and secondhand shops. But her own indifference had grown deeper, a different quality. Never, of course, fastidious, her underclothes at last disappeared completely; her skirts and trousers lost their zips, were hardly secured by string or nappy pins. Her hair got very long, so that the knots were a severe problem; and she let the fine arch of her eyebrows disappear completely.
And yet Lena loved that house. She loved it. Even though the huge hall was chill except in high Summer. Because when the back door was opened it was possible to look right through the house to weird arches of blue creepers that hung over the door. Because there were huge bare rooms with yellow glowing floors and high ceilings. And bookshelves. Even though Ben hated the bareness. There wasn’t enough furniture, he said, and certainly the huge rooms had often no more than one big chair, and a table. He said the space invaded him, made him feel he was disappearing. And she recognised the feeling, the disembodied ghostly feeling of the space; but it suited her. She sat in the blue chair alone in front of the fire in winter; happily alone, uncluttered; however many piles of books grew up around her. And she read and wrote, yes, like a disembodied spirit, using the heat of the coke fire, or the blower heater, like a kind of drug: sending it straight up her legs to warm her knickers and thighs. In a lovely daze of peaceful remoteness, a monastic calm, that extended out of the day and into the
evenings
.
And Ben began obsessionally watching television. Why should he watch her read? They spent whole evenings in separate rooms. The house permitted it; the
full extent of her remoteness. And only occasionally did she have a full sense of its strangeness, of the dangerous nature of such withdrawal.
*
One December morning. She was sitting high in a room on the third floor, level with black and leafless sycamores looking out over the garden. At the tracing of thin branches against a cold white sky. Happy. Reading. A poem of such occult brightness that the single words in her mouth were like hard and separate pebbles. And she looked over the garden, and saw with a stir of happiness the white flakes of snow coming down through the thin tracery of branches, filling the angles and crevices, catching on the open leaves of the evergreens. In her window watching she delighted in it; and the swirls of snow blew harder and harder over the whole grassy centre of the garden, piling against the wall. At twelve noon. Four inches thick, she relished, or even more. And about then she had a phone call and talked of the snow like that, as a beautiful strangeness cold and remote from her. In her unfeeling shelter. Her eyes flew over the bleak whiteness of the garden with the birds; but she had no sense of the cold that pressed on their wings.
What a surprise then at two o’clock to look through the front of the house at two lanes of traffic caught at the lights, stretching both ways up the hill, and see the snow piling on the roofs of the cars. Some cars now she could see were abandoned, and the snow was still coming, thick lumps of it, out of the sky, blurring the kerb to a curve, and even the shapes of the cars she could see were going, white shapes disappearing out of sight up the hill towards the school. And at that point she remembered the children. That they had to get
home from school. By bus. And the snow lost its beauty immediately as she thought of them.
Her first thought, a taxi; but when she lifted the phone it was dead. With a complete silence that made her understand it was no accident of her own line. And now she put on her coat roughly. There was no way even to get in touch with the school. So she rushed out of the house, meaning stupidly to get the car out; but the snow was up to her knees. For the first time she understood the magnitude of the whiteness. And the wind had levelled, it pushed at her in a hard cold blast she had to turn her back into. And her skin prickled with fear and heat more than the cold. At the corner there was a public phone. She picked it up without much hope; and listened to the same noise; total
disconnection
. Silence. And the time? When would the children get out of school?
The snow had covered half the glass at one side of the box, resting on the ledges securely as white wool. Through the other side she could look down on the Southern part of the city under snow; it was wholly paralysed and helpless with the suddenness of the storm. Most of the cars now had been abandoned. A little way back in the queue of them she could see a deserted bus, snow piled up in drifts on the stairs.
It was a five mile walk to the school. And she thought of Michael’s matchstick thin legs, and his thin blue lips. Struggling against the wind. And she set off up the hill unthinkingly towards them wondering only: whether they had set out, whether she would somehow miss them on the way.
The street of narrow houses that began the bus route rose straight into the wind. On both sides of the
pavement
were people struggling downwards with the wind behind them. Into the bays and pocked red fronts of the
houses, over the cars stuck in their lanes, the snow continued to pile up. And the cold reached her now, her feet and hands hurt with it. Frozen and deserted, a milk cart stood with its shafts disguised in the snow like a bizarre monster. And there were fewer cars as she mounted the hill, and some stuck at oblique angles in the road, or locked where they had slid together early on in the blizzard.
The snow froze on the wind; on to her eyelashes; so that keeping her eyes open was nearly impossible. Yet her greatest fear was to miss the children. Every two children that she passed looked the right shape and she called to them, across the road, but none of them were hers. A terrible foreboding began to rise in her. And she tried to hurry. Astonished to find that even getting her feet out of the snow was a huge effort, having to stop for breath in spite of her fear, and finding that every breath was full of snow and hurt her lungs.
Whole families were making their way home.
Together
. And for them the strange paralysed silence was almost gay, she could hear them calling or singing in excitement now. She could not imagine. Where her own boys could be. She recognised. The caps of the school, stopped two children to ask for them; but no-one had seen them. And the school had let the kids out an hour ago, they should have reached this point by now; she began to panic. Asking every child she met. As the snow went on falling, the stiff level wind carrying it straight into her. And the light was going. Under the leaden December skies.
But now she could see the school; the lights were still on; perhaps the children were waiting for her there. For a moment she was so certain of that she could hardly contain her relief, and in any case the school road was downhill, she ran towards it, sheltered from the wind by
the hedge. Into the school playground. Up the steps.
There was a cleaning woman; and one of the masters from another form. But no. They were not in the school; they were not waiting; they had left with the others early, told to walk fast; and Michael, it seemed, had cried, because he had forgotten to bring gloves. And now she was more afraid than she had ever been in her life; as she thought of him crying; with the cold. In total abandon. And Alan, impatient and helpless, and unable even to get in touch with her. How? Had they got themselves separate from the others and how should she look for them now, which way?
At the top of the school road with a heart like lead she entered a public phone again. She would have to call the police. And the full stupidity of her behaviour hit her, as she saw more families passing cheerfully in the snow; provident mothers with scarves and carrier bags. As she banged desperately on the dead receiver, she watched one mother pause to give a hot drink from a Thermos flask to her small girl. And
she
had looked out of her window at the snow and seen it only as a picture through a window. To her surprise, a voice suddenly said from the phone: can I help you?
–For God’s sake. Can you connect me? She thought quickly. Gave her home number. Perhaps they were there before her, after all. Perhaps that was where they were.
And the phone answered.
Not the children, but a lodger. No. No-one was there.
No sign, no message. Lena wanted to cry. The police then the police. But as suddenly and mysteriously as the phone had worked it was dead again. And someone was banging on the door.
–Yes? She opened the door, a bit irritably. It doesn’t work, she said. Sorry.
–Are you Michael’s mother? said the woman. Oh, I thought you must be. I went back to the school and they said you had been.
Now Lena looked. And saw a friendly dumpy woman. With a big camel coat belted tightly and little glasses on her nose.
–Where is he, where are they?
–Well, I took them in. They looked so cold, and the little one was crying with it. I was afraid they’d never get as far as you. I would have let you know before but.
–I know the lines were down. Oh God. Where are they?
Lena felt dizzy with relief.
–Well, just a few houses down. The woman gave a warm giggly laugh. They didn’t get very far I’m afraid. The little one hadn’t got any gloves and the big one had his feet all wet because his boots leaked. So I hope you don’t mind, I took all their clothes off and gave them a hot cup of tea.
–Mind? It’s marvellous. Lena looked at the little round woman at her side; she could have passed her ten times a day and not seen her; and now she looked like a saint. Her round determined nose. Her ordinary, kindly face. And thought: Would I even have
noticed
?
two cold little boys passing my house crying? As this little woman had. Peeping from behind her curtain. Curiously. Interested in the world around her, and what went on in it.
The woman had a top floor flat at the edge of the street; Lena’s wet feet sunk guiltily into a carpet with a heavy pile.
–Never mind never mind, the woman said cheerfully. I gave them a big piece of cake, she said apologetically. I hope it won’t spoil their supper.
Their supper. Which wasn’t even cooked.
–I’d just finished baking it, said the woman. And the little one. (He’s a devil, isn’t he?) Asked if he could
have a bit, and I thought: well a little bit can’t hurt, and they might have to wait a bit for supper, so.
–Look, it’s Mummy, said Alan. Neither of them looked at all surprised to see her.
–We’ve been having a super tea, said Michael.
–I’m afraid their socks are a bit wet, said the woman. What do you think of these? She held out two
enormous
pairs, and a slightly smaller pair of boots. It’s such a long while since I’ve had children in the house, she sighed. But I had these in a drawer.
–Marvellous, said Lena again. She felt close to tears. Imagine keeping three rooms which had a spare drawer for old things like that.
–Won’t you have a cup a tea yourself? asked the woman You look all in, if you don’t mind my saying so.
–Yes, I do. Feel a bit odd, said Lena. And it was true. Even seeing the two of them there sitting safe and warm and happy had not completely relieved her.
–It’s stopping now, you may as well wait a little bit, said the woman. And the wind is dropping.
Lena was trying to behave normally. To find something to
say
that would convey how grateful she was; I’ll bring her some sweets, a big box of chocolates tomorrow, she thought; but now she couldn’t think what to say, except stiltedly, again and again: thank you, thank you. And was very careful not to spill the tea on the carpet.
*
Going back, with no wind and downhill, with gloves on Michael’s fingers, and big warm boots on Alan’s toes, the walk was sheer delight. The children had never seen such snow, were astonished at every tree, stood and stared at every rounded and mis-shapen vehicle trapped in the street.
–Come on, she said. But not impatiently. Because it was
a long walk and she was happy enough to have them at her side and unprotesting.
–Look at the shine of the icy bits, marvelled Alan.
–That bus!
They laughed and ran together past the first corner, catching their breath at their first view down hill at the snow covered silent city.
–We’ll have hot chocolate, she promised them. And I’ll put the meat in the oven as soon as we get in. And you can have. Hot water bottles in your bed and.
–That was a lovely woman, said Michael. What do you think would have happened to us, Mummy, if she hadn’t come out to find us?
–Oh, I don’t know, she said shakily.
–He just wouldn’t walk on, said Alan, I couldn’t make him. He just stood and cried he was cold.
I
could have made it.
–You had gloves, said Michael.
–Well, I gave you my gloves.
–Never mind all that now, said Lena tiredly. Look. There’s the house.
It had never seemed more welcoming from the outside; once inside she was acutely conscious of the coldness, the bleakness of it. They went into the kitchen, and she brought in the blower heater.
–Here, she said. And put a kettle on quickly, lit the oven. As the phone went.
She took it on the third ring. It was a woman’s voice.
–Hello? Who? WHO? She could not hear, the voice at the other end was so gentle. Elizabeth who?
And could not for the moment even connect the name to a face or a fact it was so far from her immediate network of sensation.
–I’m sorry. But could not conceal her floundering.
–I don’t suppose you remember me. Never mind. I used
you know, to be married to Danny. You. Stayed with us once on the hill.
–Of course I remember, said Lena angrily. Where are you, Lisa?
–You sound awfully busy.
–No. Not exactly. What are you doing here?
–Well I’ve been buying a country cottage said Lisa.
–Where are you staying?
–I’m going off to London now. But I expect I’ll be back.
–We must have lunch.
–Lovely.