The Wilderness Read online

  STORY OF THE LITTLE DEATH

  The wrecking ball buckled the face of a house. Along the Edwardian terrace other houses were being pulled down with hydraulic excavators and cranes; they could not demolish them fast enough. It was a bleak scene—the buildings' masonry twisted and their brickwork crumbled, and the house interiors were black, rotten, and forgotten. The snow around them was dirty and the air dusty. He covered his face.

  Hardly old at all, these buildings, but not worth living in as they stood, and too expensive to restore. They were not war-damaged themselves, but they reminded one of war damage, reminiscent of that starless, hungry time of his teens and towns that looked beaten up and sick. No, the sooner the rows were gone the better—their poor condition did nothing for the area except cast an austere shadow, and the ground they occupied was relatively high and drained, close to the steelworks. It would provide a good housing site for the influx of workers. He was wondering at a clean modern development based on the big ideas of the thirties; when he talked about humanity, comfort, and provision Helen approved. Yes, she said, that's better, that's good.

  She had encouraged an excited discussion about the possibilities—a sort of village, as Mr. Rowntree had made for his workers, with everything they needed at hand. But more modern, he had interjected. Yes of course, she conceded, more modern, good roads, and places for cars, they could even have a coffeehouse and a Chinese restaurant. He had been thinking more along the lines of uncluttered horizontal and vertical planes of white poured concrete and roof gardens faced at the sun, and buildings centred around sets of perfect squares so that every house was aware of every other house, to create a—

  Close community, Helen had offered.

  Quite. Everybody in their own space, but conscious, on a bigger scale, of their shared life.

  Helen had been enthusiastic. She still was. He observed the demolition and made site notes, kicked the snow away and dug his heel into the ground to get a feel for the soil. Had the sun been out, this whole small plateau would be drenched with it now. It received thirteen or fourteen hours of sunshine a day in the summer, which meant that with careful planning and decent construction the houses could be warmed through without the need for much heating, and would not suffer damp problems.

  He walked back to the Mini and put his notebook of ideas on the passenger seat. Somehow he did not see it happening the way he planned. Somewhere between the ideals and the reality an ingredient would be lost. Money, probably. He did not have the heart to tell this to Helen, or even the heart to tell himself. He turned the radio on—Buddy Holly. He thought of the money under his bed and, charged with the need to trade it for something extraordinary, tapped his fingers as he drove away.

  That weekend he and Helen argued, properly, for the first time.

  “The house is so cold,” she said, pulling a blanket around herself.

  “It's old, what can I do? You wanted to live here.”

  “So is it my fault, that we're cold?” It seemed to be a genuine question, so he answered accordingly.

  “In part, yes.”

  She gave a crazed smile he had never seen before.

  “Is it my fault it's been snowing for two months?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Is it my fault we haven't got any of those gas heaters— everybody has them, except us. Is that my fault?”

  “I wouldn't say so, I'll get some. If you want the house to smell of gas that's fine.”

  “Jake, they won't make the house smell of gas. Cheryl has one and it's fine.”

  “Who's Cheryl?”

  “A friend from church.”

  “What is it with you, that everywhere you go you just make friends?. You didn't want to leave London because you were happy, and now here you are with all these friends, seemingly happy—”

  “Is that a criticism?”

  He sat at the piano and played a few high ironic notes.

  “Anyway,” Helen said, “I'm not happy. I'm cold.”

  “Is that my fault?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. And good that everything isn't absolutely one hundred percent brilliant with you.” He turned to her and ceased playing. “Because your perfection gets a bit wearing sometimes.”

  He saw her body stiffen. “How terrible for you,” she said slowly and quietly. “How you have suffered in my hands, poor man.” He had never seen her appear so pale and blank. She tugged at the blanket until it was tight around her.

  “Everything is supposed to be easy,” he said. “What with me making decisions to carve our future, and your dreams to guide us. What a perfect combination we are! But your dreams are failing us. Where's Alice?” He stood from the piano stool. “Where is she? Why can't you just accept that you're not perfect, you don't know?. You're going blind into every day just like the rest of us.”

  “I don't know where Alice is,” she said. “I don't know.”

  “That's right. And here we are running after something that doesn't exist, so why don't we give up?”

  “Because it does exist.”

  “It doesn't.”

  “Jake, it does. Why don't you trust me? When you said we were coming here I trusted you.”

  “Yes, but you have reason to trust me because I do everything I can to make the future and make it certain, I control it. You just predict it, where's the control in that? At best—if your predictions are right—all we are is victims of them.”

  “No—”

  “And at worst, like now, gullible victims.”

  He went to the fire and fed it with another wedge of ash wood. It was not even that cold, if she only dared to shrug the blanket off, face and challenge it.

  “You have to stop playing God,” he said.

  She marched to him. “You're the one playing God. I control the future. I make it certain.”

  “If God exists we are all victims,” he said, his voice raised. “Look at you, huddled there. The meek shall inherit the earth. Well you'll be first in line—you'll have it, it's yours. You'll last a day. You, your Bible bashers, you'll last a week at the most without people like me to take charge.”

  He left the living room by one door, angry, but rather calm. Helen left by the other, disappearing into the study and up the second stairs. He heard her feet soft on them.

  In the afternoon he, Helen, the baby, and Sara packed into the Mini and drove out along the icy roads, snow shovelled to the verges. Progress was slow and haphazard as the car slipped along the grooves of other tyres and tried to take several courses at once. They went to his father's grave, where they laid flowers and stood in a frozen breeze, a winter landscape without contrast. Helen, who had never known his father, began crying, and then wandered slowly from grave to grave reading dates and whispering into Henry's ear. She had hardly spoken to him since their fight. She was stiff with Sara, and he was struck by how Sara, in perverse response, warmed to her. She rubbed Helen's arm, commenting on the cold. Difficult for thin women, she said. Difficult to keep the chill away when you've no body fat. He saw Helen smile despite herself, and then retreat again into a defensive gloom.

  Then, at Sara's request, they went into the woods. Tucked up and quiet, Helen stayed in the car breast-feeding.

  “I like to come here,” his mother said. “The last bit of wood left for miles around—when I first came here it was all wood. Now it's all vegetables. Beetroot instead of trees.” She smiled wryly. “Not so beautiful, hmm.”

  “It depends on your idea of beautiful,” he said.

  “Mine is trees, not beetroot. I don't suppose I'm alone.”

  As they walked she poured coffee from the flask into the first gold-rimmed cup, handing it to him, then into the other. She tucked the flask away in her bag. Even under the trees the snow was thick enough to envelop their feet as they went.

  “Your father visits me,” she said suddenly.

  “Visits you?”

  “Yes, comes to me. At night. He lies in bed beside me.”

&n
bsp; “A ghost?”

  “Something of the sort.”

  “Can you touch him, is he there?”

  Sara shrugged. “It's hard to say, you have to be less literal about these things, Jacob.”

  They walked on steadily, sipping their coffee.

  “Does he say anything?”

  “Asch, no.” She flicked the suggestion away. “If we said anything we would only argue. We sleep, and when I wake up he is gone.”

  Their feet creaked across the snow as they walked on, slowing unconsciously.

  “Did you used to argue? I don't remember you ever arguing.”

  “No, we never did, never, though we had this little war going on, silently of course.”

  Not a little war, he thought. A huge war over whose thousands of years of history was the more relevant. A war too big for arguments.

  The more he considered it, the more he found his parents' marriage singularly catastrophic. It had passed off wordless bitterness as peace, sacrifice as compromise; he for one had been convinced for years. He had chosen Helen—had he?—as someone with whom he could reenact this quietude. It was a theory, at least, and it made him suddenly grateful for their argument; how he did not want to become his parents! He would not give up.

  “Where does he go, I wonder,” he said. “Father. When he leaves in the morning, where does he go to?”

  From his mother, silence. Snow began to fall again. One flake, two flakes, a laid-back flurry. A gunshot sounded then and Sara jerked her free hand to her heart.

  “Dreck!” she said. “Good God. Dreck!”

  She looked rapidly around her to see where the shot had come from. The air was confused with snow and completely quiet as if there had never been sound, as if it had never known sound at all. He, meanwhile, had spilt his coffee, not at the shock of the gunshot but at the speed and looseness of his mother's reaction—this from a woman usually so succinct and eloquent in her movements.

  “Deer culling I expect,” he added, wiping the coffee on the sleeve of his coat.

  “It scared me half to death.”

  “Nothing scares you, you're never scared.”

  “Untruth—untruth,” she muttered, motionless. “I am very scared of being mistaken for a deer in the wood. But thank you all the same.”

  He thought suddenly of a leaf, a leaf shape—he did not know why except that, of course, images flash into the mind and out again, brain functions, nerves, strangenesses that are not there to be understood. He poured the remains of the coffee into the snow and put the cup in his pocket. Absently, he reached for his mother's hand but she withdrew from his touch.

  “Look up,” she said.

  Why, he wondered? Why look up? But he did. Perhaps Sara, too, had been thinking of this leaf? Often he had entertained the idea that they, he and his mother, thought the same things. If their brains were to be sliced in half like cabbages they would reveal the same patterns and layers. So he did not ask why, but just did as she said and expected a reason to follow.

  Above was monochrome: perfectly white snow on black branches that jagged across a dark-grey sky, a black bird passing through the scene. It was a photograph of the past, he in it. Snow fell on his face as if the photographic paper itself, old and pulpy, was disintegrating. There were no leaves, of course—it was winter. His brain flickered uncertainly.

  He clutched the cup in his pocket thinking that he ought to get back to Helen. It was incredibly cold and the baby would be unsettled by all this waiting. The handle of the cup—the precious cup that had once been Arnold's—snapped off in his fingers. Shit, he mumbled under his breath. Shit.

  “I don't know where he goes when he leaves,” Sara said. “I suppose he never really comes.”

  They continued looking up towards the sky until the forest ran out, then they turned and walked back with longer, more hurried strides, their faces wet with snow.

  Duly, Helen gave up.

  “I've thought,” she said a few days later. “I've thought and you're right. Let's give up. It's been seven months trying for Alice—for, I mean, a baby—and I think I was wrong. We're not meant to have another child, God doesn't want it.”

  Her look was resilient; she held his gaze. She would give up on the specifics, the look said, but she would not give up on the general, the fundamental. God would not stop coming into it just because he had insulted her and her friends.

  “So we'll stop trying,” she said. “If it's to be, it's to be. My dreams are wrong. Forgive me.”

  He let her fatalism go. The fanaticism. Once again the thing that most separated them was the thing in her that most impressed him—her ability to believe. No, not ability, her addiction to believing, her conviction, and the great power that sprang from it. So he agreed, and together they let their Conception Events go.

  A month passed and another. The snow melted and small, tense buds appeared on the cherry tree. Another month passed. He was not prone to matching emotions with seasons; spring was not a time to be new and optimistic, it was spring in England because the face of the earth to which England clung was turning finally towards the sun, there was no emotion about it. It was a surprise to him then when he found himself harbouring hope that now that the freeze had gone and the leaves were opening and the birds were returning from Africa, Alice—not just any child, but Alice—would come. Then the hope turned to expectation, then, when summer came, the expectation turned to deep frustration, the frustration to desperation.

  Helen seemed calm. She began volunteering at a hospice and came home daily inundated with gifts from dying people who thought their whole lives had been worthwhile if only because they had met her. Henry started crying again like a normal baby, crying and babbling and laughing. Eleanor had found a boyfriend and she stressed how in love she was; trade at The Sun Rises was increasing. Truly, the moors were a fantastic place to be in the summer, vast, warm, and sewn through with flowers. Whenever he went to see Sara she was with Rook, and he was left to observe them dancing continual Strauss waltzes across Sara's orange carpet. Everybody but him, then, was at peace.

  He wrote to Joy. He began telling her about The Big Death and the ghost of Elisabeth, elaborating until Elisabeth became potent to him. Perhaps Helen's dreams were not so unreasonable after all, if Sara could be receiving the ghost of her dead husband in her bed at night, and if he could lend himself so readily to these fairy stories, and if he could devote so much time to writing to a woman who was becoming less real by the day. And if Alice would not exit his plans.

  And if the great humanitarian housing project he had crafted was turning out to look rather like any other housing project, with windows too small to make use of the sunlight and a budget shrinking faster than the dried-out peat. If what was so apparently real was failing, and what was so apparently false was thriving, then Helen's dreams did not look so irrational. And besides, without their social prophesies as to which film they should see or place they should visit, their weekends were certainly less interesting, he too often at The Sun Rises witnessing Eleanor's public love affair (doomed, he knew) and reaching back in drunkenness to old times there, times he had failed to repossess.

  Then Joy wrote and told him about an argument she had had with her husband. He hurled a lobster into the swimming pool, she said. So I hurled him in after it. As if she had been told, in exact detail, his anguish over Alice and his conflict with Helen, she indulged in some advice. The French call the orgasm a petite mort, a little death. Her take on this was that the little death is necessary to life as well as pleasure—if a woman wants to have a baby a small part of herself has to die to make way. She can't be all life all the time. Joy suggested that Helen had not had an orgasm for a long while, and that they would never conceive without it.

  He was taken aback; he had not mentioned his impotency (this was how he regarded it on all levels) to Joy, nor would he ever. What made her so knowing about him? Sometimes she talked as though she had fifty years of experience under her belt. And she was right,
also, about Helen. When they had conceived Henry their relationship was new and pleasure had been everything, but this time they had wiped pleasure completely from their agenda. From this point onwards he would step back into this project; he reverted to his original stance on the dreams, weighing now the extent to which they had, with their fatalism, hoist him into a sexual lassitude and prevented a result. Alice, he suddenly thought, would be his child. Where Henry dismissed him Alice would crave him. By the time he reached the end of Joy's letter he was breathless. Knight E5 to F3, she concluded. He shifted her thus, and planned his next move.

  Joy's next letter was a parcel. Helen picked it from the porch floor and gave it to him, asking if he knew what it was. He said no truthfully. Opening it in privacy he found it was a miniskirt, blue denim with red stitching and hopeless pockets. Joy had sent it for Helen, confirming that these were becoming fashionable in California. She had never met Helen but thought she would look vital in it, sexy and modern. There was also a pair of silk tights which Joy said were the new thing—where stockings were fiddly and uncomfortable and no good for miniskirts, tights were a second skin. He held them up by the waist and looked at their weird shrivelled form in some dismay, but then pictured them stretched over Joy's legs, over his wife's legs, and he wrapped them into a ball with a wry smile.

  After a week—the minimum time needed, he guessed, without Helen associating the parcel with the gift—he asked Sara to look after the baby and took his wife to The Sun Rises. Helen was in good spirits, maybe she was pleased to see him happy again. They talked to Eleanor and her new partner most of the night and helped her now and again behind the bar.

  “Eleanor is in love with you,” Helen whispered gently. “Whatever pretence she makes with that man.”

  He whispered back, stroking her neck, “And I'm in love with you.”

  When he got home he gave his wife the miniskirt and silk tights. He wondered what she would put in those pockets— poems on folded-up pieces of paper? A photograph of the baby? A photograph of him? A photograph of a man he did not recognise? She looked at the skirt quizzically, almost suspiciously. The hemline was a good few inches above the standard. He expected her to announce, I could never wear this, but she didn't. She just carried on looking, turning it in her hands.