A Jest of God - Margaret Laurence [35]
Once in spring I was walking in the fields on the hillside just beyond the cemetery. There was snow, still, in the small hollows where the sun had not reached, snow latticed with the earth specks that never show until the drifts begin to melt. At the edge of the cold black-veined whiteness, in among the stalks of last year’s grass now brittle and brown like the ancient bones of birds, the crocuses were growing, the flowers’ faint mauve protected by the green-grey hairs of the outer petals. I crouched to pick some, scraping away the dead grasses and the soiled snow. Then I looked up and saw, at the foot of the hill, in a poplar bluff, only a few yards away, the boy and girl. They’d be sixteen, perhaps. I knew them both, although their names were gone. They’d been children of mine, once. The girl had opened her coat and put it around him, and they were private and close together in their shelter. I was the intruder. They didn’t move apart or look away. They regarded me with unstartled eyes. And then I wondered how I must look to them, squatting here as though I’d had kidney trouble and had to go on this open hillside. Or else as though I were looking at them on purpose, a peeping Thomasina. In a torment of embarrassment, I called out, “I just came here to look for crocuses.” It was the boy who replied, “Yeh,” he said. “Us, too.” Then they could not hold back their laughter any longer, and while they laughed I could see despite the tent of her coat that he had spread his legs and was holding her between them. I got away, somehow, marvelling at the webbed ironies. They hadn’t intended cruelty. They likely would only have said, afterwards, “Did you see the look on her face? Aw, never mind – she’s just jealous,” never actually suspecting it might be so, interpreting it really as my disapproval. And I recall myself walking back up the hill road into Manawaka that day, wondering if people would see something in my face or if they would merely say, “There’s Miss Cameron – she’s always going on walks by herself.” I could see myself like that, on every side road and dirt track for miles around, over the years. I wandered lonely as a cloud – like some anachronistic survival of Romantic pantheism, collecting wildflowers, probably, to press between the pages of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. I wish I could forget that day, and those kids, but I can’t. Such moments are the ones that live forever.
I don’t know what to do with myself. In winter I always say how much I need the sun, yet here it is July, and I’m free, and the sun in high and is blazoning warmth everywhere, and I haven’t set foot outside the house all day.
“Where are you going, Rachel?”
Mother is sitting at the living-room window, her favourite post of vigilance these days. She watches Japonica Street like a captain on the bridge of a ship, watching the ocean and hoping for some diversion. She almost yearns for funerals. They create a miniature parade on the street, and she can overhear the voices from the Funeral Chapel below. Well, she’s got little enough to entertain her. I ought to take her for a walk. I took her out yesterday and she was so slow. It’s not her fault. I must not be impatient. It’s not fair; it’s not right. I must be more patient. Also, more cheerful. I’m not cheerful enough with her.
“I thought I’d just walk downtown and get some ice cream for supper. Would you like to come along?”
“I don’t think so, dear. I’m played out today. I don’t know what it can be. That long walk yesterday, maybe. I think it’s exhausted me.”
“Oh – I shouldn’t have taken you so far.”
“Well, never mind, dear. You were enjoying it – I didn’t want to suggest turning back.”
Oh God. Again. I can feel myself beginning to grow dizzy, as though a leather thong had lassoed my temples.
“I’m sorry. I should have noticed. You rest now, then. Is there anything you want, before I go?”
“Oh