A Jest of God - Margaret Laurence [57]
My hand is still on the doorbell, and now I realize it must have been ringing for some time. I’d almost forgotten where I was.
“Rachel! This is a surprise. Come on in.”
Calla is wearing lemon-coloured denim slacks and a violet blouse. She looks about ten feet broad. The lead-coloured fringe of her hair is standing up spikily all over her forehead. Her right wrist clanks with a brace of bangles, and her feet, which are grimy, slap with the rubbery sound of her royal-blue toe-thong sandals. She puts a hand out to my shoulder, as anyone might, guiding in a visitor, but immediately she withdraws it, making us both conscious of this half-gesture which probably wasn’t intended as anything at all.
“I thought I’d drop in for a minute, if you’re not busy.”
“I was just taking a break,” she says. “The pause that refreshes. Coke or iced tea for you?”
“Iced tea, please. Do you really keep it on hand?”
“I put what’s left in the teapot at night into the fridge,” she says, “so as not to waste it. Then it’s always there. Here – sit down, if you can clear a space somewhere.”
Everything in her livingroom seems to be piled in the middle of the room. The turquoise chesterfield; the glass-topped coffee table; a confusion of books and letters; two unthriving potted pink geraniums; pictures done by her class last year on huge sheets of newsprint with poster paints – clumsily intricate castles and ocean liners; innumerable unemptied ashtrays; a brown pottery bowl of coffee sugar with a brass spoon bearing a gargoyle’s leering face and the words The Imp of Lincoln Cathedral; a square cushion with a yellow fringe and an ivory satin cover painted with a towered church and the lettering The Turrets Twain – St. Boniface, Manitoba.
“It’s slightly a shambles,” Calla says without apology. “I’m painting the walls. Like them?”
They are a deep mauve-blue.
“It’s an unusual colour.”
“I never knew it would turn out quite so strong a shade,” Calla says, “but it’s still wet. Maybe it’ll lighten when it dries. How have you been, Rachel?”
“Oh, fine, thanks.”
I’m not afraid when I am with him, but when I’m not with him, it seems to return. I didn’t intend to do what I did last night. Women shouldn’t phone men. Anybody knows that. But it had been a week, nearly. If only I hadn’t phoned him. Or if he’d been out, away, not available. I had to wait until Mother was asleep, and even then I wasn’t certain, and sat in the hall beside the phone, guarding it, guarding myself, listening towards her door. I thought (why, I don’t know) that he would be the one to answer. But he wasn’t. His mother said “Who is speaking, please?” I wanted to say ex-Queen Soraya or None-of-your-business, but I’m not very composed over these things, so I said my name. He came to the phone. He said “Yes?” Just like that. A business reply. Don’t phone me – I’ll phone you. I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem, by the roes and by the hinds of the field, that ye stir not up, nor awaken love, until it please. I had to go on and explain, didn’t I? You must have thought I left rather suddenly the other evening – I’m sorry if I gave the impression – etcetera, etcetera. And then he said, laughingly, as though trying to figure out what I was talking about, “Why no, darling, I didn’t think that at all.” His voice was so present that I believed him, but now I don’t know again. It might have been the easiest way of dealing with me, for him. “I’ll give you a ring, eh?” he said.
Calla is sitting opposite me, spread brawnily on to her one armchair while I insist on perching at the chesterfield’s edge as though to make certain that I’m looking so temporary she won’t be surprised if I take off at any moment.
“The summer’s more than half over,” she is saying. “It doesn’t seem possible that it’s August already. I’ve been terrifically busy.”
August. That’s what bothers me the most. At the end of the month he will have to return to his work, and go away, and