A Jest of God - Margaret Laurence [67]
I walked for some time. I thought – why shouldn’t I walk in the evening by myself? There are parts of this town I’ve hardly seen. Then I noticed where I was, and that what I’d been doing, actually, was walking on Japonica Street and around the block and back again. This became clear to me when I saw the blue neon sign dancing outside our place and recognized that I had seen it a few minutes earlier. I saw there was no use in this parade, so I went inside. I made the supper and then we looked at the TV.
He might have had another flare-up with the old man, and left on impulse, not having considered it but simply driving away. If that was the case, he may write.
– Darling – I left in a hell of a hurry, I know, but everything became kind of chaotic and I couldn’t stand it any longer. What I’m wondering is whether you’ll be coming here some time, and when. What about –
No, Rachel. That has to be abandoned. Some poisons have a sweetness at the first taste, but they are willing to kill you just the same. He left because he could not bear their loving reproachful need for him to stay. He could not bear it even for the few more weeks he’d planned to be here. You did not figure at all in his going or his staying. That was not an aspect which he had to consider. He did not phone because it never entered his head to do so. It wasn’t significant enough to warrant a phone call. He was busy. He packed his suitcase and went.
There. That’s stating it at its most brutal possibility. Look at it, Rachel.
And yet I don’t believe it. I don’t believe it was completely nothing, for him. Do I deceive myself? More than likely. I don’t know – that’s the thing. I never knew him very well. We were not well acquainted. We talked sometimes, and I tried to hear what he was saying, but I’m not certain I did hear. I may have heard only guarded echoes of his voice. He never spoke of his real life, the one he leads away from here. Only the photography of the boy. Nothing else. If he had wanted to say more, I would have listened, but not necessarily with comprehension. And all he knows of me is what he has guessed, whatever that may be.
August is nearly over. Next week we return to school.
Nick – listen –
They troop in, two by two, all the young animals into my Ark. And I must take an interest in them, because I’m the keeper. It wouldn’t be fair to them if I didn’t. They trust me very little, but at least they trust me this much – whatever happens, I will take charge, they believe.
They enter sophisticatedly, because this is their second year here and not their first. They nudge and bump one another, daring to cry an astonished Hi! to long-lost comrades last seen yesterday, daring to stash around their persons pieces of noxiously pink bubble gum or black jawbreakers with an unidentified seed at the candied core. Maybe they are remembering, with condescension towards their ignorant earlier selves, the time when they entered mutely or shamed themselves by bawling for their mums. Now they are full of jauntiness. They swagger, make their aggressive declarations openly, and lord it over the cautious young. Most of them, that is. Here and there, I can already spot one who by nature is no joiner, and I wonder what’s there, curiously, as though they were codes which I might partially decipher if there’s enough time.
I did not think I could muster any interest at all, and yet I have. No – it isn’t I. They’ve drawn it from me, being as they are – present and unaccounted for, here in the flesh, with loud voices which irk and beckon.
I wonder who will be the one or ones, as it was James last year? All at once I know there will be no one like that, not now, not any more. This unwanted revelation fills me with the sense of an ending, as though there were nothing to look forward to.
I don’t know. I don’t know what is the trouble. What I’m worrying about, underneath, isn’t really so – it’s an