A Jest of God - Margaret Laurence [70]
All this is irrelevant to here. I open the bathroom window and look out at the dusk hovering around our house. Then back to the white porcelain sink, the bathtub with its griffin feet, the cellophaned bath cubes stacked on the corner shelf beside the toothpaste and the never-used tins of birthday talcum, Cactus Flower, Scarlet Lily, Young Lilac. Our bath towels and face towels always match. This week mine are yellow and hers are rose.
What will become of me?
It can’t be borne. Not by me. What am I going to do? It does not matter at all what I feel, or what the truth is. The only fact is that it cannot be allowed to be.
Imagine it. I can’t. I won’t. Yes. Imagine it. Go ahead, Rachel. She would be – how? – broken up, wounded, ashamed, hysterical, refusing to believe it, believing it only too readily, willing to perjure her soul or pawn her wedding ring to be rid it, never able to trust again (she would declare), not able to hold her head up forever after on Japonica Street, outcast and also seeking exile because unable to meet the sympathetic stutterings of the world, and worst of all, perhaps, blaming herself (or claiming she was) for something unknown and unsuspected in her rearing of me. “What, I ask myself, Rachel, could I have done, in bringing you up, that you would go and do a thing like that?” Bringing her grey hairs with sorrow to the etcetera. And underneath all the frenzy, all the gimmicks, she would mourn really. As though it were a death. And no one could ever convince her otherwise.
“Rachel, where are you going?”
“I’m not going anywhere. Just out for some cigarettes.”
“Oh. Then you’ll be going to the Regal?”
“Yes, or the Parthenon. Do you want anything?”
“Well, if you could get me just a bar of the plain chocolate. Not the milk, you know, the plain.”
“Yes. All right.”
“Thank you, dear,” she says. “I don’t often have a sweet tooth. Just from time to time. Somehow tonight I –”
“All right. I won’t be long.”
Japonica Street is silent, only the late sparrows speaking, and on River Street the sidewalk is gritty with dust, and the first blown leaves of autumn make their small wind-compelled assaults against my ankles. The store windows have their lights turned out, mostly. Only here and there one has been left burning as an advertisement. In Simlow’s Ladies’ Wear, I am faced with a brown orange-speckled tweed suit for autumn, and a charcoal white-piped smock and matching skirt labelled in Ben Simlow’s unlaughing printscript – For the Lady in Waiting.
Nick? I would just like to see you for a little while. I wouldn’t mind if I couldn’t touch you. I would accept that. I would just like to speak with you. That isn’t asking a great deal.
– The hospital smells of disinfectants and subdued sickness, but this ward is apart and not peopled by the sick. Her hair is slightly damp with perspiration, and spread long and loose across the pillowcase. Her face is composed, owning herself. She is absorbed in her own thoughts. The nurse, white and rigidly upright as a bleached board, stands by her bed, softening momentarily. “Someone to see you – will you?” She has no idea who it could be, but she nods yes. He comes in, frowning, sceptical of all this, not liking the surroundings, and then he sees her, one bed among six (ten? twelve?). “Rachel.” Yes. Hello. “You might have told me before, darling.” I thought you might not want to know. “Is that really what you thought? You’ve got it all wrong, darling. I saw him – you know? I’ve seen him already. Not bad, eh? You did pretty well, darling.” Did I? “Rachel, you know I can’t help talking about everything as though I didn’t mean it – don’t you know what I mean, darling?” Yes, I know, it’s all right, I know, everything’s all right now –
The wind, whipping dustily, circles in a cold chain around