Elementals - A. S. Byatt [54]
I did have another idea, I think, about Wendy and Rachel. I thought, if some girl stretched a dark cord across the path, in the cross-country run, she could bring down Wendy in her pride as she strode past, leaving the way clear for Rachel, who would be impressed and grateful. It would be a real secret, something would really have happened, that could never be told. It would be real treachery, not just giggling and whispering. Rachel would be able to recognise the degree of difference, between talk and something really happening, for once. I didn’t have this idea, particularly, because I was in love with Rachel and hated Wendy. Or the other way round, because I was in love with Wendy, and she spurned me for her inner circle. She never exactly spurned anyone – her inner circle got there through the greater persistence of their greater desire. I don’t think I was in love with either of them, or with anyone, except Sir Lancelot, and Rupert, and Saladin, and Mr Rochester. I was afraid of being annihilated by boredom, of there never being anything else. Once I thought about talking to Rachel about my idea about the cord, of course, I saw how impossible the idea was. She wouldn’t have listened, and might have reacted quite nastily, or been put off, or even scared. The scenario of her secret gratitude was just that – a tenuous scenario, and I abandoned it. I was sorry, because I knew where the good place to stretch the cord would be, between the trees in a copse on the climb round the rough scree near the old quarry. There was cover for the traitor to retrieve the cord, and get away, in the confusion. The traitor would be dressed for the race, but would have skipped a large part of the circuit, cutting straight through the trees.
The thing that happened was, that Wendy, running easily, and well ahead of everyone else, did stumble and fall, in exactly that place. She fell quite a way, down the scree, and hit her head very nastily on a sharp stone, and broke a vertebra and a rib, and was in hospital for quite a long time. She was unconscious for quite a long time, too, and when she did come round was, to use a cliché which is conveniently to hand, ‘never the same again’. A light went out. She took the eleven-plus with the rest of us, and didn’t pass. Neither did Rachel, or not to our very superior school, and after a time I heard no more of either of them. I don’t know what became of Wendy after the Secondary Modern. I have a very clear memory of the piece of cord – sort of fairly thick garden twine, such as my father had in his shed, a dark khaki-green twine, completely invisible over dead leaves and puddles. I have the opposite of Alzheimer’s, I remember things I really think didn’t happen. After all, my job is scenarios, is finding props, is imagining lighting, the figure entering the frame, and ACTION. I remember Jael because the story doesn’t quite make sense, the emotions are all in a muddle, you are asked to rejoice in wickedness. I remember Jael because of the delicious red, because of the edge of excitement in wielding the pencil-point, because I had a half-a-glimpse of making art and colour.
Christ in the House of Martha and Mary
Kitchen Scene with Christ in the House of Martha and Mary
(detail), Diego Velázquez, c. 1618
Christ in the House of
Martha and Mary
Cooks are notoriously irascible. The new young woman, Dolores, was worse than most, Concepción thought. Worse and better, that was. She had an extraordinary fine nose for savours and spices, and a light hand with pastries and batters, despite her stalwart build and her solid arms. She could become