Читать книгу Journey to Paradise - Dorothy M. Richardson - Страница 7
ОглавлениеI
I looked up and saw Josephine cutting cake. Until that moment every moment of Sunday had been perfect. The day had been so perfect that I had forgotten there was anything in the world but its moments and they were going on for ever, and I was just turning blissfully towards the walk across the common; daylight still on the greenery, and the Hopkins in F service with candles burning in twilight and the frivolous evening congregation. I looked drunkenly up to look down the envious room at my green soul holding the window clean open from outside and pouring in and holding them all in affectionate envious silence and saw Josephine standing in the way bent over the cake, looking exactly like Grannie as she pursed her face to drive the knife through. I stayed stupidly looking, not able to get back until the cake was cut, and although she had not noticed me she reminded me in her spitefully unconscious vindictive spoil-sport way that it was my turn to go to Grannie’s. There was no need to say it. It was part of her everlasting internal conversation about the dark side. Something leapt from me towards her; the room was a sound in a dream. Life; a dream swimming in sound. Today was still all round the pattern round the edge of my plate, and I felt that a particular way of putting jam on to my bread and butter would keep everything off. But the layer went over, thinning out over the creamy butter, raspberry jam being spread with a trembling hand by nobody, nowhere ... by Josephine. The morning garden, the sunlit afternoon heath, the eternal perfect Sunday happiness of all the rooms in the house were Josephine’s. She held them there or snatched them away. Grannie’s was woven in her dark mind always; all the time.
II
The summer shone down Grannie’s road in a single wash of gold over the little yellow brick houses. Inside her sitting-room it had gone. There was a harsh black twilight full of the dreadful sweetish emanation that was always in her room. It came out dreadfully from the cold firm wrinkles of her cheek when I kissed her and shook out over me from her draperies when she raised her arm and patted me and made that moment when I always forgot what I had intended to say. When her arm came down the beads of her big oak bracelet rattled together as the ends of her long-boned puffy fingers patted the horsehair seat. People sat down. I sat down, aching with my smile. Her long stiff hands were already fumbling her ear trumpet from the lap of her silk dress. When I had secured the speaking end she said, how are you, my dear? Very well, thank you—how are you, I shouted slowly. The visit had begun; some of it had gone. Eh she quavered out of the years. If she could see into the middle of my head she would see the lawn of her old garden and the stone vase of geraniums and calceolarias in the bright sunlight, and would stop. Her tall figure tottering jerkily under its large black shawl-draped dress, the lapels of her lace cap, the bony oval of her face, the unconscious stare of her faded blue eyes as she moved and stood about the garden all meant. I was a ghost meaning nothing, then and now. She sat wearing the same Sunday clothes but her eyes were on my sliding silence. I said my words over again. They were lasting longer than if she had understood at once. Her face fell as she heard. Middling ... middling, she said in a shrill murmur. Isn’t it a lovely day I shouted angrily. My throat was already sore with effort. Her disappointed eyes remained fixed on me. It has been lovely today I yelled. Did your father go she asked with a reluctant quiver. My false face when I shouted back showed her she had misunderstood. She sighed and turned away from the light. The long tube slithered in the folds of her dress as she sat back, still holding the trumpet to her ear. Presently she turned slowly round and lowered the trumpet and patted my knee. I smiled and said we went for a walk, very quietly. I felt she must be hearing. She put up the trumpet again. I could not say it over again, she would know what I meant if I waited. I hesitated and felt a crimson blush. She smiled and patted my knee with her free hand. You’re growing up a bonny woman she quavered. People having tea in basket chairs under trees watched. The beauty of the day hammered in the room. She saw it all. But her words were a bridge thrown towards nothing. It gets dark earlier now shouted my ghost. The summer’s going, she quavered, turning away again and putting down the trumpet. I lowered the mouthpiece and she coiled the apparatus in her lap and sat back giving her cry as her shoulders touched the back of her chair. Bad, bad, she whispered, patting her left arm and smiling towards me. I nodded vehemently. Listen to the minister, she murmured, read your bible every day. She sighed heavily and sat thinking of us all one by one. About us in the foreground of her thoughts was her large old house and our small one. It was long before she came back to her small home near our big one. I turned away from her heavy fragile thinking profile when I reached the moment of hoping that the end would come here so that she might never bring the trumpet and the chapel magazines to make a centre of gloom in amongst everything. When I looked again her heavy thin profile gleamed whiter in the deepening light. I could no longer see the little frayed blue veins. I looked about the room. The furniture was death-soaked. It knew only of lives lived fearing death. I looked at Grannie again. My tingling hands touched a thought ... The loud beating of my heart filled space. Lord. Lord Christ. Mr Christ. Jesus Christ, Esquire. I had thought the thought ... Below the joys and wonders of my life was that. Me. I began social conversation eagerly towards the room, in my mind. It went on and on fluently. I had found out how to do it. My mind pressed against the sky and spread over the earth discovering. I strung out thoughts in unfamiliar phrases, laughing in advance to blind my hearers until I was safely away over bridge after bridge. I nearly bent forward to secure the speaking tube. I felt it in my hand. It was no use. It would carry my thought into action.... All social talk was hatred. I sat twisting my fingers together longing to get back into the incessant wonders and joys away from the room that had seen my truth. The room throbbed with it. It made the room seem lighter, the twilight going backward, evening and gaslight never to come.... When the gaslight came on the furniture the room would become quiet and harmless again.... It was dark and cold. Voices were sighing and moaning through the walls. The bell waiting for me made the wonders and joys ... it might come soon; any day. Who can tell how oft he offendeth. Cleanse thou me from secret faults. Useless. God was not greater than I. The force of evil is as great and eternal as the force of good.... I wanted to cast myself on my knees and weep aloud in anger. Be angry and sin not. That meant waiting meanly for the good things to come back. There were no good things. If God saw and knew evil he was evil ... Grannie sighed. I smiled towards her through the twilight, my body breaking into a refreshing dew. The little room was being folded in darkness. The bright light that came into it in the morning was a stranger; a new light. Light the gas, dearie, whispered Grannie. Years slipped in and out as the gaslight spread its gold wings sideways from its core of blue. The evening stretched across the room, innocently waiting.
