‘Take me through, take me through.’
They moved across the dark room like some impossible animal that had wandered out of prehistory. In the bedroom the curtains had not been drawn, and the fog washed on the window-pane, making the room seem to drift in a heaving void. Cameron felt angry at his clothes for shackling the urgency of his desire with the ludicrousness of trousers, the mundanity of laces. As he lay down beside Margaret, lust sprang her like a trap.
‘I wish there could be more,’ she was saying. ‘Why can’t we be together?’
‘I love you,’ offering the words as if they were some sort of absolution. Then he gagged her mouth with his.
Beyond the moilings of their bodies, the city churned and hooted faintly like a factory, busily engaged in manufacturing their futures, making arrangements, constructing situations, precipitating choices. Again Margaret made to speak, but Cameron smothered her words, for her voice gave access to the needs that waited for him to finish, illumined the faces that watched him from the darkness of his own head. Allison, their children, Morton, the young man. Inexplicably, one irrelevant thought hovered over him like a vulture, waiting to glut on the guilt of his exhaustion: was this Allison’s day for going to Elmpark? He wondered if it was. He hoped it wasn’t. Somehow, that would make his action worse.
But he drove that thought off with all the others, repelling it with the force of his involvement. He mined desperately at her body, as if he could transmute them both into something different and escape what waited for them, or could admit them to some small, private eternity, while the luminous dial that burned like a cancer on his wrist kept an ironic record of his efforts.
4
The clock showed half-past three. Mrs Dawson had already slipped out, unobtrusive as an earthquake, to brew the tea. Just time for a rousing finale before biscuits were served.
‘These are just a few samples of some of the things that have happened to our Guild Members while on hospital visitation. I hope I haven’t painted too rosy a picture. Nor one that is too black. It is sometimes amusing, sometimes depressing. But I think I can safely say it is always useful. Illness is a lonely condition. And the sick can always benefit from pleasant conversation, friends, a little warmth.’
Which would be quite useful here too, Allison thought. The church hall was very cold. The walls were ascetically bare and painted a shiver-inspiring off-white. Igloo Grey. The four old-fashioned radiators that defaced the walls gurgled encouragingly from time to time, threatening heat that never came. Perhaps they had abdicated in favour of the spiritual warmth of the legend painted in huge letters below the clock: ‘I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life’.
‘This is one small way in which we can try to show the truth of a Christian life. It is easy to forget in our own comfortable lives the quiet suffering that a lot of people less fortunate have to put up with. It’s not asking too much for us to sacrifice a little of our time for their sake. We mustn’t let our own comforts blind us to the needs of others.’
‘Comforts’ was an understatement. Looking round them, she could well understand why this was said to be one of the richest congregations in Glasgow. It showed, especially in the small inner circle of older women who sat at the back of the hall – Mrs Gilchrist, Mrs Cartwright, and Mrs Anderson. She had often wondered why they attended these ‘Young Wives’ meetings at all. The only thing that qualified them was their noseyness. It was strange. With their money, they could have been doing anything they wanted. But they preferred to come here. Perhaps it was just that they liked to be where their influence could be felt. And in this room it was almost tangible.
While she was speaking, she watched them sitting there, a little trinity of their own, doing a modest trade in social destinies. She felt she knew them well, having memorised each the way one would memorise an important telephone number that might be useful some day. Mrs Cartwright was the most obtrusive, as blatant about her money as if she had been dressed in hand-stitched fivers. One of her more memorable remarks had been: ‘I find food always catches in these gold fillings. Don’t you?’ Mrs Anderson was much more bearable. Her husband was a coal-merchant who had built up his own business, and her bad grammar, which antedated her wealth, she bore around with her like a cheerful mark of Cain. The most influential of the three was Mrs Gilchrist. She never touched upon anything connected with money, just as other people seldom point out that they have blood. She spoke very little altogether, but was eloquent with diamonds.
‘Perhaps the best way to appreciate how these people can benefit from our visits is to think of someone near to you being in their position.’ She decided she had better shut up soon, because she had reached the stage where she couldn’t see any connection herself between the ends of her sentences and their beginnings. ‘Myself, I have a sister who knows what it is to have been in this situation. To depend on the charity of other people for company. And it has made me determined to try to comfort other people in the same predicament. In tribute to her, as it were.’ She was hunting desperately for a way to finish. She felt they might just have to pull her into her seat. ‘Anyway, I hope I haven’t bored you too much in telling you about this. Because, really, if there is one thing this activity is not, it is ‘boring”. She paused, sensing that she had devised an unintentional conundrum. Write your answers on a postcard and send them to. . . . ‘And those young wives who are at the moment completely involved in seeing their children past their first few years might like to bear this in mind. As something they might like to do once their children begin school. Thank you.’
There was a smatter of genteel applause before Mrs McKendrick, the minister’s wife, stood up.
‘I’m sure we’re all very grateful to Mrs Cameron for her most interesting little talk. I feel certain that her words have not fallen on stony gound. And I want to express my personal thanks for the way she bravely stepped in at short notice to fill the gap. Thank you, Mrs Cameron. By the way, Mrs Gilchrist has very kindly agreed to help in the running of our Daffodil Tea. And any ladies wishing to be of assistance, either with baking or labour, should roll up their sleeves and give their names to Mrs Gilchrist. Now, tea will be served.’
Mrs Dawson re-entered, armed with an enormous tea-pot.
‘Thanks, Allison. You saved a life,’ Mrs McKendrick said.
The Christian name was a concession. Mrs McKendrick only used it on special occasions as a sign of favour. Pleased at their temporary intimacy, Allison left her and went straight to where Mrs Gilchrist was sitting. She expressed her willingness to help with the Daffodil Tea and gave her name to Mrs Gilchrist, who took it as if she had been the angel who appeared to Abou Ben Adam.
‘Won’t you join us, dear?’ she said. ‘I must say I found your talk very interesting.’
‘Thank you very much,’ Allison said, making it serve for the compliment and the chair proffered by Mrs Anderson.
She felt slightly overwhelmed for a moment among their upholstered effigies. When you got close to Mrs Cartwright, she became a concerto of subterranean sounds. Stays creaked, cloth sighed, breath fluted faintly in her throat – all clamouring minutely against the injustice of the demands made upon her corpulence by her vanity. She had drawn up the final lines beyond which there was no surrender. Her makeup was a death-mask, her corset a catafalque.
She epitomised the impression that all three of them made on Allison. They were initiated into a coldness, a finality that excluded others. Even the way they stirred the tea given to them by Mrs Dawson and her assistants was ritual, as the first sip was ritual. They enclosed the simplest actions in a kind of stateliness, like canonical brocade. Allison thought with a shiver that she would one day be one of them, a high-priestess of the menopause.
