Tuesday Feb. 4
Today I drove around smaller roads. They are clear, wet black ribbons twisting over a white landscape. On these country roads I notice that the snow does not cover the land so much as reveal it. As if it was stripped naked. You see its curves; the way a field rim turns up in a pout to a hedge; the slow undulation between two hilltops; the sliding curve of flank in a huge white expanse of field. The snow strips it of distractions and colour, flattens weeds and tall grass, and absorbs back into the shape of the surface the harsh outlines of rocks, ruined ploughs, piles of fencing and rotting bales. All detail is concealed, to reveal the sensuous shape of the whole. Trees and stone walls are all that show up, the trees bare, black and scratchy-spindly, shocking tufts of coarse black pubic hair in the folds and valleys of the body. Stone walls make black lines fractured by white, outlining shapes, emphasizing the creases between limbs. The body that lies around me is huge. I crawl across it like an ant on a Henry Moore figure, lost between voluptuous swellings.
A story.
A Natural Father
The school playground was fenced with green plastic-coated wire mesh, in diamond shapes, eight foot or so high. To prevent intruders, perhaps – or stop the children, like creatures in a zoo, from escaping. He stood right next to the wire, close enough so that each eye was looking through a separate diamond-shaped space. As he leant forward to stare, silently imploring the clusters of children by the wall, and round the boilerhouse, to break up and reveal themselves, his hands came up and gripped the wire either side of his staring face. She wasn’t there at first. His clenched hands were sweating. He stood rigid, willing her to appear.
Then from around a corner – or skipping out from the middle of a crowd right under his nose – would come the yellow-white fluff of hair, framing the terrible sweet face. There she was.
She never looked at him. She seemed to be happy, engaged with other children. Laughing, or being chased, or intent in intimate conversation. Once he had spotted her it was impossible to lose sight of her; she was the only child in the playground with hair so blonde it was nearly white – silver in some lights, a warm pale-yellow silver, like early morning sunshine, not the sad grey-silver of old age. Silver Top, Duck’s Fluff, Dandelion Clock, were names he had called her. Now she was bigger, with knobbly schoolgirl knees beneath her pleated skirt.
He hung immobile against the fence, hot and weak, till the bell was rung at one. The children ran to the doorway and he watched her light till the crowd of taller children pressing round her blotted it out.
Miss Haughton had been headmistress of Castle Hill Primary for eighteen years. She had seen most things, in her time. And she had seen men who hung in the shadows at the far end of the playground, following her children with eating eyes. This one was different because he came right up to the fence. In fact from the window of her office it looked as if he were lying, spreadeagled, against the fence. Like a man in a prison camp, she thought.
They should all be in prison. They should all be in prison, the filthy creatures, with their beastly appetites. Besides, he was damaging her fence. His whole weight was pressing against it. Soon it would begin to sag between its supports and have to be renewed. The children knew they mustn’t lean or climb on it. You’d think a grown man would have more sense.
The next time she spotted him she put down her roll of sugar paper, took the drawing pins from between her teeth, and marched straight out to send him packing.
‘If I see you loitering here again I shall call the police. Do you understand? These children are under my protection.’
The man turned pale when she spoke to him. The children had fallen in behind her and semi-circled her, iron filings round a magnet, as she faced him. A little girl with white-blonde hair stood there open-mouthed, staring at the strange man. He turned and fled.
His wife had been animated, like the child. It was one of the things that had attracted him to her. She was always engaged, laughing and chattering to other people. She seemed to have boundless energy. When they married he found it less attractive, because she was such a fly-by-night. She would start one project with all the enthusiasm in the world, and then lose interest. The house was full of half-finished things: half-made curtains, half-knitted jumpers, half-written letters. Being slow and thorough himself, he was finally irritated by her wilful skittishness. And, of course, vice versa. By the time he had painstakingly finished off the fitted cupboards in the kitchen, two months after she’d helped him choose the design, she could no longer stand the sight of the wretched things.
A couple of years passed. They both wanted children. They had planned to start a family as soon as they married, but nothing happened. Sometimes when things were going badly between them he thought it was just as well. At other times he thought a baby might help. She went to the doctor’s and a slow round of tests was started up. Odd hospital appointments here and there, and people telling them there was plenty of time yet. She seemed to make it more her concern than his; and when it would not be solved in a day or a single visit to the hospital, she lost patience. They rarely talked about it, though they made love often – it was the only activity in which they didn’t exasperate each other.
He began to long for a child. Not knowingly, but with a dull subconscious pang of loss. He wanted something he could watch and cherish and receive warmth from, like the slow steady glow of a fire; instead of the intricate, inanimate objects his life was devoted to at work, and at home in the car, the decorating, the fitting of wardrobes. He wanted someone who would grow in his warmth, to whom he could give the slow burning love which was locked away from his wife’s impatience. Loneliness was like an absence following him. There was no security between himself and Elizabeth.
Their lives were locked in a pattern of separateness. During the week they each worked; in the evenings he watched telly and she went to her evening classes. At weekends he tinkered with the car and worked on the house, while she shopped, visited friends, came and went untidily, leaving doors open, and half-finished cups of coffee, and dishes in the sink. Knowing that she was as unhappy as he was the only thing that made him able to bear her behaviour.
When she told him she was pregnant he was past believing it. It was too good to be true. They had been trying for three and a half years.
He was so happy he didn’t know how to express it, and hardly dared to for fear of it vanishing. He started work on the baby’s room, stripping, sanding, painting; slow and thorough. She was quieter and often seemed tired; being able to wait on her and bring her things eased his desire to love her. He thought she was never so beautiful as when she pregnant.
He went to the hospital with her when she started in labour, but towards the end they sent him out, because they needed to use forceps. The midwife said Elizabeth wasn’t pushing hard enough. He stood in the room where they put him in a blaze of fear, praying to the God he hadn’t believed in since junior school. If you let them be all right, I don’t care what happens. You can do anything you like to me afterwards, I won’t mind. Just let them both be all right, please God.
The baby (Amanda) was born with clean white hair, and a screwed-up kitten’s face. David cried when he saw her. And when he dared to cuddle her close enough to feel the living heat of her small, determined body, the cold space of loss that he had carried inside himself for years blazed up with an answering warmth.
Elizabeth was an erratic mother. She fed the child and looked after her well enough, but sometimes she wanted to do nothing but pet and fondle her – at others the baby must be banished to her cot for hours on end, to learn to sleep and get into a routine. Crisis followed crisis: over feeding (breast, followed after two weeks by bottle), colic, non-sleeping, nappy rash, dummies versus thumbs, and so on. Gradually David gained confidence, and began to infiltrate Elizabeth’s sloppinesses with his own methodical preparations. He cleaned the bottles, sterilized them and mixed up new feeds. With a patience he recognized as scheming – perhaps evil – he waited for Elizabeth to get tired of her new toy. Soon he had taken over the night-time feeds. He was at work all day, and became so tired he often hallucinated, but at night he was awake, ready with Amanda’s feeds, ready to change and cuddle and play with her. Alongside the growing