The Underpainter Page 10
“They never change their minds,” he said at the supper table a few days after New Year’s. “Their word is law.”
“What about great-uncle John?” asked Fred suddenly. He was ten years old and even more taciturn than his feared father, but he loved Augusta and wanted her inside with him. Augusta and the boys turned to look at him in amazement: he had spoken without being spoken to. An awful silence fell over the table. “Didn’t he change his mind and come back from the Klondike?” continued the child weakly, his voice barely a whisper.
“Did I ask you a question?” Edward Moffat peered at the boy from under a severe ridge of thick dark eyebrows. “Did I speak to you?”
Fred stared at the mashed potatoes on his plate. Augusta reached for his hand under the table.
“Fred,” said his father, “I’m speaking to you — I’m asking you a question now. I am asking you if I spoke to you.”
“No, sir. I forgot, sir.”
“Don’t forget again.”
“No, sir.”
Edward Moffat picked up his knife and fork, and his relieved wife and family reached for their own utensils. He chewed thoughtfully and then laid his knife and fork back on the table. His pregnant wife and silent children followed suit, all except for baby Cecil, who banged his spoon once or twice on his mug.
“Fred,” said Edward Moffat, “do you remember what Uncle John said before he departed for the Klondike?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, what did he say?”
“He said, ‘I shall never return.’”
Edward Moffat had begun to eat again, as had the rest of the family. Except Fred, who was recovering from being spoken to.
“And Fred,” his father continued, “do you remember what happened to Uncle John after he changed his mind and returned from the Klondike?”
“Yes, sir,” he said. “A horse kicked him in the head.”
“And then?”
“And then he walked slowly like, across the field, through the gate, up the walk, through the back door, through the woodshed, past the kitchen, into the parlour, where he lay on the sofa and died.”
Their father had one more question for Augusta’s favourite brother. “And what did he say before he died, Fred?”
“‘I should never ’ov changed my mind. I should never ’ov left the Klondike.’”
Edward Moffat gazed meaningfully at each of his boys in turn, including baby Cecil. “Let that be a lesson to you,” he said.
“And so,” Augusta explained to me, “when school started again after Christmas, I was dispatched twice during the week out into the dark, cold winter late afternoons. On Saturdays I remember looking out the window with dread while I ate lunch, knowing that soon I’d have to be out there in all that snow, all that snow and nothing to do.”
At first she would merely stand stunned, quite still, inside the confines of what her mother called “the yard.” She did not weigh enough to break the crust on top of the snow so she was able to walk back and forth alongside pickets that had been as high as her waist in summer, pickets that now only reached her ankles. What drew her to the fence was that it was connected at each end to the house and so was soothing to her mind in that the territory inside it could be thought of as just another chilly room. Augusta spent much of her time remarking to herself that on Saturday afternoons her shadow on the snow was two times taller than she was, that after school it grew to ridiculous lengths as a result of the setting sun, and that on dark days or as supper approached, her shadow grew in the opposite direction, as she was lit from behind by the wonderful lamps in the warm house.
Once it became dark, Augusta was able to look with longing directly into this comfortable domestic world from which she had been banished. Fred sometimes waved to her from the kitchen window, where he kept watch, not wanting to let her out of his sight. The other boys made faces through the glass or scratched their initials in the upper panes where frost had formed. Sometimes they called her names when they were forced outside to shovel a path through the accumulating snow to the back door. Augusta eventually learned that it was necessary to keep moving, otherwise her hands and feet would become unbearably cold. Gradually, like a caged animal pacing in a pen, she beat a deep circular path around the edges of the yard.
Her father passed her on weekdays as he returned from the back acres where he carried on a small lumber business in the winter. He would walk right up the path one of the boys had shovelled and often not notice Augusta at all, such a shadow she was in the dusk. But, as the weeks went by and the days lengthened, she became, of course, more visible, and one day he actually stopped and stared at her with that odd combination of surprise and tenderness that visited his face whenever he looked at her. Then, as he remembered why she was outside, his expression changed and he asked her what she was playing.
Augusta looked at her brown boots on the white snow. She always told the truth. “I am playing at nothing, Father.”
Her father turned to give directions to one of the boys who was to take the two draughthorses into the barn. Words concerning water and straw and harnesses were exchanged. Several minutes passed before Edward Moffat turned to his daughter again.
“You say you are playing at nothing?”
“Yes, Father.” And then hopefully, “Do I have to play, Father? Do I have to stay out here?”
Edward Moffat considered Augusta’s question for a few moments. Then he said firmly, “Yes, I have not changed my mind. I know what’s good for you. You must learn to make your own play.” He looked at the circular track in the snow. “Why, you have not even left the yard,” he exclaimed. “Go to the edge of the woods or down in the meadow. You should go to the other side of the barn, near the creek, then the playing will be more natural-like. It will just come to you.”
Augusta’s heart sank.
“You will go where your mother can’t see you from the house,” he continued in a commanding tone. “And the playing will just come to you.”
Two days later, with great reluctance, Augusta trudged out behind the barn and then followed the lane that ran beside the creek. She stopped just short of the woods into which her father so often disappeared on winter days, looked down the white path that bisected the two dark armies of fir trees, and thought about play.
Other girls had dolls; hers had all been broken by her brothers. Some of the children she knew at school spoke of game boards and dice and even, occasionally, of cards. These were all considered immoral by her Methodist father. There were books — schoolbooks, almanacs, The World’s Great Exposition of Civilization, and World of Strange Wonders — but they were not to be removed from the house.
The early March snow, heavy now, dense and wet because of rising temperatures, was beginning to seep through her boots. Her socks were damp.
“I will not play,” she said aloud, though no one heard her. “I won’t do it.”
She bent down, picked up a handful of snow, ate some of it, and threw the rest at the trunk of a cedar tree, where it stuck, making a white circle on brown bark.
“Anyone who plays is stupid,” she whispered angrily.
She squatted, made another more solid ball of snow that she rolled across the ground, watching the way it grew as she pushed it in front of her. Soon she was standing beside a large white sphere almost as big as she was.
I have made something, she thought.
Half an hour later she had constructed seven of these globes and had positioned them side by side so that they made a kind of wall with open triangles at their tops and bottoms. She filled in these areas with more and more snow until her mittens were soaked and her hands were burning.
By the time she heard the dinner bell she had completed a second wall at a right angle to the first and was standing a few yards away admiring her white handiwork in the grey light.
She was hugely pleased with herself.
I will come back tomorrow, she thought, completely forgetting that tomorrow was Sunday and that she w
ould be forbidden both work and play.
“We could make a snow sculpture tonight,” I said to Augusta. Although the streetlights were still lit, because of the storm I could barely see Victoria Hall, which stood adjacent to the China Hall. A thin coating of snow was beginning to inch its way up the large front window. “God knows there’s enough of it out there.”
“Not one like mine,” said Augusta. “We couldn’t make one like mine.”
In the end, it took Augusta four and a half sessions to finish her snow house. She had remembered to leave a space for the doorway and had entered and exited several times. It wasn’t until she had completed the roof — which was made from scrap boards she had found behind the barn — that she realized she had no window. She crouched in the dim interior, on a floor of packed snow, and thought. If she returned to the woodshed to fetch a shovel, the boys would want to know what she was up to, follow her back to this spot, and gleefully smash her walls. This was her house; she was the only one who knew about it. It was hidden by a clump of cedar. No one could see it from the farmhouse. She imagined she was the only one who had ever thought to make something like this. She wanted it to remain unwitnessed, to have it all to herself.
Using a stick, she dug through a wall, first from the outside in, then from the inside out. This project took her the better part of an hour. The snow had settled in recent days, and hardened, and there were thick inexplicable pieces of ice here and there that made the going difficult.
When the light finally broke through, it was in the form of a single beam thrown from the intense orange sun. Augusta had thought to create a west-facing window. It was always going to be afternoon in her house so the light was always going to be perfect. She enlarged the window as much as possible with the stick, admired the view, squinting, her face taking on the colour of the sun, which was by now quite low. Then, in the last half-hour of perfect light, she rolled several large balls of snow through her door and constructed one white armchair, finishing it just as she heard the sound of the dinner bell travelling across the field to fetch her home.
Augusta returned to her snow house two days later after school. She had every intention of making a snow bed, a snow table, was, in fact, designing these pieces of furniture in her mind as she walked the path behind the barn. When the small structure came into view, Augusta noticed with pleasure that her roof of boards had disappeared under four or five inches of fresh snow, making the whole house white, as if it had always been that way. Though it was now late March, they were experiencing what her father called a cold snap, and the snow was not as manageable as it had been in recent weeks. There was a stiff wind that made white wavelike drifts in the meadow and that cut through Augusta’s coat. She lowered her head so as not to hit it on the doorway and entered her snow house.
“There was a grey girl,” Augusta said, looking directly at me to gauge my response. “A grey girl sitting in the white chair.”
Concealing my bewilderment, I nodded. I wanted her to continue.
She must have blown in through the window, was Augusta’s first thought. She was startled — how could she not be? — but she was not as startled as she should have been and this intrigued her. Augusta squatted near the window and studied this grey girl. She was quite beautiful and older, more grown up than Augusta. Her hair was so fair it was almost white, the skin on her hands and face a little darker. Narrow drifts had settled in the folds of her blue-grey skirt, as if she had sat very still on the snow chair all day long. She had breasts under her grey-blue bodice, Augusta was certain of this.
The grey girl didn’t seem at all surprised to see Augusta, and she didn’t appear to be uncomfortable with the way Augusta was staring at her. She just sat, entirely still, in the white chair. It was a sunny day but, because of the wind, curtains of snow were entering through the window. Occasionally the grey girl’s face was obscured, but it always came into focus again when the wind died down.
“I am quite comfortable here,” said the grey girl at last. “And you are too.”
Yes, thought Augusta, I am. “I like houses,” she announced, then wondered why she had said this.
“Yes, you do,” said the grey girl. “I myself live in this house,” she continued, “but you may visit whenever you like.”
“No,” said Augusta, “only Saturday afternoons and Tuesdays and Thursdays after school. My father never changes his mind.”
“No, he doesn’t,” agreed the grey girl.
Augusta could think of nothing else to say. She had decided that the girl might be eighteen years old, or even older. There were no mittens on her hands and only a dark-blue cape on her shoulders, but she didn’t seem to be cold.
“I’ve been waiting,” said the grey girl, “for a long, long time.”
“All day long,” said Augusta.
“Longer than that.”
“For two whole days?”
“Longer than that,” said the grey girl. “I’ve been waiting for twelve years. I may have to wait for ten more.”
Augusta said nothing. The grey girl’s voice seemed to be scolding her in some way. But when she looked into her eyes, which were more blue than grey, she saw they were filled with kindness, happiness.
The following week the snow softened and Augusta was able to construct some additional furniture for her house. The table, the bed, a second chair facing the first, which allowed for conversation, and one side table on which she placed a solid white vase. Sometimes the grey girl was there, sometimes she was not. Often she did not appear until Augusta had stopped working and had collapsed into her own chair.
“I’ve been here all along,” the grey girl would say as she came into focus in front of Augusta’s eyes.
One day when the snow was soft enough for Augusta to be able to make several bowls and even a sort of teapot for the grey girl, a robin perched on the outside of the window ledge and looked inside inquisitively. And then, the next Saturday as she approached the snow house, Augusta had to admit to herself that it had begun to lose its shape.
“Don’t worry,” said the grey girl as Augusta entered an interior filled with a kind of slow rain, “one or the other of us will be back. Maybe both.”
The following week the snow house collapsed. Two weeks later there was not a trace of it left. Augusta turned thirteen, just a few weeks later, in May of that year. On her birthday her father gave her a gold locket with the initial “A” engraved on it. After she had opened the gift, thanked him for it and gave him a formal kiss, he ordered her to remain inside from then on, to help her mother and to concentrate on her school work, housework, and needlework.
“In case you think I have changed my mind,” Edward Moffat said to his daughter, “you are entirely mistaken. You are a young lady now and young ladies don’t play. If you were still a child, you would go outside on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays.”
For just a moment Augusta envisaged her own thin reflection in the circular lake that had been left behind for several days after the snow house had melted. Clouds mirrored there had sometimes taken on the shape of the grey girl, but the image had dissolved as she looked at it.
“I didn’t think you’d changed,” she said, then paused. She was going to add the words “your mind” to the sentence, but in the end she let them go. “I didn’t think you’d changed at all,” said Augusta to her smiling father.
“Did you ever see the grey girl again?” I said to Augusta. I could hardly believe that I had asked the question without irony, but there it was.
She had moved down to the front of the China Hall while she was talking, was now searching the dark, empty street, looking, I thought, for some sign of George.
“Yes,” she said, “but not until the war.”
“Was she a ghost, was she someone who was haunting you?”
“Yes, no …. She was someone who was going to haunt me. For a time, though, she was very real.”
By now I was genuinely astonished. “She was going to haunt you?”
He didn’t look at all the way I’d imagined him from Augusta’s story. His face was narrow. He looked thinner than I expected, less sure of himself.
“He was thinner and less sure,” said Augusta when I remarked on this. “The photo was taken after the war.”
I won’t let Mrs. Boyle anywhere near the collection. She has been forbidden to set foot in the end of the room where it is kept, ever since the day I found her pawing through it, a large plastic garbage bag close at hand, disapproval written all over her face. “You’re a grown man, for Gods sake,” she said to me. “What on earth do you want to be doing playing like a child with pieces of china?”
I told her it was absolutely none of her business how I spent my time.
“None of my business, is it?” she retorted. “And me the one that keeps you going day after day. You’re such a strange one, you’d lose the power of speech if it weren’t for me coming in here every morning. And praying for you. Oh, yes, don’t look at me like that. You are exactly the kind of person I feel compelled to pray for.”
I explained that I’d much prefer that she would do no such thing. “If there is a God,” I said to her, “which I seriously doubt, then I’d much rather not be brought to his attention. And as for the china,” I said, “I want you to leave it alone altogether.”