Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage: Stories Part 13

A young man's voice asked her if the doctor was there, had the doctor been yet?

"He didn't need a doctor. When I came in I found him dead."

"When was that, then?"

"I don't know-twenty minutes ago."

"You found him pa.s.sed away? So-who is your doctor? I'll phone and send him over."

In their matter-of-fact discussions of suicide, Nina and Lewis had never, as she remembered, talked about whether the fact was to be kept secret or made known. In one way, she was sure, Lewis would have wanted the facts known. He would have wanted to make it known that this was his idea of an honorable and sensible way to deal with the situation he had found himself in. But there was another way in which he might have preferred no such revelation. He would not want anybody to think that this resulted from the loss of his job, his failed struggle at the - 124*

school. To have them think he had caved in like this on account of his defeat there-that would have set him raging.

She scooped the packets off the bedside table, the full ones as well as the empties, and flushed them down the toilet.

The undertaker's men were big local lads, former students, a bit more fl.u.s.tered than they wanted to show. The doctor was young, too, and a stranger-Lewis's regular doctor was on holiday, in Greece.

"A blessing, then," the doctor said when he had been filled in on the facts. She was a bit surprised to hear him so openly admit that, and thought that Lewis, if he could have heard, might have caught an unwelcome whiff of religion. What the doctor said next was less surprising.

"Would you like to talk to anybody? We have people now who can, just, you know, help you sort out your feelings."

"No. No. Thank you, I'm all right."

"You've lived here a long time? You have friends you can call on?"

"Oh, yes. Yes."

"Are you going to call somebody now? "

"Yes," said Nina. She was lying. As soon as the doctor, and the young bearers, and Lewis, had left the house-Lewis borne like a piece of furniture wrapped to protect it from knocks-she had to resume her search. It seemed now that she had been a fool to restrict it to the vicinity of the bed. She found herself going through the pockets of her dressing gown, which hung on the back of the bedroom door. An excellent place, since this was a garment she put on every morning before scurrying to make coffee, and she was always exploring its pockets to find a Kleenex, a lipstick. Except that he would have had to rise from his bed and cross the room-he who had not been able to take a step without her help for some weeks.

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But why would the note have had to be composed and put in place yesterday? Would it not have made sense to write and hide it weeks ago, especially since he didn't know the rate at which his writing would deteriorate? And if that was the case it could be anywhere. In the drawers of her desk-where she was rummaging now. Or under the bottle of champagne, which she had bought to drink on his birthday and set on the dresser, to remind him of that date two weeks hence-or between the pages of any of the books she opened these days. He had in fact asked her, not long ago, "What are you reading on your own now?"

He meant, apart from the book she was reading to him- Frederick the Great by Nancy Mitford. She chose to read him entertaining history-he wouldn't put up with fiction-and left the science books for him to manage himself. She had told him, "Just some j.a.panese stories," and held up the book. Now she threw books aside to locate that one, to hold it upside down and shake the pages out. Every book she had pushed away then got the same treatment. Cus.h.i.+ons on the chair where she habitually sat were thrown to the floor, to see what was behind them.

Eventually all the cus.h.i.+ons on the sofa were dispersed in the same way. The coffee beans shaken out of their tin, in case he had (whimsically?) concealed a farewell in there.

She had wanted no one with her, no one to observe this search-which she had been conducting, however, with all the lights on and the curtains open. No one to remind her that she had to get hold of herself. It had been dark for some time and she realized that she ought to have something to eat. She might phone Margaret. But she did nothing. She got up to close the curtains but instead turned out the lights.

Nina was slightly over six feet tall. Even when she was in her teens, gym teachers, guidance counselors, concerned friends of her mother's had been urging her to get rid of her stoop. She did her best, but even now, when she looked at photographs of - 126*

herself, she was dismayed to see how pliant she had made herself-shoulders drawn together, head tilted to the side, her whole att.i.tude that of a smiling attendant. When she was young she had got used to meetings being arranged, friends bringing her together with tall men. It seemed that nothing else much mattered about the man-if he was well over six feet tall, he must be paired off with Nina. Quite often he would be sulky about this situation-a tall man, after all, could pick and choose-and Nina, still stooping and smiling, would be swamped with embarra.s.sment.

Her parents, at least, behaved as if her life was her own business. They were both doctors, living in a small city in Michigan. Nina lived with them after she had finished college.

She taught Latin at the local high school. On her vacations she went off to Europe with those college friends who had not yet been skimmed off to marry and remarry, and probably wouldn't be. Hiking in the Cairngorms, she and her party fell in with a pack of Australians and New Zealanders, temporary hippies whose leader appeared to be Lewis. He was a few years older than the rest, less a hippie than a seasoned wanderer, and definitely the one to be called on when disputes and difficulties arose. He was not particularly tall-three or four inches shorter than Nina. Nevertheless, he attached himself to her, persuaded her to change her itinerary and go off with him-he himself cheerfully leaving his pack to their own devices.

It turned out that he was fed up with wandering, and also that he had a perfectly good Biology degree and a teaching certificate from New Zealand. Nina told him about the town on the east sh.o.r.e of Lake Huron, in Canada, where she had visited relatives when she was a child. She described the tall trees along the streets, the plain old houses, the sunsets over the lake-an excellent place for their life together, and a place where, because of Commonwealth connections, Lewis might find it easier to get a job. They did get jobs, both of them, at the high school- though Nina gave up teaching a few years later, when Latin was - 127*

phased out. She could have taken upgrading courses, preparing herself to teach something else, but she was just as glad, secretly, to no longer be working in the same place, and at the same sort of job, as Lewis. The force of his personality, the unsettling style of his teaching, made enemies as well as friends, and it was a rest, for her, not to be in the thick of it.

They had left it rather late to have a child. And she suspected that they were both a little too vain-they didn't like the thought of wrapping themselves up in the slightly comic and diminished ident.i.ties of Mom and Dad. Both of them-but particularly Lewis-were admired by the students for being unlike the adults around home. More energetic mentally and physically, more complex and vivid and capable of getting some good out of life.

She joined a choral society. Many of its recitals were given in churches, and it was then that she learned what a deep dislike Lewis had of these places. She argued that there often wasn't any other suitable s.p.a.ce available and it didn't mean that the music was religious (though it was a bit hard to argue this when the music was the Messiah) . She said that he was being old-fas.h.i.+oned and that there was little harm any religion could do nowadays.

This started a great row. They had to rush around slamming down the windows, so that their roused voices might not be heard out on the sidewalk in the warm summer evening.

A fight like this was stunning, revealing not just how much he was on the lookout for enemies, but how she too was unable to abandon argument which escalated into rage. Neither of them would back off, they held bitterly to principles.

Can't you tolerate people being different, why is this so important?

If this isn't important, nothing is.

The air seemed to grow thick with loathing. All over a matter that could never be resolved. They went to bed speechless, parted speechless the next morning, and during the day were overtaken by fear-hers that he would never come home, his that when he did she would not be there. Their luck held, - 128*

however. They came together in the late afternoon pale with contrition, shaking with love, like people who had narrowly escaped an earthquake and had been walking around in naked desolation.

That was not the last time. Nina, brought up to be so peaceable, wondered if this was normal life. She couldn't discuss it with him-their reunions were too grateful, too sweet and silly. He called her Sweet Nina-Hyena and she called him Merry Weather Lewis.

A few years ago, a new sort of sign started appearing on the roadside. For a long time there had been signs urging conversion, and those with large pink hearts and the flattening line of beats, meant to discourage abortion. What was showing up now were texts from Genesis.

In the beginning G.o.d created Heaven and Earth.

G.o.d said, Let there be Light, and there was Light.

G.o.d created Man in his own image. Male and Female created he them.

Usually there was a rainbow or a rose or some symbol of Edenic loveliness painted alongside the words.

"What is the meaning of all this?" said Nina. "It's a change anyway. From 'G.o.d so loved the world.'"

"It's creationism," said Lewis.

"I could figure that. I mean, why is it up on signs all over the place? "

Lewis said there was a definite movement now to reinforce belief in the literal Bible story.

"Adam and Eve. The same old rubbish."

He seemed not greatly disturbed about this-or any more affronted than he might be by the creche that was put up every Christmas not in front of a church but on the lawn of the Town - 129*

Hall. On church property was one thing, he said, town property another. Nina's Quaker teaching had not put much emphasis on Adam and Eve, so when she got home she took out the King James Bible and read the story all the way through. She was delighted by the majestic progress of those first six days-the dividing of the waters and the installation of the sun and moon and the appearance of the things that creep upon the earth and the fowls of the air, and so on.

"This is beautiful," she said. "It's great poetry. People should read it."

He said that it was no better and no worse than any of the whole parcel of creation myths that had sprung up in all corners of the earth and that he was sick and tired of hearing about how beautiful it was, and the poetry.

"That's a smoke screen," he said. "They don't give a p.i.s.s in a pot about the poetry."

Nina laughed. "Corners of the earth," she said. "What kind of talk is that for a scientist? I bet it's out of the Bible."

She would take a chance, once in a while, to tease him on this subject. But she had to be careful not to go too far. She had to watch out for the point at which he might sense the deadly threat, the dishonoring insult.

Now and then she found a pamphlet in the mail. She didn't read them through, and for a while she thought that everybody must be getting this sort of thing, along with the junk mail offering tropical holidays and other gaudy windfalls. Then she found out that Lewis was getting the same material at school- "creationist propaganda" as he called it-left on his desk or stuffed into his pigeonhole in the office.

"The kids have access to my desk, but who the h.e.l.l is stuffing my mailbox in here?" he had said to the Princ.i.p.al.

The Princ.i.p.al had said that he couldn't figure it out, he was getting it too. Lewis mentioned the name of a couple of teachers on the staff, a couple of crypto-Christians as he called them, and - 130*

the Princ.i.p.al said it wasn't worth getting your s.h.i.+rt in a knot about, you could always throw the stuff away.

There were questions in cla.s.s. Of course, there always had been. You could count on it, Lewis said. Some little sickly saint of a girl or a smart-a.r.s.e of either s.e.x trying to throw a monkey wrench into evolution. Lewis had his tried-and-true ways of dealing with this. He told the disrupters that if they wanted the religious interpretation of the world's history there was the Christian Separate School in the next town, which they were welcome to attend. Questions becoming more frequent, he added that there were buses to take them there, and they could collect their books and depart this day and hour if they had a mind to.

"And a fair wind to your-" he said. Later there was controversy-about whether he actually said the word "a.r.s.e" or let it hang unspoken in the air. But even if he had not actually said it he had surely given offense, because everybody knew how the phrase could be completed.

The students were taking a new tack these days.

"It's not that we necessarily want the religious view, sir. It's just that we wonder why you don't give it equal time."

Lewis let himself be drawn into argument.

"It's because I am here to teach you science, not religion."

That was what he said he had said. There were those who reported him as saying, "Because I am not here to teach you c.r.a.p." And indeed, indeed, said Lewis, after the fourth or fifth interruption, the posing of the question in whatever slightly different way ("Do you think it hurts us to hear the other side of the story? If we get taught atheism, isn't that sort of like teaching us some kind of religion?"), the word might have escaped his lips, and under such provocation he did not apologize for it.

"I happen to be the boss in this cla.s.sroom and I decide what will be taught."

"I thought G.o.d was the boss, sir."

- 131*

There were expulsions from the room. Parents arrived to speak to the Princ.i.p.al. Or they may have intended to speak to Lewis, but the Princ.i.p.al made sure that did not happen. Lewis heard about these interviews only later, from remarks pa.s.sed, more or less jokingly, in the staff room.

"You don't need to get worried about it," said the Princ.i.p.al- his name was Paul Gibbings, and he was a few years younger than Lewis. "They just need to feel they're being listened to.

Need a bit of jollying along."

"I'd have jollied them," Lewis said.

"Yeah. That's not quite the jollying I had in mind."

"There should be a sign. No dogs or parents on the premises."

"Something to that," said Paul Gibbings, sighing amiably.

"But I suppose they've got their rights."

Letters started to appear in the local paper. One every couple of weeks, signed "Concerned Parent" or "Christian Taxpayer"

or "Where Do We Go From Here?" They were well written, neatly paragraphed, competently argued, as if they might all have come from one delegated hand. They made the point that not all parents could afford the fees for the private Christian school, and yet all parents paid taxes. Therefore they deserved to have their children educated in the public schools in a way that was not offensive to, or deliberately destructive of, their faith. In scientific language, some explained how the record had been misunderstood and how discoveries that seemed to support evolution actually confirmed the Biblical account. Then came citing of Bible texts that predicted this present-day false teaching and its leading the way to the abandonment of all decent rules of life.

In time the tone changed; it grew wrathful. Agents of the Antichrist in charge of the government and the cla.s.sroom. The claws of Satan stretched out towards the souls of children, who were actually forced to reiterate, on their examinations, the doctrines of d.a.m.nation.

- 132*

"What is the difference between Satan and the Antichrist, or is there one?" said Nina. "The Quakers were very remiss about all that."

Lewis said that he could do without her treating all this as a joke.

"Sorry," she said soberly. "Who do you think is really writing them? Some minister?"

He said no, it would be better organized than that. A masterminded campaign, some central office, supplying letters to be sent from local addresses. He doubted if any of it had started here, in his cla.s.sroom. It was all planned, schools were targeted, probably in areas where there was some good hope of public sympathy.

"So? It's not personal?"

"That's not a consolation."

"Isn't it? I'd think it would be."

Someone wrote "h.e.l.lfire" on Lewis's car. It wasn't done with spray paint-just a finger-tracing in the dust.

His senior cla.s.s began to be boycotted by a minority of students, who sat on the floor outside, armed with notes from their parents. When Lewis began to teach, they began to sing.

All things bright and beautiful All creatures great and small All things wise and wonderful The Lord G.o.d made them all- The princ.i.p.al invoked a rule about not sitting on the hall floor, but he did not order them back into the cla.s.sroom. They had to go to a storage room off the gym, where they continued their singing-they had other hymns ready as well. Their voices mingled disconcertingly with the hoa.r.s.e instructions of the gym teacher and the thump of feet on the gym floor.

- 133*

On a Monday morning a pet.i.tion appeared on the Princ.i.p.al's desk and at the same time a copy of it was delivered to the town newspaper office. Signatures had been collected not just from the parents of the children involved but from various church congregations around the town. Most were from fundamentalist churches, but there were some from the United and Anglican and Presbyterian churches as well.

There was no mention of h.e.l.lfire in the pet.i.tion. None whatever of Satan or the Antichrist. All that was requested was to have the Biblical version of creation given equal time, considered respectfully as an option.

"We the undersigned believe that G.o.d has been left out of the picture too long."

"That's nonsense," Lewis said. "They don't believe in equal time-they don't believe in options. Absolutists is what they are.

Fascists."

Paul Gibbings had come round to Lewis and Nina's house. He didn't want to discuss the matter where spies might be listening.

(One of the secretaries was a member of the Bible Chapel.) He hadn't much expectation of getting around Lewis, but he had to give it a try.

"They've got me over the b.l.o.o.d.y barrel," he said.

"Fire me," said Lewis. "Hire some stupid b.u.g.g.e.r of a creationist.

The son of a b.i.t.c.h is enjoying this, Paul thought. But he controlled himself. What he seemed mostly to do these days was control himself.