Year of the Beast Read online

  But it was not just the dreamy look of everything – familiar streets, trees and sky made new – but the sudden turn of events as well. She walked in a dream in which the strangest things were possible. She was pregnant. No matter that she was thirty-nine and beyond having babies – at least she’d thought she was, having entered that zone of irregular ‘visitings’: whether early or late in life she doesn’t know, because she doesn’t talk about such things. No one does. But none of that mattered now. Here she was: thirty-nine, pregnant and floating up the hill to meet the father who knew nothing of this, and whom she knew was the father because there wasn’t anyone else. Never had been. And she knew it would stay that way: that there would only ever be one man in her life.

  How could such a thing have happened? Of course, it was a dream. She wasn’t just floating up the hill in a dream – she was dreaming. True, the doctor had told her she was pregnant, that she had probably conceived about seven or eight weeks before. But he was in the dream too, and the words he spoke to her were words spoken in a dream. None of it was true. Of course not. She would wake any minute. But she could feel her feet on the ground now, and she knew that she wasn’t dreaming – even if everything was dream-like. The most unbelievable thing had happened. And, at some stage, she started to think of this sudden turn of events as a miracle. As much as she might have thought she was beyond babies, she was going to have one. A miracle. Not exactly an immaculate conception – she was rushing up the hill to meet the father – but a miracle all the same. Fate had singled her out.

  And as she swept up the hill to meet Viktor, she was bringing news of her miracle with her. The most unbelievable, the most wonderful, of events. And she was as light as air as she reached the top – the gardens deserted as they always were – and saw him sitting on the bench where they always met, amid birdsong and foliage. He looked at her and waved, smiling. He had no idea. How could he? She had only just found out. And in that moment, having floated up the hill, she was suddenly both light as air and heavy with her news. How to begin?

  He rose to greet her and told her he had closed the shop. They had an hour. She could have smiled. Since when did they ever need an hour? As he stood and spoke to her, he seemed to enter the dream. For he spoke to her slowly, with a soft, tender voice. More than charming, with a tenderness she felt sure she’d never heard before. And with a light in his eyes she’d never seen before. Beautiful. They were living the most beautiful dream, and as much as she wanted the dream to go on and on, she had news of a miracle to deliver. And all the time – seconds, minutes – in which he spoke of the shop and the hour they had, she was bursting with this news until she could hold it in no longer.

  ‘I’m pregnant,’ she blurted.

  And in that moment, the dream dissolved. His face went blank. She was no longer floating. Her feet were heavy on the ground. A flock of birds screeched into the air; the harsh everyday world, a world without beauty, colour or living dreams, the world she’d known and lived in all her life, reasserted itself and the dream collapsed. She was the forbidden love he spoke to in German. A fairytale. That was where they existed. That was the part she played in his life. She was a fairytale character in a fairytale far removed from the everyday world. But she had just stepped out of her part and into another for which he had no use: for nobody gets pregnant in fairytales. And from the moment she stepped outside that fairytale world and that fairytale life, everything came crashing down around her.

  There was no uncertain pause on her part, wondering how this news might be received, for she saw all of this straightaway.

  ‘Pregnant?’ he eventually stammered. The soft voice was gone. The light in his eyes was now a glare. He turned from her and looked around the gardens, taking in the distant departing screech of the birds.

  ‘You’re sure? How do you know? Who have you spoken to?’

  The questions were shot over his shoulder with a backward glance.

  She explained. The doctor. The verdict. Baby conceived about seven or eight weeks before. Yes, the doctor was sure. Staked his reputation on it.

  He eyed her, up and down, as if she were lying. Worse, as if she’d planned this weeks before and he’d walked right into a trap. Crafty bitch … It was all there in his eyes. Eyes that not so long ago had seen the beauty in her that no one else had ever seen now saw only a crafty bitch. And the same Viktor who was too afraid to speak, afraid of the danger of those moments when people say things they think they mean and in which they fall in love, or think they do, now shot questions at her over his shoulder without care or concern. And at some point she realised she was crying. Crying, for heaven’s sake. When was the last time she’d cried? Years ago. She hadn’t allowed herself the luxury of tears since she was a child. But there she was, at the top of the hill, thirty-nine, pregnant and crying. Never so achingly alone.

  He kicked the dirt and looked around the gardens again. Rigid, apart from a deep intake of breath and a sigh that was instantly comprehendible: What a mess!

  ‘You’ll have to go away.’ He spoke without even looking at her. ‘You can’t stay. The whole town will soon know. The town will talk. You can’t stay.’

  That was when he turned to her. Whether he could see her tears, she couldn’t tell. He didn’t speak of tears. He didn’t come near her. He didn’t touch her. He could barely look at her. Suddenly, he was an engaged man. Had responsibilities. Commitments. Duties. Promises to keep. Honour to consider. He threw these things at her as if speaking to a child. Couldn’t she see that? No, he seemed to conclude, she couldn’t. Or wouldn’t. Crafty bitch … He sighed again. What a mess!

  She had brought news of a miracle, while between sighs he talked of his responsibilities. What on earth did she expect of him? And with that question and in that moment, she drew breath. What did she expect? She barely knew. For a moment there, while she floated up the hill, she may have expected … something. Improbable happiness, some sort of wonderful ordinariness. How could she explain? She barely knew herself. He stood shooting questions at her without care. She stopped crying. And she knew, right then, that she should have expected nothing. She’d been a fool.

  It was, she knew instinctively, one of those moments we never really recover from. She will be seventy and the memory of what has just happened will always be recalled with pained surprise. Her eyes might have been wet from fresh tears, but iron entered her, body and soul. And she knew, with absolute clarity, that she would never forgive him.

  She wanted nothing of him now. He was unworthy of the miracle. She saw this in an instant. And for a moment it felt to her as though her conception were immaculate. That he had nothing to do with it. Could not possibly have had anything to do with it, such was his unworthiness. He’d been revealed for what he was and had always been – a small-town draper. Talking of his responsibilities and his honour, of the family business, when she brought miracles. Something tremendous.

  But most people run from the tremendous, and Viktor was just most people, after all. He was running. Even as he spoke, he ran. And honour? She had to laugh at that, for the town’s gossip had informed her weeks ago that the town saw no honour in him. He had already received white feathers in the mail or delivered under the shop door. Viktor, spelled the German way. Viktor Muller. Why hadn’t he changed any of that? Why wasn’t he in uniform? He was not a young man, but men older than him, like Mrs Collins’s husband, were in uniform. He was either a coward or a spy. Someone ought to report him. Have him locked up. No, the town saw no honour in Viktor Muller. Nor did Maryanne. No, this child was not born to be fathered by a small-town draper, or to be taught the trade of the draper and haberdasher: words she now mentally spits into the inner-city suburban night air. The child, she knew from the first, was going to be larger than that, and from the moment of its conception had outgrown the father.

  He said something about meeting the next day, and she guessed why: money, an address to write to when the time came.

  ‘We should walk back separatel
y,’ he added.

  ‘But nobody ever comes here, Viktor. Isn’t that why we do?’

  And it was then, as if on cue, that a third figure entered the gardens. And not just any figure. Mrs Collins, who never seemed to leave the school, stood on the edge of the lawns, her progress halted by what she saw. She stared at Viktor and Maryanne without greeting them, not even a nod, drawing her conclusions, then straightening herself and finding her privacy in another part of the gardens.

  ‘Damn.’ Viktor looked down at the sandy pathway. ‘That’s all I need! I’ll go first.’

  And with that he wheeled around and strode away, Mrs Collins nowhere in sight. His path curved, dipped, and he was gone. Maryanne was left standing by the bench, palms on her stomach. She had floated up the hill in a dream, bearing news of a miracle. The dream had dissolved the moment she told him, but the miracle was still there beneath her palms. Fate had singled her out. For this. A fate unlike any she’d contemplated before coming to the town. And as she set off back down the hill, alone, never so achingly alone, it was also with an odd sense of resolve. Alone, but singled out. Different. The bearer of a miracle. And her life, until now devoted simply to getting through from one day to another, would be devoted to this.

  ***

  She returned to her room after school to find a note slipped under her door. Mrs Collins was waiting to see her in her office. Such a serious, high-minded woman. One of those upon whom the worries of the world seemed to sit; one of those who looked at you in a manner that says: Don’t you understand? I am Atlas; I bear the weight of the world. Its injustice and wrongs. Somebody has to. For the world is all wrong. And I must set it right. I am chosen. And yet, all the time through the first interview when Maryanne had arrived at the school, she’d had to suppress a smile. In case the smile became a giggle. And that would never have done. And all because of an old childhood rhyme she’d forgotten about until the name Mrs Collins brought it back.

  Mrs Collins lost her drawers;

  Won’t you please lend her yours?

  But Maryanne wasn’t smiling that afternoon. The note was a summons. And she knew why. Maryanne dropped her classroom things on her small desk and walked back into the school, up the silent and deserted hallway to the office.

  Without speaking, Mrs Collins pointed to a chair on the other side of an imposing desk. She signed a piece of paper then looked up at Maryanne as if, it seemed to Maryanne, she were studying some nasty mark on the carpet.

  ‘A certain gentleman,’ Mrs Collins began, going straight to the matter, ‘a certain gentleman from the town, a gentleman engaged to be married, I might add, has been seen leaving your room.’

  Her voice was controlled, but only just. She glared at Maryanne across the desk.

  ‘By whom, Mrs Collins?’

  ‘Do you deny it?’

  ‘Deny what?’

  Mrs Collins straightened herself, her voice rising in response to the sheer cheek of the question. ‘That this gentleman was seen leaving your room …’

  ‘I can’t be responsible for what people see or think they see, Mrs Collins.’

  ‘The same gentleman,’ Mrs Collins added, as if Maryanne had never spoken, ‘the same gentleman you were seen with this morning in the gardens. Do you deny that?’

  Maryanne was weary. Her day had already been long. Her life would never be the same again. And although she had floated up the hill in a weightless dream, she was now beginning to feel the weight of the change. She was heavy with it, and the questions added to her weariness. But among it all there was this miracle that had happened. A child. She could scarcely believe it. And as much as Mrs Collins sought to impose her disapproval and displeasure upon her, Maryanne kept returning to the prospect of a child. Hers. The world is big, she was thinking; a baby small. The baby will look to her for everything. And she will give it that everything, while, small at first, it grows into the world. A mother. She will be a mother. She was only beginning to comprehend it, in all its wonder and terror.

  She was contemplating all of this, in a world of her own, when she became aware of Mrs Collins’s eyes staring at her. No, glaring, demanding an answer.

  ‘We met and spoke in the gardens. That is true. People meet and speak there all the time.’ She paused, adding, ‘Does it matter?’

  ‘Matter!’ Mrs Collins almost jumped from her chair. ‘Do you deny he was ever in your room?’

  More questions. And she knew this was a difficult question. If she said yes, she’d be lying. And Maryanne doesn’t lie. If she said no, she’d be bowing to her inquisitor and confirming the gossipy suspicion of the small-town spy in Mrs Collins. There was a third alternative. She could simply place herself above such questions. For something mighty had happened. Something that swept her up and soared above all this. What of talking in the gardens with a certain gentleman? What of her room, and who visited? ‘Beautiful, schöne, schöne Frau …’ he’d said. And it suddenly occurred to Maryanne that that was the moment: that was the day the baby was conceived and that was why she was suddenly beautiful. There was a reason for Viktor’s sudden observation, one that neither of them understood at the time. But which she now did.

  ‘It’s seems,’ she said, choosing the third alternative, ‘that you’ve already made up your mind.’

  ‘So, it’s true?’

  ‘Did I say that?’

  ‘Answer me.’

  She was doomed anyway, with mightier things on her mind, and was strangely calm, as though two people she knew were talking and she was merely watching. ‘Is this any of your concern? Why do you ask, Mrs Collins?’

  Looking back, it was as though Mrs Collins was a bomb set to go off, and Maryanne’s casual reply the detonator. And there was a part of Maryanne that was intrigued, almost amused, by the spectacle. She was clearly going to be sacked, so what was the point of all this?

  ‘Why? This is my school. Mine. Do you have no shame?’

  The exploding Mrs Collins delivered the question with a roar, the noise lingering, then tapering into silence. All that was lacking, it seemed to Maryanne, was the dust and smoke.

  Mrs Collins lost her drawers …

  Make the powerful comical and they are no longer powerful. How, Mrs Collins, did you lose your drawers? It wasn’t something Maryanne had ever contemplated before, and for the first time it occurred to her that it was not such an innocent little rhyme after all. How indeed?

  Mrs Collins rose from her chair, turned round and, with her back to Maryanne, contemplated the main street beyond the window, a view that Maryanne, from her chair, vaguely took in too. A large banner with a giant ‘Yes’ was stretched across the Masonic Lodge opposite. A dog yelped at anything that passed. A truck drew up, a soldier got out. A crowd began to gather. When Mrs Collins turned back to her she was composed: one of those who could switch their moods on and off in a moment. Perhaps it came with the weight of great responsibility.

  ‘You will leave this school at the end of the week,’ she said, adding that it was just as well the holidays started the following week.

  Yes, Maryanne thinks, standing in her inner-city doorway, looking onto the street: there was no scandal, nothing so grand as an ‘affair’, just an unfortunate business that did not need to be spoken of again.

  Mrs Collins resumed her seat and opened a drawer, pulled out an envelope and passed it across the desk to Maryanne.

  ‘There’s a week’s wages. And two weeks for the holidays. Be thankful you’ve got that.’

  There was a touch of pity in her voice, or perhaps it was just despair, that said: Aren’t you too old for all this, you silly woman? She turned back to the view from her window: the crowd gathering on the dusty street, the dog kicked into a whimper by the soldier. ‘What a world,’ she said, shaking her head, as if to add: They sack silly young maids for this, not women of our age.

  She wrote a name and address on a sheet of paper and handed it to Maryanne. ‘There, that’s the headmaster of a school near your home whom you can cont
act. I’ll write to him.’ She handed Maryanne the sheet of paper and nodded towards the door, as much as to say, our business is done. You are now off my hands. And Maryanne took the sheet of paper with a vague thank you. A vagueness that Mrs Collins took to be casual, if not insolent. She stared at Maryanne with a look that this time pronounced her trouble: trouble that she was glad to be rid of.

  Maryanne was tired as she closed the office door behind her. She returned to her room, lay down and drifted into a deep afternoon sleep. But before she drifted off she heard the echo of a softly spoken ‘beautiful’, and closed her eyes, convinced that that was it, that was when the baby was conceived and that was why Viktor suddenly saw beauty in her when no one before had. Schöne, schöne Frau … There was a reason …

  ***

  Her meeting with Viktor the next morning before work was a quick exchange, almost between strangers: he constantly looking about in case they were seen, while he gave her a roll of notes and an envelope containing an address she could write to when the time came, or if she had to. She told him she’d been sacked, and he rolled his eyes: one person knowing about them, in a small town, was one person too many. What a mess! But he shot her a glance that also said, it’s all for the best. Then, still anxiously looking about, he took a step back and offered her the slightest of bows, as if they’d been dancing, the dance had got out of control, and now the dance was over. He turned and was gone. A different Viktor. A changed man. Or, perhaps, the Viktor he always was. And, she knew, a Viktor she would never forgive. For Maryanne is one of those you only cross once. Once trust – like faith – is broken, it stays broken.

  She looked down at the roll of money in her hand, wishing she could have flung it back in his face as he had flung back the gift of her miracle. With no wedding ring on her finger, she knew then there’d be no end of the Mrs Collinses of this world ready to pronounce her a whore, and with the roll of notes in her hand, part of her felt like one. But the fact, the pathetic fact, was that she needed that money. That money would help sustain her. Sustain them. And she could tell, just by the weight of the roll, that there was a lot of it. And the security it gave her outweighed the indignity of receiving it. He had wheeled off, without looking back. And she was alone in the gardens. She could have wept all over again. Eve, after Adam stormed out on her. But Eve wasn’t alone, was she? She had this gift. Eve was no longer one, but two. She drew comfort from the thought, and stroked her belly in silent communion. And felt an odd sense of strength, that she had been singled out and she could do this. She was different. Different from what she had been and would have been had she never come to this place. She might have been alone in her garden, watching the rapidly diminishing figure of Adam storming off, but she had never felt so alive. Never so filled with purpose.