Spring Manoeuvres Read online

  Larry liked the irony of it, marching after all, listening to the speeches, applauding. He said he wouldn’t give a damn who he marched with or how many speeches he had to listen to if over the Holy Loch and the American base a huge black mushroom cloud expanded slowly, like a question mark.

  “I absolutely must have a clear view of this spot,” Edith said again. “Nothing must be in the way, not the march, not the beech trees, not anything.”

  “Don’t worry,” Douglas replied. “There are several vantage points. You can take your pick.”

  He thought of towers and the tops of hills, some of them real, some imaginary. He pictured Edith alone on them in her wheelchair, a rug about her, waiting. While he marched and Larry and Helen managed the raft, the explosion, she would have to be on her own. At least two hours probably. A long time under the circumstances. He would prepare a good picnic for her however, with a thermos of tea. A little tray could be attached to the wheelchair: he would see to it. The tea would help her combat the chill as it grew upon her, as it surely would. Of course he would see to it that she was in a sheltered spot – the edge of a wood, cradled by a hill, under a tree of many branches. Nature had its good places as well as its bad. One of the former would be her companion during the critical hours of the march. He could think of no other companion: in their later years, it seemed, they had drifted from the main, become isolated, with few friends.

  “What have you in mind exactly?” Edith asked, making again as if to rise in the wheelchair.

  “We can fix you up with some binoculars,” Douglas said, borrowing some of Larry’s jauntiness. “For a start we can do that. Then there’s that place at the top of the road where the three pine trees are. With binoculars you can have a peaceful, uninterrupted view.”

  “It’s not going to be birdwatching, you know!” Edith said scornfully. “I’m going to be watching my son trying to bring off something difficult and dangerous. I’m going to be willing him in spirit to bring the country to its senses. No less! No less!”

  “I appreciate that, dear,” Douglas said. “How about this then? I’ve still got that small video camera at home. The explosion could be filmed. You could be in charge. We could sell it to the newspapers, television …”

  “What makes you think I could hold them, the binoculars, the camera? For Christ’s sake, Douglas!”

  “They’ll be attached. All you’ll need to do …”

  “The pain!” Edith cried. “The pain!”

  She held up her hands as far as she could, which was not very far, and began to curse. She coughed, as though it was hard for her to get her words out too, coughed and cursed until she was winded, gasping.

  Suddenly, Larry stopped the wheelchair and fell to his knees on the grass verge with a little cry. At first it wasn’t clear what had possessed him. But then, swivelling on his knees, he reached out to embrace his mother. Soon his head was on her breast and the wheelchair was rocking to his sobs.

  To receive him, Edith had to lift her head, which made it seem as if she was staring at the sky, head angled in the interests of precision. Douglas was trembling, and for some reason rubbing his hands. He might have been imploring them not to become too upset or to keep a place for him in whatever was developing.

  The next Douglas knew he was grasping the arms of the wheelchair from the front, stooped and bent there as if protecting his family from the skies or struggling to keep the wheelchair from running off the grass verge onto the shore. Then he realised that someone was holding his left hand, someone else his right. The sobs and cries of mother and son were almost indistinguishable. What’s more, he seemed to be adding to them, his voice wracked, barely recognisable, issuing from terrible depths.

  No sooner had he got himself upright than he was stooping again to touch Larry on the shoulders. He should try to release him from his distress, he felt, this grieving communion with his mother which might have no end. Edith seemed to be attempting it too actually, her gloved hands, high on her son’s back, patting it with immense patience and forbearance.

  Eventually Larry disengaged himself. He looked ashamed and amazed and as though he wasn’t quite sure any more where he was or why he was there. He stumbled unhappily beside the wheelchair while Douglas pushed it, pushed it in the most measured way imaginable, as if all that stood between his family and utter collapse were such movements as these, dogged, careful, faithful, deft, enduring.

  They drove to the hilltop from which, more than from any other, Douglas imagined Edith witnessing the explosion, filming it. There was a copse of high trees, round which the road made a U bend, and there were often crows.

  For some moments they didn’t leave the car but sat very still, trying to settle themselves.

  The American base was clearly visible, the path the raft would take across the water easily imaginable. Douglas’ thoughts were simple. He believed that the weather would continue fair and that the raft would proceed faultlessly across the windless loch, exploding where planned and very loudly. As though overseen by providence, there would be a clear sequence then: uproar on the base, commands vying with hysteria, piercing whistles, boats launched, but, on shore, the march being resumed after its memorable interruption, Larry, Helen and himself all part of it now, enjoying solidarity, singing perhaps, moving towards the square and the speeches. And Edith on this high hill of course, scarfed against the wind and screaming out with laughter and pride.

  “We should perhaps get out and see where you’re going to be sitting tomorrow,” Douglas said.

  His wife and son made no move, seemed greatly to be in need of guidance. It alarmed him. He would have to get them ready for the next day and he wondered how. He wondered if he had the strength, the inspiration.

  With immense care, having positioned the wheelchair by the passenger door, he moved Edith’s helpless legs and torso out from the car. Larry, who would normally have helped, did nothing. Douglas had the thought that although he had done it thousands of times before, this was like the first. Or like the first time he had done it properly. Perfectly. Proof of his sincerity at last, his love.

  “You’ll have these extras tomorrow,” he said. “Remember that.”

  “You don’t seem to be thinking straight any more, Douglas. I know we’re all excited, but how can I possibly …”

  “At least give me credit for ingenuity. I’ve fixed up supports which can be attached to the arms. They’ll hold the binoculars here, the camera here.”

  He demonstrated where they would be and was surprised to feel pride. If you could feel pride in spite of the reactions of others, he thought, there would be less loneliness.

  “It’s true, mother,” Larry said sorrowfully. “He’s fixed it for you. There’ll be no strain.”

  “Thank you,” Edith said, eyes darting from side to side. “I appreciate it. I appreciate it very much.”

  Moved himself now, Douglas lifted a hand to hush her. He hadn’t known them so formal with each other, so simple.

  “It’s the least I could do.”

  “The view is perfect,” Edith said. “Just perfect.”

  It was too. The near shore and even the far shore were clearly visible, the loch and its grey water, the shifting currents even, blue grey under grey, the American base with its harsh lights on already and its winking antennae, its great smoky bulk. A bright evening sky overarched it all, seeming to bestow an immense silence.

  Edith had gone very quiet. Douglas had to ask three times how the spot really struck her, and, when at last she responded, she seemed not quite to have understood the question. It was as though she was venturing on meditation and didn’t want to be disturbed.

  “As I say,” she muttered remotely, “it’s just perfect.”

  Larry was the first to spot them, black shapes ahead of their noise, shadows flickering over the hills and the loch. He pointed and ducked but before he could shout the hilltop was blasted by their roar. They flew downwards to the loch, then upwards over the hills on the other
side, some banking to the left, some to the right, a manoeuvre they had all seen many times but still, in its symmetrical violation of space and silence, shocking and spectacular.

  Minutes after they had gone, Edith stirred, emerging from her silence as if something had occurred to her that should have occurred to her long ago.

  “You’ve no idea how much I’d like a drink. The jets can go to hell, can’t they? In spite of all, there seems so much to celebrate. Doesn’t there? If you stop to think of it, we’re close to being blessed. Or this spot is and we’re beneficiaries. D’you know what it reminds me of? I bet you can’t guess. It reminds me of that time in Arran when Larry was a baby. We were high up on the hillside that leads to Goat Fell, by the White Water. I was agile then, of course, and in all the future I didn’t dream of such shadows as these. You’ll not remember it, Larry, but you will, my love, I’m sure.”

  Touched by her simplicity and directness, Douglas said that he did remember it, although he didn’t, he had to be honest. He had thought so much about the times before her illness – almost as though trying to discern the seeds of it – that he had difficulty now in distinguishing one time from another. Like a sunlit plain in the far distance, they stretched north and south, east and west, as far as the eye could see.

  Edith’s Journal – 6

  From the top of Strangeway’s Hill – why is it called that? – I had the most wonderful view. It’ll be the same tomorrow, the weather forecast assures us.

  Now we’re on the eve of the march, I’m having these visitations from the past. I still can’t see beyond tomorrow – it’s just a blank, a darkness – and maybe that’s why the past is claiming me so. I can’t go forwards, into the future, so I’m vulnerable to the past. At my age, it seems limitless. I didn’t know I had so many good memories. Times are coming back to me which I wouldn’t have thought were so dear. I’ve been lucky, I think. Lucky in spite of all.

  It’s a kind of harvest, you might say, I’m bringing in. Memories falling over one another to get my attention. Like children at a party. I doubt I’ll have time for them all, and since I’ve more time than most, confined to this chair and almost useless now, that shows how many there are. A myriad. I don’t feel any strain though. In fact I’ve never known such an absence of strain. The memories just come, perfect down to the last detail, and in the most revealing sequence imaginable. Randomness doesn’t come into it. It’s like the story of my life or of parts of it. But it’s not as if I’m just living it over again; it’s as if I’m doing so with a sense of what it’s amounted to. That was never there at the time – oh no I couldn’t begin to say what this meaning is. It’s simply there in the memories, reassuringly manifest, like a light shining through them, a kind of frame.

  I allow myself the fancy that they are a balm to my pain, the memories, that if they were to stop I’d be overcome by pain entirely. What a strange way of regarding myself – as a stage on which either the past lives again or pain dominates, mocks, degrades: I don’t like to think I’ve no say in the matter but it really does seem that way. I’ve invited neither the memories nor the pain, but here they are, fighting for possession of me. Maybe it’s what happens with ruined bodies, overtaxed wills: a time comes when benign and malign forces choose you for their eternal struggle.

  I know it’s because of the resemblance to what’s going to happen tomorrow that I was so struck by it, but let me share one memory.

  Larry, aged about seven, is walking before us along a rocky shore. His right hand is raised, purposeful, holding thirty yards or so of string at the end of which, bobbing on small waves, is a toy yacht. We seem to have been walking like this for some time. There’s a feeling of great delight but not of safety. Indeed something close to chaos seems to threaten. Larry can only believe that what he’s doing has rare delight by constantly turning to look at us and we can only believe it by attending to his every movement. Were he to look round and find us looking away or were we actually to do this, the whole scene would fracture. The yacht would bob away, a storm would get up, someone might drown. It doesn’t happen though for it’s one of those days when everyone’s timing is perfect. We walk on and on, right round the bay to the lighthouse where Larry reins in his yacht.

  It was a bay in the north of Arran. Beyond it is the Irish Sea. It wouldn’t profit me to return though. Only the naive believe in returns, revisits. In my experience, landscape never delivers the goods on occasions like that. The very reverse: it stands still as the grave, making you feel you’ve made a fool of yourself. Which you have. Its neutrality is what you notice; it’s not partial, doesn’t give a damn for our nostalgia. We err by not understanding this.

  The closer we get to the march, the more the memories come. Hour by hour. Such a quickening. Will they stop so that tomorrow I can concentrate on Larry? Will there prove to be a providence or is it quite random what’ll happen? Certainly, when dear Douglas parked me at the top of the hill today, I had the most profound sense of being providentially buoyed up. In agony half an hour before (I’d never tell him, but Larry’s posturing and false optimism didn’t help), I felt suddenly wonderfully still and concentrated. Perhaps it’s easier for us with useless ravaged bodies to feel we’re instruments of higher powers, I don’t know, but I did really feel it. Why not, if you stop to think about it? If God can ask Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, why can He not ask things of us, the ill and elderly?

  I appear to be able to accept now that all I can do tomorrow is be with Larry in spirit. (The filming is really incidental.) Until recently though I couldn’t. I kept thinking there must be something unique for me, Edith Low, to do. Only if the pain becomes terrible am I likely to think it again. When the pain is like that, you see, I’m a different person. The world is not as it is now. I seem to feel that extreme measures are necessary.

  It might help if I rehearse what’s going to happen tomorrow – firstly, what we hope will happen, secondly, what we dread.

  Douglas and Larry will park me at the top of the hill. I’ll have food with me and tea. There will be supports for the binoculars and the video camera. I’ll train the glasses on Larry in his cove and set the camera going in plenty of time to film the explosion. Larry’s given me an approximate time – 3 p.m. I’ll start filming before that. After the explosion, which will halt the march for quite some time, I believe, Larry and the friend who is helping him (a retired teacher, I’m told) will join the march. They’ll go to the town square and listen to some speeches maybe. Douglas and Larry will then meet up and drive up the hill to collect me. I’ll probably be very cold by then but happy. Happy! There will be celebrations on the hill top.

  If it goes wrong, it will probably be because of problems launching the raft. It’ll blow up in Larry’s face. Or it’ll get launched but blow up too soon or too late or not at all. Or it’ll all go to plan but Larry or his friend or both will be arrested. If Larry is arrested or injured or worse, Douglas will come and get me immediately he finds out.

  They’re both very concerned about me, I must say, almost more than they are about themselves and each other actually. They feel for me being on the sidelines.

  At least each is doing what he thinks is right. Neither is compromising. Neither am I really.

  I don’t think I’ve ever loved them so much. Or felt myself so much loved. I think I could describe myself as happy.

  IX

  The day of the march dawned bright and still. Early jets had left vapour trails that looked like the ribs of heaven. Great Easter weather. At seven o’clock Larry came into his parents’ bedroom to tell them so; smiling broadly, drew back the curtains to demonstrate the truth of his words.

  Discovering the sleepers, exacerbating the discomforts of waking, the light seemed cruel, but beautiful then, solicitous.

  Edith was especially slow to waken, moaning, making little jerking movements with her arms and legs, as if the drugs had bunched up in her system and were exploding. Larry sat on the side of the bed, his smile still rather deliber
ate, and, when the moment came, helped her to sit up, fixing pillows behind her as he did so. Her grey hair fell over her face. He drew it back carefully, securing it at the nape of her neck. She muttered thanks but complained she’d had a bad night, that the day could only bring improvement. As if realising only then what that day was, she broke off, her head falling forwards onto her chest.

  Larry told them to rest where they were. He had made their breakfasts and would bring them in on trays.

  Which he did, first serving his mother, then his father, and then, as if it was someone’s birthday or an anniversary, sitting in a chair in the morning sun watching them.

  His mother moved her mouth down to her hand, tugging at her toast, his father, who had barely spoken, ate with more formality in bed than he did at table.

  “When does the march start?” Douglas asked, although he had asked it the evening before.

  “One o’clock,” Larry said.

  “And the raft? How is it? Did it go into the car alright?”

  “It’s in the boot now. It went in easily. I knew it would.”

  “Have you been up long?” Edith asked. “You look as if you have.”

  “Since five-thirty. It’s been very still and bright. I’ve heard birds singing I’ve never heard before. I even saw a fox, up by the observatory.”

  “I’ll be glad to get going,” Edith said. “I didn’t have a good night.”

  “Me too,” Larry said. “It’s been a long wait. Tonight though, if all goes well, we’ll have a party.”

  “Just the three of us,” Douglas said, looking out into the garden where the hut in which Larry had built the raft and the explosive device stood. The wood had weathered, not so white, a little browner now.

  “I don’t know about a party,” Edith said in a reduced voice. “I’ve never known about them. Shall we wait and see? If we have one, we have one. If not … not.”