CONTINUITY

or    PART 3 OF 5 RECOGNITION

Nothing in which she had trusted fully had ever really let her down, so she was inclined to believe what she was told she ought to believe. She questioned the probity of individuals, but not of what was printed, what was spoken importantly.

Having survived great danger, she was both cautious and hopeful; but she remained watchfully content.

She didn't dance so much after marrying. Hardly at all. The music was different. Some of it was good; but her husband didn't really dance. He'd go the rounds with her, but was self-conscious. That made him ungainly; and that made him unhappy. He had too much rhythm, she'd say. There isn't room for it if other people are dancing. She made people laugh the way she talked.

They went to the pictures. Saw just about everything. And when they came back, coughing maybe from smoggy streets, there'd be something to eat, which her father had prepared from what there was, if he could; and, whatever he offered, there was his smile.

And, beside the man's smile, the cat's, too. A smile with a cat attached, he told them. Always a strange shape about the face, that cat. From its first life, he'd say, before it was respectable and had a home. And the cat would look at him with considerable ardour, shaking a little as if with  emotion, and make the noise that it made where other cats purred. It was, without doubt, they thought, his cat. It offered its dignity to him repeatedly in these ceremonial tableaux; and they lived their lives as cat and man, the man besotted and lonely.

Then the rocket destroyed the entire opposite block and killed just about everyone in all the houses there. It blew in their French windows, even though the flat was mostly below ground. The cat ran off. They never saw it again. They never knew what happened to it.

Later, her father died, in a smile, sure and full of love. There was beauty to it. The younger man knelt beside the bed, just went down on his knees, and bowed over the rumpled blanket, and cried.

No one had ever seen him cry as an adult.

Afterwards, he apologised, and she told him not to be silly. She told him how right it had been. She heard her mother say to her father That child has a lot of sense, although she hadn't been supposed to have heard that. A long time ago.

Careful of the sin of pride, she said to herself.

It was awful but, for a time, although they grieved, they enjoyed having the flat to themselves. Her father was missed, but the space was entirely welcome. They had a best room and a living room. Then they became used to it being like that.

He came home on time in those days, pleased to be shot of the factory and those there who would drag you down if they could. They'd take your money and help you look for it. They'd call you their friend and then they'd menace you.

It was good to be in his own home, with a wife, and curtains you could close and a front door you could choose not to open fully. His parents were two hundred yards away.

They tried for a child; and then for another, to be company. One of each make, he said; though it was the same joke he had often made in another guise, she laughed.

In each pregnancy, she worked until the last minute. They needed the money; and she didn't want to be a blob staggering around that dingy place. Who would? It was never the same after the bomb smashed the windows. The replacement was mean. Some of the exultation had gone from those shadowy walls.

On that first occasion of being alone - he told her, but at first no one else, he was a shy man - when she went into hospital, the woman on the second floor, the one who'd always say the doctor had diagonised her (how could anyone have so many illnesses and look so well?) invited him up as soon as he got back... Perhaps it was the next day; but soon.

I thought you might like a bit of cake. There you are. Bring me the plate after, won't you?

I can put the kettle on.

There was a set answer to that, to be shared repeatedly in his own home, but not across the doorstep with someone he didn't want to touch.

It'll heat up quickly, you know... I expect you'd fancy something warm and wet these dark evenings. You must be lonely. Come up. You've got to bring the plate. (He took the cake; and bit a third of it away first time, because he hadn't eaten anything since breakfast, handing her back the plate as he began to chew, saying thank you at the same time. She looked surprised but took it, fanning out her fingers towards him, but without a successful contact, touching instead the end of the cake; so that, once he'd shut the door, he threw the rest of it away and found something of his own to eat.) I'd enjoy having you up, you know; in my place. It's cosy. You'd be very welcome in it... I wouldn't keep you waiting.

After two or three times of that sort, she didn't ask again and was a bit offhand if he greeted her. His innocent politeness confused her.

It was the first time he'd had such an offer since he married and he was shocked; she had a big backside. He told his wife so there'd be no misunderstanding. When she took the baby into where she had worked to show her ex-colleagues, she made sure she told that to everyone.

He was the happiest man. There's a photo of him looking at the children in the carry cot; and no one could look more pleased.

After, years later, when he was dead, she was alone; in a hotel of some kind. She was thirsty. They'd cut her hair. She stroked a cat, but it was a picture of a cat she was holding, on a box of chocolates; so it must have been a photo of a cat she had stroked another time. But how had they known to get the photo and put it on the chocolates? Someone had given her the chocolates. At home, they'd had a small dog; and the dog had howled to the trumpeter song on the gramophone. Her father had put his head back, calling the dog; and, as the music got under weigh, they howled together. A car came down the road very fast and knocked the dog up in the air; and killed him, beyond all doubt; because, when he struck the ground, he didn't move. Her father picked him up. There were no marks on him. He said the dog's name. He forgave the driver, though it may have been the driver's fault. He said: I must take him in to let my wife know; she'll want to see him. They laid him on a cushion and sat down facing him, all three of  them, without any time limit, without any plan, without any remembrance of an earlier plan for the day; and they said to each other they would never get another dog. They said that he was the best dog. They said that he had understood far more than one would expect.

And Bobby sat up. Yes, that was his name was Bobby. He sat up, as if he had just been called. His hair was on end. He looked worried. He stood up. Very quickly. He growled, only it was a kind of yelp; just once. And he ran round the room. Off the sofa where the cushion was, the cushion they'd laid him out on, and up on the table and across the table and down; and then up on something else...

How was that room arranged? She could see it but not all of it. Not all of it at once. The way you know someone you know with a glance. And when she couldn't see it then she forgot it. Though she knew that room!

And around. And up on the sofa again. And down. Round and around. Then he stopped. No one had tried to stop him. He's mad, said her mother.

When he went to sleep, they prayed for him.

When he woke up, he was all right. He lived for years more.

There was someone there she recognised. Someone she had known before. For a long time, she thought she knew: she thought it was herself; and she wondered how that could be.

She looked at the chocolate box and the picture on it...

From there, remembering, she looked at what she had thought was herself, and the window behind her; and out at the passing countryside; but that was a long time ago, the fields going by. She was young then. She was in a car. But she wasn't young now and there were no fields, only the buildings of the hospital. It was very difficult. She must have been asleep.

The daughter had hardly seen the mother. She had passed her, not recognising, and the woman had spoken. The little shrunken woman, holding firmly to a box of chocolates at which she kept looking with wet eyes. Possibly, the woman examined her. It didn't seem that she focussed very well. So much had been lost. So much had changed in a few weeks. Something had given way and everything had slipped. What had been hidden was partly visible. What had been familiar was turned in on itself and absent. Is this my mother?

You wonder, said the woman, how things get like this. What did I do wrong?

The child briefly regretted her adulthood and grieved for herself and for her mother.

Perhaps it isn't I who did wrong. There must have been a time when it could have been different, if I had done something.

It was clearly said. It was said to her. She was recognised. The two acknowledged each other, but without mutual recognition. No more was possible. In the corridor were soft feet squeaking on a polished floor.

The one who was ill was apologising to the one who was young and well!

Memory was again among forgetfulness; a crumple of human being was stroking a cardboard picture of an animal. All that she had to say, this far from home and comfort, had been said.