Barbara Vine - The Minotaur

I spent much of the next day and the next, which was a Saturday, observing Mrs Cosway's routine with John, and on Saturday afternoon I suggested she have her rest while I went out for a walk with him. Id succeeded in phoning Mark and at the second attempt had spoken to him, making both calls during the permitted times. He was disbelieving when I explained Mrs Cosway's rules to him and indignant about falling in with them. A meeting was arranged in London for the Tuesday, my first day off. I said nothing about the following weekend, reserving my expectations about that until I knew if he still attracted me the way he had done in our last months at Lund.

The village of Windrose was still unvisited, though only about half a mile away. I suggested to John that we walk there and met with the first opposition I, or anyone else as far as I had seen, had had from him. He shook his head.

‘Not there,’ he said in his dull monotone.

When I asked him why not he frowned and his expression became surly. It seemed wiser to leave the question for now. I was getting tired of walking round the same three fields, over the river bridge and alongside the wood, but he was determined. If he were set on following that route every afternoon I would rebel; for the present I gave in.

Accompanying him on these outings was an awkward business, consisting really in his setting off and I walking some paces behind him. In recent years I have seen Muslim women following along behind their husbands like that. It was clear John didn't want me but his mother expected me to be there and he never said anything. The day he said he wouldn't go to Windrose was mild and dull, the sky a uniformly cloud-grey, the kind of day I have come to think of as essentially English, windless and still, the atmosphere calm and unchanging. We walked in single file three or four metres apart along the kind of wide path I believe is called a ride, between low hedges, broken here and there by gates into the meadows. Blossom was out on the brambles and the elder, it was pretty and tranquil, like a painting by Constable, who had lived not far from there. Across the little valley between shallow hills, I could see Windrose, a cluster of houses, a big house a short distance away, and the red church tower rising high above paler roofs and dark thatch.

John seemed not to look around him. Perhaps it was all too familiar, and though there may have been comfort in this, there must also have been boredom. Or was he incapable of feeling bored? Who knew? I suited my pace to his and he walked fairly slowly, his head down and his eyes on the ground. My attempts to talk to him, which I persisted in, fetched monosyllables from him at best and more often nothing. That day was the first occasion on which I said nothing. I had given up.

We were out for about an hour. When we got back he made his way to the kitchen, shuffling along, as he always did when inside the house, though he had walked normally along the ride. Ida, who seemed to live in that kitchen, constantly occupied at some task or other, smiled at him and said hallo. His face, usually so dull and blank, lightened a little. She made tea for him and me but made no effort to say anything more. And I saw that he was content with this, that he appeared to listen to the conversation I had with her without taking any part in it.

Ella was out somewhere but Winifred was at home, spoiling my theory that Ida was solely responsible for the work of the household by doing the ironing. There was a great deal of it, bed linen and table linen, underclothes, John's shirts and the limp cotton dresses favoured by all the Cosway women except their mother, who dressed invariably in black trousers and blouse or sweater. Winifred had piled it untidily on the dining table, set up the ironing board, switched on the other television (black and white and very small) and worked away slowly and in no apparent order, her eyes on the screen. It took her several hours and by the time it was done Mrs Cosway was awake, Ida had set out the tea things and Ella was back from wherever she had been. Seated next to me at the tea table, Winifred remarked with an air of conscious virtue that she and Ella would go to church in the morning. Would I like to come?

We Swedes are a secular lot and I hadn't been to church since I was at school, but this might be my only opportunity for some time to visit the village and I was curious too to see some of the other Windrose residents. On the other hand…

‘May I think about it? I'll let you know later.’

Winifred looked rather shocked, perhaps expecting me to jump at the chance. Mrs Cosway seemed pleased rather than otherwise at my response and, bowing her head the way John did, favoured the bread and butter on her plate with one of her nasty little smiles.

‘Don't be too long about it, will you?’ Winifred said this as if she were arranging a bus outing for thirty or forty people to some popular London event rather than a half-mile walk to morning service. ‘I'm sure you'll want to meet Mr Dawson.’

The identity of this person I resolved to find out later, perhaps when and if I told Winifred I would go with her. Meanwhile there was John's bedtime ritual to come and the inevitable sleeping pill. Once it had taken effect and he was bludgeoned into heavy sleep, Mrs Cosway asked for an account of our walk. Had we followed the same route? What, if anything, had John had to say for himself? Had we met anyone? I thought this an odd question.

‘We didn't meet anyone to speak to. I saw a man on a tractor quite a long way away and when we came close to the road, some cars went by. Why do you ask?’

‘You always want every detail, don't you? Why this, why that. I shall say to you what I used to say to the children, “Because I say so.”’

I shrugged. ‘I'm sorry. But there is one thing I would like to know, if you don't mind. I suggested to John that we go to the village but he was very set against that idea. He didn't say why not and I wondered.’

‘As I said, you want every detail. It's very wearing, I must say. If you must know, he doesn't like going there because the people stare at him. Most of them are very ignorant. There were some children – they laughed. It was dreadful for him.’

‘I'm sorry,’ I said. ‘It is better I know, isn't it? So that I won't try to take him there again.’

‘I suppose so. But you couldn't if he didn't want to go.’

After supper, twice asked by Winifred if I had yet made up my mind, to forestall a third time, I told her I would go to church.

‘I'm so glad, that's wonderful,’ she said, as if I had said I had come into a fortune or bought the house of my dreams. ‘If it isn't raining we'll walk, shall we? It's not far. Meet down here at ten-thirty?’ She turned to her mother. You can spare Kerstin for a couple of hours, can't you?’

‘I suppose so.’

I was learning that this was a favourite rejoinder of Mrs Cosway's. Ella, changed out of her summer frock into navy blue trousers and a pink sweater with moth holes across the back, had sat in an armchair for the past hour, marking work in her pupils' exercise books. To do this she had put on a pair of large, unflattering glasses with rainbow rims and she chain-smoked while she worked. Occasionally, Winifred (saying, ‘I really must give up’) took a cigarette from the packet herself, but she smoked no more than one to every five got through by her sister.

Mrs Cosway I expected to have a word or two to say on the subject of the fug Ella had caused and her unattractive hawking, but apart from removing herself to a far corner of the room, she gave no sign of disapproval. She was sewing, doing something I think may be called gros-point on a great rug-sized tapestry, whose design was hidden from me, and she took no part in the desultory conversation except to say apropos of nothing, ‘Zorah will be home on Wednesday.’