Luke Williams - The Echo Chamber

I did not know that the woman whose pale eyes had looked into my own was Mrs Honeyman. Nor could I guess that in the following months she was to have an influence over my life, that she would succeed (where others had failed) in bringing me into her realm, under the power of her ideas. Nevertheless, I sensed the challenge in that look. It was, I think now, both a recognition of a kindred spirit and an attempt to dominate that spirit in me. It saw my childish need to believe in the illusion of the theatre and wanted to expose, then crush, it. Later, when I knew her better, I recognized that look as forceful but not strong, like a powerful handshake that conceals the weak individual beyond the grip, and I found that she was jealous of many things, and that she acted strangely when she thought it would please me. Why, then, did I let myself be taken in by her, if even for a brief period? Now that I am here, recalling my history, I am seized by a suspicion: did I want her to rule me because I was tired of having no mother in my life?

After the play she approached our pew. She lit a cigarette and said to Iffe, ‘I am glad you were able to come. Your boy made a wonderful little girl.’ Iffe didn’t reply but in her unhurried way only nodded her head. Then, addressing me, she said, ‘Wait here,’ and left to fetch Ade. I turned to examine Mrs Honeyman. She wore a raw silk dress and curious hat made out of black feathers. Part of her awkwardness came with her height; she held her long body very straight and seemed acutely aware of it, almost embarrassed by it. She watched until Iffe disappeared, then took off her hat, and her hair, like some wilting creeper, fell limply down the back of her neck. She said, ‘Hello, Evie.’ (How did she know my name?) ‘I am Susan Honeyman.’ Smiling, she said, ‘I hope you liked the play, it was quite a triumph, don’t you think?’ She drew hungrily on her cigarette.

‘I liked it very much,’ I said truthfully. And since she did not immediately speak, I added, ‘Especially the snow storm,’ and looked at her with wide eyes.

‘You liked my little trick with the feathers,’ she said, through a mesh of blue smoke.

She sat down beside me on the pew and held her head very still. I said, ‘I even got hold of some of the flakes and put them in my pocket. I wanted to take them home. But they’ve melted. And now my pockets are soaking wet.’

Mrs Honeyman opened her mouth. A kind of high, stifled laughter emerged from it. After several moments she composed herself and said, ‘What a funny little girl!’ and laughed again, which said to me, If anyone heard you calling those feathers an instance of snow, what could she think but that you are out of your mind?

She lit a cigarette. I felt she was daring me to speak. I said, ‘Do you know, in 1942 it snowed in Port Suez?’

‘I don’t doubt you believe it,’ she answered immediately. ‘I dislike liars. I am drawn to storytellers, however. That is why I have taken an interest in you.’

Over the following weeks I got to know Mrs Honeyman. Ade, Ben and Iffe left to visit relatives for the Christmas period, and there was no one to cook for us. So at evening time the Honeymans came to our house; they brought supper, and the four of us ate on the veranda. The men talked, mostly about work, of their plans to clear the city’s slums and the skyscrapers they wished to raise, after which they retired to Father’s office. I was left alone with Mrs Honeyman. She would take out a cigarette from her silver case and with an excited gesture illuminate the tip. She sucked powerfully then exhaled with a look of keen pleasure, as if it tickled or amused her to smoke. Exhaling blue-grey clouds from her nose, she began to talk; as her cigarette spiced the air, her voice punctuated it.

I learned that she led an idle life, of no interest to anyone, and had cultivated a hatred of all action but the raising of the hand, with a cigarette in it, to the lips. Nevertheless I saw she attributed to the least of her sensations an extraordinary importance and was unable to keep them to herself. This might have led to tedious evenings on the veranda. Yet it was quite something what she made of her moods, from which she was apt to branch out to wider concerns (although she always returned to her ill-health or disequilibrium).

‘Do you know,’ she told me, ‘last night I had the sensation I was floating above my bed. I must have been dreaming, although I was convinced I was awake. I think it had something to do with my body’s quarrel with the fact of gravity.’ And, later: ‘It was very curious this morning when the cook came to bring me my replenishments. I could not help feeling that she was trying to poison me, as servants everywhere are wont to do. My great tiredness is no doubt linked to her cooking.’ Another evening: ‘Evie, do you hear the little catch in my throat when I pronounce the vowel a ?’ This she attributed to an apple pip that had got stuck in her throat, and she believed that by talking she would increase the blood flow to her neck, which in turn would increase the possibility of the pip being loosed, which, finally, would reduce the frequency of the fits of breathlessness and coughing from which she suffered.

Mrs Honeyman hinted that in her twenties she had been an actress, but since arriving in Nigeria five years earlier, in her mid-thirties, had spent nearly all of her days in bed, dozing and smoking. She hated the festive season because the mission-school play, which her husband and the priest pestered her to direct, forced her into activity. To ‘over-extend’ herself in this way was bad for her health. She even claimed that directing those hordes of ‘niggers’ (I noticed Mrs Honeyman took pride in using terms like ‘nigger’, ‘savage’, ‘crowface’ and ‘cannibal’) threatened her sanity. So much so that she maintained one could perceive in the Christmas play the mark of an unbalanced mind. (And, in fact, hearing this, I recalled something that hadn’t struck me during the performance but which I now found odd: each of the boys had played female parts; and Dayo, the only girl, had been cast as Kai.)

‘But perhaps you don’t believe me,’ she said (this on New Year’s Eve, after Father and Mr Honeyman had left us at the table). ‘Perhaps you think I am making the whole thing up. I knew it! You don’t believe I am in any way responsible for the Christmas play!’ I assured her that I believed her. ‘That makes me very happy,’ she said, breathing out a menthol cloud and bending double to cough. ‘You see, I took great pains over its composition. It might seem to you that it was a small trifle of a thing. Getting those bandits to act was a labour in itself, because nigger children are forever joking around and telling lies. They don’t know the difference between acting and real life! But, Evie, do you know that wasn’t the hardest part. Not by any means. The adaptation of the Andersen tale cost me a great deal, to be honest with you.’ She sighed and ran her fingers through her long, blonde, lifeless hair as if to emphasize the point. Then she made a claim that seemed to contradict what she had said only a moment before: ‘Of course, it is all empty palaver,’ and went on to disparage her efforts, saying the topic was too boring for a ‘young lady ’ to have to endure. Nevertheless the following evening we picked the topic up again, analysed the speeches for false notes, talked about how she might have made the costumes more lifelike. I told her once again how much I had liked the simulated snowfall. ‘Well now,’ she said, ‘I can’t say what kind of peculiar serendipity led me to create that effect. Inspiration is a mysterious business, Evie, it can’t be forced.’

For me these conversations were novel experiences and exciting. Not only was I lacking a mother figure in my life, the memory of The Snow Queen lived in me powerfully. I had been struck by the theatre’s transformative powers, which had seemed to speak of my desire or will to shape my own personality. And yet it was Mrs Honeyman who had spoken — she whose pale eyes gave the colour of insincerity to everything she said!