Edward Aubyn - At Last

Annette’s voice redoubled its excruciated gentleness for the second stanza.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,

Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;

There midnight’s all a-glimmer, and noon a purple glow,

And evening full of the linnet’s wings.

Peace comes dropping slow , thought Henry, how beautiful. The lines lengthening with the growing tranquillity, and the deepening jet lag, and his head dropping slow, dropping slow onto his chest. He needed an espresso, or the veils of morning were going to shroud his mind entirely. He was here for Eleanor, Eleanor on the lake at Fairley, alone in a rowing boat, refusing to come back in, everybody standing on the shore shouting, ‘Come back! Your mother’s here! Your mother’s arrived!’ For a girl who was too shy to look you in the eye, she could be as stubborn as a mule.

Where the cricket sings , thought Patrick, is where you live with Seamus in my old home. He imagined the shrill grating coming from the grass and the gradual build-up, cicada by cicada, of pulsing waves of sound, like auditory heat shimmering over the dry land.

Mary was relieved that plenty o’ nuthin’ seemed to have gone down well with Patrick, and she felt that the make-believe simplicity of ‘Innisfree’ was a charming reminder of Eleanor’s yearning to exclude the dark complexities of life at any price. What Mary couldn’t relax about was the address she had asked Annette to make. And yet what could she do? There was no point in denying that side of Eleanor’s life and Annette was better qualified than anyone else in the room to talk about it. At least it would give Patrick something to rant about for the next few days. She listened to Annette’s singsong, cradle-rocking delivery of the final stanza of ‘Innisfree’ with growing dread.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day

I hear the lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;

While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,

I hear it in the deep heart’s core.

Annette closed her eyes and reached again for her amber necklace. ‘ Om namo Matta Meera ,’ she murmured, re-empowering herself for the speech she was about to make.

‘All of you will have known Eleanor in different ways, and many of you for much longer than me,’ she began with an understanding smile. ‘I can only talk about the Eleanor that I knew, and while I try to do justice to the wonderful woman that she was, I hope you will hold the Eleanor that you knew in what Yeats calls the deep heart’s core. But at the same time, if I show you a side of her that you didn’t know, all I would ask is that you let her in, let her in and let her join the Eleanor that each of you is holding in your heart.’

Oh, Jesus, thought Patrick, let me out of here. He imagined himself disappearing through the floor with a shovel and some bunk-bed slats, the theme music of The Great Escape humming in the air. He was crawling under the crematorium through fragile tunnels, when he felt himself being dragged backwards by Annette’s maddening voice.

*

‘I first met Eleanor when a group of us from the Dublin Women’s Healing Drum Circle were invited down to Saint-Nazaire, her wonderful house in Provence, which I’m sure many of you are familiar with. As we were coming down the drive in our minibus, I caught my first glimpse of Eleanor sitting on the wall of the big pond, with her hands tucked under her thighs, for all the world like a lonely young child staring down at her dangling shoes. By the time we arrived in front of the pond she was literally greeting us with open arms, but I never lost that first impression of her, just as I think she never lost a connection to the child-like quality that made her believe so passionately that justice could be achieved, that consciousness could be transformed and that there was goodness to be found in every person and every situation, however hidden it might seem at first sight.’

Of course consciousness can be transformed, thought Erasmus, but what is it? If I pass an electric current through my body, or bury my nose in the soft petals of a rose, or impersonate Greta Garbo, I transform my consciousness; in fact it is impossible to stop transforming consciousness. What I can’t do is describe what it is in itself : it’s too close to see, too ubiquitous to grasp, and too transparent to point to.

‘Eleanor was one of the most generous people it has been my privilege to know. You only had to hint that you needed something and if it was in her power to provide it, she would leap at the opportunity with an enthusiasm that made it look as if it was a relief to her rather than to the person who was asking.’

Patrick imagined the simple charm of the dialogue.

Seamus: I was thinking that it would be, eh, consciousness-raising, like, to own a private hamlet surrounded by vines and olive groves, somewhere sunny.

Eleanor: Oh, how amazing! I’ve got one of those. Would you like it?

Seamus: Oh, thank you very much, I’m sure. Sign here and here and here.

Eleanor: What a relief. Now I have nothing.

‘Nothing,’ said Annette, ‘was too much trouble for her. Service to others was her life’s purpose, and it was awe-inspiring to see the lengths she would go to in her quest to help people achieve their dreams. A torrent of grateful letters and postcards used to arrive at the Foundation from all over the world. A young Croatian scientist who was working on a “zero-energy fuel cell” — don’t ask me what that is, but it’s going to save the planet — is one example. A Peruvian archaeologist who had uncovered amazing evidence that the Incas were originally from Egypt and continued to communicate with the mother civilization through what he called “solar language”. An old lady who had been working for forty years on a universal dictionary of sacred symbols and just needed a little extra help to bring this incredibly valuable book to completion. All of them had received a helping hand from Eleanor. But you mustn’t think that Eleanor was only concerned with the higher echelons of science and spirituality, she was also a marvellously practical person who knew the value of a kitchen extension for a growing family, or a new car for a friend living in the depths of the country.’

What about a sister who was running out of cash? thought Nancy grumpily. First they had taken away her credit cards, and then they had taken away her chequebook, and now she had to go in person to the Morgan Guaranty in Fifth Avenue to collect her monthly pocket money. They said it was the only way to stop her running up debts, but the best way to stop her running up debts was to give her more money.

‘There was a wonderful Jesuit gentleman,’ Annette continued, ‘well, he was an ex-Jesuit actually, although we still called him Father Tim. He had come to believe that Catholic dogma was too narrow and that we should embrace all the religious traditions of the world. He eventually became the first Englishman to be accepted as an ayahuascera — a Brazilian shaman — among one of the most authentic tribes in Amazonia. Anyhow, Father Tim wrote to Eleanor, who had known him in his old Farm Street days, saying that his village needed a motor-boat to go down to the local trading post, and of course she responded with her usual impulsive generosity, and sent a cheque by return. I shall never forget the expression on her face when she received Father Tim’s reply. Inside the envelope were three brightly coloured toucan feathers and an equally colourful note explaining that in recognition of her gift to the Ayoreo people, a ritual had been performed in Father Tim’s far-away village inducting her into the tribe as a “Rainbow Warrior”. He said that he had refrained from mentioning that she was a woman, since the Ayoreo took a “somewhat unreconstructed view of the gentler sex, not unreminiscent of that taken by old Mother Church”, and that he would have “suffered the fate of St Sebastian” if he “admitted to his ruse”. He said that he intended to confess on his deathbed, so as to help move the tribe forward into a new era of harmony between the male and female principles, so necessary to the salvation of the world. Anyhow,’ sighed Annette, recognizing that she had drifted from her written text, but taking this to be a sign of inspiration, ‘the effect on Eleanor was quite literally magical. She wore the toucan feathers around her neck until they sadly disintegrated, and for a few weeks she told all and sundry that she was an Ayoreo Rainbow Warrior. She was for all the world like the little girl who goes to a new school and comes home one day transformed because she has made a new best friend.’