Excerpt from The New Suffolk Hymnbook - “Jane”
Here is the second of the two excerpts mentioned in the previous post:
Excerpt - Chapter Eight, “Jane”
- An academic researcher, Jane, arrives at a mission outside Suffolk, where her stay takes an unexpected twist. (The entire chapter is in italics.)
The cook purées his squash. There is a mound of it on my plate, dark orange and heavy, tufted like a cloud. At a certain point during dinner I can ignore it no longer. I have been busying myself with the other things, a thrilling self-punishment, putting off the first bite. I eat the meat and greens and drink my milk. But I never quite finish these. The thought of the squash gets the better of me. My fork strays, hooks a strand of orange. It slides off on my tongue, a buttery sweet filament. The rest of dinner is done. I fill my mouth with squash and hold it there a moment. The juices drip down my gullet. I don’t know what spices he usesâ€?sugar, salt, cinnamon, perhaps clove, perhaps black pepper, and something from the tropics, aniseed, cardamom. I chew very slowly, swallow with deliberation. The food has always been very good here. But this squash is divine.
I am one of many in the dining room. Some of the women will skip breakfast or lunch but they all turn out for dinner. When the meal commences, after the blessing (which Father Bayley as often as not is present to giveâ€?if not, there is a headwoman, clearly the most elaborately religious and clearly aware of her importance), the room resounds with the day gone by. Everyone has saved their speech for this moment. Stories bluster about like the four winds. Chronic tribulations get their airing out. One hears in patches the news of simple livesâ€?the deaths, the births, the ailments, the unexpected phone calls. One hears talk of distant men. The conversation crescendos, falters, swells, crescendos. I am not excluded from it, though I seldom pose as anything but a listener. I have taken to sitting by a young woman named Ruth. She is quiet like me but she giggles violently when accused of quietness. I ask about her day, she asks about mine. Occasionally a ritual question booms down the table for my benefitâ€?So what’s new, Doctor? There is a respectful lull but I demure. Everyone cackles.
Our meal asserts itself. We settle into it. Chatter dropsâ€?words are pushed from sides of mouths. Heads bow, as during the blessing. I notice that Ruth smiles to herself, possessed of some secret happiness at this moment. The dining room tables, viewed from aboveâ€?a great meditative affair of reaching and pulling. There is no shame in our eating. The food may be compared to manual work. We work on the ample portions of creamed spinach, sauced chicken, new potatoes, cold beets and the squash. We lose sight of ourselves, somewhat. I am tugged at of course by the delectable question of the squashâ€?Is now the moment of the first bite? Is it now?â€?but I am not unreceptive to other states of mind. Different scenes open, flicker to life. I fall prey, I suppose, to moments. In a humble banquet hall Our Lord’s feast rolls apace, and somewhat incredibly I’m to be found there, eating with good steam alongside the priest and his dozen-and-a-half healthy-sized inmates. In an altogether different room, quite faraway, meanwhile, an agitated young girl is drawing deep breaths, wishing composure upon herself. There is nothing that is not pure sensation to this girl. I see her perfectly. I almost forget that I am eating. She braces against the sill of the window. Her body surges with excitement. On the far side of the window the hard brown trunk of a tree, plunged in grass, is surmounted by a wild green blaze. Beyond, the world scintillates with painful intensity. What is this girl feeling? Oh, she hardly knows. She presses her hands to her breasts and pushes firmly down to her hips. As if in the grip of a mania she repeats the motion. Then her hands slide with purpose. They cup her buttocks. She is taken with the idea that they are not her own hands. She gently walks her fingers until they reach justâ€?there. She stands up quickly on her tiptoes. This mischievous girl! I have to suppress a chuckle at the table. There is not a soul around me, even Ruth, who is not ignoring me, and it would not do to attract attention. Especially now, because the time has comeâ€?I place a heap of squash in my mouthâ€?and the act is as secret as the girl’s. I tremble inside, like the girl, with the stuff on my tongue. My tastebuds humble me. I recover the emotional fact that I have been many women. We are all of us thereâ€?the girl and I and many others, a ten-year-old sent into transports by a new doll, a girl at fifteen, deeply resentful of her parents, a twenty-six-year-old, beset by self-pity and doubt, a thirty-year-old, a thirty-five-year-old, a forty-year-old, restless, childless, never particularly in love, and me, here at the table next to Ruthâ€?all of us in the spice and fullness of the squash in my mouth.Were I to close my eyes, I feel, I would see patterns unfold like flowers, like sumptuously-hued waves of silk. I feed myself more. I know the beautiful consolings of memory. I want to shout, to raise a scandal. If you can just find a way to make contact with yourself, I want to call to the people. To give birth to yourself in a thousand acts of inner mothering. The feeling of wholeness (even if induced by your tongue and an urgent swallow) is a true redemption. But of course I don’t close my eyes or shout. I sit blinking with the others. I am as docile as theyâ€?neither the fool who gets up halfway through a good meal nor the glutton who stays behind for scraps. We finish together. A sense of approval pervades the room, mixed with appreciation for the cook. The meal is like any other here, it may pass without comment. I watch the faces as closely as possible without being rude as we stretch and head for other rooms. My aim is simply to see whether anyone is watching mine. I can’t help imagining things said about me. Indeed, some people behave strangely when they eatâ€?there is Peaches over there, who obviously enjoys her squash. But then it is a fine squash. She’s doing what comes natural, being good to herself. But I have not detected a single eyebrow raised in my direction. The food and the cook’s skill are simply taken for granted.
*
The police were here, I’m told. It was the first thing out of Father Bayley’s mouth when I entered his office. The words established our relationship at once. He spoke to me like a captain to a hand on deck.
They left this, he said. He indicated, curtly, both a piece of paper on his desk and that I should sit. An odd gesture, it left a quick, negative impression, as if he had blurted something. A crude map had been drawn on the paper�point A in the top-right corner, point B in the middle, point C, lower-left. Lines streamed from point A as if it were the sun.
Briefly, he said, C is Suffolk, our little town, B is us, and A is the Waterman prison, up the road about an hour. Last night they had a mass escape. Those lines show how far each escapee made it until he was caught.
He paused. There was a question in my throat.
They didn’t get them all, though, he said. Two are still on the run. The police have a theory. The escapees were members of two gangs which banded together briefly. Once outside, it appears one gang fled north, away from us, and the other south, toward us and Suffolk. The two who have not been caught are members of the second gang. They might easily have reached us by now, or indeed, might have made it to Suffolk. There is no way of telling where they are. The dogs have not picked up any new scents.
