The Virgin in the Garden by A. S. Byatt

The Virgin in the Garden by A. S. Byatt

Author:A. S. Byatt [Byatt, A. S.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780099478010
Google: sDmaJ1zFkioC
Amazon: 0679738290
Publisher: Vintage
Published: 1992-01-14T16:00:00+00:00


24. Malcolm Haydock

Daniel went round to the Haydocks’ on Stephanie’s “day”. It had somehow become impossible to see her at Masters’ Row or in the Vicarage. As he strode up the concrete path he heard a muffled din.

She opened the door to him, her hair all over, her eyes wild.

“Quick, shut the door.”

“What’s he up to?” Daniel abandoned his prepared speech on their immediate future. “You look grey and tattered.”

“I am grey and tattered. He’s washing. He’s got everything in the bath and the tap pouring out scalding water. I can’t cope. Neither of us seems to keep still the way we did.”

“Hang on.” Daniel mounted the stairs, two at a time. He stood in the bathroom door and confronted Malcolm Haydock, if that could be called confrontation in which one party shows no awareness of the other’s presence.

In the bath, soaking and steaming were: Mrs Haydock’s floral eiderdown, a knotted mass of underwear, pink and black, an octopus of suspenders and straps, several pairs of shoes, a spilt Meccano, a floating army of little grey inch-high soldiers, a dissolving jar of bright pink bath crystals, and the hoover. Malcolm Haydock was singing, endlessly, like a hurdy-gurdy, the tune, “How much is that doggie in the window”.

Daniel hoisted out the hoover and stood it, soggy and steaming, in a corner. He addressed Malcolm with grave courtesy.

“That could damage you. Or anyone, it could damage, if it got plugged in as wet as that. And I’ll have the eiderdown, my lad. Feathers don’t take too well to water.”

He hauled, bear-like, and piled it into the washbasin, soaking the front of his shirt and trousers in the process. Malcolm Haydock retreated in a shambling manner and sat down with his cheek against the lavatory pillar. He began to make a deadly even, shrill squealing noise, on one note. His eyes rolled up and round and down.

“I’ll have your mam’s woollies. Because of shrinkage, you see. And I’ll have the shoes, or they’ll perish. I don’t see why you shouldn’t go on with all this nylon stuff, though, now it’s wet anyway, Malcolm. You may as well wash it properly, I reckon.”

He held out a sopping handful of petticoats and suspender belts. Malcolm flung his head round and round on his neck. Daniel hung the garments over the edge of the bath and summoned Stephanie.

“Have you got anything we could squeeze this lot out in? It’s a right mess. The colours are running.” He turned back to Malcolm.

“We mean well. We’re not just out to thwart you. I don’t see why you shouldn’t wash things, if you want to. It just depends what things.”

Malcolm Haydock emitted, like a radio signal, the information that he was not there, that no one was there, nothing. Stephanie appeared, lugging up the staircase a galvanised bath into which working jointly against Malcolm’s most piercing train whistle noise they managed to hump and slither the sodden eiderdown. For quite a long time they worked, silently, fiercely, together wringing, squeezing, rubbing, stretching, hanging.



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