Alice Hartley‘s Happiness

Michael shrugged his shoulders. ‘I suppose I shall go and find Doctor Simmonds,’ he said. ‘He’ll have to come back and see her. He’ll know where Daisy lives. She’s in one of the houses in the village but I don’t know which one. I’ll ring up my Dad and tell him Aunty Sarah’s been ill. I’ll drive us back to campus. The van’s got to be back at midday. Where shall I take your furniture?’

Alice looked at him blankly. The alternative therapy centre was fading so fast that Michael had almost forgotten it already. All there was for her in the future might be an occasional share of his narrow bed in the little room, and the nightly wheezes of her husband as his fevered imagination placed him and Miranda Bloomfeather in more and more exotic locations and in foreign countries too. There would be the grisly support and sympathy of her women friends. There would be interminable counselling sessions in which Alice would be made to feel obscurely to blame and clearly in the wrong. There would be a long, hopeless seeking through esoteric and unlikely therapy, for such scant legal fun is available to a forty-year-old woman whose husband despises her. Alice knew that without regular sex and lots of essence her neck would go crepey. She did not need a spiritual guide or a tarot reading to recognize the chance of a lifetime when it came on a plate.

She rose to her feet.

There was another banging on the ceiling. ‘If Daisy is not up here in five minutes with my tea and my brandy and my cat I shall dock ten shillings off her wages,’ came the ringing voice.

Alice’s eyes hardened. Her mouth was set. ‘Your Aunty Sarah is a negative Life Force,’ she said firmly.

Michael’s eyes goggled behind the round lenses.

‘She has a bad aura,’ Alice said. ‘Her magnetic field is distorted. She is trying to fight her destiny. She has a weak Life Force. She is ready to Go Over.’

Michael tried to speak but found his voice had gone. ‘What d’you mean?’ he whispered.

Alice had turned her back on him. She was switching on the kettle and fetching a clean cup and saucer from the Welsh dresser.

‘She has a negative Life Force,’ she said quietly. ‘She needs help to be At One with her destiny – her move to another plane.’

The kettle boiled. Alice picked up the tea caddy and spooned tea into the pot. She added boiling water. She put the teapot on the tray with the milk jug and the sugar bowl. Then she took a slim dark bottle and measured four precise drops of a clear odourless liquid into the teapot.

‘I’m giving her a nice herbal tea,’ she said.

Michael leaped to his feet but became entangled with the table leg. By the time he was free of the furniture Alice was carrying the tray upstairs, her face Madonna-like in its serenity.

‘Please don’t, Mrs Hartley!’ he cried. ‘Please don’t give her a herbal tea, Mrs Hartley. It’s much better not! Please not a herbal tea, Mrs Hartley!’

Aunty Sarah was sitting up in bed scowling at a handsome gold hunter watch when Alice and Michael tumbled into the room, Alice holding the tray and looking determined, Michael with a frightened grip on one of her trailing shawls.

‘Thought I’d told you to get lost,’ the old lady said acerbically. ‘What’s that?’ she demanded, pointing to the tray. ‘And where’s Daisy?’

‘Daisy’s not here today,’ Alice said in a confident tone. She put down the tray on the bedside table and nodded pleasantly at Aunty Sarah. ‘I’m a friend of Michael’s,’ she said. ‘Your doctor sent a message to say you weren’t well so we both came over to see you. I shall look after you until Daisy arrives.’

‘Oh,’ the old lady said, unconvinced. She shot a look at Alice’s flowing kaftan and the scarves with the glittery coins. ‘Not one of them Harry Krishners, are you?’

‘No,’ Alice said levelly. She reached over and poured the tea into the cup. ‘Milk? Sugar?’

‘No sugar,’ the old lady said, irritated at the suggestion. ‘Not one of the Mormons? Seventh Day Adventists? Quakers? Anarchists? Socialists?’

‘I have no god but the Great Earth Mother,’ Alice said calmly. ‘Drink your tea, Aunty Sarah.’

‘Miss Coulter to you,’ she replied instantly and with malice. She dipped her puckered old face towards the teacup. Michael held his breath, about to cry out, about to dash the cup from her hand.

She paused. ‘Not from the Welfare?’ she asked sharply. ‘Housing? Social Services? Not one of those little-Miss-Nosey-Parker-social-workers come to see if I’m dying in my bed, are you?’

‘No,’ Alice said steadily. ‘Just a friend of Michael’s from the university.’

‘Don’t drink the tea,’ Michael said in a whisper too soft to be heard by anyone but his own quivering ears and feeble conscience.

Aunty Sarah puckered up her dry pale lips, readying herself to drink. ‘Not a neighbourhood watch scheme?’ she said with sudden suspicion. ‘Not come to befriend me? Not Friends of the Aged? Not want to understand me?’

‘No,’ Alice said, her voice no less patient.

‘Senile Dementia Support Group!’ Aunty Sarah screeched. She pointed a quivering bony finger accusingly. ‘You’ve come to talk through my confusions with me!’

‘Not at all,’ Alice said. She gleamed at the old lady. ‘I’ve come to poison you with herbal tea so that Michael can inherit this house and he and I can live here forever.’

‘Noommmiiimmmmpppp!’ Michael moaned.

Aunty Sarah cackled like an old witch. ‘That’s good!’ she said delightedly. ‘I love a good joke. I like you!’ She took a deep swig of tea. ‘I like you, Heidi! You’ve got spirit!’ She gulped swiftly.

‘DON’T DRINK THE TEA!’ Michael said clearly. He stepped into the centre of the room, from behind Alice’s cascade of skirts. He snatched the cup from Aunty Sarah’s hands with all the power of a young man who has found the deep secret source of potency inside himself. Michael had read D. H. Lawrence and he recognized the feeling welling up inside him. He was as male and as powerful as a bull in a meadow. He was strong like the dark primeval soil. He was thrusting like an oak tree reaching towards light. He was free of the pathetic chains of bourgeois society, his face glowed, he breathed deeply into his pouter-pigeon chest. He was a man who has faced a very great temptation and managed to spurn it. Hearing Alice speak of murder and hearing poor old Aunty Sarah laugh so trustingly had broken Michael’s reserve. His innocence had gone. In its place was strength.