‘What lovely carnations’; wondering whether she had anything big enough to put them in.
It was when she was sitting next to him in the car that she noticed he was older than she’d thought yesterday and much more attractive.
‘You wrote that it always rained here and look what a beautiful day!’
‘Oh, isn’t it, isn’t it?’
Such a beautiful day. The sky pale blue, the clouds light and white and innocent. It seemed ungrateful to remember icy gales, perpetual drizzle. Now the wind was soft and gentle – almost warm. ‘Winds that blow from the south.’ Fruit trees covered with flowers were all over the place. As they passed one, she said: ‘Cherry, plum, I’m not sure.’
‘I don’t know. I am not a country man. I am a city man.’
‘Yes I can see that,’ she said.
She was surprised at the security and happiness she felt. She very seldom felt safe or happy and if it was so for this man whom she’d only met briefly once over a drink and never expected to see again, why pull it to pieces?
All the same his face was so familiar. Then she remembered that life of Modigliani and the photograph on the cover. He was almost exactly like it.
When he asked: ‘Are you getting tired?’
‘Well – I’ll be glad to get home and have a drink.’
‘Yes. But do you mind if we go by Exeter so that I can pick up some wine that I think you will like at my hotel?’
When he came out of the hotel he was carrying two bottles of rosé. They drove back home quickly along an empty road, hardly speaking.
‘I’ll get the glasses? Ice? Or shall I put the bottles in the fridge for a bit?’
‘They’re still quite cool,’ he said. ‘Feel.’
She sat facing the light while he opened a bottle, lit two cigarettes and gave her one. Then he took up a book of Dutch poems on the table. ‘You read Dutch?’
‘No. The English translation’s inside. I can’t read Dutch or speak it.’
‘But you know Amsterdam?’
‘A little. Not well. The Hague better. I remember the canals of course and some beautiful old houses. But that was a long time ago. Are the houses still there, I wonder?’
‘Yes, some are still there. And in one lives my uncle and his sister.’
‘Oh, does he?’
‘Yes, and every evening they invite friends and play cards up to all hours. Two, three in the morning you can ring them up and they are still playing.’
She liked his face when he spoke about these people. Amused but pleased and affectionate. It was nice of him to think of them like that.
‘Do they play for money or for love?’ she said.
‘For love. For love. You know,’ he said, ‘I admire my uncle. When I was quite a little boy and my mother died he really brought me up. That was in Indonesia. My father is an artist. I have some pictures of his that I like very much and I like him. But he is too – too soft. That is not a good thing.’
‘I suppose not.’
‘My uncle is not so.’ He took a case from his pocket and handed her a small photograph. ‘That is my uncle.’
The uncle looked a bit on the sly side to her.
‘I see what you mean,’ she said.
‘And this is my father.’
‘You are like him.’
‘Yes I know. And I am fond of him, I feel affection for him but he is not – how do you say – forcible enough.’
‘Yes, but if everybody were forcible, what a shambles. Don’t you think it’s quite bad enough as it is?’
He put the photographs away carefully.
‘I am sad that I have to go to London tomorrow.’
‘So am I,’ she said.
Then, leaning back, he said suddenly: ‘Tell me – what do you like best about me?’
She was surprised but answered at once. ‘I like your eyebrows best.’
‘My eyebrows,’ he said. ‘My eyebrows?’
He seemed so astonished that she explained. ‘You see in a face like yours one expects, or I expect, smooth eyebrows. Black, almost as if they were painted. But yours are shaggy and in the sun they are a good deal lighter than your hair. It’s a surprise and I like it very much.’
‘No one’s ever told me that before.’
They looked steadily at each other for a few seconds then together they began to laugh.
‘Oh I must have a photograph of you like that. I’ll get my camera, it’s in the car.’
‘No, don’t photograph me. I hate it. I’ve never liked it all that much, now of course it’s a phobia. Please don’t.’
‘Of course not, if you don’t wish it. All the same I’d like to take a few photographs of the cottage if you allow me.’
‘Photograph anything you like, but not me.’
At the door he turned. ‘We recognized each other, didn’t we?’
She didn’t answer. She thought: yes, I recognized you almost at once. But I never imagined that you recognized me.
She sat so often in this chair looking at the eternal drizzle, listening to the wind. All night it whistled and whined and moaned, rattled the doors and windows till she had to get up and wedge them with newspapers before she could sleep. All day it tormented the trees. How she’d grown to hate it, the bullying treacherous wind. Even when it wasn’t raining, sunshine was just a pale glare.
But today the sun was real sun and the light gold. The grass was yellow, not green. No wonder she felt as if she were in another time, another place, another country. She saw him walking about the field in front of the sitting-room and thought: ‘What on earth has he found to photograph there? The cows over the hedge?’
‘I’m afraid that field is rough and full of holes. I can’t garden much.’
‘I like it today but perhaps on a wet dark day it might be sad. But of course you have many friends.’
‘Well not exactly. Not in the village anyway. This is a big county, you know.’
‘So you are alone here. That should not be.’
‘No, no, I’m all right. A very nice woman comes quite often and I’ve got a telephone. Besides, I like being alone. Not always of course, but one can’t have everything.’
‘And in the winter, are you alone in the winter?’
‘I try to get away for the worst months and then – well it’s all a bit chancy.’
‘I was thinking, I know a place in Italy that you would like very much. It’s quiet and beautiful.’
‘It sounds just the thing.’
‘And would you think of going there?’
‘Why not?’ she said. Of course she could think.
Looking worried he said: ‘I couldn’t be with you all the time. I would be with you as often as I could. But you see there is my job. And there is my wife.’
‘Of course.’
‘My wife and I don’t get on.’
‘Oh dear, what a pity.’
‘Yes, we have agreed to stay together for the children till they are older. Meanwhile we don’t interfere with each other.’
It seemed to her she’d heard that one before, long ago when everything was different. ‘It sounds a good arrangement – very fair to everybody –’ she said. ‘And maybe . . .’
‘You don’t know my wife.’
‘No.’
‘She is like this.’ Now he was getting excited. ‘I was in New York a few months ago. I brought her back a dress – very pretty. I thought to please her but it hangs in her cupboard. She has never once put it on.’
‘Perhaps it doesn’t fit,’ she said.
‘Of course it fits her, of course. Such a mistake I would not make. She won’t wear it because I bought it and she is like that about everything. She wants to separate as much as I do, believe me, but we have this arrangement because of the children. And so . . .’
‘I was only joking.’
‘But I am not joking at all. I mean what I say.’
‘Yes and it would be lovely, but it’s quite impossible, I can’t.’
r /> ‘Why not?’
Of course he must have seen perfectly well why not and if he didn’t she was certainly not going to spell it out. That would have depressed her for days, for weeks. How few people understood what a tightrope she walked or what would happen if she slipped. The abyss. Despair. All those things.
She made the first excuse that came into her head. ‘Such a fuss. My passport. Besides, I hate packing.’
‘I will come and fetch you. I can come in October. I can pack very well. Nothing will be difficult, you will see.’
‘You don’t know how much I’d like it but really it’s just not possible.’
He said nothing for a bit, then: ‘Well think about it. If you change your mind will you write to me? You have my address.’
‘I’ll probably think about it a lot. But I won’t change my mind.’
‘No one is ever certain of that,’ he said and talked of other things. But when he asked her to dine with him she was obliged to excuse herself, for suddenly she was very tired, hardly able to move, too tired to say much.
‘Thank you for seeing me and for today,’ he said at the door, again bowing and kissing her hand. ‘I will hope to hear from you. Have nice conversations with the cows in the next field.’
‘You never know,’ she said.
Before getting into the car he waved and called, ‘You will see me again.’
‘Yes, yes, that would be splendid. Try to manage it.’
She went back into the kitchen and shut her eyes. ‘Why not, why not? Why shouldn’t I walk out of this place, so dependent on the weather, so meanly built, for poor people. Just four small rooms and an attic. Like my life.’ She put her hand to her head and laughed. ‘And who knows what’s up in the attic? Not I for one. I wouldn’t dare look.’
A small house – it was suffocating. She went to the door and propped it open. Why not? Why not? Hadn’t she forgotten her one advantage now? She could do exactly what she liked. She could do something a thousand times sillier than taking a holiday in Italy – that is all it was – no one need know and no one would care. Or rather she could easily arrange that no one knew. And most certainly no one would care.
A voice said: ‘I hope I do not disturb you. I saw your door was open and I came in. I have got this specially for you.’
She wiped her eyes hastily. ‘You are not disturbing me at all. I was nearly asleep.’ She was delighted to see Mr Singh. Any port in a storm. ‘What have you brought to show me today? But let me see it in here.’
‘This I thought is for you. Beautiful stuff, beautiful. Feel it.’
‘Yes. But what’s that orange-coloured thing?’
That is a –’ He showed it. ‘A short nylon nightgown. Looks a good shape. No lace.’
‘Pretty,’ she said.
Looking rather surprised, he held it deftly under her chin. ‘A very good colour for you,’ he said. ‘And I have a black one the same.’
When he told her the price of them both she paid him. He didn’t try to sell her anything else but shut the suitcase.
She went with him to the door. The wind was getting up and it had turned cold. It won’t be fine tomorrow, she thought.
‘Good-bye mam, thank you mam, I will pray for you.’
‘You do just that,’ she said. And locked the door.
Sleep It Off Lady
One October afternoon Mrs Baker was having tea with Miss Verney and talking about the proposed broiler factory in the middle of the village where they both lived. Miss Verney, who had not been listening attentively said, ‘You know Letty, I’ve been thinking a great deal about death lately. I hardly ever do, strangely enough.’
‘No dear,’ said Mrs Baker. ‘It isn’t strange at all. It’s quite natural. We old people are rather like children, we live in the present as a rule. A merciful dispensation of providence.’
‘Perhaps,’ said Miss Verney doubtfully.
Mrs Baker said ‘we old people’ quite kindly, but could not help knowing that while she herself was only sixty-three and might, with any luck, see many a summer (after many a summer dies the swan, as some man said), Miss Verney, certainly well over seventy, could hardly hope for anything of the sort. Mrs Baker gripped the arms of her chair. ‘Many a summer, touch wood and please God,’ she thought. Then she remarked that it was getting dark so early now and wasn’t it extraordinary how time flew.
Miss Verney listened to the sound of the car driving away, went back to her sitting-room and looked out of the window at the flat fields, the apple trees, the lilac tree that wouldn’t flower again, not for ten years they told her, because lilacs won’t stand being pruned. In the distance there was a rise in the ground – you could hardly call it a hill – and three trees so exactly shaped and spaced that they looked artificial. ‘It would be rather lovely covered in snow,’ Miss Verney thought. ‘The snow, so white, so smooth and in the end so boring. Even the hateful shed wouldn’t look so bad.’ But she’d made up her mind to forget the shed.
Miss Verney had decided that it was an eyesore when she came to live in the cottage. Most of the paint had worn off the once-black galvanized iron. Now it was a greenish colour. Part of the roof was loose and flapped noisily in windy weather and a small gate off its hinges leaned up against the entrance. Inside it was astonishingly large, the far end almost dark. ‘What a waste of space,’ Miss Verney thought. ‘That must come down.’ Strange that she hadn’t noticed it before.
Nails festooned with rags protruded from the only wooden rafter. There was a tin bucket with a hole, a huge dustbin. Nettles flourished in one corner but it was the opposite corner which disturbed her. Here was piled a rusty lawnmower, an old chair with a carpet draped over it, several sacks, and the remains of what had once been a bundle of hay. She found herself imagining that a fierce and dangerous animal lived there and called aloud: ‘Come out, come out, Shredni Vashtar, the beautiful.’ Then rather alarmed at herself she walked away as quickly as she could.
But she was not unduly worried. The local builder had done several odd jobs for her when she moved in and she would speak to him when she saw him next.
‘Want the shed down?’ said the builder.
‘Yes,’ said Miss Verney. ‘It’s hideous, and it takes up so much space.’
‘It’s on the large side,’ the builder said.
‘Enormous. Whatever did they use it for?’
‘I expect it was the garden shed.’
‘I don’t care what it was,’ said Miss Verney. ‘I want it out of the way.’
The builder said that he couldn’t manage the next week, but the Monday after that he’d look in and see what could be done. Monday came and Miss Verney waited but he didn’t arrive. When this had happened twice she realized that he didn’t mean to come and wrote to a firm in the nearest town.
A few days later a cheerful young man knocked at the door, explained who he was and asked if she would let him know exactly what she wanted. Miss Verney, who wasn’t feeling at all well, pointed, ‘I want that pulled down. Can you do it?’
The young man inspected the shed, walked round it, then stood looking at it.
‘I want it destroyed,’ said Miss Verney passionately, ‘utterly destroyed and carted away. I hate the sight of it.’
‘Quite a job,’ he said candidly.
And Miss Verney saw what he meant. Long after she was dead and her cottage had vanished it would survive. The tin bucket and the rusty lawnmower, the pieces of rag fluttering in the wind. All would last for ever.
Eyeing her rather nervously he became businesslike. ‘I see what you want, and of course we can let you have an estimate of the cost. But you realize that if you pull the shed down you take away from the value of your cottage?’
‘Why?’ said Miss Verney.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘very few people would live here without a car. It could be converted into a garage easily or even used as it is. You can decide of course when you have the estimate whether you think it worth the expense and . . . the troub
le. Good day.’
Left alone, Miss Verney felt so old, lonely and helpless that she began to cry. No builder would tackle that shed, not for any price she could afford. But crying relieved her and she soon felt quite cheerful again. It was ridiculous to brood, she told herself. She quite liked the cottage. One morning she’d wake up and know what to do about the shed, meanwhile she wouldn’t look at the thing. She wouldn’t think about it.
But it was astonishing how it haunted her dreams. One night she was standing looking at it changing its shape and becoming a very smart, shiny, dark blue coffin picked out in white. It reminded her of a dress she had once worn. A voice behind her said: ‘That’s the laundry.’
‘Then oughtn’t I to put it away?’ said Miss Verney in her dream.
‘Not just yet. Soon,’ said the voice so loudly that she woke up.
She had dragged the large dustbin to the entrance and, because it was too heavy for her to lift, had arranged for it to be carried to the gate every week for the dustmen to collect. Every morning she took a small yellow bin from under the sink and emptied it into the large dustbin, quickly, without lingering or looking around. But on one particular morning the usual cold wind had dropped and she stood wondering if a coat of white paint would improve matters. Paint might look a lot worse, besides who could she get to do it? Then she saw a cat, as she thought, walking slowly across the far end. The sun shone through a chink in the wall. It was a large rat. Horrified, she watched it disappear under the old chair, dropped the yellow bin, walked as fast as she was able up the road and knocked at the door of a shabby thatched cottage.
‘Oh Tom. There are rats in my shed. I’ve just seen a huge one. I’m so desperately afraid of them. What shall I do?’
When she left Tom’s cottage she was still shaken, but calmer. Tom had assured her that he had an infallible rat poison, arrangements had been made, his wife had supplied a strong cup of tea.
He came that same day to put down the poison, and when afterwards he rapped loudly on the door and shouted: ‘Everything under control?’ she answered quite cheerfully, ‘Yes, I’m fine and thanks for coming.’
As one sunny day followed another she almost forgot how much the rat had frightened her. ‘It’s dead or gone away,’ she assured herself.