Later, he had calmed down, appeared to have forgotten the exchange. She was relieved, but disturbed. What was this? Tim, who was always so agreeable? Never a cross word.
At Christmas, her mother came to stay, a visit proposed by Laura with the notion that some kind of family Christmas would tame the disheveled house, normalize it. Her father had died a couple of years before and her mother, Susan Harper, was glad to come. She was gallant about the various deficiencies: “No, really, it’s not that cold . . . I’ve coped with worse bathrooms, I promise you . . . The kitchen’s going to be lovely eventually, I can see.” There was a frenzy of cooking: the full-scale Christmas dinner, Laura made an iced cake, Susan an array of mince pies. The house smelled rich, seemed to mellow.
“Really warm now,” said Susan. “Mostly, anyway. Just chilly places. Draughts, is it? Feels like that. Does Tim need to do something with the windows?”
“Nothing wrong with the windows,” he snapped. Tense, annoyed. Busy with his clipboard, the squared paper. Susan fell silent, abashed. They had got on fine, in the past. She said as much to Laura.
“He can be tetchy, these days. Sorry.”
Susan took herself off to the shops, being tactful, perhaps, on the pretext of some need. Tim was now tiling in the bathroom. Laura brought him coffee, stood for a moment. “You did rather squash my mum, you know.”
He said nothing, intent upon placing a tile. Then he turned, looked at her. A look of pure hostility, that shocked her. She went downstairs, so fast that at one point she nearly tripped, her stomach lurching.
Susan returned from her excursion, with a placatory bottle of wine. She and Laura had tea in the kitchen, Tim still immersed in bathroom fittings overhead.
“I was pounced on by one of your neighbors—saw me leaving the house. Old. Asks questions.”
Laura pulled a face. “I know. Her. Yes, she does.”
“Checking me out. Then—how was Tim getting on? Saw him up on the roof, hopes he takes care, you don’t want another accident. Went on and on . . . funny place, that, nobody stays that long, wonders why you two wanted it . . .”
“Accident?”
“Oh, someone’s wife—way back when old Mrs. Thing was a child. She didn’t elaborate. Offered to walk me to the shops, but I escaped.”
“I’m in the market for a different neighbor,” said Laura. “No one’s come forward so far.”
She made a curry with the remains of the turkey. Tim drank most of the wine, opened another bottle, became more congenial. They made love that night. No, Laura thought, after—we had sex. Love wasn’t what we were making. He had been cursory, rather rough. He felt, indeed, almost unfamiliar, as though a stranger took over the bed.
On the day that Laura’s mother left she said, “Will you actually live in this house?”
Laura laughed. “You mean, unlike Tim’s other projects? Maybe. Maybe not.”
“Would you like to?”
There was a silence. Laura’s mother became brisk. “We’d better get going, if you’re going to run me to the station.”
In the car, she said, “If you really don’t like the house, when he’s done, you must say, Laura.”
Laura sighed. “Of course I would, Mum.”
After Christmas, it got a bit warmer. Tim was doing some decorating now, in the new bathroom and elsewhere. The heating seemed to have become more effective lately, and Laura would leave an upstairs window open for a while to clear the smell of paint. The Christmas break had given Tim a spell of concentrated work on the house but it was now back to routine—the daily stint at their jobs for both of them. For Laura, this was something of a relief. At least she had company, at work. Conversation. Laughter.
Everything we used to have. Before we came here.
Thoughts fermented, on those winter evenings, cleaning up after supper in the kitchen, watching television later. On one of those nights, restless and suddenly resentful, she took him up a mug of coffee. He was in the spare bedroom, plastering a wall.
“I suppose I can’t persuade you to join me for Have I Got News For You?”
He did not look at her. “No. I’ve gone off it, anyway.”
“You used to love it. We did.”
He glanced at her. “You seem to assume that everything always stays the same.” Exasperation in his voice.
She left the room, slamming the door. Ran down the stairs.
Halfway down, she felt it. A hand on her back. Between the shoulder blades. Pushing. A sharp push. Then it was gone. She had clutched the banister.
She looked back up the stairs. The door she had slammed was still shut, Tim inside that room. It had been cold, the hand. Cold through her sweater.
A draught, of course. A chilly draught from that window on the landing—must have been left open. She went into the kitchen, got herself a glass of wine, sat down in front of the television and applied herself to a program that no longer seemed particularly entertaining.
They coexisted now, she and Tim. That was how it felt. They lived together, under the same roof, but their lives were quite separate. They ate together, in the evenings and at weekends, and there might be desultory exchanges. But we never have a conversation, she thought, we never talk. It was as though the Tim she had known for six years had retreated, subsumed into some other persona. Sometimes he was short with her; most of the time he simply paid her little attention. She began to wonder if perhaps he had depression. What are the symptoms of depression?
And she sensed changes in herself. Anxiety, instability. Well, no wonder—with Tim like this. But it was more than that; she was conscious of some deep unrest. Of wanting . . . to get away, it felt like. Get away from what? From Tim? No, no. From this place? Perhaps. She never returned from work in the evening with any sense of coming home. The surroundings seemed forever alien, a place that was not hers. And the house . . . Yes, the house too. At weekends, she found herself going out as much as possible—shopping excursions that were barely necessary.
On one of these she met Sheila Bates, not seen for some weeks.
“Your mother gone, has she?”
“Some while ago,” said Laura.
“Pity. You’ll miss her. We had a chat.”
“So I heard.”
“She was saying she didn’t feel you were really settled in.”
She did, did she? A bit previous of you, Mum.
“No wonder, with all that building work. I said as much. He’s got going on the roof again, I saw. Up there yesterday.”
“He’s taking advantage of this break in the weather,” said Laura. “And he’s not going to fall off. You said something to my mother about an accident.”
“No one ever fell off the roof, that I know of. It was a woman. Young woman.”
I don’t think I want to know about this, thought Laura. And that’s enough neighborly exchange. “I must get on—shopping to do.”
“Him that lived there before the war. I was a child so I hardly remember. Big man, like yours. And the wife had an accident. Bad accident. People didn’t care for him. There was talk he’d had something to do with it. Then he went.”
“A long time ago,” said Laura irritably. “And nothing to do with us, is it?”
Sheila Bates shrugged. “Long time ago, that’s right. Neither here nor there now, I suppose. And you’ll have the place all done up to the nines before long, I don’t doubt.”
“Well, made habitable, at least. Anyway, I must be off.”
“My mother wouldn’t walk past the house. She said he’d never really left,” said Sheila Bates.
Laura stared at her. Turned and walked away. She’s an old bat. I really have to find myself another neighbor.
She bought some salmon for supper, a favorite of Tim’s. Wine, a piece of Stilton. It was almost dark when she got back, still those raw winter afternoons, the light draining
by five. Tim was up on the roof.
“Come down,” she said. “You can’t see, up there.”
No answer.
“Well, be careful, then.”
Soon, from the kitchen, she heard the front door slam, his feet on the stairs. He would be plastering now, on the landing.
She did things in the kitchen. A sauce for the salmon, vegetables. A salad for starters. Presently, the salmon went into the oven.
She called up the stairs. “Supper in twenty minutes—OK?”
A reply, after a moment or two. “I’d rather have it later—I’m in the middle of something.”
“I’ve put it in the oven. It’s salmon.”
Plastering sounds. “I said later.”
She glared up at his back. “If you wanted late supper you should have told me earlier.”
No response. Then, “Just keep mine.”
Laura took a breath. She ran up the stairs. Halfway up. Stopped.
“Look, Tim—I’ve bothered. I’ve taken trouble over the meal. The least you can do is eat it with me.”
He paused. Noticed her, now, it seemed. Looked down at her.
“Just fuck off, would you, Laura,” he said. A cold voice. A note in it she had never heard before.
She froze, there on the stair. Then she turned. And as she did so she was snatching at the banister, clinging on, almost flung off her feet.
Hand on her back. Push. Violent push.
Tim up above on the landing still, plastering.
She ran down. She grabbed her coat. She fetched her bag from the kitchen. Where’s my phone? The car keys? She spun from room to room, shrugged on her coat.
She stood in the hall. “I’m going,” she said.
He was watching. Up there, watching.
“I’m going, Tim.”
He laughed. No, someone else laughed. Tim standing looking at her, but the laugh was someone else’s.
The Bridge
Sunday. My birthday. This is where I am. This is who I am. Alison.
And how am I? I am well. I am fit. I am in full-time employment and have been for many a year. My much-loved daughter has sent a Liberty silk scarf and her heartfelt regrets that she cannot be with me but as already explained she has a job interview first thing tomorrow morning.
She has my eyes, his height, her own disposition—thanks be. She was born into a roaring January dawn twenty-seven years ago. He was not there. He is squeamish about blood. He appeared when all was tidied up.
So I am sixty. Sixty is no big deal, it seems to me. Not if you are in good health, plenty of energy, ninety-five percent job satisfaction, still reasonable looking, size twelve, mortgage paid off and the garden makeover a triumph. Oh, that rose pergola!
When I was thirty-seven I considered killing myself. I now see that that would have been a profoundly selfish act, but I was without judgment at the time.
Twenty-three years, then, that I might not have had. What have I done with them? I have raised a daughter. I have discovered a career path that has led from jobbing secretary to planning potentate. I keep a National Park unblemished; I tell people that no, they cannot add a conservatory to their Grade II listed house, and don’t even think about turning that ancient cow-byre into a new-build, or putting some holiday chalets on this scenic hillside. I have been useful, I consider.
Anything else? Well, I have achieved sixty years without committing any public offenses except for one speeding incident. I am not much of a private offender, either—equable, on the whole, fair-minded, I like to think (the conservatory builders and cow-byre developers would not agree), my colleagues seem to find me a person they can work with, I have friends.
Complacent?
Sounds like it. A CV is complacent—has to be. So if I review the record, complacency is bound to edge in. I don’t feel complacent. I know my inadequacies. I am a serial worrier. I bite my nails. I can be careless—many lost key crises and bills overlooked. I don’t have nice legs and I am only an average cook.
I have allowed him to get away with too much, for too long. There. Within an apparently impregnable shell there lurks a more tender occupant. Me. Essence of Alison—a person unknown to the indignant householder who has been refused permission to adorn his stables with solar panels.
Now I shall get on with being sixty, on this fresh spring morning in an agreeable home in a West Country village. Domestic chores to be done. Some paperwork. A walk, later. Supper this evening with friends a few miles away—a short drive through this delectable landscape that I help to keep untarnished. Not a bad prospect—in fact an enviable prospect from the point of view probably of most other sixty-year-olds worldwide. Sixty in Bangladesh, Afghanistan, the Peruvian Andes, would be rather more taxing, I imagine. Had one even got there.
Expectation of life in the West is over eighty. So I have another twenty years or so, probably. Seems a long time. Older, fatter, gray hairs, hips and knees and all that, no doubt. Oh, well—I’ll cope. I’m a coper.
Have had to be.
Mum dying when I was sixteen. Dad all to pieces so must sort things out for myself, get through A levels, think what to do next. Should have gone to university; felt I must get on to the job ladder. I’m undereducated, always queasily aware of that—and I could have sailed through a degree course. Instead—secretarial school, business training, and one thing suggesting another, zigzag from this opportunity to that, until I fetch up with what I do now.
Coping. With much else running parallel. Marry him when I am thirty. Have Ella when I am thirty-two. Have Luke.
My aberration, around then. Ran off the rails a bit.
And that day. The day.
Move down here. After a while, get this job. Not exactly all plain sailing thereafter, but plainer than before. I am on course, Ella too is on course—good school here for her, she grows up, does well, leaves but has not left. Ella is bright, good-looking, kind, curious, spends too much on shoes, drives a tad too fast, should shed this current boyfriend, and I shall see her next weekend.
So, the record at sixty. All right, a version of the record at sixty. I am a reasonably honest person—as honest as most. Ella would say I pick at my mistakes, chew them over. True, I think. A way of trying to see what happened.
He would say. I have a fair idea what he would say.
You know what happened, but you don’t always see what happened. Interesting difference. When I have had a run-in with someone hell-bent on wrecking an unspoiled village or desecrating a swath of agricultural land, I make careful notes after, sitting in the car, eyeing the cottages or the fields, putting down just what was said. At some later point, a subtext may shine out—I may see and hear something not apparent at the time.
Indeed. I know that I applied for, and got, a job with the county council down here because, I said at the time, it paid quite well and offered prospects. I see now that down here was also as far as possible from over there, from a particular place.
I know that I have always had a resistance to fiction. I don’t much care for novels. I read travel books, biography, history. I see now that it is a distaste for invention. I can only see stories as fabrication, lies. I may be mistaken in this. Popular taste would suggest that I am.
I know that I avoid wearing red, on the grounds that it offends my coloring (pale skin, light brown hair). I see that it is also because when we were first getting together he once referred to “that strident scarf of yours.” Red, it was. I took note of his criticism, back then.
I know that I married him because I was attracted to him—all right, was more than somewhat in love with him. He was entertaining, and had turned up. I see now that I was also helplessly, archaically, panic stricken, at thirty: should marry, should settle.
He has forgotten my birthday, I note.
*
Never again costume drama. One thing after another,
today: trouble with lighting in that B List stately home that costs an arm and a leg each week of filming. Commotion over costumes. Get that car out of shot. There’s a phone cable there, you idiot. Give me cops and robbers any day. Or a nice straightforward sitcom.
And now this hotel where the restaurant slams its doors at nine, so it’s room service or nothing.
Come on, Barry, enough whingeing. This is a diary. Get down days in the life of Barry H. Get down life as a director. Get down life.
What’s the date? Oh, Christ, it’s her birthday. Does room service do flowers? This will be marked down and held against me. Along with much else.
Happy birthday, Alison. Sorry, sorry. Much of the last thirty years spent saying sorry, come to think of it. Apologizing for being myself, by and large, which is a bit odd, considering that she presumably married me for myself, as it were. Married me for being what she perceived me as, when we first started going out.
Which we didn’t. You didn’t go out with someone back then. You saw them: X and Y are seeing each other, B is seeing this new man. If things went well you saw a great deal of her. You saw her all over, breasts to bum.
Nice breasts, she had.
The chef’s lasagna and a bottle of red—that’s better. Thank you, room service. I should be studying tomorrow’s script, but I’m not going to. Period claptrap.
She must be sixty. Christ. Which makes me fifty-seven, something I prefer not to dwell on. My CV knocks off a few years. I play down, like aging actors. I’m usually the oldest person on the set, bar the occasional grande dame doing the dowager part. We’ve got one on this gig—Victorian matriarch.
Alison played down, at thirty. I didn’t realize she was that, at first. And hadn’t really intended more than a fling, until somehow we were apparently serious. I was that much younger and not all that set on marriage, but prepared to oblige if she was so keen. Why not? one thought. Michael rather fancied her, I’d noticed, and you always want to steal a march on your brother.
My brother the barrister. Trust Michael to have it all worked out from about age ten—copper-bottomed career. We’re not much in touch these days. Hardly surprising, really.
The Purple Swamp Hen and Other Stories Page 14