The Offing

by Benjamin Myers

  And then one day the towers of the cathedral emerged before me, a stone citadel poking up through the canopy of trees to pierce the firmament and lift the souls of those who gazed upon it, and I knew that I was only a brisk day’s walk from home.

  As I walked through the village I was barely recognised. My black hair, shorn short in the spring, was now thick and hung in salt-tangled ringlets, my skin was the colour of the honey that Dulcie would soon be spinning down in the meadow, and I had filled out so that my clothes appeared to belong to a smaller man slight in stature. I nodded at acquaintances and more than once was met with the narrowed eyes of suspicion reserved for strangers who entered this odd and isolated little world of the colliery that was still war-racked, as all such places were, but nevertheless remained devoted to the excavation of the prized anthracite from the deep and ancient land.

  In September I went to the pit. Yet instead of being handed a lamp and hard hat, my father, perhaps recognising that I wasn’t suited to a life at the seam, and wanting me to have a position safer than the one he had held working the coalface for four decades, had somehow wangled an apprenticeship in the office above ground. I had done well in my examinations – better, perhaps, than anyone had expected of this young daydreamer – but it was a coveted position that rarely became vacant, and even then it was usually awarded to the pit manager’s son or daughter, who might hold it for years. Decades, even.

  I was supposed to be grateful. A clerical position was a safe position in all respects, but especially the important one: no one ever got crushed beneath a collapsing pile of paperwork or blown to smithereens drinking tea and filing payslips in the comfort and warmth of an office on a cold North-East winter’s day.

  But no one ever found adventure in ledger books and dockets either. The concept of a job for a life was too horrific to consider, and every time I was forced to do just that, or saw the look of pride on my mam’s face as I sat down to tea each night, I was sent into a sort of deep existential panic akin to that, I imagine, experienced by someone who has been handed a full-term life sentence in chokey.

  How could I sit indoors, when all that life was out there, being lived by others?

  I stuck it out and saved what I could, each day eating my way through the bland contents of my bait box, and then stepping out into the cold air with the siren’s wail each evening. Autumn drew in, and the leaves fell, and each evening I went for a walk around the lanes and fields surrounding the village, but now the lanes appeared drab and the rutted fields flat, barren and purely functional. I would return home with my breath before me and my boots heavy with clods of blackened mud, and retire to my room with a poetry book.

  I had begun to take them out of the local library, and had soon worked my way through the narrow collection there, so I took to ordering other titles in. I had a taste for it now and the librarian was more than happy to oblige me.

  One Sunday I walked the several miles to the sea, but was saddened to find it a grey wash, a broth of brine and coke dust, the beach too a gritted, blackened bank of coal containing the occasional limb of stripped bone-white driftwood, where even the shriek of the seagulls sounded like warning shots to ward off strangers.

  I suffered a lot of headaches caused by the dim light in the pit office and from all the reading I did at night in bed, hunched beneath the covers with a torch.

  Then it was winter. It came in on an easterly wind and was the coldest for decades. Snow fell and kept falling and for a few days the light was brilliant and the village sang with the excited chatter of children, but temperatures kept falling and soon everything stiffened, then became solid. The soil, the hot-water pipes.

  The snowdrifts grew deeper and out on the uplands entire flocks of sheep perished beneath a great ocean of whiteness, their corpses dug out and heaped in stiff piles. Supplies could not get through and the village became cut off; our ration-book basics were being stretched and some days we lived off tea and flour pancakes. Cows began to starve in their barns, and chickens too, thousands upon thousands of them in poultry farms. Even the pits closed and very quickly there was not enough coal to fuel the power stations. It was as if the war had not ended at all, and had in fact got worse, and the government was in disarray, and we all faced the festive season with empty cupboards.

  Snow silenced us.

  At home I shovelled snow and looked in on elderly neighbours but otherwise stayed as close to the fire as I could, drinking tea, reading, and now and again writing a few rudimentary lines of poetry. There was nothing else to be done but wait the winter out and hope for better days.

  I thought of Dulcie often, and Romy too, and when the snow finally began to melt and the pit reopened I tramped my way back to work, wondering if this was adulthood, and whether this was my life, my world, forever.

  One day when the last of the snow was melting away and the supply lines were open once again, my mother took delivery of a large crate.

  When she lifted the lid she was surprised to see a fat goose staring back at her. She led me to it in the backyard when I got home from work and pointed. The bird did not seem unduly perturbed by its new surroundings.

  Taped to the inside of the crate was a flat parcel bound by many, many sheets of greaseproof paper. It was addressed to me.

  As I unwrapped it, an envelope fell out from between the layers. Though Christmas had long been and gone, it contained a festive card in which the following message was written in large untamed handwriting:

  Belatedly

  to you and yours,

  from me and mine.

  I continued to unwrap the parcel and when the final piece fell away I held a thin, ornately bound hardback book with an embossed cover. I turned it over in my hand and admired the spine and then the endpapers. It was a marvel to behold.

  As I opened it my heart appeared to quicken. There, facing the title page, was a frontispiece that depicted on it a finely detailed illustration of Dulcie’s studio as it had surely looked when it was first occupied. Around it was the meadow, and in the far distance, rendered accurately and beautifully, was the bay and the sea. There was even a dog lolling in the long grass. It was Butler.

  I turned the page and read the words:

  The Offing

  by Romy Landau

  And then below that, written in a smaller font:

  Edited

  by Dulcie Piper & Robert Appleyard

  I couldn’t believe it. I turned the pages, quickly flipping past the contents page and through the collection that little over half a year earlier had been a file of neglected paper gathering dust in a building in danger of being slowly consumed by the landscape and the elements.

  As the crisp, freshly cut leaves of paper fluttered between my fingers, lines from the poems jumped out at me now like familiar friends returning, and when I turned back to the title page and read my name once more I realised I was holding my breath.

  She had done it. Dulcie Piper had done it. The Offing had arrived. She had found a publisher and not only was the book one of the most beautiful things I had ever seen, but my name was in it.

  I looked at my mother and then at the goose, and both of them looked back at me.

  And I smiled.

  The land was greening again, but was not yet so fulsome as the tangled corridor that I had left during the dying days of summer past.

  I had lasted seven months as an apprenticed clerk at the colliery and confirmed member of a trade union. Even with many days off during the cold, cruel winter, it was a gestation period more than long enough to birth in me a stifling sense of claustrophobia and a distrust of authority that endures to this day.

  I had quickly learned that if I didn’t act otherwise I would be in that drab office for life, and if witnessing a war, even from afar, like some sort of strange game played by adults that got out of hand, had taught me one thing it was that life is short, and we each only have one shot at it, so as Easter approached – and against the pleas of my parents, who did little to
disguise their disappointment, and despite the potential ostracism from those in the village who thought it a personal insult that I should walk away from a position of far greater privilege than those who risked their lives several hundred feet underground – I handed in my resignation. At the age of seventeen I had retired from servitude.

  My timing was good. Just two months earlier a notice had gone up at the gates announcing that the entire British coal industry was to be nationalised in order to address what the government called the ‘idleness’ that pervaded in those shattered days of recuperation that followed the war. The harsh Baltic winter had scared the industry too, and now the newly formed National Coal Board would oversee the management of all the pits.

  The long-held certainty that there would always be coal – and consequently there would always be work mining it – was the foundation of my village. But some of us saw that changing. Though money was still being invested in new sinkings and the mechanisation of the transportation of coal overground, the final chapter was already being written. The industry was contracting. It would be a long, slow death.

  And I was glad to have got out.

  An unexpected nervousness coursed through me as the lane dropped down into a shaded hollow and then there it was, Dulcie’s cottage, and a moment later there too was Butler, panting as he padded out to meet me in his quiet, graceful manner, to which I responded by squatting and giving him a big hug, and then feeding him the last of my three-day-old biscuits.

  And then there too was Dulcie Piper, in her garden, just as I had left her. She was pruning plants.

  ‘Ah,’ she said. ‘There you are. I suppose I should put the kettle on. Rosehip alright?’

  ‘Rosehip?’

  ‘Yes, for tea. I know what you’re thinking: how has the old trout got rosehips when everyone knows they’re strictly an autumnal and wintering fruit, but – ’

  Winking conspiratorially, she tapped the side of her nose.

  ‘I was rather looking forward to some of your nettle tea,’ I replied.

  She made to spit. ‘Ugh, vile stuff.’

  ‘But I thought you loved it.’

  ‘Did I? Well, I’m afraid you’ll have to pick your own if you want some.’

  ‘It’s nice to see you, Dulcie. It’s nice to be back again.’

  ‘It’s nice to see you too, Robert. And it’s nice to have you back again. Butler will be glad of the company, I’m sure.’

  The meadow was teeming once again, all my previous work cutting and unrooting undone by seeds and sun alone. It had come through one of the coldest winters on record and was approaching untamed wildness once more.

  Only then did I see that the tangle of trees and weeds at the low end that once obscured the sea had been drastically pared back so that we could now enjoy a clear view all the way out across the bay and the water beyond it.

  Dulcie saw me admiring the new, unhindered prospect.

  ‘I thought it was finally time to forgive the tempest of the briny deep,’ she said.

  We drank our tea looking out across it as I summarised my short-lived career as a junior clerk, my recent resignation and my new regimen of reading. It felt as if only a day or two had passed, rather than a moribund autumn and that the prolonged winter of discontent had been a kick in the teeth to those hoping the aftermath of war might offer an easier life.

  I talked for a long time and Dulcie listened without saying a word.

  ‘It sounds to me as if you have done awfully well to dodge a bullet, Robert,’ she said when I finally stopped. ‘Very well indeed. Work is vastly overrated. Obviously some jobs are vital, but so many spend their limited time in this life devoted to drudgery. Me, I always chose pleasure at all costs. And anyway, listen to you.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Last summer it took nigh on a week to get a peep out of you, and now the tap is on the water doth flow. Verbally speaking, I mean. What I’m saying is, you’ve grown into yourself. You’ll linger longer, I hope?’

  ‘I’d very much like to.’

  ‘Good, because there’s something I would like to show you.’

  Butler led the way through the thicket to the studio. It too appeared much as I had left it, apart from one small thing: attached to the door was a large wooden plaque into which was engraved the letter ‘R’.

  ‘You named it after Romy,’ I said.

  Dulcie handed me a key. ‘And you.’

  I was confused. ‘Me?’

  ‘Of course. Here – ’ She pressed the key into my palm and urged me to use it.

  I slipped it into a new lock, opened the door and stepped into a fully furnished room. The place had been transformed with the addition of a wrought-iron bed, a small drop-leaf table, standard lamp, rugs, oil paintings and a fitted shelf that ran right around the cabin’s interior above head height, and which held hundreds of books. On the table was a large black typewriter.

  The wood burner was still in place but had been cleaned and restored, and next to it was a two-ring hotplate on a unit that held utensils, pans, plates, cutlery and so forth. A cupboard above held some basic provisions, and lined up on the windowsill were six large jars of dark honey that appeared near-iridescent as the sun shone through them to illuminate the tiny bubbles of air trapped within.

  ‘Well?’

  I was lost for words – almost.

  ‘Did you do all of this?’

  ‘I had to have a project over the winter. Besides, you had already done the lion’s share. All I did was apply a bit of interior flair. It’s yours.’

  ‘Mine?’

  ‘To stay in whenever you like. That way, whatever you do in life, or wherever you care to wander, you will always have a home here. I’ve written it into the deeds of the house. The studio is in your name now. The cottage may crumble and my bones may rot in the dank soil of deepest England, but you will always be able to stay here should you wish.’

  ‘I don’t know what to say.’

  ‘Say nothing.’

  I looked around the room, and felt I could not imagine anywhere else I would ever want to be. But there was one question I had to ask.

  ‘Am I your project too, Dulcie?’

  ‘That sounds so crass, Robert.’

  ‘But am I?’

  ‘Helping those I feel inclined to help is what I do. Everyone could use a patron.’

  ‘This place must have cost – ’

  ‘A drop in the ocean. The fact is, it cost me very little as I’m pleased to report The Offing is selling like cinder toffee on a bank holiday. You see, the timeless poetry of Romy Landau paid for the bits and pieces – the licensing and reproduction fees alone have proved substantial. But let’s not be vulgar and talk too much about money. Let us talk instead about the abundant amber nectar that was, of course, a gift from those friends of ours whom you most boldly and bravely plucked from the branch. Remember?’

  I picked up one of the jars of honey and held it to the light.

  ‘Of course I remember. I don’t know what to say, Dulcie,’ I said again.

  ‘A simple “thank you” will suffice.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘You don’t have to thank me.’

  I smiled. ‘I won’t, then. I retract it.’

  ‘You’re hungry, I expect?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Good, because I’ve got a chicken in the oven for you. It’s got half a pound of bacon across its back and the same amount of sage and sausage meat shoved up it. I hope you’re hungry.’

  ‘But how did you know I was coming?’

  Dulcie shrugged. ‘Because the sap is rising and the ambrosia scent of summer is on the breeze again. I knew you’d be back.’

  ‘But today?’

  She brushed my question off. ‘One of these days.’

  I wondered how many chickens had been roasted and fed to Butler over the past few weeks.

  ‘The meadow is a bit of mess,’ I said through a quiet belch of satisfaction. I threw a large greasy pi
ece of chicken thigh to Butler, who snatched it from the air with delight in his dark Teutonic eyes.

  ‘Yes, well, I only got as far as hacking at the branches blocking my view,’ said Dulcie. ‘It’s not so easy doing that when you’re an old crone, alone, and there’s frost on the ground. And ageing is so tedious. Avoid it at all costs, I say.’

  ‘You’re not alone now, though.’

  She smacked her lips.

  ‘I’ll have to pay you, of course.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘The meadow work.’

  I laughed. ‘You know I don’t need paying. You only have to ask.’

  ‘Well, there is just one more thing that I nearly forgot, actually.’

  She stood and walked into the house, and then returned. She pushed aside the dish that held the remains of the chicken and placed an envelope in front of me.

  ‘Your share of The Offing so far.’

  I opened it up and pulled out a cheque for four hundred pounds. It was more than my father made in a year.

  ‘I can’t believe it,’ I said.

  ‘Believe it. There’ll be more to come, no doubt, once it’s out in paperback in the autumn. The hardback notices have been very good, and it’s already into its third print run. This is almost unheard of in contemporary poetry. There’s nothing the literary world likes more than a narrative of triumph and tragedy – it doesn’t really matter in which order – and, Christ, Romy certainly exemplified that. Now that the dust of that silly war has settled, they want something else to write about, you see, and what better story than that of a doomed Germanic poet who wrote like an angel, burned brightly and briefly, and then ended it all rather than live in a world half-destroyed by her own kin. Lost at sea, forever a mystery. That’s how they see it, anyway, and I’m not much inclined to correct any inaccuracies otherwise. Let the myth grow, I say, and fuck them all.’

  She raised her glass. I did the same. We clinked them together.

  ‘Now, I wouldn’t dream of telling you how you might wish to spend this windfall, just as I wouldn’t tell a tramp not to spend the pennies I’ve given him on a nice bottle of vintage meths. However, might I at least plant one seed of an idea? An investment, if you will.’