‘Good morning,’ he said.
She turned, holding a wooden spoon in her hand. She was dressed in wide-bottomed trousers and had a brightly patterned scarf wrapped around her head. She looked like a raddled Bohemian.
‘Egg?’ she asked, raising her voice above the soar of violins.
‘Sorry?’
‘Would you like an egg?’ She gestured with the spoon as though it were a baton. ‘Scrambled. Boiled. Or I could make you bacon and eggs. Emily brought my shopping in this morning.’
‘Really?’
‘You mean, really, did she bring the shopping, or really, can a nearly-blind woman make bacon and eggs?’
‘Neither. I meant, would it really be all right to have bacon and eggs?’
‘I like cooking for other people.’
‘Then thank you.’
‘Sit down.’ She pointed her spoon at the table. ‘I have a list.’
‘Oh?’
‘In my head, of all the things I need to tell you before you start. I’ve been composing it.’
‘Should I write it down?’
‘If you want. I don’t think it’s necessary. I’m going out later with one of my daughters. We’re visiting a friend of mine whom I have known for nearly eighty years. Think of that. She’s deaf and I’m blind. Still, we can poke each other with our sticks. You’ll have the house to yourself.’
‘I’ll make a start on things.’
‘Good.’
‘The list?’
‘Right. First of all, you must help yourself to food and drink. Someone comes with the shopping every few days. You know where the fridge is, and there is also a freezer, there—’ Her spoon pointed accurately. ‘You can have anything you want. There is wine in the cellar. Too much wine; it will outlast me, however hard I’m trying to outlast it. Have as much as you want. Maybe you’d like beer. I don’t have beer, however, I hate it. So if you want some, you have to buy it from the village, which is two miles away. You could go on your bike.’
‘Of course.’
‘Coffee and tea are in here.’ She rapped a cupboard with her arthritic hand. She was in a much more prosaic mood this morning, businesslike and almost curt. ‘Washing: there’s a washing machine in the scullery. You’ll find it. It’s perfectly easy to operate, and there’s a line outside round the back. If it’s wet, you’ll have to drape things over radiators or chairs. I don’t have a drier.’
‘That’s fine.’
‘No smoking inside. But I said that last night, I think.’
‘No; of course.’
‘Jonah thought it would take you two or three weeks.’
‘Until I see what there is, I couldn’t say.’
‘Would you like to have guests?’
‘Guests?’
‘Friends to visit?’
‘Probably not. Thank you, though.’
‘They would be welcome.’
‘That’s kind of you.’
‘It’s not kind. This house is large and the rooms are lonely.’
‘But I think it will just be me.’
‘If that’s what you want.’
‘It is,’ he said firmly.
‘In the evenings, we can perhaps have dinner together sometimes, should you wish it.’
‘That’s very—’
‘But you can always say no. I won’t be offended. I like people who say what they think. And there’s no obligation: I like company but I never mind being alone. And in the day, I’ll just leave you to your own devices.’
‘I might have lots of questions; presumably there will be decisions that I can’t make for you.’
‘You’re here because I don’t want people I know going through my life for me. Ask me anything; it doesn’t matter what you come across. You’re just a stranger. Perhaps the best thing would be if we met at the end of each day, in the early evening. Then you can ask me what you want.’
‘All right.’
‘In three weeks’ time, it’s my ninety-fifth birthday.’ Peter was about to wish her many happy returns, but she continued: ‘You will probably be done by then. My family are all arriving. There are a great many of them, more all the time. There will be a large, noisy, exuberant meal where I will be bathed in everyone’s tenderness and no one will talk about why this is happening, and then everyone can decide what they wish to take from the house. I think the grandfather clock is in great demand, though no one is actually saying so. It’s as if I’m dead, living in my afterlife.’
‘Because you’re leaving this house?’
‘Yes.’ She sighed and opened the fridge, feeling around for the bacon, removing an egg from the holder in the door. ‘We have a buyer. Some rich banker, I think, who snapped it up the day it came on the market and will renovate and decorate top to bottom. I will be gone before Christmas. I would like to have had one more Christmas here, but I will be with one of my sons and then—’ She waved her spoon.
‘Where will you go?’
‘Where?’ Turning the dial of the hob, where a pan already waited.
‘Yes.’
‘Where do ninety-five-year-old registered-blind women go at the end of their lives?’
‘You’re going into a home?’
‘There should be another word for it. Say, a waiting room.’
She expertly cut a knob of butter from the pack and dropped it into the pan, where it sizzled.
‘Couldn’t you live with one of your children?’
‘No! I don’t want to. It wouldn’t be right. I want no child of mine to be my carer. I would rather die.’
She sounded angry and passionate.
‘But maybe they would like it?’
‘No!’
‘Maybe they don’t want you to go into a home. Maybe you think you’re relieving them of a burden and actually you’re depriving them of a pleasure.’
‘Young man—’
‘Peter.’
‘Peter. You don’t understand.’
She peeled three rashers of bacon from the pack and dropped them into the butter.
‘What don’t I understand?’
‘You do not understand – indeed, why should you and how could you? – the gross indignities of old age.’
‘Indignities?’
‘Yes. Soon, I will very probably need someone to cut up my food. To wash me. To cut my toenails. To pluck the little coarse hairs from my chin. To wash my dirty clothes. To take me to the toilet. To wipe my bottom. I can’t see if you are blushing but you probably are.’
‘No, I’m not.’ Indeed, Peter did not feel embarrassed by the old woman’s words; he almost felt uplifted by them.
‘Then I’ll become incontinent. I’ll dribble. People will spoon mush into my mouth.’
‘This all sounds rather drastic, when you seem so strong, so self-reliant.’
‘Ageing is drastic. It is very bodily. Maybe I’ll start to lose my memory; very probably I will. We can’t escape these things, you know. Bit by bit I’ll go into the darkness. I won’t be their mother any more, or their grandmother, their great-granny. I’ll be like an ancient leaking baby.’
‘But if they love you!’
‘Ah, you’re a romantic. You believe in the notion of a self – a real me, no matter how I decay into shrieking, burbling horror, no matter that I have no words and recollection of who I once was.’
‘Well, yes. I do. Of course I do. You’d still be you, even if all these things happened, which they probably won’t. The essence of you, Eleanor Lee, will remain.’
‘You should see my sister.’
‘You have a sister!’
‘Yes. A stepsister. Don’t worry, she’s younger than me. A mere ninety-one. Perhaps she’ll outlive me, but I don’t envy her that. She’ll come for my birthday. You’ll meet her then.’
‘But I’ll be gone by then.’
‘Perhaps. We’ll see. Is the bacon crispy enough?’
Peter came forward and looked at the three blackened rashers.
‘Yes,�
� he said firmly. ‘They’re just right.’
‘You mean they’re burnt.’
‘No! I like them well done.’
‘Very well.’
She cracked an egg assertively on the side of the pan and dropped it into the fat.
‘Cut yourself some bread and toast it,’ she ordered. ‘Do you cook?’
‘Some things,’ he said. ‘I make a good Greek salad. And I’m quite proud of my spiced aubergine. And my marmalade cake. And I’m a dab hand at a dry martini.’
‘You’ll have to teach me. We can cook together and drink together.’
‘I’d like that.’
‘I think your egg will be done soon. It might be better if you serve yourself.’
After, she took him to the room she called the library, though really it was more like a junk room at the end of the house, large and unheated, with draughts of cold air coming in through the ill-fitting windows and bare boards on the floor, covered here and there with small patches of brightly coloured rugs. Some catastrophe had taken place at the far end of the room, where a pair of long crimson velvet curtains hung in burnt tatters from the rail, and the window frames were scorched. Peter stared around him in consternation. He saw three tall metal filing cabinets on one side of the room, one of whose drawers stood open, full of sodden, half-burnt papers in a soup of black liquid. Near them, under the burnt windows, were two trunks and a battered cardboard suitcase missing its lock. There were piles of books on the floor as well as on the shelves, and boxes everywhere, splitting and overflowing with folders and papers. Drifts of ash mixed with balls of dust. At the end of the room were several teetering stacks of yellowing newspapers; in the middle, beside an old wooden rocking horse, were a couple of plastic laundry baskets – one blue and one grey – that were filled to the brim with photographs.
Those were the things that were to some extent stored. There was also a large amount of clutter – small objects and large, tat and things of value, miscellaneous, uncategorisable, bewildering. Peter, gazing around him, noticed a single woollen mitten, a small dolls’ house with its hinged roof, a leather case open to reveal an old-fashioned shaving kit, a bundle of velvet curtains, a roll of carpet, a wooden painter’s model of a hand with articulated fingers, a cracked porcelain dog, a red bucket half-filled with buttons, ancient stiff riding boots, a tin watering can minus its rose and with a broken handle, several biscuit tins, and a deck-chair on which sat a teddy bear with only one eye.
‘Blimey,’ he said weakly.
‘Is it a mess?’ she asked.
‘There’s a lot here.’
‘I know. I always thought I’d sort it out myself but I never quite got round to it and then, well, I can’t now. I’ve never been very good at throwing things away.’
‘I can see.’
‘Well. That’s not your concern. You just need to look through the papers and books.’
‘There are a lot of those as well.’
‘I know.’ She smiled. ‘Sixty or seventy years’ worth.’
‘Was there a fire in here?’
‘Of sorts,’ said Eleanor.
‘What happened?’
‘I lit a match.’
‘Oh.’ Peter waited and then, when she didn’t say anything, asked, ‘Were you hurt?’
‘Only my pride.’
‘I could do with some guidance.’
‘In what way?’
‘Why does Jonah think that these papers’ – he made a gesture at the overflowing boxes around him – ‘will be of interest?’
‘I have no idea. Maybe they won’t be. You must be the judge. Now, I’m going to get ready for my daughter. You will be wanting to make a start. Help yourself to whatever you want. I’ll see you this evening.’
And with that she was gone. Peter could hear her three-legged walk receding and then he was left in silence, in the cold, disordered, ash-smudged room. He gazed around him. He had gone to bed last night oddly elated, stirred by being in this shabby old house. Now he felt slightly dejected. He recognized the mood and its dangers, an ill wind blowing through him. He shook his head vehemently. He mustn’t give in. This was his chance to return to the world he’d been avoiding. He had to give himself a chance. He should decide how he was going to set about this, and then just move through the mess like a mole through earth, nosing it aside bit by bit until he emerged on the other side. He would start with the books. They were straightforward. Most of them would have to go to a second-hand bookshop or a charity shop. Then he would move on to the photographs. Finally, all the papers.
He looked at his watch: it was nearly ten o’clock. He had to treat this like a real job, or he would be overwhelmed by it: every day he would work for eight hours. He would allow himself one cigarette each hour. He would try to get up at seven and have a run before breakfast – perhaps Polly would come with him, though he wondered if the ambling old dog could move fast enough. When he started early enough to give himself time, he would go for bike rides in the afternoon, before it got too dark. To the sea, perhaps, which he still had not yet seen except from his bedroom window as a faint sheet of dull grey, barely distinguishable from the wet grey sky. He could swim in it. He liked cold water and surging waves; they made him feel alive in the way that warm turquoise oceans never had. He loved lonely empty oceans.
Work. He ran up to his room lightly, taking the stairs two at a time, seeing as he did so a car draw up in a splutter of gravel and a woman with a dramatic mop of silver hair get out. She was tall and walked with long strides through the drizzle towards the house. That must be Mrs Lee’s daughter. Maybe she was Jonah’s mother – Peter had a very hazy idea of the family. He wanted to stay and see what she was like, but at the same time felt like an intruder. He took out his laptop, a notebook and a couple of pens, as well as his iPod. He would work to music, a steady, energetic beat. He would concentrate on the job at hand and would drown out his thoughts.
But as soon as he heard the car draw away and knew he had the house to himself, he left the dusty junk room and set out to explore it, feeling that he was doing something forbidden and yet unable to resist the rooms that stood empty behind closed doors. He had seen most of the rooms downstairs already. He went into the living room where they had sat the evening before, but which had then been lit only by the fire. He opened the drinks cabinet and peered in among the dusty bottles of liqueurs and spirits, and pulled up the piano lid, pressing his fingers down briefly on the ivory keys. The notes hung in the air. Polly padded softly into the room and stood beside him patiently, waiting to be stroked. She smelt of wet towels and had sad brown eyes. He looked at the pictures on the walls and the ornaments on the shelves, picking up a great satiny shell to hold against his ear for the distant sound of the sea. There were dozens of coloured-glass bottles lined up, brown and blue and cloudy green, like potions from an apothecary’s store. He lifted one and pulled out its stopper, putting his nose to the opening to sniff, but it was empty. He lifted the lid of the piano stool and stared down at the sheets of music. Chopin, Debussy, Mozart, Saint-Saëns, but also music-hall songs and hymns. Some were browning and dog-eared. Perhaps she had had them since she was a girl. There was a carved little chest in the corner and inside that were board games and playing cards. Peter imagined Sunday evenings, rainy afternoons, everyone together in the laughter and squabble of a large, close family.
The kitchen he knew, but he pulled open the fridge door and peered inside, plucked a few shrivelled grapes from the bunch to eat, popped a cherry tomato into his mouth. When he heard a sound he started guiltily, but it was only one of the cats. Behind the kitchen was an old-fashioned scullery with a vast, cracked sink at one end. There were splitting Wellington boots in there, and ancient walking boots, several coats on hooks, a battered old trilby, a walking stick, folded deck-chairs, dog food and cat food, and a rusting birdcage. Upstairs, he wandered along the corridor, opening doors and peering into rooms: a bedroom with a high bed and cracked wooden shutters and a long rail of dre
sses that swayed like elegant women dancing, autumn light lying across its splintering floorboards; a smaller bedroom with a single bed in one corner, piled with old toys and smelling of neglect; a bathroom with a window reaching to the floor, so you could lie in your bath and look out on to the garden; a laundry cupboard stuffed with yellowing sheets and fraying towels. It was a house that creaked and rumbled, full of narrow doors leading to dark recesses, of corners for spiders.
He half-opened the door to her room but then drew back, suddenly disturbed by his snooping, and returned to the junk room with a mug of coffee and a biscuit he’d found in a jar in the scullery. It was stale and bendy and stuck to his teeth. Outside, it was raining. Wet brown leaves lay like a rash on the lawn. He would start with the books: there was always something reassuring about books, their heft and the smell stored up in their pages, probably unopened for decades. But it quickly became obvious what a large job this was going to be. Shelves hold many more volumes that you’d ever think. He sat on the rocking horse and opened a file on his computer. He wrote down the title and author of each book, arranging them in alphabetical order according to author, noting the publisher, the date of publication and also the general category: fiction, history, biography, politics, philosophy; books on art; books on wildlife; cookery books going back decades; travel books; guides to hotels and bed-and-breakfasts from the fifties; gardening books and various out-of-date manuals. There were dozens and dozens of books about medicine. Peter put them all to one side, to go through later. Three were by Gilbert Lee – who must be her husband, or perhaps one of her sons. He should have found out all these things before arriving. He hadn’t even googled Eleanor Lee. Probably there were hundreds, thousands of people by that name. Jonah, typically, had told him almost nothing. Peter didn’t even know how many children Eleanor had, how many grandchildren. He wanted to linger over the books, smell their old and long-unopened pages, but restrained himself. He would take a few up to his room this evening and look at them at his leisure. First editions he put in a separate pile that soon became several piles.
The Twilight Hour Page 4