Imaginative Experience

by Mary Wesley

  What was the name which was sparked off by the toy? Christy? Something like that. A child? Her child? Oh my God! Whatever you do, Sylvester adjured himself, don’t interrupt, don’t speak, let her weep.

  So he stood holding her, Julia wept and Joyful lowered himself into a crouching position with his nose on his paws. After a while Sylvester thought, I wonder what messages there are on my answerphone? And what, if anything, is in all my letters? And, it really is lovely what she has done to the garden; what a remarkable girl. And the house! I don’t ever remember coming home to a house so free of debris and dust; Celia could be a slut. The rugs look lovely. They give the room balance. Celia is welcome to the old lot, one had a bit of moth; I wonder whether she’s noticed, or Andrew Battersby? I must not ask but when this girl stopped the train and upended the sheep she looked as desperate as she did just now when I handed her the toy. Perhaps there is a connection? I wonder whether she ever heard from British Rail? I wish my mind was not so full of trivia. I wish I knew what to do. He was still standing with his arms round Julia when the telephone pealed and his answerphone voice replied, ‘Please leave a message after the tone.’ Then: ‘It really is very tiresome of you, Sylvester,’ said Rebecca’s voice, ‘not to let me know when to expect you back. I could easily have stocked you up with groceries and put milk in your fridge. Christmas this year is so badly arranged, the shops are shut for four whole days. I am aggrieved, Sylvester. I could have helped. It will be your own fault if you come home to powdered milk only.’ Malgré lui, Sylvester shook with laughter.

  In a hoarse voice Julia said, ‘She has telephoned several times when I’ve been working, but you said not to answer.’

  Sylvester said, ‘My former secretary. She means well.’

  Julia was still weeping; her eyes were swollen, her nose red, her cheeks drained of colour. Relaxing his hold a little, Sylvester manoeuvred her to sit on the sofa. Sitting beside her, an arm still holding her, he presently said, ‘Suppose I make us a pot of tea?’ and, ‘A gulp of whisky would do no harm,’ and, ‘Your head must be aching. Aspirin?’

  Wiping tears with her hand, Julia said, ‘So sorry. A kitchen towel?’

  Sylvester said, ‘Loo paper’s softer,’ and went to get some, noting as he went that she still clutched the toy which now was as saturated as his jersey.

  Waiting for the kettle to boil he wished he was not so jet-lagged; at the best of times it was a nuisance but now he was aware that should he put a foot wrong, or utter an inept remark, all would be lost. ‘All what would be lost?’ he asked out loud. ‘All what, for Christ’s sake?’ He put cups on a tray and filled the teapot; fatigue made him clumsy. ‘Whisky,’ he reminded himself and balanced glasses and bottle among the cups.

  Julia sat where he had left her, one hand holding the roll of lavatory paper, the other the toy. Her tears had stopped. He put a small table by the sofa and poured tea. Celia had despised the table, he remembered with amusement; if she had not, one would have had to put the tray on the floor. He poured tea. ‘Sugar?’ ‘No thanks.’ ‘Milk?’ ‘Please.’ ‘Drink this first.’ He measured a tot of whisky and handed it to her. ‘Come on, drink it.’ Obediently she swallowed. ‘Now drink your tea.’ He gave her her cup and, pouring himself a generous dollop of whisky, sat back in the armchair to watch her gulp tea and replace the cup rattling in its saucer.

  She said, ‘Perhaps you had better listen to your messages. There may be something urgent.’

  Appreciating this effort towards normality, Sylvester said, ‘Why not?’ It was not possible to ask questions and awkward to sit in silence. He found a pencil and pad and brought the telephone close. ‘I have been away for weeks, but everyone knows. I hardly think there will be anything urgent,’ he said, pressing the button.

  She still kept a hold on the toy but had drunk her tea; he crossed his legs and lay back in the armchair to listen to various messages from friends, invitations to dinner which he noted on the pad, a message about books he had ordered from his bookshop, please collect, a request from his solicitor to call if he had not received a letter dated such-and-such and sent to New York, some messages of Christmas cheer and, interspersed among these, Rebecca’s crisp accents. ‘There is something odd going on in your house, Sylvester, which I don’t like—there’s a dog on your doorstep.’ ‘I feel very doubtful about your cleaning woman, she puts out suspect rubbish, it smells of horse. You should have stuck to Mrs Andrews.’ ‘I have seen a seedy-looking man hanging about who may be a squatter or a thief sussing you out. Of course I waited until he moved off.’ ‘I have been thinking, Sylvester, that you should have an alarm fitted even if Celia has removed everything of value. If only you’d left me the key—’

  ‘And so on and so on.’ Sylvester chuckled. ‘She has a heart of gold, a mania for interference and not enough to do,’ he said to Julia, who did not appear to be listening. ‘She would like to run my life,’ he said, gulping his whisky, ‘but there is something that’s important, if only I could remember. She wrote to me; what the hell was it? Something to do with a death? It’ll come back in a moment.’ He switched the answerphone off. ‘What is it,’ he leaned forward to look at Julia, ‘that that toy reminds you of?’ One should never, he howled inwardly, drink on a jet-lagged stomach.

  ‘My child had one like it,’ Julia said quietly. ‘It was his favourite toy, that and his whistle. He was never parted from it; Mrs Patel gave it to him when he was a baby. I have never seen another. Its coat is real fleece. He had it with him when Giles took him to stay with Clodagh, it would have been in the car when they were killed.’

  Sylvester felt his throat go dry.

  ‘I found his whistle!’ Julia said. ‘It had lodged behind a radiator. I have that. Giles was driving when they were killed; I imagined that since he’d lost his licence Clodagh would drive, but he was driving. I should have realized that since she loved Giles, she would let him drive if he wanted. She loved him so much and she adored Christy. She blames me for not being there to do the driving; I always drove after Christy was born, it was safer. She blames me. I blame myself. I know it’s illogical because I was not there, I was not wanted. Giles visited Clodagh alone and sometimes I let him take Christy. It seemed only fair, Clodagh loved him and it would have been unkind to keep him away. But she did not want me, it was Giles she wanted, and Christy.’

  Julia paused to blow her nose on a handful of Andrex.

  ‘After the divorce,’ she said, ‘she wanted them more than ever. She is possessive. She bought Christy toys, life-size things which frightened him; what he liked was his lamb, and the whistle. I suppose the size of the toys represented the size of her love? But life is not like that. I was stupid to let him go. I tried to be fair. I was stupid, too, about Clodagh. I did not take in that she was in love, I thought she was old. I did not suss the situation. I thought she was being kind and helpful to a younger man and that I meant something, I did not grasp the situation. To be honest, I did not want to. Then, later, I thought there’s such a thing as the benefit of the doubt; all that! I did not want to face up to Giles and Clodagh as a unit, which later included Christy but not me. Clodagh is ten years older than Giles and Giles was ten years older than me, so why not? Why shouldn’t they?’ She drew in her breath. ‘Clodagh holds me responsible,’ she went on, ‘she told me so at the funeral. She—oh well, that’s how it is, she calls me a murderer.’ Sylvester drew breath audibly. Julia said, ‘I know she does. One of the things my phantom telephoner calls me is “murderer”; when he did it last, I managed to blow Christy’s whistle down the phone—’

  Sylvester gulped some cold tea. ‘Why did you marry—’

  ‘He raped me. He said it was love. We were working in Clodagh’s garden. I wanted it to be love. He could be delightful, very attractive and funny. I did not know then about him and Clodagh. I hoped it would work when Clodagh insisted we marry—I found I was pregnant. It did work for a while, but then—’

  Sylvester, who had been holding his breath, breathed.
‘Then?’

  Julia said, ‘I don’t suppose it’s ever happened to you, but quite soon when I married Giles I knew when he was making love to me that he was thinking of Clodagh, that she was the real thing, not me.’

  In the silence Joyful whimpered in his sleep. Julia said, ‘I’m terribly sorry to rabbit on like this. I do apologize.’

  Sylvester said, ‘Who is Clodagh?’

  Julia said, ‘My mother. Didn’t I say?’

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  SYLVESTER’S MIND SEETHED WITH questions, none of which he felt it safe to ask.

  Julia blew her nose on lavatory paper and tossed the used tissue into the waste-paper basket. She said, ‘I have embarrassed you. I’d better go.’

  ‘No,’ he said, almost shouting. ‘No.’

  They fell silent and Joyful, changing his position, stretched, his claws clicking on the parquet floor.

  Glancing up, Sylvester said, ‘My ex-wife Celia had an ornamental French clock with an irritating tick, which she posed on the mantelshelf. Pose was a word she liked to use. “Let us pose this here,” she would say. When she left me, she took it and a lot of things with her. Now I enjoy the space.’

  Not answering directly, Julia said, ‘What about the rest of your messages? You switched the thing off.’

  Switched it off and invaded her privacy, thought Sylvester. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘Good idea.’ He pressed the button and picked up pad and pencil. If I do this, he thought, it will give us a breather to collect our wits, and listened to three more routine messages before switching off. ‘That seems to be the lot,’ he said, but immediately the telephone began to peal. He picked up the receiver and said, ‘Hallo?’

  ‘What’s this about my death?’ enquired a woman’s voice. ‘It’s not the kind of joke you usually make. You have thoroughly upset Hamish with your messages of condolence: please construe.’

  ‘Oh my God!’ exclaimed Sylvester. ‘That’s what I was trying to remember. Rebecca wrote me in America that she had read of your death in The Times. I tried and tried to reach Hamish to tell him how sorry—What?’ He held the receiver away from his ear. ‘Yes, that’s the one, she was my sec—Oh, Calypso, I’m so relieved—What?—Yes, of course I have other aunts—Oh, really?—That one?—But she’s been senile for years, one could only be pleased, well, relieved for her—No, no, you sprang to mind because you are my best aunt, my favourite—No, she did not mention your name, she just wrote “aunt” and I sprang to the conclusion—Yes, please forgive me and apologize to Hamish—You will? Oh good, that’s a relief, and Calypso, thank you, you’ve done something wonderful, you’ve cheered … Oh, she’s rung off.’ He held the receiver for a moment, then replaced it gently and with a sense of joy watched Julia laugh. She had a merry laugh.

  ‘How,’ she asked, still laughing, ‘did that happen? What made you think your aunt was dead?’

  With embellishments he explained Rebecca’s letter. ‘Rebecca is the one who thinks you are a squatter. She is the one whose messages you have just heard, she condoled in a postscript—I remember it now.’

  Julia said, I wonder who the seedy-looking man can be?’

  ‘What seedy man?’

  ‘The one she saw lurking in the street when she spotted Joyful on your doorstep.’

  ‘What was he doing there?’ Sylvester glanced at the sleeping animal.

  ‘Waiting. I do not bring him in when I am working. Last night when I took refuge was the first time I let him come in with me.’

  ‘He is more than welcome,’ said Sylvester, ‘any time.’

  Julia frowned. ‘Once or twice when I was in here I heard him bark, and a man swear at him. That might have been—’

  ‘More likely Rebecca’s fertile imagination, she invented Calypso’s death. It comes back to me—“your aunt has passed away”. She can equally have invented a seedy man.’

  ‘An aunt did die.’ Julia grinned.

  ‘I see you are able to quibble.’ He was delighted to see her more cheerful. ‘Tell me,’ he leaned towards her, ‘did British Rail ever make trouble?’

  ‘British Rail?’ she asked in puzzlement.

  ‘When you stopped the train to save a sheep which was stuck on its back.’

  ‘What do you know about that?’ Julia stared at him.

  ‘I was on the train. I watched you. I wanted to help but I hesitated and did nothing. Was there a fuss?’

  Julia said, ‘Oh?’ Then, ‘No, nothing. I think the guard must have fixed it; he was kind. How odd, I had quite forgotten.’

  ‘I wondered,’ Sylvester blundered on, ‘whether your action then had anything to do with that toy? You looked then, with that sheep, just as you did just now when I gave you the toy.’ Distraught, he thought; she was distraught.

  Julia looked down at the toy. ‘It’s wet,’ she said, ‘soaked.’ She put the toy down. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘it’s probable.’

  Sylvester said, ‘Go on, please tell me.’

  Julia looked out at the garden; he should have a bird bath, she thought. That would round off the garden, make it complete. She said, ‘I had been to their funeral. Giles and Christy’s. My—Clodagh has them buried in her village cemetery. I don’t feel Christy is there, and I don’t care about Giles. I was on my way back to London; I would not go into her house. She was glad when I left, I could see that. She made a big thing of the funeral, she and her friend Madge; it was their “do”, nothing really to do with me. I was not exactly compos. Yes, the sheep did trigger a connection with Christy. If I could help the sheep, it helped Christy. Something of that sort? Nothing logical. I was on a “high”.’

  ‘Of grief?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He remembered her grief; he had just seen it again. ‘I should not ask all these questions,’ he apologized, wanting to ask more, feeling compelled.

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’ She looked down at the toy, not touching it.

  Sylvester reached for the whisky, poured for them both, handed Julia her glass. ‘What did you do when you got back?’ She had disappeared in the crowd. He had wanted to follow, had not.

  She sipped her whisky. ‘I cleared all their things out of the flat. I felt mad. I thought I must rid myself of all of it—I did that—scrubbed the place—couldn’t talk to anyone—there was no-one—I got some vodka, thought I’d get drunk. A girl from another flat came noseying. I gave her a fright, I think, and she was the one who drank the vodka. I walked in the rain—miles and miles—fell asleep in a church somewhere and the priest—I wanted to talk but there is, there was something I could not, cannot tell, I—’

  On the doorstep Rebecca pressed her thumb on the bell.

  Sylvester exclaimed, ‘Bloody hell!’ and, glass in hand, went to open the door.

  ‘I had a feeling you might be back.’ Rebecca stood robustly on her high heels.

  (This may be the most important moment of my life and she interrupts.)

  ‘Rebecca! What brings you here?’

  ‘Milk!’ Rebecca extended a pint carton. ‘I was passing on my way out to lunch and it occurred to me that I have plenty and that should you be back I could spare you a pint. Am I not clever?’

  ‘– – – –’

  ‘Aren’t you going to ask me in?’ Rebecca swayed inwards. ‘We are letting a lot of cold air into your warm hall. I won’t stay long, I know what you are like when you are jet-lagged. I just came to see whether you are OK.’

  ‘Thanks, I am.’

  ‘My God, Sylvester! There’s a dog behind you!’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What’s it doing here?’

  Joyful advanced, interested but doubtful.

  ‘It’s welcome.’

  ‘Are you hinting that I am not? Where on earth did it spring from?’

  ‘He belongs to Mrs Piper.’

  ‘Mrs Piper?’

  ‘Mrs Piper.’

  Rebecca mouthed, ‘Your cleaning lady? What is she doing working on a Bank Holiday?’ she whispered.

  ‘Actually, we w
ere having a drink. Would you join us?’

  ‘No thanks. It’s too early. It’s not my drinking time.’

  Sylvester said, ‘It’s still American drinking time.’

  ‘I’ve seen that creature lurking on your doorstep, it growled at me. What time is it in America?’

  Sylvester tossed the contents of his glass down his throat. ‘Come in,’ he said recklessly, ‘come in and see what Mrs Piper has done to the garden, it’s a miracle. Mrs Piper,’ he said, leading the way, ‘this is my former secretary, Rebecca. Mrs Piper, Rebecca; Rebecca, Mrs Piper.’

  ‘How do you do?’ Julia stood up, extended her hand.

  Rebecca shook it. ‘Bitter cold day.’ She eyed Julia. ‘I was just passing,’ she said. ‘I brought Mr Wykes some milk.’

  Julia smiled.

  ‘Come on, Rebecca, have a drink.’ Sylvester replenished his glass. ‘Look at the garden.’ He waved his arm. ‘Miraculoso. I think I am a bit pissed.’

  ‘You should not drink with jet lag.’ Rebecca moved to look out. ‘Goodness!’ She stared at the garden. ‘What happened to Celia’s cherub?’

  ‘Went out with the rubbish. Soon after Celia.’

  ‘As I too must. Nice to have met you.’ Rebecca swivelled her glance from the garden to Julia. ‘I will be in touch,’ she said to Sylvester who, following her to the door, wheedled, ‘You sure you won’t have a drink?’

  ‘Quite sure.’ Rebecca opened the street door. ‘See you soon,’ she said, stepping out.

  Sylvester shouted after her, ‘Thanks for the milk,’ and, returning to the sitting-room, collapsed laughing into his armchair. ‘Where were we?’

  But Julia said, ‘Tell me about the cupid,’ and he knew that Rebecca had robbed him of her confidence. The opportunity was lost.

  ‘The cupid?’

  ‘Oh! The cupid,’ Sylvester cried bitterly. ‘Celia’s cupid! It was horrible, a horrible plaster thing. I can’t think where she found it, can’t imagine. Anyway, she plonked it in the middle of the garden—she was always going to do something about the garden and never did—then someone whose taste she respected looked at it. I know! It was Calypso, the aunt who is not dead, and from her expression—her expression only, mind, Calypso would be too tactful to voice a derogatory opinion for fear of hurting Celia’s feelings, unaware at that period that Celia’s feelings are cast-iron—Celia twigged that she had boobed, bought a bit of loathsome kitsch, lost interest in the garden—not that she ever had much—so there it sat. And when she left me to remarry her first husband, Andrew Battersby, she left it behind but took everything else of the remotest value and I was inspired to root it up and put it in the dustbin. I say, Julia Piper, I am talking too much, it’s the whisky, but old Rebecca’s reaction to Celia’s cupid brings it all back. I told you, didn’t I, how I watched her load a taxi with the TVs and that she even took my new kettle?’