The Whites of Gold

by Sam Lock

  ‘Yes. You live in a dream world, Eddie. In fact, I sometimes wonder what you’ve been up to all these years.’

  ‘All what years?’ I almost snapped back at him.

  ‘Well, all the years before we met. You don’t realise it, but you never talk about them. You speak about when you left home and about your first years in London, when you lived with those two weird blokes in Battersea; but never about the years between – between then and now.’

  ‘I do,’ I protested. ‘I’m sure I do.’

  ‘You don’t, Edwin,’ said Mark emphatically. ‘All I know is that you left Battersea to move to Chelsea – to where you live now; and that’s about it.’

  I quickly thought about this, wondering if it was really true; then realised that to some extent it was. For I had never spoken to Mark about Patrick, for example; nor had I ever said very much about the work that I did or about the colleagues at my office; although the reason for the latter was simply that it was such plodding, tedious work, in which I took little interest.

  ‘I mean, you must have had friends during those years,’ said Mark. ‘You must have had affairs – had lovers.’

  And strangely enough, I felt too ashamed to be able to tell him that I hadn’t; that I had been forced to seek sexual relief occasionally with some stranger, but during that time had formed no real relationship; only Patrick, Len and Thelma had been my friends. It seemed that the deaths of my parents, followed so quickly as they had been by the arrival of Mark in my life, had acted as some kind of turning-point that had lifted me out of myself. So all I said to Mark in reply was, ‘Well, I had a few affairs, Mark. Of course I did. But they weren’t very interesting. None of them are worth talking about.’

  ‘Oh, Eddie – you are an odd one,’ Mark answered with a laugh, suddenly pushing me through the doorway of our room and on to our bed. ‘You know,’ he said, ‘there are a lot of things going on out there, in that big, wide world of ours … This year, a man walked on the moon, for instance. And a woman – yes, a woman, Eddie – was made the prime minister of Israel. These things count, you know.’

  ‘And Judy Garland died,’ I said, a little wickedly.

  ‘Judy who?’

  ‘Garland. She died.’

  ‘Well, there you are,’ he answered, giving me a quick shake that soon turned into a hug. ‘At least you are aware of something that’s gone on outside that little dream world of yours … Come on, Eddie. Let’s turn in. Put out the lights and go to bed.’

  To which I readily agreed, knowing that Mark and I would be lying there in silence for a while, inhaling the apple sweetness of the air that wafted about the room and scented everything in it. Not strongly, but with a very pale, very delicate perfume.

  XII

  Today there’s been such big news! Thelma announced that she’s found a job for herself – a full-time one; and doing exactly what she’s been wanting to do, which is to run – she said ‘manage’ – a restaurant.

  She announced this when she and Len and I were having Sunday lunch together (Mark not being there because of his work) – saying she had something to tell us that she thought we ought to know. And I have to admit that both Len and I were quite stunned by the news.

  ‘But where, Thelma?’ was Len’s first response. ‘And how?’

  ‘South Kensington. A bistro,’ she said. ‘Saw it in the Standard. In the ads.’

  ‘And actually running it? Actually managing it?’ Len went on, a little too questioningly, I thought.

  ‘Yes,’ Thelma answered. ‘Of course.’

  ‘How do you mean – “of course”, Thelma? You’ve never done such a thing: never had such a job.’

  ‘I know. But I do know a hell of a lot about it – don’t I? Through you. I’ve listened to all your worries and troubles for years, Len. Helped you to sort them out. Discussed changes, plans – different menus and so on – so I’m not exactly a novice, am I?’

  ‘No. But –’

  ‘I think Len is surprised, Thelma. That’s all it is, isn’t it, Len?’ I said, cutting in, wanting to relax the feeling of tension there was between them. ‘Isn’t that so, Len? She’s been pretty secretive about it, though – hasn’t she? You have, you know, Thelma.’

  ‘Well, what if I have?’ Thelma replied, with a quick toss of her head. ‘You don’t get anywhere if you talk too much. Deeds count more than words.’

  ‘Well then,’ said Len, puffing out his cheeks a little and obviously adjusting to the idea. ‘We’ve got to – well, congratulate you, haven’t we? Haven’t we, Eddie? … An extra glass of wine is what is called for here, I think. Come on. Let me top that one up for you, Eddie; and let’s drink to – well, to Thelma, shall we? The new manageress.’

  As Len and I lifted our glasses and wished Thelma well, I saw how deeply nervous Thelma had been made by this sudden new direction her life had taken.

  ‘Are we allowed to kiss her?’ Len said jokingly. ‘Or do we just shake hands?’

  A strong blush began to colour Thelma’s cheeks, and the three of us then clung together and kissed each other and laughed.

  I am now thirty-three years old, and all my adult life I have struggled to free myself from my past; yet I’ve done so only a little, it seems to me. But perhaps it will always be like that. Perhaps to be really free of it wouldn’t be right – be good. That’s what I’m having to learn, it seems. For as I have made these mental trips into times gone by, I see that what is there, lying behind me, is not really there at all; not trapped in time as I think it is. Instead, it is free and alive and playing its part in making me what I am – what I have become. The wheel keeps turning. The understandings change from day to day. I remember how Patrick said to me once – Patrick, the Irishman, I mean, who used to be my neighbour. ‘You’ll never pin it down, Eddie,’ he said. ‘You can’t nail time. It’s ever on the move. Ever on the go.’

  He said that one night after we had slept together for the first time, when I had been restless, feeling guilty about being with him on account of my age.

  ‘Oh, Jesus, Eddie,’ he said. ‘What’s wrong with us enjoying ourselves, for Christ’s sake? Kiss the joy as it flies, lad – that’s what you need to do. Life’s short. You know that – don’t you? It’s here and gone in no time. You won’t be thinking that right now, when you’re so young, but you’ll know it as you grow older. Look. You like me – don’t you? You enjoy being with me. You enjoy it when I kiss you in the way that I do – when I make you relax; when I ease you into it. And there’s a shiny new moon up there in the heavens tonight, sending its blessings down. So what more do you want for us than that?’

  I loved to hear Patrick speak in that way – the soft, lilting sounds of his voice would always enchant me.

  ‘Thinking of your dad, are you?’ he would sometimes ask, when there were signs of my being morose. ‘Is that what it is? … Well, I’ll tell you what, Eddie, he wasn’t thinking of you – was he? – when he treated you the way he did. Kiss it as it flies, Eddie. Let go. Give in …’

  ‘Hey – look,’ he once said to me, as he turned on to his back naked, in order to display his lanky body. ‘How about this, then? With its John Thomas all erect and all the saints of Ireland looking down at it in amazement. For there’s not many will have seen the likes of that, Eddie – I can tell you.’

  And I knew that he was right: that it is wrong to be so retentive, in the way that I tend to be. ‘Come here,’ he said, pulling me close to him and drawing me into his arms. ‘You’re a lovely boy, you are. Do you know that? What do I have to do to make you happy?’

  I had no answer to that. For I was then just seventeen years old, and knew myself much less well than I do today. All I could say to him in reply was that I was grateful for what he had done for me; for waking me up to things that I needed to know and that I really ought to have known by then. And for the short time that we were together I did know, I did experience, a happiness of sorts. He didn’t have the steadiness of character that Mark seems to be b
lessed with. He was more mercurial – and always looking for change. But when he gave, he gave – totally; with no barriers, no conditions.

  ‘Jesus,’ he said one day, after we had known each other for some time. ‘You’re an odd chappie, you are, you know. But you’re going to meet someone someday who’ll get the hang of you better than I can’ – which, when I look back at it, seems to have been a prediction that looked ahead to my first meeting with Mark, which had been in that bar in Piccadilly. That same bar to which I had first been taken by Patrick when he had been showing me the town, and when, on the top deck of a bus coming home, we had encountered that noisy band of boisterous women.

  The year is now drawing to a close, with the days shorter, the nights colder and much longer, and with a touch of frost in the early hours before the day begins. Somewhere, a long way off, tucked into the folds of the Exmoor hills, is the small town in which I was born, and to which, after so many years of being away from it, I have only recently returned. Now, with the winter drawing near, things there will be peaceful for a while, as the countryside draws itself together for the festival of Christ’s birth; after which there will be the frosts and snows that mark the beginning of the year before the sudden advent of a new spring; later to be followed by the fulfilment of a new summer.

  Little by little. Day by day. What was it some wise sage once said – some Greek, I think – that the beautiful comes about through many numbers? Well, I don’t know that much about beauty. My life has been too curbed, too restricted, for me to grasp the full meaning of that word. Mark grumbles because I’m not ‘open’ enough – always being so watchful, he says, so very careful, and always ready to see the negative side of things. But I do have some idea of what beauty might be, and occasionally, in some odd moment when I’m caught out (which is usually when I’m not thinking too much), I catch a glimpse of something that might be it: seeing everything not in a golden light exactly, but certainly in a different and more optimistic one than is my general view of the world.

  What an odd thing memory is, though. The way it works. How almost anything can trigger it into action. I experienced this yet again today, after returning home from work; when, for some reason – I am not sure what – an image suddenly surfaced out of the past and came floating into my mind: of one of the labourers who worked on my uncle’s farm, a man that I saw regularly as a child, when there on my weekly visits. A swarthy, not very attractive character, with a hooked nose and beady, glittering eyes – the memory of him is a haunting one.

  Rusty is what he was called, I think, or what he was known as, rather, since it was obviously some kind of nickname. And I suddenly recalled how his eyes would often watch me from within the shadow of some barn, or from the corner of a haystack in the fields, as I was going about doing the little jobs I had been set to do – collecting eggs from the chicken runs; or apples, perhaps, that had fallen before their time, but that my aunt would none the less use for making chutney. And I knew that I was afraid of him.

  Not that he was ever rude to me; nor did he ever show signs of there being anything violent in his nature. But young though I was, I sensed a need to be careful and not to engage with him at all – although now, as I look back, I cannot think why.

  What did he see in me, I wonder? What was he projecting on to me – or on to my image, rather? His own youth, perhaps? Some aspect of consciousness? I really don’t know. Or did it have to do with a loss of innocence, I wonder – that, by using me as some kind of object for his projection, he was seeking to recover?

  Whatever, he was an unusual figure – one deeply bound up with the natural world of the countryside, the world in which he grew up and in which he had always lived. For people used to say of him (it was my uncle who told me this) that he was capable of wizardry, and of casting some curious kind of spell. That there were times when he had been seen alone, at dusk, in the corner of a meadow – where, as the light began to fade, he could be heard making a peculiar kind of whistling noise that attracted small animals to him – wild animals, I mean; so that, as darkness fell, he could be seen surrounded by stoats, weasels, hedgehogs and the like; occasionally, it was said, even by a badger or a fox.

  He sometimes slept in the open too, and on hot summer nights could be seen bedding himself down beneath some hedgerow, where he would slumber until dawn.

  He didn’t look like an Englishman – more like a Spaniard or an Italian; with locks of jet-black hair that pushed themselves out from beneath the grey tweed cap he always wore; and with slightly sallow, oily skin – and (I recall how this used to disturb me) very wet, red lips and a tendency to dribble.

  He drank a lot as well. Mostly cider – very rough farm cider, that in winter he would drink hot: heated, as I recall, in a pointed copper cone that had been thrust into the fire.

  ‘You wants to see a little frog being swallowed alive?’ he would say to visitors to the area, whom he might meet in the local bars when scrounging money or a drink from them. At which they would usually laugh – until, to their astonishment, he produced a live frog from his pocket.

  ‘Now,’ he would say, ‘do you want to see ’im going down legs first or head first?’ To which when asked what the difference would be, he replied, ‘If ’ee goes down head first, you’ll see ’im kickin’ for joy. If ’ee goes down legs first, you’ll see the look of ’orror in ’ee’s eyes.’

  One day – it must have been when I was in my early teens – this man Rusty called at my parents’ house; and this being an unusual thing to have happened, my memory of it is a vivid one.

  I recall that I was ill and in bed, suffering from some nasty form of bronchial flu. Also, that it was a Thursday, which meant that it was market-day and that both my parents were out.

  I remember too that Amy was with me in the house and that it was she who answered the doorbell when it rang: a rather loud ring; and one that, after a pause of just a few seconds, was repeated.

  Then I heard the sound of Amy’s voice, and in reply to it, a voice I didn’t recognise, although there did seem to be something familiar about its tones and rhythms.

  I couldn’t hear what words were being said because, although the door had been left ajar, my bedroom was tucked away at the very back of the house, above my father’s study. None the less, I was able to guess from the verbal pattern of the exchange that Amy had let someone in and had closed the door behind them.

  Being curious to know who the visitor might be, I listened carefully, and after a pause heard the sound of footsteps on the stairs, accompanied by the sound of Amy’s voice, issuing some kind of instruction.

  ‘Top floor,’ was all I could hear, followed by, ‘The door will be open.’

  The footsteps then continued; and, before long, there was a knock on my bedroom door.

  ‘Yes?’ I called out, now anxious to know who it could be, and thinking to myself that it couldn’t be Tom, since he had been to see me only the day before, and in any case he wouldn’t be needing directions regarding the whereabouts of my room.

  So it was really to my very great astonishment that I saw the face of Rusty appearing in front of me, and disturbingly close to me as well.

  ‘Can I come in?’ he asked, in his coarse, West Country voice.

  ‘Oh, yes, do,’ I replied, rapidly sitting up in bed. ‘Do … please.’

  He had removed the peaked cloth cap he always wore when out of doors, and I remember how this had changed his image in a rather striking fashion, making him appear much younger than I had imagined him to be from my somewhat distant encounters with him on the farm. And I had never thought that he could smile, as he did then; nor that the jet-black locks of his hair, which always thrust themselves out so wildly from beneath the edges of his cap, would be as long as they were, so that as he pushed them away from his forehead they clung together, seeming almost to pin themselves back; drawing themselves towards the nape of his neck, and making him look, I thought, rather like some rough, eighteenth-century seaman.

 
What was also very striking, now that he was close to me, and caught, as he was, in a sharp shaft of light that struck across the room from its one tall window, was that the colour of his skin, which, on the farm, had always seemed to be a kind of brownish-grey or olive, broken only by the savage scarlet of his lips, now seemed a near russet-gold.

  ‘I’ve brought this for you,’ he said, holding out a large cone of newspaper, in which, as if it might have been a bouquet of roses, there was an enormous bunch of dark-green watercress; the leaves of which sparkled with tiny drops of dew.

  ‘I’ve just picked it for you, Edwin,’ he said. ‘From the river bank … Your aunt told me you liked it. She said it would cheer you up: make you feel better.’

  I hardly knew how to reply to this – how to thank him. His physical presence – his closeness – the intensity of his gaze as he handed me his gift, made me feel shy of him.

  ‘You do like it – don’t you?’ he asked, with a look of deep puzzlement in his eyes. ‘The cress,’ he said. ‘You do like it?’

  ‘Oh, yes – I do!’ I blurted out, now taking his offering but still not thanking him for it.

  ‘Well, I hope you’ll be better soon, young man,’ he answered, with a quick, clumsy nod of his head. ‘You didn’t mind – did you? – my coming to see you?’

  ‘Oh, of course not,’ I stuttered in reply. ‘It’s really kind of you. Really thoughtful’ – spoken, I hoped, with at least the semblance of a smile.

  He looked at me intently for a while, as if he might have been fixing a picture of me in his mind, then glanced swiftly about the room, taking in the dark Victorian furniture, the large china washbasin, with its matching, rose-patterned jug, the wardrobe, with its large bevel-edged mirrors, in which, I realised, he could see a reflection of me in my bed.

  His eyes paused for a few seconds before moving on to the bed itself, then back from it to me.

  ‘Shall I ask Mrs Gibson to put the cress in water?’ he asked. ‘Take it down with me?’