A Room With No Natural Light

by Douglas Lindsay

  ‘I’m surprised anyone eats anything anymore,’ said Mrs Cromwell.

  Daisy had a knife in her hands. She wondered if she would have the strength to do it; take her mother’s life. Turn and throw, or walk deliberately behind her and slit her throat.

  The door from outside opened and Pitt walked in, removing his hat. He saw the two women; saw that Yuan Ju was not there. He knew nothing of her leaving, assumed she was in the laundry or somewhere around the house. He would only realise she was gone when Daisy served dinner. At least it would be apparent that, while she was serving it, she definitely hadn’t cooked it.

  8

  Sunday morning. A quiet day in the vineyard. A day when other vineyards were busy with tourists and wine tasters, Pitt’s business took a day off. None of the staff worked, not even Jenkins. The house echoed only with the footfalls of Pitt, his wife and his mother-in-law. At just before ten-thirty, Mrs Cromwell would take herself off to the local church. She would lunch with conspiratorial old friends and return in the late afternoon.

  The day would be free for Pitt and Daisy to spend together.

  *

  Daisy was at the sink. Pitt was sitting at the kitchen table drinking coffee. Neither of them had spoken in forty-three minutes.

  The door opened; Pitt did not turn, assuming Mrs Cromwell would be ghosting through the kitchen to spray the room with her odour of maliciousness and spite. However, the cold air of malice did not arrive and Ju drifted slowly into his line of vision. Head down, shoulders stooped slightly lower than they had been the previous day.

  When she hadn’t been there at seven in the morning, Pitt had assumed she must have stayed away for the night.

  Daisy turned and looked at Ju, whose eyes stared at the floor. Daisy hadn’t known when to expect her back; the insecurity that churned in her stomach had half expected Ju not to return at all. And then Daisy could have been relieved at being released from her mother’s torments, while being subjected to her cruel self-righteousness.

  Slowly, Daisy stepped away from the kitchen sink and Ju, as if she had been stuck in a holding pattern above an airport, moved forward into position.

  Pitt watched her for a few moments, and then looked away in case Daisy should see anything in his eye that betrayed him.

  *

  Sunday afternoon, Pitt found a dead finch at the foot of the trees that surrounded the side of the farmhouse. It was a bullfinch, although Pitt’s knowledge did not stretch that far. It was the second dead bird he’d found that week. Jenkins had brought him another.

  Pitt held his breath and lifted his head. There was a slight breeze and the leaves of the trees swayed and rustled quietly. A fraction of a sound, not the great all-encompassing noise of trees in a high wind.

  A few insects buzzed. Pitt moved his head, changed the angle of his hearing. A sleepy summer calm. Not a bird to be heard.

  He looked down at the small bird, began to run his fingers through the feathers. He studied it more closely than he had the previous two, interested at last to see if there was any obvious reason why the bird was dead. Like an ancient, enclosed tomb, it did not give up its secrets. It looked unharmed. Even to Pitt’s eyes it looked like a young bird, and it lay dead in his hands.

  Once again, with a look around him to see if anyone might be watching, he closed his fingers around the bird and slipped it into his pocket. However much he wanted to, he wasn’t going to be able to ignore it for much longer.

  9

  They had met at university, Daisy and Pitt. Part of the same crowd, a large group of history students. By third year, their number had dwindled to seven.

  As a couple, Toby and Jules had had an inevitability about them. Ian had been a rogue, forever on the verge of leaving, and finally dropping out of university on the eve of having to hand in his final papers, which he had not yet started. Bridget and Caroline, when university was over and they were both searching for jobs in London, finally realised what everyone else had long since known; that they were meant for each other.

  Which had left Pitt and Daisy, a very odd couple that no one could quite believe. Pitt, sullen and withdrawn, capable of warmth and compassion, anger and denial; Daisy, funny and outgoing and confident, always on the verge of breaking down and confessing her horrible insecurity. She tried to commit suicide at nineteen, and trapped Pitt one drunken midsummer’s evening, although it had not been her intention; somehow, though, they stuck and they had each other.

  Pitt managed to escape for a couple of years to France. It was where he learned the art of the vintner; not just the basics, for he quickly got under the skin of the business, discovered the beauty and the skill of the profession. Worked as a hired hand at a small vineyard in the north of Burgundy, not far from the town of Chablis. Monsieur Argot took him under his wing, amused by this thin and pallid Englishman who so quickly became engrossed in learning, who seemed enraptured by every aspect of the process.

  Pitt’s time in France seemed defined by the fact that he made no effort to learn the language. Argot spoke English, saw himself as more cosmopolitan than his neighbours, and enjoyed having someone on whom to practise. Pitt got by with the other workers at the vineyard, but never became one of them. From the start, he was more interested in the process and perfecting the end result.

  Daisy visited for a month in the middle of summer. Argot recognised the discomfort Pitt felt, but did not comment. Argot knew the kinds of mistakes that men made in the areas of love and had long ago vowed never to proffer advice on the matter.

  Just before June the following year, towards the end of his second year in France, Pitt suffered two sudden losses, a peculiar fate that might have had a different man agonising over the laws of coincidence.

  Argot died a strange death, run over by a tractor not far from the farmhouse where he lived with his wife and his cook, who was also his lover. One of the charge hands, carrying out an animated conversation with a fellow worker, shouting loudly to be heard over the noise of the engine, reversed into Argot, trapping him against the wall of one of the out-buildings. Argot died instantly.

  Pitt had not yet been contemplating his return to England, although Daisy had been agitating for it for some time. However, he quickly learned that Madame Argot would be taking over the running of the vineyard – something that she boldly stated on her very first day of bereavement – and, since she did not share her husband’s desire for cosmopolitanism and had no more English than Pitt had French, Pitt knew that he would have to leave. She would not necessarily push him out in a hurry, but there would be nothing to keep Pitt in the long run. A quick departure, he knew, would benefit everyone.

  He thought about taking a written reference from them and heading further south, to learn about the wine trade in a different climate. Then, three days after the death of Argot, he received news that his own father had died of a heart attack.

  They had exchanged letters occasionally, but he had not seen him since two months prior to travelling to France. Pitt returned home to help organise the funeral and had rarely visited France since.

  Daisy had been waiting for him. As with the month they had spent together the previous summer, she did not ask him any questions about the wine trade, running a vineyard or living in France. It was of no interest to her. The only things about Pitt that concerned her were details of his life that directly impacted upon her life. The only thing about France that concerned Daisy was the fact that Pitt was no longer there.

  Pitt struggled aimlessly for a while to adapt to life back in England, but when his father’s estate was sorted out he discovered he had some money. He bought a small vineyard in the east of Gloucestershire and set himself up as a winemaker. The only part that interested Daisy in any of this was that he asked her to marry him. He was never entirely sure why, other than that it seemed to be expected. He had no genuine interest in it.

  Thirty years later they had not progressed beyond the vague disinterest that had initially brought them together.


  Of their university friends, Toby and Jules had four children and had divorced a lifetime earlier. Ian had died of malaria in the Congo, having felt sure he didn’t need to take the necessary tablets. At the funeral, Toby remarked that, on Ian’s death certificate, they should have written cause of death as the invincible hubris of the rich and well-educated. Bridget and Caroline were still together, living a life of cliché with cats in a Parisian suburb.

  Daisy and Pitt rarely made love. She oscillated beyond his understanding of humankind. If he didn’t look to have sex, she harangued him for his lack of attraction; if he tried to have sex too often, it was all he wanted her for. In the beginning, he presumed there was a balance, a possibly attainable median figure, with which she would be happy. Eventually, over the years, he realised that there was no such figure, attainable or otherwise. His wife would never be happy, and there was nothing that he, or anyone else, could do to change that.

  Somehow, right from the beginning, it seemed inevitable that Mrs Cromwell would move in with them, and Pitt had so quickly retreated from his marriage, and to so great an extent, that he did not care.

  He was buying a vineyard so that he could walk through the vines, caring for them, nurturing them. And he would also be a vintner, so that he could do the same with the wine; he could sit in amongst the vats while the wine fermented, singing to it or talking to it, or just sitting with it, helping it through the process. Away from his wife, away from contact with anyone, away from life. In a dark room, with no natural light, overseeing a process that had been taking place for over five thousand years. No computers and no phones and no means of communication.

  The silence of the wine.

  The greatest advantage of all that wine possesses, Pitt had once remarked to himself, is that it cannot speak. And at least he had made himself smile.

  At the root of it all, though, the root of his own existence, was this undeniable truth; he did not care what anyone else thought and took no concern in others.

  Which was why the arrival of Yuan Ju had caused him so much bewilderment.

  10

  ‘She seems nice,’ said Daisy.

  Monday evening. Yuan Ju had made a mild chicken curry. It was the kind of meal that Mrs Cromwell had a small passion for, but she was bloody-minded enough to not give any quarter. Yuan Ju would not be staying, and so there was no use anyone getting to like the food she was making.

  The curry had been delicious. Everyone had eaten it. None left.

  ‘Yes,’ said Pitt.

  ‘I mean, I think I’ll probably keep her on beyond the three months. The lads all seem to like her.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Pitt was sitting at the kitchen table, cleaning his boots. Yuan Ju had already gone to bed. Her mood still seemed grey; she had not recovered from the Saturday evening. Head hung low.

  Daisy was eating a biscuit. Pitt did not look at her. He wondered if she appreciated the flavours of Ju’s cooking; the combination of sweet and sour, the juxtaposition of salt and citrus. He presumed not, for what did Daisy know about the finesse of Chinese cooking? How often had Daisy watched Yuan Ju prepare food?

  Daisy was glancing up, hoping to catch Pitt’s eye. Hoping for a reaction.

  ‘I think Blain and her, you know, I think there might be something there. I see them looking at each other.’

  Pitt didn’t rise to the bait.

  ‘I hadn’t noticed,’ he said.

  But he had noticed, which was why he knew that Daisy was lying. She was testing him. She must have seen him looking, and now was waiting for the hint of a glance, something in the eye. Waiting to pounce with her jealousy coiled, ready to be unleashed. She had been waiting thirty years; she had been waiting all the way through university, even before they’d got together. Daisy was jealous of everyone’s romance, and she would certainly be jealous if she sensed it in her husband.

  Pitt kept his eyes down and knew that he had to be more careful. Ju wasn’t going anywhere. Stay out of her way, don’t even look at her – at least, not until Daisy wasn’t around.

  Maybe even talk to her.

  Pitt thought that it wasn’t Blain who was interested, it wasn’t Blain who seemed to have some unspoken thing with Yuan Ju. It was Jenkins.

  ‘Do you actually notice anything?’ Daisy asked sharply. It was a direction in which she regularly took the conversation. He knew not to rise to it.

  ‘You’ve noticed she’s Chinese, I suppose?’

  He didn’t reply.

  But he had noticed everything. The slim hips, her feet neatly placed together as she stood at the sink, the small breasts over which her long black hair sometimes hung as she placed a dinner plate before him. He had noticed the dark eyes and pale brown skin and the look of sadness and the wonderful lips, and he had wondered if they ever smiled.

  He wondered what he could do to make them smile.

  11

  Yuan Ju was cooking a Thai dish, something she’d picked up in her few weeks in the UK prior to coming to work for Pitt. Fresh root ginger. Lemon grass. Kaffir lime leaves. Garlic chives. Fresh coriander. Prawns. Squid. Coconut milk.

  He watched her from his place at the kitchen table, as he had done the day before and each day the previous week. They had fallen into a ritual that was at once comforting and exciting.

  He wondered if Yuan Ju found it awkward that he sat there; watching the movement of her fingers; watching her glide slowly around the kitchen; watching her clothes stretch across her breasts as she reached up to the high shelves; watching the slow dancing movements of her feet.

  Sometimes he felt a dryness at the back of his throat, but that was easily solved by drinking water. He didn’t think it was sexual, the urge that drove him to remain at the breakfast table long after he was due out in the fields. It wasn’t sexual, but he didn’t like to examine it in case it might have been.

  It was the warmth of the moment, which had nothing to do with the sun and the stove; the warmth of watching someone quietly do their work. Slow movements in near silence. He couldn’t express it; he possibly didn’t even know how to think about it. The calm spread through his body. That was all.

  The precise movements of her hands, the gentle chop of the knife on the board, the grating of strange roots. Occasionally he would catch the aroma of fresh ginger or cinnamon, or the scent of some vegetable that he did not know.

  Some days he longed to talk to her, to stand beside her and ask her to talk him through what she was doing. The ease of that conversation meant that it was not for wont of an opening line that he did not speak. Yet he could not bring himself to engage her. He didn’t know what scared him. Other days he quickly accepted his reticence, did not torture himself and would sink into the elegy of the moment.

  Silence can seem so wise, more often than it can appear a lack of anything to say. Pitt’s own silence, the silence into which he had now drifted, was made with no conviction, having arisen organically from the man he had become. Perhaps it was not wise, but if it meant that Pitt spoke less stupidly than most others, it was a credit in itself.

  Did he take Ju’s silence as sagacity? Or was it respect for her employers, or a mundane lack of ability to communicate in English? Whatever it was, he realised that it was part of the strange chemistry that drew him towards her.

  He did not have to find the words; he would never have to find the words, and she would never expect him to.

  He could not remember a time when he had been able to speak to Daisy without her judging him, dissecting every word and phrase, pulling him apart. It had not driven him to silence – that had been a gradual and ever-increasing inevitability of his personality – but his near silence had been to his great advantage in conducting relations with his wife.

  He wondered sometimes if Daisy was offended by Ju’s silence.

  For all that he looked forward to mornings in the kitchen with Ju, they never ended well. Eventually, his work would drag him away, or Ju would finish what she was doing in the kitchen and
self-consciously leave to take up some other task.

  Pitt would feel like the clothes had been taken off his back.

  *

  ‘Listen.’

  They were standing in the shade at the back of the farmhouse, Pitt squinting towards the light.

  He had spent the previous few hours in the cellars, turning the bottles of cuvée, sitting beside the oak barrels of the pinot. He knew of some winemakers who thought there was little point in leaving the wine in the barrels for more than a couple of months. Pitt liked to leave them for a full year. Give or take.

  Then again, some winemakers probably thought there was little point in talking to the wine.

  He hadn’t talked this morning. He talked less and less as the vintage matured. He hadn’t come to thinking that it wasn’t important; he had come to thinking that the wine had aged enough that it did not need so much nurturing. He talked more at the start of the process. Even so, some days his words dried up and he had nothing to say. He transferred his taciturnity of the kitchen to the wine cellar and would sit in comfortably morose silence.

  It was a warm day, much cooler out of the sun. He could hear the buzz of a couple of insects. He lifted his head and looked at the sky. Away to their left there was a plane leaving its contrail against the pale blue, but it travelled soundlessly to them.

  Pitt looked back down at the dead starling that was lying at their feet.

  ‘I know,’ said Pitt.

  ‘No birds,’ said Jenkins, who did not share Pitt’s ability for leaving words unsaid. ‘One of the lads pointed it out yesterday afternoon. I hadn’t thought about it, but once he said it, you know... I can’t remember the last time I saw a bird around here. A live one, at any rate.’

  Pitt stepped away from him and looked into the trees that made up the small wood at the back of the farmhouse.

  ‘Not so long,’ said Pitt. ‘I noticed it just over a week ago. But even then, there were still only one or two.’