A Room With No Natural Light

by Douglas Lindsay

  Jenkins had been there long enough to know the signs. He called it the papal conclave. The others laughed. Pitt was too worn down to find it funny.

  Pitt could not remember ever laughing.

  ‘He’s having another affair,’ said Pitt dryly. ‘A woman he met in...’

  ‘Funny,’ she said, the word snapping out to cut him off. ‘What did he say about the business? Did he talk to you about opening up? Opening a café, conducting wine tasting tours?’

  Hardyman didn’t always talk about those things to Pitt; but that was just because they often had lunch together as friends when they didn’t talk about the viticulture business at all. However, recently, Hardyman had been warming to the subject.

  ‘No,’ said Pitt. It was easier to lie, but, when Daisy started worrying about money, he knew there was no escape. He would be sitting here being harangued for the next couple of hours. She would be annoyed at him about everything, and every word he said would be slanted negatively by the time it had been repeated from her lips.

  ‘I don’t believe you,’ she said. ‘What did he say?’

  Pitt lifted his gaze from the table and stared at her with dead eyes. Defences up, time to sit back and absorb the punches. This would be no boxer, soaking up the pressure in order to turn the tables later on; this was for the duration, to take hit after hit, at the end of which he would walk away.

  ‘You’ve got to do it,’ she said. ‘You’re not special. Is that what you think? Do you think you’re special? Better than everyone else? You think all these other vineyard owners, you think they all want to have people trampling all over their grounds? You think they like having to take customers round?’

  Pitt held her gaze for a while, eventually letting his eyes drift back down to the table. There had been a time when he would have answered her questions. Now, she asked so many, it was clear she did not anticipate any reply. As it was, as far as he knew, quite a lot of his fellow vineyard owners enjoyed lecturing to the public, and showing off their yards and their knowledge.

  Pitt would let the vineyard go bankrupt before doing any of that. Pitt was not listening.

  ‘Not you, though, because you’re special. You don’t need to. You’ll be fine with your vines and your fifty bottles of wine selling at nine ninety-nine every summer, that’ll do you. And all the time the bank are breathing down our necks, and we have... no... money...’

  Pitt wondered what Ju was doing. What would it be like to live with someone like Ju? To be married to Ju?

  Pitt belonged in a time where everyone treated each other with respect. Perhaps there never had been such a time, or place. There have been, and are, societies where women have been brought up to respect men, but not seemingly the other way around; a one-way deference. Pitt was willing for respect to work both ways, but Western society had passed him by, moved away from his values. No one had any respect anymore, and yet everyone seemed to demand it.

  Ju would not talk to Pitt like this, would not make such demands of him, would not instruct him on how he ought to conduct his life. And, in return, Pitt would be far more giving to Ju than he had ever been to Daisy.

  ‘You’re just going to sit there,’ she said, a statement rather than a question. No one, not even Daisy, could ever explain why she talked to Pitt like this. She did not understand the notion that Pitt would rather fail, let his business wither and die, than subject himself to public relations and human contact. She did not understand that he did not think as she did. And she did not understand that the only possibility she had of even getting Pitt to listen to her was to slow down, calm down, conduct reasonable argument, engage him, show compassion, and to understand his reticence rather than to shout abuse at it.

  Daisy did not understand Pitt, and Pitt did not understand Daisy.

  ‘Denbies, for example. Have you seen what they’re doing? Have you looked on their website? Have you seen the kinds of marketing tools they’ve started to use? Marketing tools. Do you even know what they are?’

  Perhaps Ju was changing the sheets on the bed. The sun would be streaming into the room at this time of day, a warm and hazy light. He could come in silently behind her, and, even though he made no noise, she would know he was there. As he entered, she would be leaning over the bed, her buttocks pressed against her thin cotton dress. She would stand, but not turn, waiting his touch. He would put his arms around her slim waist and press himself against her.

  14

  conversations with hardyman

  Hardyman had come down to the vineyard. Pitt had made sure that it happened on a day when Daisy would be out, taking her mother to a friend in Somerset. He had had an hour in the kitchen with Ju; an hour of silence. The beautiful silence that had not yet started to become frustrating. Now Hardyman had arrived, to walk the vines and give Pitt the latest news on the position of the bank.

  The bank had come to the idea that Pitt needed to be making more of an effort to attract income. He couldn’t possibly survive on the money he made from the sale of the wine alone. Hardyman did not know why the bank had suddenly started to think like that. Yet it made sense, he said. He could understand.

  Pitt did not care what the bank thought.

  Hardyman stood at the top of the hill, the best view of the vineyard, looking down across the vines. At the top of a long row of Dornfelder, a variety known for its colour and good acidity. Jenkins had pointed this out to Hardyman, who hadn’t been listening. Jenkins had uncomfortably moved the conversation on to that of dead birds.

  A large swathe of flat England sloped gently away from them. Small hills stood out. The hazy distance seemed a long way away. A big sky, cloud beginning to gather.

  Hardyman was squinting at the sky. Pitt had not wanted Jenkins to mention the birds, but had not said anything to him beforehand. Leaving it to chance. Had known that Hardyman ought to be told.

  Hardyman was looking at them both curiously.

  ‘Is that a euphemism for something?’ he asked.

  Jenkins laughed. Pitt caught Hardyman’s eye and looked away across the vines; Hardyman read the acknowledgement in the look.

  ‘Is that like the bees are disappearing, that kind of thing?’ he said, looking between the two men. Jenkins was laughing. ‘Do you mean that there are no more birds on planet earth, or the birds around here have disappeared?’

  ‘When was the last time you saw a bird?’ said Pitt.

  ‘I don’t know,’ retorted Hardyman. ‘This morning, probably.’

  ‘Exactly. Probably, in fact, about two minutes before you came on to our property.’

  ‘So, what’s that all about? Are you killing them? Is there some sort of disease around here? You wine people don’t like birds, do you? Jesus, John, what are you doing? You have to be bloody careful.’

  The smile had already gone from Jenkins’s face, even before Pitt gave him a doleful look. This is what loose talk brings upon you. Jenkins muttered something incoherent.

  ‘We’re not doing anything,’ said Pitt calmly. Voice neither defensive nor offended. ‘We don’t hate birds. We manage the birds, same as we manage all other potential pests, and that’s the end of it. The birds are gone and I don’t know why. We’ve found a few dead ones; we’re having one looked at by a vet. Hopefully he’ll be able to give us an answer.’

  Hardyman’s face furrowed as Pitt talked. He looked away, up to the sky, searching for avian life. Cocked his head to the side, looked curiously around them; turned and looked into the trees behind.

  Jenkins stared at the ground, wondering if the boss would have words later. Pitt looked at Hardyman, waiting for the next part of the interrogation.

  ‘That’s remarkable, isn’t it?’ said Hardyman finally, after his own brief investigation had confirmed the facts. ‘I mean, it’s not normal.’

  Pitt ran his hand across his face. Jenkins continued to stare at the ground, his toes digging at the dirt; wondering if he would defend himself, saying that Hardyman really had to be told. And not only Hardyman. />
  ‘It’s not normal,’ repeated Pitt.

  ‘You have to do something about it,’ said Hardyman. ‘There could be, I don’t know... what could there be? Some sort of poison. Have any people been affected?’

  ‘No,’ said Pitt quickly, and this time his voice was a little more strained. ‘No one is affected by it. Maybe there’s not even an it. We’re looking into the matter,’ he said, his voice taking on the air of a politician’s finality. ‘If we find out something’s wrong, it’ll be dealt with and we’ll inform the proper authorities. Until we understand what’s happening, I’m not going to go opening us up to something that might not be necessary.’

  Hardyman studied him for a short while, accepted his answer and turned away to look over the vineyard.

  ‘No birds,’ he muttered, and then in a slightly affected manner, removed a large white cotton handkerchief from his pocket and wiped it across his face. ‘Extraordinary.’

  *

  Jenkins waited for the words of reproach from Pitt, but they never came. Hardyman, at least, was a safe depository for the information, and Pitt had been curious to see his reaction.

  Jenkins waited and Pitt never said anything. This, unlike the instance of the missing birds, was not unusual.

  15

  As the weekend approached, Pitt noticed that Ju became nervous, edgier; that, by the Saturday morning, the air of melancholy that hung over her was much deeper, and that she was a young woman of great sorrow.

  *

  Yuan Ju had left China in late February. She was twenty-three years old. It seemed that her father had been saving all Yuan Ju’s life in order to buy her way out of the country, yet, in the end, they had been unable to collect all the money that she’d needed to pay for the long journey across Asia and Europe.

  Ju’s father had lived in Zhejiang province his whole life; an uninspiring life, moving with his parents from the country when the farm work in the Yangtze River delta dried up, to the city of Hangzhou. He had had such dreams of leaving, of travelling abroad to the places he’d read about in magazines.

  As the West had encroached more and more on China, he had married, and had begun to make plans to emigrate to Europe with his young wife. At first, against his own father’s advice, he conducted these plans through official routes. However, it became clear to him that he was unlikely to ever be allowed to leave; or that anyone in Europe would ever be likely to accept him.

  He fell into depression, his wife fell pregnant with their only child. Yuan Ju was born, with good omen, on a fresh and sunny spring morning, a sun that not even the smog of the city could obscure, in the year of the horse. Yuan Ju would be blessed. And, from the beginning, her father was determined that his daughter would have the life of Western freedom that he had been denied.

  Ju was raised with stories of life in Europe, the art and the free will, the weather and the money, the newspapers and media, the mountains and the ice cream. Everything. Her father took the distilled essence of every positive thing he had ever heard about Europe, wrapped it into a single ball of beauty and hope, and presented the dream to his daughter.

  She grew up with the dream, but, by the time she finally left China, to fulfil the destiny her father had always intended, she had not wanted to go.

  Alone with her mother, she cried, and said that she would send for her as soon as she was in a position to. Her mother did not think that would happen, but did not say. Her grandmother had not cried, but Ju had known how horribly sad she was. The day before she left, her grandmother had given Ju a book. It was old and faded, and contained Chinese classical poetry from the time of the old dynasties.

  Like her mother, Yuan Ju’s grandmother had known that she would never see Ju again.

  Her father took her to the collection point, so that her mother did not have to see Ju climb into the back of a lorry. He told his wife that he was taking Ju to the airport. She knew that he was lying, just as he was aware that she knew of his deception. Yet the lie had to be told. No one talked about it, and, that evening, they returned to their small apartment on the twenty-third floor of a humble block on the outskirts of Hangzhou, and ate rice and fish, and talked no more of Ju and the journey on which she had embarked.

  That night her mother cried.

  *

  There had been boats, buses, trucks; whatever was best to cross any particular border, a tangled route to shake off detection. The promise at the end was worth it.

  Across Asia they had spent four weeks crammed in the container of a truck in the cold. By the end of that time, the stench of illness and impending death had been their companion.

  Yuan Ju’s grandmother, who had been too old and straightforward to bother with the deception of her father, had given Ju instruction on how to shut down her brain. She said it would be the only way to survive being enclosed so long in such a confined space with so many people.

  Ju had spent many hours sitting on the floor of her room, her legs crossed, her head bowed. Learning the art of placing your brain in hibernation; shutting off all rational and irrational thought; mind closed to others; heart rate very low; blood barely running around her body.

  Wake up when you see daylight.

  Yuan Ju had shut herself off. It was difficult at first; had she been brought up in the West, where everything is comparative, where there are extremes and seemingly nothing in the middle, she would have called it the hardest thing she had ever done. She did not think like that. It was just something else she had to do, and it was not easy. However, eventually, she shut herself away, curled in a corner, oblivious to the discomfort, suffering and illness of others around her.

  She tried not to wonder how she would be required to work off her passage when she arrived in Great Britain, but the fear of it haunted her. She had heard stories, although her father said that they were tall tales put around by government people who did not want their citizens being smuggled out of the country to a better life.

  Eventually, when they were moved from the first truck, and then smuggled across several borders in quick succession, she became aware of the conversations going on around her. None of the people seemed to know what they were coming to. For a while, Yuan Ju kept her distance, but, after a few more days, she found that she needed the company. She could only turn her brain off for so long.

  There was much talk of forced labour. Some of them already knew people or had family members who had been required to go down this route. However, when she had finally joined in a conversation and voiced her opinion, the others hadn’t seemed interested. One or two of them had given her a strange look, and she’d had no idea what it had meant.

  She had spent the remainder of the journey in silence, head down, staring at a dirty floor, trying to remain unaware of what was going on and being said around her.

  *

  The glass bowl slipped from her hands and shattered instantly on the stone floor with an explosion of sound. Daisy leapt up from her chair; Mrs Cromwell let out a loud gasp, a quickly drawn breath, turning in shock and outrage.

  Ju stared down in horror and embarrassment as the pieces of the bowl shattered and travelled without much resistance over most of the flat stone tiles.

  ‘In the name of God!’ shouted Mrs Cromwell. ‘I could have had a heart attack.’

  Daisy put her foot down to get up, her shoes immediately crunching a small piece of glass. Ju, horrified, waved her hand for Daisy to stay seated, and picked her way through the glass to get a brush. She returned shortly, a broom in her hands, and swept the floor quickly and noisily, the glass clattering. Looked at the clock frequently as she did so.

  Mrs Cromwell noticed, as Daisy studied the sweep-up operation.

  ‘Going somewhere, is she?’ said Mrs Cromwell.

  ‘She gets the afternoon and evening off,’ said Daisy. ‘You know that.’

  Mrs Cromwell stared bitterly at Ju, her small shoulders moving quickly in time with the brush.

  ‘I hope you’re going to take the cost of
that bowl from her wages,’ said Mrs Cromwell. ‘Once they break something, and you don’t punish them for it, you never know where it’ll end.’

  Daisy didn’t look at her. She had come, within two weeks, to desperately wish that Ju would leave, to desperately wish that she had a reason to sack her. But everyone seemed to like her cooking, which was the main reason she was there. Pitt barely seemed to notice her, which was at least reassuring; and, more than anything, she did not want to give her mother the satisfaction of getting what she wanted.

  Mrs Cromwell had continued to avoid eating Ju’s food, and had eaten toast for every meal for the past twelve days.

  Ju had the floor immaculately swept in a few minutes. The bowl was collected and placed in the glass-recycling bin.

  ‘She missed a bit,’ said Mrs Cromwell, pointing indistinctly to the floor, having waited for Ju to come back into the kitchen before saying it. Ju paid no notice. Daisy felt compelled to look, and was annoyed at herself for doing so. Couldn’t see anything.

  Shortly afterwards, Ju stood in front of Daisy, bowed respectfully and left the kitchen. Mrs Cromwell watched her go in sullen silence.

  Ju went to her room and had a quick shower, changed, and went back downstairs and out of the front door without going back into the kitchen. She walked down the long path to the main road, and then the further twenty-minute walk into town until she came to the first bus stop. There she waited.

  *

  By the time Pitt entered the kitchen again, Yuan Ju was already at the bus stop. He had hoped he would see her, but was aware that more than likely he’d be too late. She’d been nervous again at breakfast, uncomfortable. He recognised it from the previous weekend, and he had begun to wonder again where it was she might be going. Had hoped to see her before she’d gone off, but had become sidetracked out amongst the vines, talking over early signs of powdery mildew with Blain. He didn’t think it would develop into a problem, but it had to be addressed early on.