A Room With No Natural Light

by Douglas Lindsay

  He’d walked quickly back to the farmhouse, aware that even if he had caught Ju before she left, there was nothing that he would have been able to say to her. They would have looked awkwardly at each other; she would have gone.

  For that reason, perhaps, he was relieved to find her already on her way. Yet, the weight of sadness that seemed to grip Ju even more forcefully on the weekends now embraced Pitt.

  16

  Where did Yuan Ju go on Saturday afternoons? As June became July, and the temperature of the ground became more consistently warm, Pitt realised that it was consuming him; the mystery of the cook.

  He realised he knew very little about her. Did not know where she came from, did not know how long she had been in the UK. She could have had family; there might have been a boyfriend. Perhaps she had another job.

  Nothing, however, could explain what he did know. On Saturdays, before she left the vineyard in the afternoon, there was no light about Yuan Ju; the day sat heavily upon her, her mood was sullen and matched her constant silence. The following morning she seemed crippled by melancholy.

  Pitt became aware that the kitchen itself, and everyone else in it, seemed to come and go with these moods. There would be an uneasy air on Saturdays, a feeling of things not being quite right, though nothing that he could ever put his finger on. Jenkins was frequently edgy, Daisy more irritable than usual. Only Mrs Cromwell was unchanging in her condemnation and her accusations by silence.

  At first he wondered if Jenkins might be the problem. He never saw Jenkins and Yuan Ju speak to one another, but Jenkins looked at her, and, right from the beginning, he had made plenty of comments to Pitt. And once or twice Pitt had noticed Yuan Ju looking at Jenkins; quick glances, stolen glances, Pitt told himself.

  Jenkins worked on Saturday mornings and then had the rest of the weekend off. Perhaps they spent the evening together, away from the judgement of the vineyard. On the third weekend, Pitt made up some excuse to keep Jenkins in work all of the Saturday, then had him stay for dinner. But Jenkins had seemed quite happy, had seemed neither concerned nor interested when Yuan Ju had left for the afternoon. There had been nothing to indicate that Pitt had interfered with any plans.

  Pitt had embarrassed himself so much by interfering like this, even though there had obviously been nothing with which to interfere, that he hadn’t done it again.

  Weeks passed. The weather was not kind to the vintners of the south of England. Too many damp, cloudy days, an unexceptional summer.

  Pitt missed the warmth. He needed the heat that the climate-change scare-junkies peddled on the news every day. The planet was getting hotter, yet not the south of England. Not yet. He knew it would happen in small changes, and that two or three degrees over fifty years did not amount to much in a short life of growing grapes in East Gloucestershire, but he needed the warmth to come now. He needed every summer to be the summer of 1976.

  They waited for news from the vet, but Pitt was not of a mind to push. No news was fine. The vines did not seem affected, the birds had stopped coming and so they no longer found any dead. They could allow themselves to forget. Eventually, there would be news, one way or another, and they could deal with it as it came.

  Daisy was unhappy, but that was a state with which Pitt was familiar. Her unhappiness centred around the weather and the likely poor yield, the vicious presence of her mother in the corner, the continuing cipher of Ju at the kitchen sink.

  Everything seemed to be channelled through Ju. Mrs Cromwell remained committed to her leaving, committed to not eating the food she produced; although she did at least begin to expand her own culinary horizons. Pizzas would arrive at the door. In the middle of Ju cooking dinner for seven, Mrs Cromwell would suddenly stand at the cooker, taking as long as possible over a tin of beans.

  Pitt took every moment that he could alone with Ju, although these moments were never accompanied by words. The kitchen, with the dual devils of Daisy and Mrs Cromwell, such a bitter and unwelcoming place, suddenly became a room of light and beauty in their absence.

  When it happened, when Ju and Pitt would find themselves alone together, then the room would become warm, the light mellow and soft. They could barely look at each other, but they could feel one another and the warmth of their time alone.

  Perhaps, Ju sometimes thought, she had not had to leave China to feel something like this. Yet, those moments alone with Pitt were the only time when her heart did not bleed.

  17

  Pitt was sitting in the cellar when the door opened. It was Daisy. She stood framed in the light of the corridor outside. She looked sullen. It was a long time since she had disturbed his idyll of the cellar; a few years perhaps. His look was impassive, as always, but he had been glad not to be talking to the wine at the time. He didn’t mind Jenkins or Blain or one of the others walking in on him; but Daisy did not belong down here, she did not belong in his cut-off world of viticulture. Daisy was of the kitchen and the bedroom, stalking the corridors of the house; harsh words and glances, a life drained of affection.

  ‘Hardyman’s office is on the phone, they need to talk to you.’

  Pitt dropped his eyes. Hardyman’s office never phoned. Hardyman phoned. He felt a strange, unexpected twisting of his stomach.

  *

  A few minutes later, Pitt stepped out of the farmhouse into the shade of the late afternoon trees. It still felt warm. He had had a brief conversation with Hardyman’s office. Hardyman was dead. The police were not seeking to interview anyone else in connection with the death. Everyone shocked. They were calling all his clients. They would let him know when the funeral arrangements had been made.

  After that brief call, he’d had an even briefer conversation with Daisy.

  ‘Hardyman’s dead,’ he said. ‘Killed himself.’

  Daisy, who had stood watching Pitt while he took the call, looked unimpressed.

  ‘All right for some,’ she said.

  Immediately, she had one of those rare moments when she realised she sounded like her mother, but covered the thought with an expression that deepened and turned more unpleasant. She walked from the room, nowhere to go. Glanced at the clock as she went, realised she could have a gin and tonic, and so her final moments of departure had some purpose.

  Pitt was alone with Yuan Ju for the first time in a couple of days. Ju had been setting the table for the workers as Pitt had talked on the phone, with Daisy watching; an intruder to the bad news. From two pots on the stove, food burbled and popped; the kitchen was filled with the scent of garlic and lime and soy and coriander.

  It had become so commonplace, that Pitt had to force himself to stop and enjoy it, to take in this new pleasure that had come to his life. The way Hardyman would have done.

  Except, Hardyman had not been enjoying life so much after all.

  Their eyes met, an occurrence more rare than finding themselves alone. She was standing by the table, seven sets of chopsticks in one hand, seven knives and forks in the other. He was standing by the Welsh dresser, where the old-fashioned dial phone sat perched on a clear surface; where once it had been in amongst clutter and discarded papers and new bills, until Ju had brought order.

  They drew each other in, but did not move. It did not matter whether Ju understood the words that had been spoken, for she completely understood the look on Pitt’s face.

  The kitchen was still and warm, dinner bubbled on the stove. The twin malevolent presence was absent, and sadness weighed upon both Pitt and Ju. They embraced each other from a distance of five yards. She did not know this man at all, but she sensed every part of him. She knew every inch of his body, she knew what he was feeling, she knew the thoughts that ran through his head.

  She could walk forward now and take him into her arms, as much for herself as for him. Today, at this moment, they were equal, and they could have and hold each other.

  In thirty years, Pitt had made one friend. He had lost the friends from old, the university crowd, long ago. Once Daisy had
Pitt to herself, she had been happy to shake off the others. Pitt had, much to her chagrin, acquired Hardyman along the way; now he was gone, and the instant sadness of it drained him.

  He lost himself in Ju’s eyes for a few moments. He had no idea how long they stood there. It was just a few minutes, but it could have been an hour. Time stopped. The growing feeling that he’d had, that he and Ju had, an understanding that was of a different world than language, was confirmed. Bound in sadness, nothing for them except each other.

  As if Daisy had sensed it and decided to leave them alone.

  Pitt felt her hair in his hands. Their foreheads together, his neck slightly bent, their bodies still apart. Then slowly drawing closer and closer, until they touched, and he drew her head into his chest. He smelled her hair. Her arms circling him, touching lightly behind, her head squeezed into his chest, the first embrace she had felt in months.

  They stood, five yards from each other, both imagining the caress and the comfort of the other. Yet, they could not move. Pitt could feel her hair, and smell her and feel her embrace, yet could not draw her in. Their eyes locked, they stared across the kitchen. Ju could not take a step closer to him, no matter how much she wanted to, no matter how much she believed that it was what Pitt wanted.

  Pitt had to make the move. Yet he could not.

  His head and heart engulfed by sadness and a crippling feeling of hopelessness, finally he snapped the spell, turned away, opened the back door and walked out into the shade of the afternoon trees.

  Jenkins was coming towards him, an abrupt re-acquaintance with reality, riding one of the quad bikes the guys had persuaded him to buy three summers previously. Pitt stood in front of him, the lugubriousness that was his common demeanour supplemented by something even more tragic. Jenkins, forceful and direct, the bringer of ill news, was stopped in his tracks.

  ‘You all right, Mr Pitt?’ he asked, as he climbed off the bike, cutting the engine.

  Pitt was staring in the trees. With the noise of the engine gone, he could hear the buzz of insects but not the sound of birds. Suddenly the lack of birds gave him an immense feeling of claustrophobia, as if he and Jenkins were trapped somewhere that birds could not go.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘What’s up?’

  Trying to flick the switch, from introspection to business. Usually it was straightforward. Usually he would be trying to remove himself from Daisy’s acerbic words about poor yields and bad weather and inefficient management.

  ‘Bad news,’ said Jenkins. The expression on Pitt’s face was unchanging. At this stage of the summer there was never going to be good news. The summer months were all about hoping for good weather, and hoping nothing went wrong. Good news came in agonisingly slow stages, a minute at a time, when nothing happened. Bad news arrived in an instant, on the back of a quad bike.

  ‘The vet we took the bird to...’ said Jenkins, then he let the sentence drift off, the look on his face saying the rest. Felt responsible, as he had trusted Blain on his word. ‘We thought we could trust the guy to come back to us first.’

  ‘Who did he show it to?’ asked Pitt.

  ‘A contact he had at DEFRA.’

  Pitt breathed out strongly through his nose, his lips tight shut, his face set in stone.

  ‘What did he find wrong with it?’

  ‘Nothing,’ said Jenkins.

  Another heavy breath. He realised at that moment that this was what he had been expecting. He had no idea why the birds were dying, yet somehow he felt that it was not going to be explained by science.

  ‘So why did he take it to DEFRA?’

  Jenkins wasn’t entirely sure of the answer to that either, but in the absence of mundane fact, it had been an inevitability. In retrospect, what vet would not have taken it to DEFRA?

  ‘I guess because it’s unexplained,’ he said. ‘Birds are dying all over the place, there’s shit coming down from somewhere... It seems he thinks he was doing us a favour by making every effort to try and identify what was wrong. That’s what took so long. He had every damn test he could think of done on that bird. Turns out Blain even gave him a second specimen.’

  He paused. Thought that somehow Pitt looked hollow.

  ‘He was going to DEFRA the minute we took him the bird,’ said Pitt.

  He turned away from Jenkins and looked across the tops of the nearest vines. His mind was slowly emptying. He didn’t want to think about anything at that moment, the prospects were so grim.

  When they had seriously talked about financing and the bank, Hardyman had always sounded bleak. There had been a clear implication that he, Hardyman, was all that stood between the banks and Pitt losing control of the vineyard and wine press.

  ‘Do we know if there’s any sort of timescale?’ he asked, without turning back. Words directed into the cooling late afternoon air.

  Jenkins shook his head.

  ‘All right,’ said Pitt. ‘Maybe we’ll have a bit of time. If there’s no kind of avian flu evident, and since it doesn’t involve pigs or cows or sheep... you know...’ and he shook his head, as if he was struggling to think clearly, ‘maybe we’ll be all right for a few weeks yet. Maybe they’ll just see it as this kind of weird thing that’s happening. A curiosity.’

  He looked up at the sky, wondering where the plague was coming from. Jenkins followed his gaze, thinking that his boss was being far too optimistic.

  ‘They found nothing wrong with the bird,’ said Pitt, more a statement than a question.

  ‘Nothing.’

  Pitt closed his eyes, took in a final breath of fresh air. He was going to retreat downstairs, half an hour’s peace before dinner. Maybe he would not come up for dinner.

  ‘Hardyman’s dead,’ he said bluntly. ‘We’ll need to get a new accountant.’

  18

  Yuan Ju had no idea that she was killing the birds.

  Once she had discovered what was required of her on a Saturday evening, her sadness had become unbearable, yet, from the very first day, she had brought her sorrow to the vineyard. Homesickness, the trauma of the journey and of leaving her family, the claustrophobia of the awful kitchen with its wicked women, had enveloped Yuan Ju.

  Beautiful creatures were not immune to this melancholy.

  Ju had been unhappy from the start, yet she remembered her first morning with some fondness, for that was the day she had met Pitt.

  She had been told to make lunch for seven people, including Mr Pitt, and she had heard that the English liked Chinese food. She would never know that the English liked the bastardised version of Chinese food, where everything is cooked in sauces that all taste the same, sauces made in factories with too much sugar, too much salt, too many additives. She had made a simple dish, fried rice with pork. She had thought that maybe she would be left alone to get on with her work, but the man had sat and watched her. She had not known why.

  She had taken the few ingredients and tentatively started cutting and chopping. She wondered if she was being judged. Was this man sitting watching over her to make sure she could cook? To make sure that she knew how to grate ginger?

  She had presumed that he ran the vineyard, and yet he sat throughout the whole process watching her. That first morning she had expected him to speak, but he had said nothing.

  She had felt his eyes on her hands and fingers, but somehow, even then, even on that first day, she had known that there was nothing sexual or sinister or threatening in his presence.

  *

  He sat and watched her every morning. After the first day she had known that he wasn’t going to speak. Sometimes she wondered if she should talk to him, and she would play out conversations in her head. Simple words. She would describe what she was doing. She would talk about the kaffir lime leaves and how they complemented the coriander. She would explain about soy sauce and how the saltiness counteracted and complemented the sweetness of brown sugar. She would describe the interaction of the flavours, the sweet and sour, the saltiness and the spiciness, and how to co
mbine all four in one dish. And he would stand and listen. Sometimes he would ask questions.

  She stood in the kitchen and enjoyed preparing food for him. As she came to accept and expect his presence, she slowed down and became more obvious in what she was doing. She allowed him to see more clearly, as the dishes she prepared became more elaborate. When he was not there, she missed him. And when he was present, she would always pay attention at lunch to make sure that he had enjoyed what she’d cooked.

  He never spoke to her, and when Daisy was there he never even looked at her, and she knew not to look at him. Daisy presumed her husband would be disinterested in a Chinese servant, and he played the part.

  Yuan Ju settled into her role, and the comfort that his presence brought her. And at the same time, she had to accept her role as the brutalised sex slave on Saturday nights, while hoping that she hid her shame and embarrassment from her employers at the farmhouse.

  And she never knew that her sadness was killing the birds.

  19

  There was a small obituary in the Guardian, although Pitt missed it. Pitt hid himself away from the world, did not want to know what was going on, did not want to know about the lives of others. He was not an observer of life, not an interested participant in society. He was stuck in his own world, where the constants were.

  The funeral was in Hardyman’s hometown on the Dorset coast on a Saturday afternoon, a couple of miles from West Bay. The sun was shining but there was a chill wind coming in off the sea. Pitt had not brought a heavy coat and was cold. He had found a shirt, and bought a black tie for the occasion. He had not been to a funeral since his mother had died seventeen years previously. Had booked himself into a small pub for the night and had told Daisy he did not want to be driving back late. But, in truth, it really wasn’t so far, and he had just wanted the night away from home, to have the time on his own. Some part of him also wanted to be away from the unbearable sadness of Ju at the weekend, for she had become tragic in the hours before and after she went away.