A Room With No Natural Light

by Douglas Lindsay

  Jenkins nodded.

  ‘Yes, boss,’ he said. ‘Anything else?’

  Pitt shook his head, turned and looked back at the farmhouse, and at the vines running away to the east. He felt no sense of loss or longing at the thought that he would soon be leaving. He was getting away to the next thing, that was all. If it didn’t work out, he would move on to something else.

  ‘Thank you,’ he muttered at Jenkins, without looking at him, the words almost unintelligible, then started to walk away. Back to the farmhouse. Back to the kitchen. Where Daisy would be waiting.

  ‘We need to talk, boss,’ said Jenkins.

  Pitt stopped, aware that he was walking out on his man, handing him the keys to the castle with as little conversation as possible. No instruction, no clue as to how long he would be gone. He looked at Jenkins, his expression slightly more open than it had been before.

  ‘We’ll be harvesting in a few weeks.’

  ‘You know about the harvest,’ said Pitt.

  ‘Yes, but you’re the one makes the decision.’

  ‘This year you’ll make the decision.’

  ‘Well, that’s fine, but were you going to tell me?’

  ‘I put you in charge of dealing with the television people.’

  ‘That’s not the same as putting me in charge of the entire operation,’ said Jenkins, the words snapping out, a rare display of annoyance at Pitt. ‘Are you going away? You never go away, and now it looks like... It looks like you’re leaving now, when we’re about to harvest, when we’re about to make wine. That’s what you do. You’re the winemaker. What are you doing?’

  Pitt had his eyes on the gravel. Jenkins did not take his eyes off him. Behind them, away to Pitt’s right, Daisy stood at the kitchen sink watching them, wondering what was going on. She could not hear them, although she recognised that Jenkins’ demeanour was unusual. Her tight little fingers gripped the stem of the wine glass. Silently, behind her, Mrs Cromwell sat in her chair by the fireplace. Daisy could feel the malevolence of her presence, as if she was a leaden shawl draped heavily around her shoulders.

  ‘Are you going off with Ju? I mean, where has that come from? She’s your twenty year-old Chinese cook. Some of the lads, you know... they think...’ He stopped. If Pitt really was going away with her, he didn’t want to be telling him what some of the lads were saying.

  ‘Yes, I’m going away with her. I don’t know how that’ll work out, but let’s just imagine that it will. Either way, I’m going. Daisy will be the owner of the vineyard, but you know she’s never run a business or made wine, so effectively all those duties will fall to you. I can’t promise you she won’t sack you and put someone else in place, but I doubt it.’

  ‘So I’m the winemaker,’ said Jenkins. ‘I’m...’

  He let the sentence drift off. He didn’t have to explain to Pitt what it meant. Pitt had obviously thought it through.

  ‘Yes,’ replied Pitt, dryly.

  Jenkins had been wondering, had let his mind wander in the previous day or two. How long would Pitt be away, and what would he be like when he came back? This changed everything, however, because if he never came back then it was no longer a matter of keeping things going; it wasn’t about making sure it was in order for Pitt’s return, making sure the wine met Pitt’s standards, that everything was in place for him to come back and take charge. Now, he could do it his way, he was free to make wine without the thought of Pitt looking over his shoulder, without Pitt returning to cast baleful glances over his work.

  ‘Everything all right?’ asked Pitt, his tone suddenly lighter, almost light-heartedly asking why it wouldn’t be.

  ‘Sure,’ said Jenkins.

  ‘You know how everything runs.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Pitt nodded. He’d had to say more than intended, but now he could relax. There was unlikely to be the necessity for so much conversation in the kitchen.

  ‘Any advice?’ said Jenkins, although he already knew how Pitt worked. As he said it, it felt more as though he was giving Pitt the chance to leave properly, with some sort of executive handover.

  ‘Hardyman always said the business side of it was pretty lousy, but it should be better once you get the TV people in, get some money for that. You might want to do all that other stuff with the public that you always talked about. Winetasting.’ He said the word as if it filled his mouth with sand. ‘That kind of thing. Daisy will probably be happy with that.’

  He started to walk away.

  ‘Nothing about the wine?’ said Jenkins. He did not feel that Pitt could advise him on running a business, as that was obviously not his area of expertise. On winemaking, however, he could have listened to Pitt all day.

  ‘You’ll be fine,’ said Pitt without looking up. Then he glanced at Jenkins, caught his eye for a moment and said, ‘Just follow your nose.’

  The two men smiled at each other, briefly, and then Pitt turned and walked towards the kitchen. Following his path, Jenkins saw the movement in the window and knew that Daisy had been watching them.

  He wondered if she’d heard anything, and if it would be as awful to work for her as he suspected it might be.

  50

  Inspector Malcolm did not like the case of Yuan Ju. He had at first. He’d imagined the story in the papers. A wealthy landowner keeping a young foreign sex slave locked in the cellar. It had seemed almost too good to be true. And so it had transpired.

  He wasn’t sure what the story actually was, but it was not the simple and straightforward case of the middle-aged pervert and the abused young girl. It threatened to be much more complicated, and not the story that would get him the national press attention he’d anticipated.

  Inspector Malcolm was already looking for a way out of the case, and hoped that the translator would provide it the following day. It wouldn’t take much from Yuan Ju for him to be persuaded to either release her or hand her over to UK Borders. Either one and she’d be off his hands. He might almost have been prepared to give her to Pitt that evening, although it had only been after an hour’s reflection since Pitt had left the station that he’d come to his great dislike of the case.

  As he drank his seventh coffee of the day, while working his way through a packet of biscuits, Inspector Malcolm knew that, by the same time the following evening, Yuan Ju would be gone. He had lost interest, and that lack of interest seeped down through the station.

  Ju was a small problem far removed from the usual drunk teenagers and breaches of the peace and angry neighbours who provided the station’s staple diet and its natural comfort zone. Malcolm was not the only one who would gladly see Ju released as soon as possible.

  *

  Pitt walked into the kitchen. Daisy was at the sink; Mrs Cromwell was by the fire. Pitt closed the door and stood for a moment. He didn’t know what he was expecting. It was so long since he and Daisy had had a proper conversation, that he hardly imagined that there would be one now.

  Mrs Cromwell did not turn, although, even if she had, Pitt would not have noticed.

  Daisy’s face was set, her lips tight. She was washing a mug, one that she had used four hours previously. She had been drinking wine since then. She turned off the tap and set the mug to the side of the sink. She rested her hands on the sink’s edge and stared out of the window.

  Pitt stood still, just inside the door, waiting for her to turn. Of all the people he was leaving behind, only the men who’d worked for him for all these years engendered within him any feeling of loyalty.

  Daisy turned, her face set hard. She had had to live for years with Pitt’s seeming determination not to say anything unless he really had to. Now she was going to bless him with the same taciturnity.

  ‘I’m leaving,’ he said abruptly. ‘Tomorrow. I’ve left Jenkins in charge of the vineyard. It’s your business now, you can do what you like, but you’d be as well leaving him to run things. He knows what he’s doing.’

  ‘You’re not coming back?’ she said, her surprise at
what he’d said about Jenkins forcing the words from her mouth. She had never been able to keep quiet for long. Nothing changes.

  ‘No.’

  So many other questions raced into her head, but then so did the earlier determination to make him work for his conversation. She could ask him twenty questions and be lucky to get one answer. She stood and stared.

  Pitt took a step closer to her. He might have spoken if Mrs Cromwell had not been there. He reached into his pocket and took out the receipt from the bank. One hundred and thirty thousand pounds paid into Daisy’s bank account.

  He held out the paper, she did not immediately take it from him. He did not waver, the small receipt held perfectly still in his extended hand.

  He’d had no reason to give her any money. She would never have known. It was some last act of sympathy for her, as if acknowledging that a perfectly good woman had been wasted by all the years of living under the miserable maternal yoke. Maybe he hoped that by giving Daisy the money she would also choose to walk away. Escape.

  She took the receipt from him and glanced down at it. A second, then her face changed. Her eyes widened, narrowed again. She looked back up at him, having lost her usual look of contempt. Money talks.

  So many years of non-verbal communication between them finally proved beneficial. They understood each other. She did not need to know where the money came from. She had not been deprived all these years; they had not lived in squalor. He was leaving, and he was not leaving her penniless. The money was for her, and not for Mrs Cromwell. She should keep her mouth shut, take time to decide what to do with it herself. He was leaving, and it was the last thing he would do for her.

  He recognised something in her face that he had not seen in over thirty years; a softness that had last been there before they’d been married. Was that all it had taken? A hundred and thirty thousand pounds. If he’d paid her more regularly, would she have lived her life less bitterly?

  He could not return the softness of expression, but they understood each other. It was between them and not for Mrs Cromwell, the blanket who had smothered their lives.

  She folded the piece of paper and put it in her pocket. Pitt turned away from her and walked through the kitchen and into the corridor that led away to the rest of the house.

  Daisy watched him out the door, glanced at the chair where her mother still sat with her back turned, and then turned back to the sink. The cosy, comfortable world of the kitchen was ending. It had been unpleasant and ill-tempered, a world defined by a complete lack of joyousness, but it was what she had known for so many years; the cold comfort of consistency. Like the Berlin wall and the Cold War. It had been ugly and bitter and absurd, but so many people and organisations had been lost without it; had struggled for years to come to terms when that world had ended.

  She was in the first moments of realisation. Up to that point, up to the moment when Pitt had walked into the kitchen, she had assumed that the instance of Ju in the kitchen had been a curious moment in their lives, but one that would pass. They had made their move to get rid of her, and, after the surprising behaviour of Pitt in hiding Ju away in the basement, normality would be resumed.

  Except it would not be. The wall was coming down. The safety barriers were being taken away. Suddenly, she was no longer tied to her husband, and with the money he had given her – while it was not an enormous amount, it was enough to be life-changing should she choose – she did not have to be tied to the vineyard. Or the kitchen. Or her mother.

  ‘What did he give you?’ said Mrs Cromwell from her chair by the fire.

  *

  They lay in bed together that night for the last time. Pitt’s small suitcase sat packed by the wardrobe. He was confident that Ju would be released the following day, and that even if it was not in time for the flight he’d booked, there would be a later plane. Even if he had to wait a day or two or longer, it was time to leave the farmhouse, the repression of the kitchen.

  The following day he would be travelling with Ju. If she was not released in time, he would be somewhere else on his own. He would pragmatically make such a plan if it was required. Now that the tyranny of the kitchen – this room that held them all in such constipated stupefaction – had become clear to him, there was no going back. Ju was gone, and so too was Pitt.

  Daisy did not fall asleep until three in the morning, Pitt an hour and a half later. They lay next to each other, backs turned, for nearly four hours, without saying a word. Without touching. Aware of each other more than they had been for decades, aware that the other was awake. They could have touched, they could have embraced. It would not have been far-fetched under the circumstances. The moment before their separation, they were closer than they had been in years; a natural drawing together, born of impending departure.

  If Pitt had reached out to her, Daisy would have responded. If she had reached out to him, Pitt would have remained stiff and cold. He felt the melting of the hostility and resentment, but it meant nothing to him. He was not going to acquiesce to any false or temporary emotion. Too long had they been lost to each other.

  For the first time in so many years that she had forgotten, Daisy lay in bed filled with sexual desire. She wanted him to touch her, she wanted to feel him, she wanted him pressed against her, wanted to feel him inside her.

  Eventually, she fell asleep and dreamt of a man she had never met. Ninety minutes later, Pitt too fell asleep, although he had thought he would not.

  *

  So long did it take him to fall asleep in the first place, that when he awoke the morning was already much older than it usually would be. He sat up in bed, looked at his watch on the bedside table. Another sunny morning. 7:56. Daisy was not next to him.

  He felt immediately that something was wrong.

  51

  Mrs Cromwell arrived at the police station at 7:44. Wednesday morning, the day already warm, any freshness having disappeared by 6:30. Mrs Cromwell was wearing an overcoat and a beret, thick woollen trousers, a small bag clutched in her hands.

  She stepped into the reception and glanced around. There was one teenager there, his head bowed, obviously asleep. His neck would hurt when he woke. Waiting for a friend who had been brought to the station in the middle of the night.

  Mrs Cromwell stood by the reception window. A solitary officer sat behind. Flicking through papers. Most of her attention devoted to the cup of coffee in her left hand, as she made scant notes with her right. She looked up at the quiet old woman on the other side of the glass.

  ‘Good morning,’ said PC Mitchell. ‘How can I help you?’

  The old woman, who looked slightly sorrowful, bowed her head and clutched her bag a little more tightly.

  ‘You have a Chinese girl here, I believe. Maybe she’s been moved out. Is she still here?’

  PC Mitchell stared at Mrs Cromwell, making her usual quick assessment. PC Mitchell was incisive, yet she did not see through Mrs Cromwell. No one really saw through Mrs Cromwell. Even Daisy thought her mother small-minded and bitter, rather than cruel and vindictive.

  ‘Yuan Ju,’ added Mrs Cromwell, as if there might have been more than one in police custody in this small corner of rural England.

  ‘Yes,’ said PC Mitchell.

  ‘I’m from the house up the road. The house that employs her. A dreadful misunderstanding that she’s ended up in here. I do hope we can get everything sorted out.’

  Mitchell studied her through the thickened glass. Mrs Cromwell lowered her eyes, looked down at the bag she was holding as if it held something of great importance; a look designed to show small-minded interest in things of little significance.

  ‘What did you want?’ asked Mitchell. She glanced at a board to her side. ‘Inspector Malcolm should be here in about an hour, I can speak to him, get some idea of what’s going on. I think they’re getting an interpreter in today.’

  Mrs Cromwell nodded.

  ‘I was wondering if I might be able to give the girl some breakfast.’
/>
  ‘She’ll get fed,’ said Mitchell. She smiled. ‘You know, if you can call it fed. She won’t starve.’

  ‘Oh, I know,’ said Mrs Cromwell, ‘but she’s really particular. Funny. You know how they can be. I mean, foreigners...’

  She said the word with a wry smile, as if acknowledging that she was slightly racist, but wasn’t that normal for someone her age? Besides, she was looking to help the foreigner despite the possibility of her not being worthy of such consideration.

  PC Mitchell was not sure what to think of Margaret Cromwell, but she knew that the Chinese girl was of little interest. By the end of the previous evening, Inspector Malcolm had told one of her colleagues that he was no longer sure why they were actually holding her; that it had to be sorted out as quickly as possible the following morning, with Ju either set free or handed over to immigration. He didn‘t care which, as long as they didn’t have some human rights lawyer turning up on their doorstep, either now or after she’d been released.

  ‘We need a solid fact by midday tomorrow, and, if we don’t have anything, she’s leaving.’

  ‘What have you got?’ asked Mitchell.

  ‘Oh,’ said Mrs Cromwell, as if surprised that she was getting somewhere. ‘I’ve got... Oh, you want to see what’s in the box?’

  ‘Yes, please.’

  ‘Of course.’

  She took a small Tupperware tub from the bag she was clutching and laid it on the counter. Mitchell slid the lock to the side, lifted the small pane of glass at the bottom, and took the box through to her side. She unclipped the lid and quickly inspected the contents.

  A bowl of white rice. Some grapes. A small orange. A piece of fruit that Mitchell did not recognise. A small tub of brown paste that Mitchell did not recognise. She pushed the items around a little, making sure there was nothing tucked away at the bottom, then clipped the lid back into place.

  ‘I’ll see that she gets it,’ said Mitchell.