Please keep this in mind for the duration of your visit.
Jonathan Littleton
Not bad, he thought, rereading his briskly typed words. Firm and not neurotic, the cadences echoing one of his insurance reports: claims of subsidence at number 41 are greatly exaggerated. Doors and windows still function. The reference to the doctor was inspired. And if Mrs. Craig did let something slip, he’d be there to practise damage control.
At ten to four the bell rang. “Sorry to be early.” Mrs. Craig held a jar of something purple in one hand and what he identified, at second glance, as a ginger root in the other. “For once all my appointments were on time.” Her silver hair was pinned up in the style that Hazel claimed made her look especially like Virginia Woolf, though he’d never seen the resemblance.
Before he could ask about his letter, Hazel appeared from the living-room. “Mrs. Craig,” she exclaimed.
Her hands full, Mrs. Craig inclined gracefully into Hazel’s embrace and made the little humming sound Jonathan remembered as one of her most irritating habits. “You look radiant,” she said, and, including both of them, “I see you still haven’t finished the hall.”
“Still?” said Hazel.
“Come in. We’re in the kitchen.” He gave Hazel a nudge in that direction. “Didn’t you get my letter?” he muttered.
“Yes, I got it,” Mrs. Craig said in a normal voice. She regarded him calmly until he turned away.
In the kitchen he put on the kettle and tore open the packet of crumpets, not a minute to lose. Hazel and Mrs. Craig sat down. “It’s so good to see you,” gushed Hazel.
“I should’ve come sooner,” said Mrs. Craig, “but I worried about intruding while your parents were here. Tell me how you are. That’s the important thing.”
To the thrum of the kettle, the little pings of the toaster, Hazel described her seizures, her memory loss, her unsteady convalesence. “Wretched,” said Mrs. Craig. “One minute you’re walking down the street and the next—”
“I can’t even make a cup of tea.”
“Do you know when a seizure is imminent?”
“Sometimes.” Jonathan watched her uneasily. “Last week there was a moment, a millisecond, before everything disappeared, when I understood what was happening.”
“You saw an aura?”
Hazel reached for the sides of her chair. “Not exactly, but I could see the drip on the faucet, the filament of the light bulb, the whoosh of gas in the cooker.” Her hands thrashed up and down. “That’s not quite right, either. Seeing things separately wasn’t so important. It was the connections between them.” She gave a nervous laugh. “Whatever that means.”
“More than most of us ever get,” said Mrs. Craig. “That’s what I tell my clients who’ve been injured: there are compensations. Illness shows us the world from a new angle. We can’t dismiss that.”
“I don’t dismiss it. I hate it. Not the seizures so much, I could live with them, but the forgetting.”
“But there’s lots you do remember,” said Mrs. Craig, “because here we are.”
Knife pressed to crumpet, Jonathan froze. Should he stage a distraction, maybe drop the plate? All his anxiety had been focussed on what Mrs. Craig might say. He had not thought to worry about confidences in the other direction. Looking up, he found Mrs. Craig’s eyes upon him; she raised a finger to her lips.
“That’s true,” agreed Hazel. “Nowadays I live in three worlds. There’s the world I do remember. I can tell you about the Christmas I spent in Bombay, the day I met Jonathan, no problem. Then, the world I don’t remember but where people and events linger like shadows. It’s as if I’m wandering through one of those surrealist paintings with the wrapped statues, only I can’t lift even a corner of the wrapping. Awful. But worse, much worse, is the notion of a third world where everything has vanished. The missing world.”
Her hands had fallen still. She drew a shaky breath. Was she about to cry, Jonathan wondered. Please.
“I remember,” she said softly, “lots of things. Just not the ones that matter. Sorry, minus ten for self-pity. When I’m better, I’m going to design a board game called Convalescence, a cross between Snakes and Ladders and Monopoly.”
“I’d buy that.” Mrs. Craig hummed. “My son gave me Therapy for Christmas. We won’t speculate why.”
“Have a crumpet,” said Jonathan. They busied themselves with passing jam and honey, last year’s crop. “If you pay attention,” he told Mrs. Craig, “you can taste the lavender from your garden.” She asked after his bees and nodded at his account of how well the hives were wintering.
“I bought you some beetroot,” she said to Hazel. “It fortifies the blood, and the ginger will help with dizziness and nausea. Grate half a teaspoon to make tea. Do you have a good doctor?”
“He’s doing his best.” Hazel took another bite. “Sometimes, though, I can almost see him contemplating the article in the BMJ that will clinch his reputation. The Elephant Man, the Seizure Woman.”
“Well, if you do decide you need a second opinion, I’m quite nicely connected, medically speaking.”
“Mrs. Craig.” He was amazed his voice could emerge from his choked throat. “Would you come and look at the study ceiling?”
For a few seconds he thought she was going to give him a cool glance and say no thanks, but she wiped her hands and got to her feet. Upstairs, he closed the study door. “What on earth do you think you’re doing?” he whispered. “You come here without so much as a by your leave, you press Hazel to talk, you suggest her doctor isn’t good enough.”
“Jonathan.”
Looking down, he saw he had seized her shoulders and was shaking her back and forth. “Hazel loves me,” he said, letting go.
Mrs. Craig made her humming sound. “No one’s saying you haven’t been terrific. From all accounts you saved her life. But that doesn’t mean—”
He pushed past her, out of the room. I wouldn’t save you first from a burning house, he thought. I wouldn’t even save you last. Without knowing how, he was down in the hall, and face to face with Hazel.
“I need to lie down,” she said. “Will you help me?”
The high-pitched squeal tapering to a breathless moan was Virginia, Freddie guessed, sounding off as usual. Over the last two weeks it had become increasingly hard to forget that he shared his apartment with five other creatures. At first he’d responded to every yip and whimper, and on several occasions had caught Agnes about to crush one of her tiny offspring. Was this also part of the Jungian archetype, he wondered, the mother as Medusa, or Moloch? But as the puppies grew, they learned to avoid Agnes and he in turn learned to ignore their outbursts and indeed remembered all the reasons he wasn’t wild about dogs: smelly, demanding, omnivorous.
Virginia squealed again and fell silent. There might, he calculated, be as much as forty-five minutes before her siblings woke, demanding breakfast. Felicity, however, asleep beside him, was less predictable. At any moment she might bob up, ready for vigorous conversation. Fingers crossed, he turned towards her, hoping the small puffs of her breathing would carry him away from this apartment and the imperatives of the day. Imperatives … imperious … and then his father was teaching him to drive in the high-school parking lot. “Mirror, signal, manoeuvre, dummy,” his father kept saying, but no matter how hard Freddie tried, he couldn’t manage. “I’m doing my best, Dad,” he pleaded. “So why are you always broke?” said his father.
Something tickled his nose. Opening his eyes, he found his irascible parent replaced by Felicity, offering tea. “Thanks, sweetie. How long have you been up?”
“Two minutes.” She slipped back into bed. “It’s like a zoo in there. Yesterday I was thinking we could use some of the proceeds from the puppies to go to Paris for Easter.”
“Neat. I’d love to be at Sacré-Coeur on Good Friday.”
Felicity had long ceased to comment on his churchgoing, but now protested that she’d been thinking pain au chocolat and the Louvre,
not choirboys and incense. “I never have grasped how you can go to mass and still be such a bad Catholic.”
“Everyone’s a bad something,” said Freddie, pleased with the notion. “Kevin’s a lousy anarchist, locking his door and hoarding personal property. You’re a wobbly feminist, struggling with women in the workplace. Trevor’s an inept Romeo, living with his mum.”
“My difficulties at work have nothing to do with a failure of feminism,” said Felicity, and began to describe the hotel in Montmartre where she’d stayed a few years ago.
A little hammer went tap, tap on Freddie’s skull. Wake up, it said. Pay attention. Bitter experience had gradually taught him that what he regarded as pleasant conversation—we could do this, we could do that—was for Felicity a blueprint for the future. “Let me talk to Trev about selling the pups. We can’t go anywhere until I get rid of them.”
With perfect timing, fresh cries rose from the kitchen. “My turn for crowd control,” said Freddie. Next door, the dogs were piled into one corner of the pen. Meanwhile, Agnes was ignoring them, as usual, and nudging her dish.
“Bad boy.” He grabbed Connecticut and set him in the centre of the pen, separated the other three, and continued to the bathroom. While brushing his teeth, he caught himself, unawares, thinking of Hazel. Do you have seizures, she’d asked, her amazing eyes opening even wider. Maybe he should give her one of the puppies, for company. The day he was due to fix her roof had brought some of the worst weather of the year, rain and driving wind. Even Mr. Littleton had been cordial about rescheduling. Now, drying his hands, Freddie pictured a glowing head. He was ready, at last, for Mr. Early’s roof. No big deal, just replacing a couple of slates. He could hardly remember why he’d gotten so bent out of shape.
Back in the bedroom, Felicity glanced up from her tome about the Pankhursts. “What are you doing?” she said, as he stepped into his underwear.
“Off to work. Another day, another dollar.”
“You’re joking.”
He started to make a speech about not letting Trevor down; after all, he recommended most of Freddie’s customers. Felicity was still staring, unconvinced. As a girl, she once told him, she’d wanted to be a detective.
“The truth is”—he pulled on a T-shirt—“it’s either haul ass or starve. My father’s a softy but, barring World War III, he’s maxed out. Besides, my being broke is messing everything up. We don’t have fun like we used to.”
This was what he hated about love. You barely had to breathe the word before you were wriggling like a snake in the grass. The worst part was, it worked. Felicity was nodding, trying not to smile. “I’ll feed our investment,” she said.
Only when he heard the shuffle of slippers and saw Mr. Early standing in the doorway, radiant and bleary in an orange silk bathrobe, did Freddie realise that a phone call might have been a good move. The urge to action had been so strong he’d assumed Mr. Early felt it too. “I could come back later,” he said, picking up his toolbox.
But Mr. Early after a slow start—“Goodness, Freddie,” he fumbled with the sash of his robe—was looking more cheerful. “No, no, I’m delighted to see you. For some reason I’m having a spate of unannounced callers these days.” He led the way inside, not to the room of heads but to the kitchen. “I’m making porridge. Would you like some?”
“If there’s enough.”
Soon they were both sitting at the table, Freddie in the sturdy chair meant for guests, eating porridge with milk and brown sugar and drinking tea. “Typhoo,” said Mr. Early. “I don’t believe in anything fancy first thing. Forgive my being a simpleton, but to what do I owe this honour? Rain seems likely, and last week, when it was much pleasanter, you adamantly refused to come.”
Beneath his benign blue gaze, Freddie struggled for an answer on the wavering line between truth and falsehood. “When I was here last time something happened”—well, that was true—“and ever since I’ve had a hard time leaving the couch. It was too dopey to tell you, so I kept making ridiculous excuses.” He reached for the milk. “Sorry.”
“You did seem a trifle out of sorts.” Mr. Early ate a spoonful of porridge. “Jane came to collect some heads one night and reported that a man was watching the house. From her brief description, forgive me, I wondered if it might be you.”
“Darn, and I thought I was invisible.” He caught himself. “I hope I didn’t scare her. Or worry you.”
“Not worry, exactly. Puzzle. Here you were, always claiming to be about to fix my roof, never actually doing so, and at the same time making nocturnal expeditions to spy on my house. Well, it is eccentric to say the least.”
Heavens to Betsy. Freddie stared at the remains of his porridge. Confronted by this account of his own behaviour, he was struck dumb. If he’d acted like this in Cincinnati, he’d be in the morgue.
“Let me tell you a story.” Mr. Early gave his spoon a final lick. “I’m feeling avuncular today. Years ago, in a repertory theatre, two young designers were jockeying for position. They’d each been asked to produce designs for Max Frisch’s Andorra—an odd play about anti-Semitism and chauvinism, not often done these days. The director was based in London, and a day was chosen for him to visit the theatre, hold auditions, and decide between the designs.
“The morning of his visit, both the young men rose, washed at least minimally, dressed in their trendiest clothes, and prepared to leave for the theatre. But one of them discovered that the door of his room wouldn’t open. It was on the fourth floor of a boarding house. Needless to say, no phone. He banged and shouted in vain. His room overlooked the garden. Eventually he lay down and fell asleep. When he woke up and tried the door again, it opened.”
“And?” said Freddie. “I hope he ran all the way to the theatre, collared the director with his brilliant designs, and got the job.”
“Alas, no. The designer who kept the appointment was given the commission. I was one of those young men, though probably not the one you think. I hate the idea you might resort to illegal methods out of some feeling that you can’t ask for what you want.”
As he spoke, Mr. Early reached for their bowls and, before Freddie could question him, stepped out to the kitchen. But which one was he? At first Freddie assumed he was the poor stooge on the bed; after all, he seemed to know his every move. Then, given his cautionary words, he thought he was the crook. So if Freddie thought he was the crook, did that mean he was the good guy? But if he really thought about it, he would’ve figured Mr. Early for the good guy all the way, which of course meant he was the bad guy.
He was still tossing around the alternatives when Mr. Early sat down again. “Dare I enquire about my roof?”
“About your roof, I’ve been a doofus. The only time it felt okay going out was after dark, and one night I came here.”
“And what changed?” said Mr. Early. “If you can talk about it without retiring to the sofa for a fortnight.”
“Agnes had her puppies. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not a sucker for animals, but somehow the whole business made the sky seem empty. And”—he fingered the milk jug—“I met a woman.”
“Cupid’s dart?”
“No, I have a girlfriend. This is something else.” But what? Salvation? A reprise of Lourdes? “I don’t know her very well,” he ended lamely. “Can I do the dishes?”
“Dishwasher. Right now, what would raise my spirits is for you to have a go at the roof while I take a bath. If you’re finished by lunchtime, I’ll make you a sandwich. How’s that for a deal? Breakfast and lunch, plus forty-seven pounds and a free confession.”
“You’re a peach.”
As they stood up, Mr. Early said, “At the risk of being horribly impertinent, let me offer yet another word of advice. Guile is not your strong suit. You may think you’re invisible, but you’re the reverse.”
“Crown Derby?” Freddie pointed at the milk jug.
“Worcester. They stole the pattern.”
On the hall table Freddie saw the letter addressed
to Donald Early, Esquire, still unopened.
chapter 10
“He says I’m getting better, but I always feel worse after seeing him.” Kneeling on the floor, surrounded by playing cards, Hazel pressed her fingers to her temples as she described Hogarth’s endless, probing questions. “I wish,” she concluded mysteriously, “I had a brother or a sister.”
Jonathan knelt on the other side of the cards. Above them, the Cassiopeia-shaped crack zigzagged across the ceiling. “You always used to say that you were glad we were both only children, that it meant we understood the peculiar pressure of our parents’ undivided attention.” Surely no harm, he thought, in one innocent memory.
“The trouble is, friends can disappear.” Hazel let her hands fall. “That’s what I’ve realised. I mean, look at Maud and me. We’ve been best friends for nearly six years, but if something came between us, if we quarrelled, we’d never see each other again.” She turned over an eight of hearts, frowned, reached for another card.
Jonathan kept very still. She couldn’t know what he and Maud had done on this very carpet only a few nights ago; just for a moment, though, he felt as if his head were transparent. Hazel had simply gazed in with her wide blue eyes and seen everything. Then he realised she was speaking again, asking him something. “Sorry?”
She repeated her request: to invite Steve and Diane for supper. “I didn’t do so well with Mrs. Craig, but I have to keep trying.”
“I’ll give them a call,” he said, and added that he thought Katie might have chickenpox.
When he had come downstairs that evening, long after Mrs. Craig let herself out, a note lay beneath the beetroot jar.
Jonathan,
Sorry if I tired Hazel. Do let me know if there’s anything I can do to help. I’m at home most days. Remember, Hazel isn’t alone in the world.
The Missing World Page 14