There was a notepad on the window ledge, as ever. I scribbled down the address she gave me. And then, before anything could prevent my doing so, I transferred my scribble to an envelope, found a stamp, and went out and popped my wife's last words in the post.
* * * *
6.
She does not have much spatial awareness—few women do, many men say—but sees no reason to doubt the information she has been given: that this room measures twenty-four foot by eighteen, with a ceiling some twenty foot high. It is a cellar, or part of a cellar. The handkerchief of light way over her head is the only part of the room set above ground level. Built into a hillside, see? he'd told her. Yes. She saw.
Apart from herself and the mattress and a thick rough blanket, and the chemical toilet in the corner, this room holds three articles: a plastic beaker three inches deep; a plastic fork five inches long; and a stainless steel tin opener.
And then there is the second room, and all that it contains.
* * * *
7.
Had I been asked, during the days following, what I imagined had happened to Michelle, I would have been unable to give an answer. It wasn't that there was any great dearth of fates to choose from. Open any newspaper. Turn to any channel. But it was as if my imagination—so reliably lurid in other matters—had discreetly changed the locks on this particular chamber, deeming it better, or safer, if I not only did not know what had occurred, but was barred from inventing a version of my own. I can see Michelle in our kitchen last week—of course I can. Just as I can see no trace of her here today, or in any other of her domestic haunts. But what happened to merge the former state into the latter remains white noise. Who stood by while she wrote that note and packed a case? What thrill of inspiration moved her to sign herself “Shell"? And in quitting her job, in withdrawing half our savings, what threat kept her obedient, made her perform these tasks unassisted?
And underneath all this a treacherous riptide that tugged with subtly increasing force. What if all this was as it seemed? What if she'd left of her own free will?
Things aren't working, David, and they haven't been for a long time. I'm sorry, but we both know it's true.
That's what her note had said. But that's true of any marriage. All have their highs and lows, and some years fray just as others swell.
These past few years, you could describe as frayed. We'd had fraught times before—the seven-year itch, of course. A phrase doesn't get to be cliché just by being a classic movie title. If ever the wheels were to come off, that would have been the time. But we survived, and it bonded us more securely. I truly believe that. And if these past few years had been less than joyful, that was just another dip in a long journey—we've been married nineteen years, for goodness’ sake. You could look on this period as one of adjustment, a changing of gear as the view ahead narrows to one of quieter, calmer waters, of a long road dipping into a valley, with fewer turnings available on either side.
But maybe Michelle had other views. Maybe she thought this her last chance to get out.
Once, years ago, a train we were on came to a halt somewhere between Slough and Reading, for one of those unexplained reasons that motivate the English railway network. Nearby was a scatter of gravel, a telephone pole, a wire fence, and a battleship-grey junction box. Beyond this, a desultory field offered itself for inspection. On the near side of the fence, a wooden sign declared this Dolphin Junction.
"Dolphin Junction,” Michelle said. “If you heard the name, you'd summon up a picture easily enough, wouldn't you? But it wouldn't look like this."
Afterwards, it became part of our private language. A trip to Dolphin Junction meant something had turned out disappointing, or less than expected. It meant things had not been as advertised. That anytime soon would be a good moment to turn back, or peel away.
And maybe that was it, when all was said and done. Maybe Michelle, during one of these dips in our journey, caught a glimpse of uninspiring fields ahead, and realised we were headed for Dolphin Junction. Would it have taken more than that? I didn't know anymore. I didn't know what had happened. All I knew, deep in the gut, was that all wasn't, in fact, said and done.
Because she had signed her name Shell. Michelle had done that? She'd have been as likely to roll herself in feathers and go dancing down the street.
She just wouldn't.
* * * *
A few days later the card came back. Until I heard the thump on the doormat I hadn't been aware of how keenly I'd been awaiting it, but in that instant everything else vanished like yesterday's weather. And then, as I went to collect it, a second thing happened. The doorbell rang.
She's back, was my first thought. Swiftly followed by my second, which was—what, she's lost her keys?
Padded envelope in hand, I opened the door.
Standing there was Dennis Farlowe.
There are languages, I know, that thrive on compound construction, that from the building blocks of everyday vocabulary cobble together one-time-only adjectives, or bespoke nouns for special circumstances. Lego-languages, Michelle would say. Perhaps one of them includes a word that captures my relationship with Dennis Farlowe: a former close friend who long ago accused me of the rape and murder of his wife; who could manage only the most tortured of apologies on being found wrong; who subsequently moved abroad for a decade, remarried, divorced; and who ultimately returned here a year or so ago, upon which we achieved a tenuous rapprochement, like that of a long-separated couple who remember the good times, without being desperate to relive them.
"David,” he said.
"Dennis."
"I'm sorry about—” He grimaced and made a hand gesture. Male semaphore. For those moments when speech proves embarrassing.
We went into the kitchen. It's odd how swiftly an absence can make itself felt in a room. Even had Dennis not already heard the news, it wouldn't have cost him more than a moment's intuition to discern a problem.
"Good of you to come,” I said.
Which it probably was, I thought—or he probably thought it was. Truth was, he was the last man I wanted to see. Apart from anything else, the envelope was burning my fingers.
But he had his own agenda. “You should have called."
"Yes. Well. I would have done.” Leaving open the circumstances this action would have required, I put the kettle on instead. “Coffee?"
"Tea, if you've got it."
"I think we run to tea."
That pronoun slipped out.
It was history, obviously, that had prevented me from phoning Dennis Farlowe; had kept him the missing degree in the circle I'd rung round. Some of this history was the old kind, and some of it newer. I poured him a cup of tea. Wondering as I did so how many gallons of the stuff—and of coffee, beer, wine, spirits, even water—we'd drunk in each other's company. Not an unmeasurable amount, I suppose. Few things, in truth, are. But decanted into plastic containers, it might have looked like a lifetime's supply.
"Milk?” he asked.
I pointed at the fridge.
He fixed his tea to his liking, and sat.
Twelve years ago, Jane Farlowe was found raped and murdered in a small untidy wood on the far side of the allotments bordering our local park. The year before, Jane, Dennis, Michelle, and I had holidayed together in Corfu. There are photographs: the four of us around a cafe table or on a clifftop bench. It doesn't matter where you are, there's always someone will work your camera for you. Jane and Michelle wear dark glasses in the photos. Dennis and I don't. I've no idea why.
After Jane's death, I was interviewed by the police, of course. Along with around eighty-four other people, in that first wave. I've no idea whether this is a lot, in the context. Jane had, I'd guess, the usual number of friends, and she certainly had the usual number of strangers. I would have been interviewed even if Dennis hadn't made his feelings known.
Long time ago. Now, he said: “Has she been in touch?"
"No,” I said.
&nbs
p; "It's just a matter of time, David."
"So I've been told."
"Everyone wishes you well, David. Nobody's ... gloating."
"Why on earth would anyone do that?"
"No reason. Stupid word. I just meant—you know how it is. There's always a thrill when bad things happen to people you like. But there's none of that going on."
I was about as convinced of this as I was that Dennis Farlowe was the community's spokesperson.
But I was no doubt doing him a disservice. We had a complicated past. We've probably grown used to shielding our motives from each other. And more than once in the past year, I've come home to find him seated where he is now; Michelle where I am. And I've had the impression, on those occasions, that there was nothing unusual about them. That there'd been other times when I didn't come home to find them there, but still: That's where they'd been. In my absence.
That's what I meant by newer history.
He said, “David. Do you mind if I make an observation?"
"Have you ever noticed,” I said, “that when people say that, it would take a crowbar and a gag to prevent them?"
"You're a mess."
"Thank you. Fashion advice. It's what I need right now."
"I'm talking hygiene. You want to grow a beard, it's your funeral. But you should change your clothes, and you should—you really should—take a shower."
"Right."
"Or possibly two."
"Am I offending you?” I asked him. “Should I leave?"
"I'm trying to help. That's all."
"Did you know this was going to happen?"
"Michelle leaving?"
"Well, yes, I—Christ, what did you think I meant? That we'd have tea this morning?"
He said, “I didn't know, no."
"Would you have told me if you did?"
"No,” he said. “Probably not."
"Great. Thanks for the vote of confidence."
"I'm her friend too, David."
"Don't think I'm not aware of that."
He let that hang unanswered.
We drank tea. There were questions I wanted to ask him, but answers I didn't want to hear.
At length he said, “Did she leave a note?"
"Did the grapevine not supply that detail?"
"David—"
"Yes. Yes, she left a note."
Which was in a padded envelope, on the counter next to the kettle.
And I couldn't wait a moment longer. It didn't matter that Dennis was here, nor that I already knew in my bones what the experts would have decreed. I stood, collected the envelope, and tore its mouth open. Dennis watched without apparent surprise as I poured onto the table the postcard, still in its transparent wrapper; the letter I'd supplied as a sample of Michelle's hand; and another letter, this one typed, formal, beyond contradiction.
Confirm that this is ... no room for doubt ... invoice under separate cover.
I crumpled it and dropped it on the floor.
"Bad news?” Dennis asked after a while.
"No more than expected."
He waited, but I was in no mood to enlighten him. I could see him looking at the postcard—which had fallen picture-side up—but he made no move for it. I wondered what I'd have done if he had. What I'd have said if he asked to read it.
At length, he told me: “I'm going away for a while."
I nodded, as if it mattered.
"I've a new mobile. I'll leave you the number.” He reached for the writing tablet on the sill and scrawled something on it. “If she calls, if you hear anything—you'll let me know, David?"
He tore the uppermost leaf from the pad, and pushed it towards me.
"David?"
"Sure,” I said. “I'll let you know."
He saw himself out. I remained where I was. Something had shifted, and I knew precisely what. It was like the turning of the tide. With an almanac and a watch, I've always assumed, you can time the event to the second. But you can't see it happen. You can only wait until it becomes beyond dispute, until that whole vast sprawl of water, covering most of the globe, has flexed its will, and you know that what you've been looking at has indisputably changed direction.
With a notepad available on the window sill, Michelle had chosen to unclip a postcard from the door of the fridge and leave her message on its yellowing back.
Picking it up, I looked at its long-familiar picture for what felt like the first time.
* * * *
8.
The doorway into the second room is precisely that: a doorway. There is no door. Nor even the hint of a door, in fact; no hinges on the jamb; no screwholes where hinges might have swung. It's just an oblong space in the wall. The ghost of stone. She steps through it.
This is a smaller room. As wide, but half as long as the other. In a previous life of this building—before it succumbed to the fate all buildings secretly ache for and became a ruin, scribbled on by weeds and tangled brambles—this would have been a secondary storeroom, only accessible via its larger twin, which itself can only be entered by use of a ladder dropped through the trap in its roof. Hard to say what might have been stored here. Wine? Grain? Maybe cheese and butter. There's no knowing. The room's history has been wiped clean.
And in its place, new boundaries:
To her left, a wall of tin. To her right, a screen of plastic.
* * * *
9.
The Yard of Ale was one of those theme pubs whose theme is itself: a four-hundred-year-old wooden-beamed structure on a crossroads outside Church Stretton, it was plaqued and horse-brassed within an inch of Disneyland. There wasn't a corner that didn't boast an elderly piece of blacksmith's equipment with the sharp bits removed, or something somebody found in a derelict dairy, and thought would look nice scrubbed up and put next to a window. The whole place reeked of an ersatz authenticity; of a past replicated only in its most appealing particulars, and these then polished until you could see the present's reflection in it, looking much the same as it always did, but wearing a Jane Austen bonnet.
Michelle and I had stayed there four years ago. It was spring, and we'd wanted a break involving long fresh days on high empty ground, and slow quiet evenings eating twice as much as necessary. An Internet search produced The Yard of Ale, and for all my dismissive comments, it fit the bill. Post-breakfast, we hiked for miles on the Long Mynd, counted off the Stiperstones, and scaled the Devil's Chair. In hidden valleys we found the remnants of abandoned mines, and sheep turned up everywhere, constantly surprised. And in the evenings we ate three-course meals and drank supermarket wine at restaurant prices. The bed was the right degree of firm, and the shower's water pressure splendid. Everyone was polite. As we checked out, Michelle picked up one of the hotel's self-promoting postcards, and when we got home she clipped it to the fridge door, where it had remained ever since.
I set off about thirty minutes after Dennis had left.
* * * *
The rain began before I'd been on the road an hour. It had been raining for days in the southwest; there'd been weather warnings on the news, and a number of rivers had broken banks. I had not paid attention: Weather was a background babble. But when I was stopped by a policeman on a minor road on the Shropshire border and advised to take a detour which would cost a couple of hours—and offered no guarantee of a passable road at the end of it—it became clear that my plan, if you could call it that, wanted rethinking.
"You're sure I can't get through this way?"
"If your vehicle's maybe amphibious. I wouldn't try it myself. Sir."
Sir was an afterthought. He'd drawn back as I'd wound down the window to answer him, as if rain were preferable to the fug of unwashed body in my car.
I said, “I need somewhere to stay."
He gave me directions to a couple of places, a few miles down the road.
The first, a B&B, had a room. There'd been cancellations, the man who checked me in said. Rain was sheeting down, and the phone had been ringing all mornin
g. He'd gone from fully booked to empty without lifting a finger. But there'd be more in my situation; folk who couldn't get where they were headed and needed a bed for the night. It was still early, but he seemed confident there'd be little travelling on the local roads today.
"I was headed for Church Stretton,” I said.
"You'll maybe have better luck tomorrow."
He seemed less worried than the policeman by my unwashed state. On the other hand, the smell of dog possibly masked my odour. The room was clean, though. I could look down from its window onto a rain-washed street, and on light puddling the pavements outside the off-licence opposite. When I turned on the TV, I found footage of people sitting on rooftops while water swirled round their houses. I switched it off again. I had my own troubles.
I lay on the bed, fully clothed. If it weren't for the rain, where would I be now? Arriving at The Yard of Ale, armed with inquiries. I had a photograph—that was about it, as far as packing had gone—and I'd be waving it at somebody. It wasn't the best picture of Michelle ever taken (she'd be the first to point out that it made her nose look big) but it was accurate. In some lights, her nose does look big. If Michelle had been there, the photo would be recognised. Unless she'd gone out of her way to change her appearance—but what sense would that make? She'd left me a clue. If she hadn't wanted me to follow, why would she have done that?
Always supposing it really was a clue.
Perhaps the rain was a blessing. It held off the moment of truth, the last ounce of meaning I could dredge from the note she'd left. The note there was no room for doubt that she'd written.
But had signed Shell. An abbreviation she'd detested. And what was that if not a coded message? It was a cry for help.
And no one was listening but me.
At length, I turned the TV on again. I got lucky with a showing of Bringing Up Baby, and when that was finished I swam across the road to the shiny off-licence, and collected a bottle of scotch. Back indoors, before broaching it, I belatedly took Dennis Farlowe's advice and stood under the shower for twenty minutes, using up both small bottles of complimentary gel. There were no razors. But the mirror suggested I'd crossed the line between being unshaven and having a beard.
EQMM, December 2009 Page 13