by Barbara Vine
‘You ought to know that you have to be careful what you say about people in this village to other people. I mean your wife ought to. I didn't speak loudly or crossly. I tried to keep my voice calm. ‘Everyone's related to everyone else. The whatever-she-said Dolly Parton is my mother.’
He stood still, taking it in. Then he said, ‘I'm truly sorry. I'll tell her.’
I knew I'd gone bright red in the face. I went back to the others. They were all talking nineteen-to-the-dozen about wine, the merits of French against Australian Chardonnay, that sort of thing, all except Jane. Jane was looking bored. When she found out what she'd said I didn't think she'd care much. Just as Ned came back with our drinks the music started. It was Len the lover on the guitar, Paul Fletcher on the tenor sax and his cousin, another Mike but from Curton, on the drums. Philippa's sister Karen started singing ‘Stand by Your Man’ in a passable Tammy Wynette imitation, and we all sat down.
A couple of songs later Ned said he'd nip back and see how Hannah was. Hannah's mother didn't show much concern, I thought, but perhaps I was feeling a lot of resentment still. I watched him go. When he got to the door he turned round, saw me looking and put up his eyebrows. I smiled and he smiled back as if he was relieved. Then I went over and talked to Dad because it pleases him so much. He's never got over his guilt at splitting up from Mum and leaving us kids and he is so happy if one of us treats him like a real father.
After I'd fetched Gracie back from the dentist, I went to find Stella. The day before I'd been off and the day before that was when I'd told her about Ned. Confiding in someone, the way I'd confided in her, ought to make you like them and want to be with them. It doesn't. It's as if you've poured stuff out of your heart into some container, you've got rid of it, and all you want is to throw it away and never come near it again.
That was why I had to find her and get rid of that feeling, get the awkwardness over. I knew I'd feel deeply embarrassed in her company. Well, I should have thought of that before I shot my mouth off, not punish her for listening and letting me talk. She'd been so patient and I'd told her so much, all about how I didn't see Ned again for nearly a month after that country-music evening until we met by chance in the village shop. All the details of what had happened next.
That same Saturday I was walking past his house and there he was in the front garden trying to prune roses. I say ‘trying’ because he didn't have a clue, he was just nipping the tops of the twigs off. So of course I took over and did it for him and he asked me in for a cup of tea. I won't say I'd have refused if I'd thought Jane wasn't there, but she wasn't, she'd taken Hannah to her mother's, and we had the tea and sat talking.
I'd lived thirty-two years in this world and I'd never talked to anyone the way Ned and I talked. There's Philippa, of course, we talk, but not much about the big things of life, more about shopping and what we're going to make for supper and old movies, which are her great passion. Ned and I talked about what we believed in and what we wanted and hoped for and what life should be. All that had been shut up inside me. I'd thought about it, I thought about it all the time, and I'd put it into words in my own mind, but never uttered it. He fetched my thoughts out of me just by talking and later on he said I had fetched things out of him he'd never told another soul.
Stella listened to me while I told her all this, how at first I thought I'd found a friend, that him being of the opposite sex didn't matter, we could still meet when he came down at the weekends and there needn't be any sex involved, she listened and she said she understood. She understood only too well, she said, that you could fool yourself along those lines and what a shock it was when you found out you were fooling yourself.
So I went looking for her. She wasn't in her room or in the lounge. I thought she might have gone up to take another look at her house across the fields but she wasn't in the upstairs lounge either. Stella didn't much like sitting about in the open air, she had to have a reason for being outdoors and the weather being fine wasn't sufficient. I smelt the reason before I found her. She was on a stone seat behind the high cypress hedge and she was smoking a cigarette.
That could have given me an opening line to cover my embarrassment. Lena would have made a big fuss, would have behaved as if Stella was ten and caught smoking in the garden shed. But what was the point? She was dying anyway, poor Stella, and might as well have a bit of pleasure before the dark.
When she saw me she smiled and held up the cigarette in a film-star gesture, her fingers extended. She reminded me of Bette Davis in one of those old films.
‘Are you going to scold me, Genevieve? I have to have a cigarette sometimes. I may as well tell you I occasionally do when no one's looking.’
‘What you do is your own business,’ I said, and if it was a bit brusque that was my way of getting over awkwardness.
‘Wild horses wouldn't drag out of me who gets my Silk Cut for me.’
Not Richard, I thought. Not the doctor. Marianne. I'd have done the same for my mum. ‘Lena wouldn't set any wild horses on you,’ I said, ‘but somehow she'd see to it you didn't get any more. So be careful.’
She blew smoke out through her nose. I'd never seen anyone do that before except in films. She was very pale and it wasn't only due to the powder she put on. The colour was draining out of her. Even her blue-green eyes were fading. Her lips parted and a thin cloud of blue smoke emerged and hovered. She waved it away with one hand.
‘Genevieve?’
I looked at her.
‘Would you go to my house and bring me back the photograph you found? Any time will do. If you're ever up in that area, if you could just go in and pick up the photograph.’
‘Stella,’ I said, ‘how long is it since anyone lived in that house?'
She didn't have to think back or calculate. ‘Twenty-four years.’
‘Twenty-four years?’
‘It's quite a long time, isn't it?’ She considered. ‘And not to say lived, Genevieve. Twenty-four years since anyone has been there.’ The look on my face amused her and she smiled. ‘I paid the rates, of course. I mean, it was rates and then it was poll tax and then council tax. But I paid up. Oh, and I had the roof seen to. Those flint walls are very tough and of course they don't need painting.’
‘You never had tenants in?’ I asked her, and, when she shook her head, ‘Why on earth didn't you sell?’
This was a bit strong for her. I'd spoken more directly than I usually do and she retreated a little, withdrawing into her shell.
‘I didn't want to.’
It's easy for people like me to resent people like Stella. Money is a daily issue with us. We find it hard enough to pay the council tax on the one property we own – or the building society owns – and when someone like her talks about easily and thoughtlessly paying tax on a house no one lives in, that she can't be bothered to let and just doesn't feel like selling, we don't take kindly to it.
‘It was mine, Genevieve. I had the right to keep it empty if I chose. I bought it myself, with what my father left me when he died in 1963. My husband didn't pay for it.’
How to tell her that wasn't the point? Not to tell her, of course. She was so pale and, suddenly, so thin, growing transparent and skeleton leaf-like as she sat there holding up the end of her cigarette between red fingernails.
‘You can sell it now,’ I said. ‘I'll handle it for you, if you like.’
‘I know you would.’
She stubbed out her cigarette on the bench, took a tissue from her handbag, wrapped it in the tissue, and put it into the bag. It was all very precisely done, fastidiously done, and when the operation was completed she rubbed at the blackened place with the toe of her navy court shoe.
Once she was standing up, holding on to the back of the seat, and puffing a bit at the effort it had been, she said breathlessly, ‘If I were to sell the house, Genevieve, there would be this advantage, that Marianne and Richard would never have to know. There would just be rather more money to inherit than they expected.�
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‘Would you like to take my arm?’ I said.
‘Thank you. I think I will. You're too polite to ask me why I don't want them to know, aren't you? I may tell you one of these days. But not now, not today. The thing is, Genevieve, I'm afraid to sell it.’
I looked at her. We were walking along the path, by the herbaceous border. The lawns fall away from there in green terraces and then there's a plantation of old chestnut trees. She clung to my arm, walking slowly. The smell of cigarette smoke clung to her, mingled with the White Linen perfume she always wears.
‘Oh, not afraid because there's something there I don't want anyone to find. It's all too long ago for that.’ She shook her head. ‘At least, I think so. There were never any letters and only that one photograph.’ Her need to express herself seemed to have conquered her breathlessness and she was speaking in a steady normal voice, quietly but cheerfully. ‘I suppose I say I'm afraid because I feel all that should be left alone and hidden, left in peace instead of brought out into the open – I mean, not have the fen cleared and the lawn mowed, perhaps the house converted in some way or another, builders there. And I can't bear to think of my things, my furniture – well, thrown out or sold for practically nothing. They get those men in, don't they, who clear houses for the price they get from a junk shop? I've seen the signs in shop windows, “Houses cleared at no extra cost”. I know it must seem ridiculous to you, but I don't feel I could bear it.’
I said it didn't seem ridiculous and just as I was going to say something about not to sell if she didn't want to and trying to think how to say tactfully that she wouldn't know what Marianne and Richard thought anyway, not after she was dead, a dog came bounding out from among the chestnut trees and raced across the lawn towards us. It was a white dog with black spots, a Dalmatian, and I recognized it as belonging to Lena's sister, who must have called to see her. Stella drew back a bit and held on to me more tightly but this dog is a real softie and wanted more than anything for me to stroke its head and talk to it. Stella wanted to know why I had my fingers crossed.
‘It's lucky to see a Dalmatian,’ I said. ‘Cross your fingers and make a wish. Go on.’
She did what I told her, though she looked doubtful.
‘Don't tell me your wish,’ I said, ‘and I won't tell you mine but we'll tell each other if they come true. How about that?’
I'd wished of course for things to come right for Ned and me, though I didn't see how they could. You can't be like my dad, have a child and then walk out and leave her. The only thing that would make that possible would be Jane dying, and why should she die? She was a normal healthy woman of thirty-seven and likely to live another fifty years. I didn't want her to die and that wasn't what I'd wished for. In fact, I'd made a mental reservation and added on, ‘but not at the price of Jane dying’. I could just imagine the remorse I'd feel, the endless guilt, if I'd wished for her death when I stroked the spotted dog and crossed my fingers and it had actually happened.
Stella and I went back into the house, meeting Lena as we crossed the lounge from the french windows. Lena took one look at Stella and said in the way she has when she's trying to be funny, ‘And how does “Lady” Newland find herself today?’
Stella said quietly she was quite well, thank you.
‘You know, those shoes of yours aren't a brilliant idea, Stella.
The heels must be two inches high. It's vanity, isn't it, dear? That's what it all boils down to, vanity.’
‘I'm afraid I only have these sort of shoes.’
‘And the budget couldn't run to a pair of trainers like the other ladies have? Think about it, dear, it's for your own good.’
Halfway up the stairs Stella said something about how you ought to be allowed to wear what you like if you were paying what she was. Four hundred pounds a week it is, though she didn't say so. She was brought up, she once told me, not to mention money, and though she's got over that she doesn't like naming specific sums. I think you ought to be allowed to wear what you like if you're not paying too, if you get it on the NHS, it's something Ned and I talked about, freedom and dignity, but I didn't want to get into politics with Stella.
She was breathless by the time we reached her room. She sat down and said, ‘Richard phoned to say he's bought me the tape recorder. He's going to bring it in on Saturday.’ The swiftness of her change of subject, and not only that, gave me a shock. ‘What did you mean, Genevieve, by not at the price of Jane dying?’
‘Did I say that aloud?’
She gave a little nervous laugh. ‘I'm afraid you did. It doesn't matter. I don't even know who Jane is.’
‘She's Ned's wife.’ I turned my face away. ‘It was the wish I made – I mean, I don't wish for her death so that I can…’
‘I know what you mean. And he doesn't either, does he?’
I was mystified and at the same time becoming uncomfortable. ‘We've never discussed it. She's young and healthy. Why should she die?’
Stella's answer was another laugh, but the kind that you'd think was a sob if you were only listening and not looking. She said very quickly, too quickly,
‘Have you ever heard of Gilda Brent?’
She was staring straight ahead of her.
‘I don't think so,’ I said carefully. ‘Should I have?’
Stella went on. ‘You tell me you like old films. You're always making videos of them. She was an actress in films. A British film actress.’
‘I'm sorry, Stella. I've never heard of her.’
‘Then do you know anyone who might have. A – do they call them movie buffs? A movie buff?’
‘There's my friend Philippa,’ I said.
She had gone very red. You don't do athletics at her age but that was the impression she gave, of someone who'd just tried to run a race or climb a hill and had failed.
‘You could ask her,’ she said. ‘Ask her about Gilda Brent.’
5
Stella had been writing, using an old-fashioned fountain pen, marbled blue, with a gold nib. The result was like someone who knew nothing of Arabic attempting to inscribe it. Or, as Richard, as a precocious adolescent, had once said, like spiders copulating.
She took a deep breath, or as deep a breath as she was able to take. Once again she turned her attention to the instructions that came with the tape recorder, but this time she persevered. She took the covering off one of the new cassettes, an operation that required the use of her nail file to split the transparent paper. It was something to have discovered how to open the machine. The cassette went in satisfactorily at her third attempt.
Footsteps passed along the passage outside her door. Stella screwed up the piece of paper on which she had been writing. She put the cap back on the fountain pen. Then she went to the door, listening to the silence for a moment before reaching for the only upright chair the room contained. She put the chair against the door, its back under the handle, holding it in place. This activity took away her breath and she had to sit down again.
After a few moments, when she thought she could summon an adequate voice, she pressed the red button on the recorder and began to speak, tentatively at first.
I am speaking, she said, into a machine that describes itself as a cassette recorder and computer data recorder, whatever that may be. I have never done this before, and I can't yet tell if the device is working or not. I shall stop now and try to play it back.
I am speaking, said the recorder, into a machine that describes itself… Stella listened to her own voice and thought how much lighter it sounded than she had expected. It sounded light and precise and old-fashioned and old. She was still vain, she thought, even now. Dying, actually dying, she would probably still care how she looked and sounded. She closed her eyes briefly, then pressed the red button and began again.
My purpose, she said, is to set on record something that no one knows but me and which should be known, a question that unless I answer it will be left unanswered for ever.
A more obvious way
of doing that would be to write it down. I have made an attempt at that but the results didn't please me, not only because, after all, I'm not a writer, but also because my handwriting is not particularly legible. The alternative would have been to have asked Richard for a typewriter instead. No doubt I can still type perfectly well, but what reason could I possibly have given for wanting a typewriter? A lot of writers, or so I'm told, speak their words into a microphone and have a secretary transcribe them. No one will ever transcribe mine, but one or two may listen.
Writing, though, is a silent activity. You can do it surreptitiously and hide it. I think I've read somewhere that Jane Austen did that, slid her writing under a book she pretended to be reading when someone came into the room. It's possible that one of the people here, pausing outside my door, in innocence or deliberately to listen, can hear my voice if not what I'm saying. Fortunately, in one way, I'm no longer able to speak very loudly. I don't really mind if they do hear a continuous murmur from inside. They will only think I'm talking to myself and that won't surprise them. Everyone in here except Genevieve takes it for granted the residents have softening of the brain or are dropping into a second childhood. I have put a chair under the door handle to stop anyone coming in. If I can. Needless to say, as if we were children using a bathroom, there are locks on the doors but no keys available to those inside.
There. I've succeeded. And now that's done I'm wondering how to begin. I'm still testing, really, and I'm going to play it back again.
My purpose, she heard, is to set on record something that no one knows but me…
The door is secured, the tape recorder is working, and I feel I must waste no more time. For, though I'm going to tell Genevieve a lot about myself and a good deal of the background to this story, there are many many things that, while I can speak them aloud in private, I know I can't actually utter to another person. And perhaps I don't have much time to utter them at all. So *I'll begin by explaining why I sent for the deeds of my house or with the obituary in The Times. No, I won't. I'll begin with Genevieve.