by Morag Joss
‘Oi! Less of the “old”, young lady!’
‘Warwick! Don’t move! Look at me. I’m trying to get your ear,’ Bunny ordered.
‘Now,’ Hilary said gently to James, ‘how the body feels is the issue. Once you have rediscovered how the body is feeling, the mind can help it recover.’ She beamed. ‘Try visualisation. Try to visualise your problem, in the part of your body that is unwell. Visualise in clay. Shape your health problem in clay, in any way you feel is right. Just let go.’
‘You want me to sit here making clay ulcers all afternoon?’
Hilary would not be defeated. ‘What I want is not the issue, James. It’s what you want that counts. I’m going to leave you to try visualising, so if you’re happy to get on, I think Jane needs some help.’
She rose and went to attend to the unhappy Jane who, alone in a corner of the studio, was silently wrapping coathangers together. Warwick broke the silence that followed by saying, ‘Ulcers, hmmm. Had ’em myself. Four. Japanese rations. Painful. Lost a lot of weight.’
James was grateful for the sympathy but hoped Warwick was not going to elaborate.
‘You can tell that was a long time ago,’ Bunny said without irony. ‘Have you lost any, by the way?’ She scanned his torso with crooked black eyes. ‘It doesn’t look like it. And Dr Golightly’s diets always work. You must be cheating.’
‘You’ve seen what I eat, Bunny dear. Practically the same as you.’
‘You don’t eat your bread.’
‘I do. I just don’t eat it with meals. I keep it and eat it later.’ Warwick coughed.
‘I shall mention to Dr Golightly next time I see him that you’re not losing weight,’ Bunny said, loudly. ‘He likes to know.’
‘Oh, don’t bother, please,’ Warwick said. ‘No need.’
Bunny had risen laboriously to her feet to refill the beaker of water that was keeping the clay damp. Something through the window drew her attention. ‘Oh, look! There he is now, coming back from the car park! Let’s catch him now. I’m sure if I wave—’
‘Bunny, stop! Sit down! Please, sit down.’ Warwick’s voice was unusually fierce.
Bunny did so. ‘But—’
He sighed. ‘I’m having a bit of trouble, if you must know, getting into the swing of this diet.’ Warwick’s voice had dropped to a whisper, and his guilty eyes included James, perhaps in the hope that he would judge him more leniently than the iron-willed Bunny. ‘Find the damned bread hard to take dry. Reminds me of the bad old days under the Japs, if you must know. So I’ve got myself a little supply. Just a little, you know, little picnic box, keep it in my room. Bit of butter makes all the difference.’
‘You’ve been spreading the bread with butter? Ivan’s lovely bread? Butter?’ Bunny’s scandalised voice made it sound as if Warwick had eviscerated his own mother and spread the bread with the proceeds. ‘Hilary, did you hear that? Warwick’s been spreading his bread with butter!’
‘Good man, Warwick,’ James said. ‘Good man.’
Hilary turned. ‘Oh Warwick,’ she sighed. ‘What are we to do with you?’
Warwick looked ashamed. ‘Oh come on, you understand surely, a Yorkshire lass like you, brought up on best booter, eh? I mean, I’m happy to cooperate and all that. Quite see the importance. It’s only a scrape, to help it down.’
‘But really—butter!’ Bunny said. She looked rather pale.
‘Wouldn’t like Dr G to know, rather not discuss it. Couldn’t tell him a lie, such a nice fellow. So let it lie, eh, Bunny?’
Warwick coughed stiffly to indicate that no reply was necessary and resumed his pose. Bunny shrugged in James’s direction and took up her modelling tool again. And as she lifted it in her trembling hand to cut into the clay, she looked at it a little longingly, rather as if it were a butter knife.
CHAPTER 30
LEECH HALF WOKE and stretched, feeling the sting of early morning cold on his bare feet as they pushed down out of the covers and dangled beyond the end of the folding bed. He was too long for beds and he did not really remember a time when he had not been, so the day’s first sensation on his feet, which brought always the wearying thought that the hut was cold, was in order. He kept his face submerged in the jumper he used as a pillow but then came the second, the same chill stealing over his head. He turned and lay staring up, just in case today the jumper might warm rather than merely scratch the back of his skull a little and although it did not, he stayed there, his eyes searching the wooden ribs of the hut roof for anything unsettling, anything not as yesterday, as far as he could remember yesterday. His blocked nose was clearing now, with the softly rushing, itchy sensation that he had grown used to. He sniffed, and the mixed smells of dust and earth and salty feet gave him further reassurance that nothing had changed. So, secure in his mind that nothing had happened in the night that would call for any rearrangement of his expectations, quite sure that the hut was again freezing and that this day was so far consistent with others, Leech got out of bed.
Yet the day was different, or was going to be. Leech stepped on shaking legs out of the hut into the first light. Too early to say when the dawn clouds would shift, but today’s happenings in the sky would go beyond mere weather. This day would be different. But when Leech tried to find words for the difference none came to him save those which he had heard others say: momentous, epoch-making, historic, unique and which, being other people’s, remained just words. This day would also be, he remembered hearing, a once-in-a-lifetime experience, an idea which filled him with foreboding. Leech had had many of those. Once in a lifetime came horribly often, he found. For how long is a lifetime? Only as long as memory made it. It should be a long, unbroken tunnel between the very first thing he ever remembered—sunlight sparkling on the hairs on the sleeping dog’s back that he saw from high up in someone’s arms that day—and right now, today, the view of the hut roof when he opened his eyes on this August morning in 1999, aged thirty-one. But in Leech’s tunnel there had been many rockfalls. His tunnel was a series of small dark chambers without doors, in every one of which a short lifetime had been lived.
Leech’s lifetimes came by in turn and ended again once or twice a week, each lasting a few days at most. Once lived, the memory of them would remain close by for a time and then develop a tendency to stray, returning grudgingly, then not at all. His most loyal memory was his lifetime as a child. It remained somewhere not far off and lit by a weak, kindly beam, like the recollection of a story once read under the bedclothes about another boy a bit like him. Other lifetimes left no trace at all. He bore scars on his body from wounds he supposed he had suffered, and sometimes deduced from the state of his fingernails and hair, which continued to grow in what felt, impossibly, like his absence, that his life must somehow be passing. He wore clothes which looked familiar, as if he had seen them once on a long-dead relative who, he almost saved himself from realising, was himself. Only his love for Ivan joined up the days and gave him a part of his life that he could feel was truly his.
Still barefoot, he strolled round to the water butt on the side of the hut. It was almost full because it had rained for most of July, although Leech was not up to that degree of reflection on weather so long ago lived through. He scooped up a handful of water and drank it, and with another handful loosened some of the grime on his face, and used both hands to smear it into fresh streaks. Then he weighed his scrotum inattentively in one cupped hand, peed into the hedge, scratched his armpits and finger-combed his hair, yawning. He returned to the hut, put on his shoes, pulled on his jumper and came out again, dragging a blanket with him and pulling it round his shoulders.
Birds were starting to sing, and Leech could now see the torn silver lace of night-spun cobwebs stretching across between the rows of vegetables, down to the high boundary hedge. Leech waited. Then, not knowing if what he sensed were a movement from the ground or a sound upon the air, he began to run, stripping and tearing the threads of spider silk hanging between the vegetable rows. He rea
ched the bottom of the garden just as the scream of the first train tore the curtain of the morning in two. He stopped, gazed upwards and watched open-mouthed as the silver and yellow train ripped past, unzipping the seam between hedge top and sky.
It passed. Leech yawned again, rearranged his blanket round his shoulders and turned back down towards the shed. Skirting past the ranks of undisturbed beans, peas and lettuces, still trussed with the silver wire of the spiders, he tramped across the empty half acre of rye field until he reached the gap between the fruit cages where he could see the back of the house. There was nothing to see except the patch of poor grass, Hilary’s whirligig for drying the flowered bed linen, a few herbs among the concrete slabs by the back door, and the outside tap. The curtains were closed. Good. Leech crouched down between the blackcurrants and the raspberries, picked a few and ate them. Then he sat down, wrapped his blanket round him, and waited. Ivan and Hilary were safe and sound, he could feel it. Safe and sound. Leech’s eyes took in their curtained bedroom window above the dining room and scanned across to the smaller window whose curtains were not drawn. Nobody else, then. No B&B guests last night. Leech sighed with pleasure, fished in his clothing for his stuff, rolled a cigarette and lit it. He didn’t like the B&B guests much. Ivan never said come on down to the house after when there were B&B guests around. There had been a nice one once whom he remembered for some particular reason, though the reason itself eluded him. She was nice. Very small she was, tiny. You could lift her like she was a doll or something. He did remember that.
* * *
HILARY LOOKED out the window as she filled the kettle and watched without surprise as Leech plodded across the grass and waited by the door. She opened it and nodded him in without smiling. It was too much to smile when she did not feel either fully awake or at all welcoming, and since Ivan was not yet down she did not have to find the energy to pretend. Ivan’s raw diet seemed to be helping with the nausea though, or perhaps it was the ginger tea or the acupressure he regularly did on her arms. Quite possibly it was just the loving care he was now giving her that made her feel better. At the thought, she smiled fondly at Leech who, in answer, slid into his usual seat at the table in one corner. A smile meant there was a good chance of breakfast.
Hilary had already set out on a chopping board what looked to Leech like far too much fruit, when Ivan appeared in the doorway. He smiled at Leech, opened the fridge and pulled out from the back a torn plastic packet, holding it up between one finger and thumb.
‘This wants using up,’ he said. ‘Leech can have this, can’t he, Hil?’ Hilary peered at the packet and nodded. She could not, either in conscience or in Health & Safety, put such elderly bacon before B&B guests, if they had had any. Ivan said brightly, ‘I’ll do it. Want some fried bread with that, Leech?’
Leech nodded happily. Breakfast, when it came a few minutes later, was the best he had ever had. The bacon was good. And the fried bread, although brown, had been fried by Ivan, which made it a once-in-a-lifetime breakfast.
‘A once-in-a-lifetime breakfast,’ he said throatily, watching Ivan and Hilary eat the last of their fruit. He had not noticed the silence, but noticed now that Ivan and Hilary exchanged a look. Hilary got up and began clearing plates.
‘We’ve got something to tell you,’ Ivan said, and hesitated. ‘Something that’s going to happen soon.’
But Leech was too clever for that. He nodded and spluttered, trying to talk too fast. ‘I know. I know. A big thing’s happening.’ His voice was rusty from under-use. ‘Today. The eclipse. That’s happening today, yeah? Once in a lifetime. See? I know.’ He sat back, beaming with pride.
Ivan and Hilary looked at each other again, worried. Ivan said gently, ‘The eclipse was yesterday, man. Remember? You were with me. We watched it together. Hilary was at the clinic. All right, man?’
Leech stared at him. Slowly, he shook his head. He might remember and he might not. ‘Yeah,’ he said, so as not to disappoint Ivan.
‘The thing is, the summer’s going to be over soon, isn’t it,’ Hilary stated. ‘The weather’s going to change, isn’t it? It’ll be too cold for the hut, soon.’
She was now wiping round the sink with an antiseptic-soaked paper towel from a plastic box. Ivan watched while Leech, who may or may not have taken in what she was saying, looked down at his empty plate.
‘I mean you’ve been very welcome,’ she said, with the merest emphasis on ‘been’. ‘Ever so welcome, really, hasn’t he, Ivan?’
Her eyes pleaded with Ivan to do the next bit for her. Ivan drew in a deep, reluctant breath. ‘It’s been good to have you, man,’ he said. ‘Really good. I mean, I really appreciated the help, it was great having you. The radicchio this year—wow!’
Leech’s face brightened and he looked up, nodding. ‘Yeah! And the … the strawberries! Yeah, they were good.’
‘They were! They were really good. We don’t want you to think that we don’t really, really appreciate it. Do we, Hil?’
Leech nodded with satisfaction and returned to his plate, prodding up single crumbs of bread with one forefinger and putting them in his mouth.
‘It’s just that,’ Hilary began again, knowing that Ivan had done his worst and she could look to him for no more, ‘well, we did say. I mean, there’s still lots of picking to do so maybe you could help out now and then but the really busy time’s over, isn’t it. And do you remember Ivan told you that we’re going to have a baby?’ She allowed herself a smile and a lift in her voice. She looked at Ivan and the now customary look of private joy was exchanged, a look which said in a glance, yes of course everybody’s pleased for us but nobody else knows how happy we really are.
Leech frowned. There was a familiarity in the statement that made him suppose that it had cropped up before. Hilary lifted his plate away and wiped hard with her antiseptic paper at the place where it had been. Depositing the plate on the side of the sink she turned and looked hard at Ivan once more. He responded with an encouraging smile. She sighed. ‘The thing is, we’ve been quite happy to have you here, you know, for meals and washing and the odd bath and so on.’ Leech nodded as if to say it was nothing, he’d been pleased to oblige. ‘Only with the baby, it’ll be more difficult. Do you see?’
Leech did not, and was studying the table top. ‘And as I say the summer’s nearly over, so you couldn’t go on staying in the hut anyway. It’ll be too cold soon. It’s been ever so cold anyway, this summer, you can’t have been that comfortable. We wouldn’t feel right, you staying in that hut much longer.’
Leech wiped his hand back and forth over his mouth, considering. He looked up at Ivan. ‘Can kip in the house, then, can I?’
Ivan could tell by Hilary’s face as she turned to the sink and turned on the hot tap that she was not going to say the next bit. ‘Hilary’s saying,’ he said, looking at her back rather than at Leech’s stone eyes, ‘Hilary’s saying that it’s maybe time to think about where you’re going to go next. After here. It’s time to move on, do you see? Hilary’s worried about you in the hut. Because we’ll be a bit crowded with the baby, see what I mean?’ When Leech did not reply he said as firmly as he could, ‘You can’t kip here. I mean, we’ll see what we can do, getting you sorted and that, but you can’t kip here really, no.’
‘Oh, we’ll definitely get you sorted with something,’ Hilary cried quickly, turning back from the sink. ‘I mean there’s no question of throwing you out. I mean, we’re not like that. But the baby … well, everything’s going to be a bit upside down for a while, I expect.’
She drew breath to ask if he understood, and thought better of it. He would not, and if he said as much it would change nothing except how bad she felt, by making her feel even worse. But Leech had to go. It had crossed her mind earlier in the year that when she took in the B&B sign at the end of August, Leech could perhaps have the smaller room. She assumed, because he sometimes had a packet of cigs and the odd can of Coke, that he got a little money from somewhere, benefit probably
, so she would be able to negotiate a bit from him to cover food and hot water. And even in the winter he could carry on being a real help to Ivan, so that he would never get over-tired and would be less prone to episodes. Three in the house would be quite bearable, she had anticipated, since Leech’s company was no more demanding than having a soporific cat or a stuffed fox in the room with you. But baby put an entirely different cast on her plans. Her anxiety for the unborn child was being channelled into an obsession about keeping a spotlessly clean house, an aspiration incompatible with having as a lodger the likes of Leech, who did not have so much as a toothbrush let alone normal domestic standards. She was intent also on realising the picture she had created in her mind of herself, Ivan and the baby, as happy and self-contained as a secular nativity scene, the perfect nuclear family whose ruthless exclusivity she would protect from Leech or anyone else as if it were, indeed, holy.
It was not in Leech to make suggestions so he sat, awaiting orders. Hilary chose to take his impassivity for acceptance and said brightly, ‘Good! So, suppose we said the end of August, then? That’s enough time, isn’t it? End of August,’ she repeated.
‘Coming?’ Ivan was now at the back door, holding it open. ‘There’s plenty to lift.’ Leech embraced the normality of being told what to do and stepped past him out on to the concrete path. ‘I’ll be along in a minute,’ Ivan said.
Leech turned and made off across the grass to the gap in the hedge that led to the fruit cages and the garden beyond. His loping walk could have indicated that he was entirely relaxed about his impending homelessness, or that he had not taken it in.
Ivan wrapped his arms round Hilary and snuggled into her neck. His skin’s scent reminded her of a lovely clean sheep. It was too early to feel any bump yet but Hilary, sheltering in the safety of her tall husband, imagined with quiet excitement what it would be like when Ivan would also feel, embracing her like this, the hard little pillow of fluid that their precious one was swimming in and later, the cheeky little kicks that he would take against his bony belly when she hugged him hard.