by Peter Benson
So this is my house at the edge of the marshes with its roof, windows and tables, and there go a flock of geese and this is my house too. It is like everyone’s other house, a place where mysteries, promises, dreams and terrors are kept.
It is not a lasting state, this house, but it changes every day. It holds things that never leave – the memory of the first time I saw Isabel, the sound of her cries echoing through the night, the smell of sweat and salt, the feel of her – and it grows, twists and adds things to itself.
It could be mad or it could be angry, or it could double back on itself and become taller than the tallest building in a city. It could be yellow and black and talk in a language only it understands. It could whisper about careless times, or flare like a candle and become the person you loved. Her name could chime. It could be Isabel or Grace or someone else, someone whose name you cannot say any more, but when you are so lonely and you pull her picture from an envelope and stare at it in the middle of the night you know she was the love of your life and you will never forget her. You can smell her skin, but then the smell fades and passes. It has gone, and before you have a chance, you find yourself screaming in the night and wailing into the day.
It is as bad as that, as bad as the grave-digger who thinks, for a second, about what would happen if the man at the top walked away and left him there with his spade, rope and bucket and the block of light shining down. Or it could be a pale sky and we are walking along, and skylarks are watering the air with their songs. The sky is the roof and the larks are bees in the rafters, and I wake in the late afternoon from a dream about being a more dangerous man than I am.
I sit up and as the wind plays with the marshes, I remember how her skin used to ripple like water under ice. I used to lean towards her, put my ear next to her nose and listen to her breathing. I used to do these things, but I am different now, changed. I do not imagine I am clever, and I do not think I am pleased. When I remember things I have done and people I have known, I realize I was never true to them or true to myself. I spent too much time lost between what I thought made me happy and the ideas of happiness that were fed to me. But happiness only comes when you stop playing games and realize the only thing you have is your state of mind. This is all there is, nothing more. And at the moment my state of mind is quiet and I feel like the air in an empty drawer, scented with old possessions and old hands. I can see myself fresh and still, and I sit without wondering or waiting, and I listen to the wind as dust balls roll around my feet.
I read as I wait, then get up and stand at the window. I suppose I should go outside and do some work in the garden, but I will not. The beds and borders do not interest me and the lawn can grow as tall as a forest. I am not tired but I want to sleep, but I only want to sleep if Isabel is beside me. I want to listen to her beating heart and smell her skin. I want to close my eyes and feel her lips on my face. I want to hear her voice whispering in my ear.
But this is not going to happen yet. I am dreaming, turning like a falling leaf in whispering air. I say I am dreaming, but Isabel did come back, she did visit me here again, in the spring, as she travelled on her way to London. She had determined to become a nurse, and was to begin work at St Thomas’s Hospital. When she arrived, I made her a cup of tea and offered her a plate of small cakes, and as we sat on the veranda and I listened to her talk about her plans, it came to me. I say it came to me, but I suppose it was with me all the time, for how could it not have been? How could something so simple have gone unnoticed? For as she had shed her skin, so I had shed my fears and memories, and all the things that had bound me to the top floor of life. They had flown south like swallows, caught the warm air, and I told her this. “There is change in everything,” I said. “Change is the engine of the world.”
“Yes,” she said. “Maybe it is.”
“It is,” I said. “All my life I thought I should live one way, without thinking there are many ways. A thousand ways. I was foolish, blind and foolish.”
“No,” she said. “You were never foolish.”
“I was.”
She smiled now and nodded, but she was not going to argue. So for another moment we sat and listened as the late birds flew home, a small wind blew, and the garden gate squeaked on its hinges.
“What were your fears?” she said.
“Many.”
“Name me one.”
“That I would never do anything worthwhile. That I would always do mundane work in a safe world.”
“Now you are fooling yourself.”
“Am I?”
“Why?”
“You know why.”
“Tell me.”
“You saved me, David, and that was far from mundane.”
“I thought…”
“Thought what?”
“That maybe… maybe I would never be able to love. Or find…” I stopped the words in my throat for a moment. “Someone who needs me. Loves me.”
She reached out and took my hand, held it in hers and stroked it. I looked at her skin. It was pale and smooth, and beautiful. I remembered how she used to look, her face and back and neck, and I said, “Do you remember? How you used to be?”
“Of course.”
“And what do you think now?”
“I think I have another life. And I think I’m grateful.”
Now I wanted to weep, to tell her that if I had a chance I would want to love her and have her love me, but at that time I knew it was useless. There was only so much change in time. She was bound to the ambition to do good in a greater world than I knew, and sweep like a ship across an ocean I would never sail. I would stay in the marshes with the birds and the sky.
“You have to leave things behind,” she said. “You have to know how to say goodbye.”
“I suppose so.”
“You do know how to love.”
“You think so?”
“I know you do.”
“Sometimes I doubt it. Sometimes I think love is just a cupboard your mind hides inside.”
“That’s not a good way to think,” she said, “not a good way at all. And it’s not true.”
“I know, but I don’t think like that all the time. Sometimes I think that all I have to do is learn patience.”
“Maybe,” she said, and now I held my breath, “maybe one day I’ll teach you.”
“Would you?”
“Yes,” she said, “of course I will. Did you ever doubt it?” and she leant towards me, took my chin in her hand and kissed my cheek. Her lips felt like nothing at all, and she smelt of lemon. Lemon, a perfect fruit. Light, sour and fresh. Waiting. “Learn patience, David,” and as her words hung in the air, I thought she was going to tell me something else, something I wanted to hear. I almost prayed for it, but what is prayer to the faithless? On the other hand, what is prayer with faith? How can the divine help when the divine is such a failing lie? In either case, if an answer is heard, the answer is only made of empty words bred by imagination, words with no more power than a skipping rhyme. I would have to wait for my mind to clear, for our desires to meet and coalesce, and for the clouds to part. And waiting was something I had never done before, not properly, not carefully. And like the doubting apostle who placed his hand in the wounds and felt the scales drop from his eyes, so I knew that one day Isabel and I would walk back to this place, and I would meet her again where the stabbing bitterns court, wet or dry, dead or alive. There was no doubt, no doubt at all. And as she left and closed the gate, I watched her hair and the fainting rain, opened my mouth to call but let the words stop in my mouth, and I turned back to this, my pen and the ancient Pauline truth.
BORN IN 1956, PETER BENSON WAS EDUCATED IN Ramsgate, Canterbury and Exeter. His first novel, The Levels, won the Guardian Fiction Prize. This was followed by A Lesser Dependency, winner of the Encore award, and The Other Occupant, which was awarded the Somerset Maugham Award. He has also published short stories, screenplays and poetry. His work has been adapted for TV and radio, and his
novels are translated around the world.
www.almabooks.com