by Jill Dawson
The moment she’d had this thought she felt its foolishness, its falsity. He can’t know anything: his eyes aren’t piercing straight to your darkest thoughts, he’s not a mind-reader, what can he possibly know? You’re making things up – matter of fact, you might be half cracked at this moment, if you want the truth.
‘I heard about your Dagger, too.’ Ronnie’s voice came from nowhere. But it sounded gentle and kind, not accusing. She breathed out in the fug of the car. ‘The award party is in a month, I think. We could go together? That is, if you felt like driving us?’
Was it only this? Ronnie was always shy about asking for rides? But he was more social than she, too, and convinced that writers gained immeasurably from being around other artistic people, having had that initial input himself as a boy from the composer he described only as ‘a thin, crinkly-haired figure’. Pat had felt a little high, and then a confusion of shame, in being told she was shortlisted for the Silver Dagger award. Best foreign crime novel. It would be published in England now at any rate. But a prize was nothing great.
Pat’s distaste for parties amounted to a phobia. Her talent for aloneness was powerful, and although Ronnie shared her skill in solitude, their intermission requirements were different. Her solitude was punctuated by a need for intense sexual and passionate experiences that left her drained and hungry for aloneness again. Ronnie needed something else. Something intellectual, green, healthy. Not the degrading immersion that she went in for. A shudder passed through her as she remembered.
An October stillness hung in the air; bells were already ringing and dusk liquescing the countryside. On the dashboard lay Ronnie’s attempt to make a corn dolly. ‘Looks more like a voodoo doll,’ Pat muttered, holding the curious stick figure up to examine it, while Ronnie gave her directions to the church and remarked on the loveliness of the sunset; like a pink ice-lolly slowly melting.
Ronnie’s corn dolly was the goddess Ceres, imprisoned for a year in a cage of corn, to promise fertility. He said that, traditionally, it was always the men who made them and she was not to josh him for his efforts, made in the proper way from the last sheaf of the harvest. As she studied it, hunched and stiff, the arms sloping by its sides, it was the stick-thin Gerald she saw. And maybe something pretty shady. Out of the corner of her eye, something else.
I’m closing the door of the telephone booth at our agreed time on a milky blue night under a full moon, trapping brambles and leaves in with me. From the crunch underfoot I notice that another of the panes of oblong glass has been smashed into little cubes. The phone is ringing already – almost leaping off its cradle like a black snake – and I snatch it up. ‘Sam?’ Yes. ‘What did the police say?’
‘Nothing much. Name, a description. When did I last see him, that sort of thing.’
‘And how did they sound? You know? What kind of person did you speak to?’
‘Oh I don’t know. Just as you’d expect. A British bobby. Not that intelligent. Not that – oh.’
And then a little kerfuffle at her end, and I realise that her daughter Minty must be in the room she’s calling from and there is talk of ‘cocoa’ and ‘toothbrush’ and ‘Don’t worry, darling, you’ll see him tomorrow,’ and murmuring, and then she’s back on the line.
‘I didn’t realise she was awake! She might have been listening outside the door for all I knew.’
I’m not too concerned. If the child picks up on her secrecy she’ll just assume it’s the usual adult thing, the whispering and hiding of painful truths that parents do routinely to children: Daddy hasn’t come home and no one knows where he is. I long to say something useful and soothing, something to tilt the mood and make Sam friendly again, not wary, like this, not tired-sounding and quietly hostile, but there’s nothing I can think of.
‘Well, call me again tomorrow,’ I say. ‘I’ll be in the phone booth at ten in the morning. Will Minty have left by then? Will you be able to talk?’
Yes, Minty will be in a car with her little friend Hermione Dixon and the Dixons’ nanny will drive her to school. That is, until the news, of course, when she knows Minty will be fetched back again and she has to face her, her tears and dramas or, worse, her dry, too-mature-for-words stoicism. Her voice is dulled, quiet. I guess that some of the reality is seeping in; it’s only natural, I suppose, that she might feel a little sad about Gerald, but that will pass, surely, when she realises what it means for us, what freedoms it affords us . . .
‘I never feel sadder than seeing little Minty all dressed up with that blazer and beret and with her little case on her way to school,’ Sam says.
‘Well, now that – now, perhaps, you can make your own decisions about which school she goes to. Won’t that be nice?’
I have to say this quietly, of course. Everything in a whisper because naturally, at this point, we can only know that a husband is missing, that he didn’t leave word of where he was going, that his wife returned from a weekend visiting friends and found that he wasn’t there and that she is worried enough to call the police.
I close the stiff booth door and dash over the road to Bridge Cottage; rain falls in fat wet blobs on my head. I decide a large glass of whisky topped with water from the faucet will help me sleep but in fact it jolts me awake, and lying there stiff and alert for an hour or so, breathing in the scent of Sam’s hair on my pillow, I give up and wrench myself from the warmth of my bed to take up my writing.
My bathrobe is hooked on the back of the door. I don’t wear it when Sam is around: I know it’s unsexy; I feel like an old man in it. But it’s comforting now: the deep plum-coloured wool, the Harrods label, the familiar cream and lilac stripes on its cuffs, the striped woollen belt. It smells of me, I suppose, this thick, draping garment, whatever that smell is – how can a person know their own smell? It was Sam who told me I have a talent for aloneness. I had never heard it expressed that way. ‘Hey – I get lonely sometimes!’ I’d protested. And I feel it now. Like a child alone in a plane, appraising the world. How far this tiny, silly, pointless village is from everything and everyone. What on earth am I doing here? Why am I always . . . why have I always been cut off like this, rattling around somewhere like a nut in a sealed-up doll’s house? There’s Texas, Paris, Europe, New York. The world, with Ronnie and books and people in it. And here I am. None of them knows where I am just now and what I did.
Except Sam, of course.
My fingers curl around the shell of a snail in the pocket of the bathrobe, grazing its sticky horns before it draws them in. I move to add it to the ones on the window ledge. A hobneydod, Ronnie had called it. There are lots of them now: various pairs of differing sizes, some found in the garden. The garden ones are in a washing-up bowl on the window ledge so that I can observe them and figure out if they’re pairs of the opposite sex. The original snails in their saucer contain the eggs, and I check these every time I pass and replace the snails who have crawled over the rim and sometimes ended up on the windowpane. The eggs have turned a pale grey colour. I keep a magnifying-glass close by to observe them but even in the lamplight these are now clearly visible. One pair in the washing-up bowl is now digging a pit; happily, there will surely be more eggs soon.
I’ve crossed a line that very few people cross. It is – as I always knew it would be – an extraordinary feeling. Nothing else matters. No rules, no silly behaviour, like putting out milk bottles on the step, filling up the car with gas, opening a bill from Eastern Electricity Board – none of these things seem real any longer, or necessary. Surely I now live by different rules, like the delirious pleasure I felt as a child if I bunked off school, the secret feeling that no one could find me, the delirium of terror in case they should.
I pour myself another glass of whisky and take a big, burning gulp. I only feel up to the Plotting book, not the novel, not the immersion required for that. I’m too prickly and alert. Aroused. Provoked. Not exhausted, not yet, but I can feel it waiting to engulf me.
I write then take another glug of th
e whisky (this one is good, a smoky single malt, golden in colour, delicious), turning at last to the novel, lifting my fingers to begin.
And then he turns up again, making me jump out of my skin, appearing at the bottom of the stairs, simply sitting there, fully dressed, small and bent like a coat-hanger, tapping at the heel of his pipe and looking over his shoulder at me with that soft glow and those small dark piggy eyes.
‘You should have weighted the ankles,’ he says. ‘Weight the body down so it won’t pop up again and betray you. Why didn’t you think of that?’
He gets up. He stretches in the low-ceilinged cottage. Jerks one finger at the rolled-up rug, leaning against the stairs.
‘You’ll have to get rid of that. Blood and semen and who knows what else? They do tests, you know. Won’t there be a post-mortem, too? You’re so much more of a rookie than you think . . .’
Tests! What tests? They only do tests if they suspect something. The whole point is – you’re a suicide. That’s why it’s fine for you to bob back. That’s why it wouldn’t be fine for you to have weights around your ankles. And they don’t always do a post-mortem. I’ve looked it up, a giant legal tome at the library. Post-mortems are expensive, and distressing for the family, prolonging the grieving process. They don’t do one after every death as a matter of course.
‘You took an awful risk with that blow to my head,’ he says. ‘The skull does have its weak points. One is the pterion, known as the temple. Just beneath this thin bit of skull is the middle meningeal artery. If you get clonked in the temple, this artery can rupture. That must be how you did it. Not the back of the head but the temple.’
How did he get to be so knowledgeable? I don’t remember him having any kind of Irish accent, either, but there is the faintest trace now. He’s right about that blow to the head. I have been worried about that. But then, apparently, the thing to be aware of when determining death by drowning is that other injuries – head injuries – might be caused by the fall into the water, or by contact with a boat, or even in the moment when the body is hauled from the water, which sometimes involves hooks and ropes and further insult to the head . . . And then there is a knock on the door – late as it is – and the Thing, it, him, whatever his name is, disappears and dear kind Ronnie is there, in darkness, knocking at the back door.
I switch on the kitchen light at the same moment as he opens the unlocked back door, bringing in a blast of rain-soaked air, shaking his head with that ever so slightly too-long mane – it makes him seem like a vain man, which he isn’t. ‘You were writing,’ Ronnie says, with the greatest civility. ‘I’m so sorry.’
I assure him it’s fine. It’s late for Ronnie, gone midnight now, and Ronnie is more of a morning person, but he’s been at the church, evensong, then stayed to interview someone for his book, and when he went to cycle home, he discovered he had a flat. He tries to wheel the great muddy thing into my kitchen but I draw the line at that.
‘Leave it out there. Mrs Ingham won’t make off with it.’
As I open the back door there is a low ghostly sweeping movement in the huge elms. The return of my grey blob?
‘Barn owl,’ Ronnie says. ‘She’s hunting. Aren’t they beautiful with their little heart-shaped faces?’
We close the kitchen door against the rain and chill. My kitchen is not much warmer.
‘You talk to yourself when you write,’ Ronnie says, glancing at the tumbler of whisky I’m holding. I offer the bottle, standing on the kitchen table, to him; it seems to make a rather servile ducking gesture, like doffing its cap.
Ronnie accepts a small one to warm up. ‘Doesn’t everyone?’ I ask.
‘Why no fire?’ Ronnie asks, wandering into the front room, and immediately sets about making one, kneeling in front of the hearth to sweep the cold ash with the little dustpan and brush. Then his eyes land on my bathrobe: ‘Or were you on your way to bed?’
I tug the plum-coloured robe tighter and redo the belt, following him into the front room, shaking my head, reaching for my cigarettes and the gold lighter in the fluff of the pocket. I let Ronnie light the fire – tearing up the copies of the Ipswich Star and using the last of the kindling and, yes, though I didn’t think of it before, the room is cosier with that crackling sound and smell in it.
But there is the rug I’ve rolled up and stood on its end, meaning to be rid of it. And beside that the recently cleaned bit of red-brick tile; bare and scrubbed and dramatic. Flustered, I go to fix us some buttered crackers, the only food I have in the house, wanting Ronnie to follow me into the kitchen until I can somehow shove the sofa over the bare spot. Ronnie produces a brown-paper bag he’s brought of Blenheim Orange apples, his favourite. I chop one of the miserable-looking apples into pieces, place them on the tray with the whisky bottle and a glass of water to dilute. ‘It’s only midnight,’ I say. ‘Plenty of hours left to write.’
‘Ah, but . . .’ Here Ronnie is shy, apologetic. His mouth tucks under a little as he asks: ‘I wondered if you’d mind terribly, darling, if I stayed over? I can’t quite face fixing that puncture tonight in the rain, if you won’t let me bring the bike into the kitchen. I do have a puncture kit so I promise I’ll be off first thing in the morning.’
I nod, trying to seem as if I don’t mind the disruption. Ronnie knows me too well for that.
‘How many words today?’ he says.
‘It’s been a strange day, I guess. I couldn’t settle.’
He nods. No need to explain to Ronnie how it is.
‘The only useful thing I did was rethink the title. A Lark at Dawn is goddamn-awful. The Schizophrenic We – what d’you think of that?’
In fact, I’ve only just thought of it. And I’m not sure it’s any good either, and Ronnie agrees.
He purses his mouth and shakes his head.
‘Sorry, darling. I don’t like it.’
We both sip our whisky.
‘Well, Pat, you’ve made it very homely in here.’
This is a joke. He strides again from kitchen to living room – to be nearer the fire. I see Bridge Cottage through his eyes. Plain beige lining of the green velvet curtains, drawn closed. The lamp craned over my typewriter. Books in a slow, overflowing ooze from opened boxes to floor. My desk a litter of ashtray, half-empty glass, the core of an apple, another saucer of snails. The television set, looking awfully dead when it’s not switched on.
The orange flames of the fire snap merrily and I seize on this:
‘It’s cosy enough now you’re here.’
This seems suddenly to be a flirtatious remark, though I didn’t mean it to be. Ronnie’s blue eyes glow at the compliment. He crosses his knee in the leather chair; I perch on the sofa. A loud plop from a drop of water falls into a glass bowl I’ve placed on the floor in one corner of the room. Ronnie looks at it questioningly.
‘How on earth is rain getting in there?’ he asks.
‘Not rain. The upstairs bathroom. Plumber’s coming tomorrow to fix it.’
‘Let me,’ Ronnie says, and goes upstairs.
I follow him up at once. ‘No need. Man from Framlingham is coming first thing.’
Ronnie is in the bathroom, doing something with the ballcock. He stands on the lid to reach the black cistern above his head, rolls up his sleeves and comes back downstairs to rummage in my toolbox – horribly close to the Black & Decker in its own black box – and then goes back up again. I follow him at one step every time, saying: ‘Leave it, it’s late, why bother?’ but then he pulls the long chain and flushes the lavatory and the gushing sounds cease. He dries his arms on the guest towel.
‘There.’ He smiles. ‘Why pay good money for that?’
I’m not smiling. He sees my expression and stretches out a hand to touch my cheek. ‘Pats, sorry. What is it?’
His touch makes me want to bite his fingers, like a cat. Instead I grab them and kiss them.
Ronnie allows it, smiles, and strokes my hair with his free hand.
‘Such a funny mood yo
u’re in this evening,’ he remarks. His face is close and our eyes meet. Suddenly he looks startled, frightened even, and I have to step back, wondering what he saw there. We’re now on the landing and in sight of my bedroom, the door open, the bed with its crumpled silky counterpane on the floor in a pool of emerald green. I somehow don’t want to get back in there on my own so I say to Ronnie: ‘Come with me. Let me see you undress.’
This is not the first time. But it was long, long ago, and surprise now rolls over Ronnie’s face. It was the time of his essay on George Crabbe, his obsession with where Crabbe’s leech pond might have been. The era of his experiment with the siren voices of fiction.
‘So sad, tonight, aren’t we?’ he says, and kisses my forehead. But he obliges, following me into the room, undoing the belt of his khaki pants, and unbuttoning his shirt, then stepping out of the white shorts, his suntanned ease in his body that of a man who spends hours swimming naked in rivers, who works shirtless chopping wood in his garden. But my room is cold and he leaps, shivering, under the covers, tossing the pants from his foot and almost tripping in his haste to get warm. I take off my bathrobe and watch him lie there smiling as I take off the pyjamas and climb slowly in beside him.
‘So beautiful you are,’ he says. Again, not for the first time. The bedside lamp is switched on, the bedside table at Ronnie’s side of the bed (Sam’s side is how I think of it), and Ronnie moves to switch it off, but I put my hand over his.
‘Let me look at you,’ I say. He sits up; the covers rest at his waist. My hand traces the light fur of his chest, then I murmur: ‘Ronnie, what’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?’
I put my head down to kiss him on his sternum, his tiny pink nipples. Ronnie’s body is smooth, carved, like a fine boat, like a canoe that has been sanded and sanded, then further scribed by the sea. All wood and sunshine and heat – how hot men always are, compared to women – honest edges and muscle. He smells like the oil from his bike, and the smoke from the fire, and the tart green apples he’s been eating, and the fine healthy sweat of the cyclist, of one who sleeps deeply and well. As I kiss him, planting one after another soft, small kiss on his chest down to his belly button, he strokes my hair. I know from the way he does this that he is trying to soothe me, dissuade, not charge up. I can’t see his face just now so I try again: