“I can’t stay for very long. Only a minute or two.” The woman squeezes past me and makes her way towards the living room as though she is a regular visitor in my home.
“Would you prefer tea or coffee?” I ask.
“Either, thanks. Whatever is easiest. Honestly, I really can’t stay long.”
I follow her into the living room, sit her down and then go into the kitchen to pour her a cup of tea. In my house it’s easy to carry on a conversation with somebody from the kitchen. You don’t have to do any shouting or anything, so I wait for her to say what’s on her mind, but she doesn’t say anything, so I pour the milk into the tea and then stir.
After she has gone I begin to clear away the tea, and then the plate with the biscuits that she refused to eat. I pick up the plate and look through the window as she clip-clops her way, in her stupid high heels, down towards the end of the cul-de-sac where her new red hatchback is waiting for her. She does not look back, but rather than envying her confidence, I find myself despising it. She has, after all, just come into my home and very quickly stepped beyond the boundaries of decorum. As I set down the tea and biscuits before her, I asked her if she would like sugar. She shook her head vigorously as though I had offered her rat poison.
“Well,” I began, “I suppose you have to ask yourself, does Carla really want to learn the piano?”
“I thought she did,” said the mother, “but now I’m not so sure. She’s at a difficult age, and she has strong opinions about certain things.”
“I see.” I took a biscuit. “Such as playing the piano?”
“Well, not just this. There’s your own behaviour to consider.”
“My own behaviour?” I replaced the biscuit on the plate and looked at the woman.
“I think you need help, don’t you? Carla likes you all right, but she says you shout, and then at other times you’re nice, but most of the time you just stare out of the window and you don’t hear anything that she’s saying to you. Can I ask you frankly, Miss Jones, what’s the matter?”
“You’re taking your daughter’s word for all of this?” The woman stared at me with a piteous look that would have tried the patience of a saint. “I see, so I’m to understand that I’m the one with problems concentrating.”
“Carla’s a good kid, and she wouldn’t lie. In fact, she’s quite upset about you. I mean, she likes you, but she thinks you should get some help as you’re behaving strangely.”
For a few moments I stared at this woman, and then it dawned on me that she was serious.
“More tea?” I asked. The woman glanced at her watch and then reached for her bag.
“You know, at least I tried. I’ve really got to be going.”
“As you please.”
The woman leaned forward now and she tried to appear sympathetic.
“I think you should remember, it’s a small village, and like you I’ve been used to the town. But these people, they talk, you know.”
“About who?”
“About you, Miss Jones. There are good people in the village that you can spend time with. You don’t have to be by yourself.”
“Well, I can’t stop them talking.” It was difficult to remove the anger from my voice, and Mrs. Lawson seemed to accept the fact that there was little further to be said on this, or any other, subject.
“Well, I’m sorry, but I really just came to tell you that Carla won’t be coming back for any more piano lessons.” With this said, she got to her feet and bade me good morning. I look at her now as she leans forward and unlocks her car door. She climbs in and starts the hatchback’s engine, and soon she is indicating right and then turning into the traffic and making her way to work.
There is a young man weeding in the graveyard. He is there almost every time I visit. What makes his labour strange is the fact that he does this job by hand. Not with a scythe, a trowel, or even a pair of scissors; this young man pulls out the weeds by hand and stuffs them into a black plastic bag that is looped to his belt with a piece of frayed rope. As I walk up the short incline I can see that he has finished my parents’ grave. They lie side by side, Mum having died first and then Dad a year later. They planned this final resting-place together, and they arrived in almost perfect harmony. One day, while Dad was down at his allotment, Mum’s heart gave out. He said goodbye to her in the morning and left the house which they had shared for almost fifty years. When he arrived home at the end of the day she was gone. According to the neighbours, she collapsed in the back yard while taking out the rubbish, and one of them called the ambulance while the others tried to bring her round. There had been a few minor scares over the years, including a mild stroke when they went abroad, for the first and only time, to Majorca. She had to be flown back, on insurance, and she spent a fortnight in hospital. But this final blow was swift and sudden, like a hammer falling, and there was no time to do anything but react. Dad phoned me and I travelled up from Birmingham. I made him a cup of tea and we sat together in silence, a banked fire glowing red in the grate, until the weak sun came up the next morning. I knew that he’d not be able to last long without her.
In the morning he asked me to get hold of my sister, and so I said I would, although I had an address but no phone number. It turned out her number was unlisted, but it wasn’t that difficult to find Sheila’s number in London and so I called her and broke the news about Mum. She was silent, and then when I asked her if she was coming to the funeral she simply said “yes.” When, two days later, she turned up with her friend, it took all my self-control to stop myself from saying something to my younger sister. Now was not the time to be introducing Dad to such lifestyle choices, for he was fragile enough as it was. In fact, I couldn’t remember a time when I’d been more angry, but luckily Dad was too grief-stricken to notice what Sheila had done. My so-called husband Brian played the role of peacemaker, and somehow we all survived the funeral. And then Dad started to get worse. His ailments seemed to all flare up together. The chest from all the years on the pipe. Then his hips, which had long been riddled with arthritis, went from bad to worse, and then finally his eyes started to mist over with glaucoma. Six months after we buried Mum he had become so bad that he couldn’t go to the toilet, or take a bath, or do much of anything by himself. To start with, I was travelling up from Birmingham and spending every weekend with him, but his doctor finally told me that unless we got a nurse he’d have to go into a home. So I asked the doctor to be honest with me and say how long he’d got left. He knotted his fingers together and said maybe a year, but probably less, and so we arranged for a retired midwife to live in the spare room. Soon Dad couldn’t leave his bed, but he still made the poor woman’s life miserable, even going so far as to tell her that he didn’t believe in good women, only women who lived under the influence of good men.
Less than a year after Mum went, he passed away in his sleep, and the sour-faced midwife made a performance out of leaving the house before his body was even cold. Again, I telephoned my sister, and this time I got her answering machine and left a message, but I heard nothing. I wasn’t surprised, and if truth be told I was somewhat relieved that I would be spared a rerun of Sheila’s selfishness. It had been her own wilful decision to leave home at seventeen, and for nearly thirty years Mum and Dad had hardly had any contact with her. It was something they’d reluctantly learned how to deal with, and they’d become well schooled in the practice of deflecting questions, telling half-truths and hiding their grief. Mum, in particular, seemed to suffer. Sheila’s rejection of them both, and her determination to live her own life in the south, caused Mum to retreat even further from people and conversation. Mum began to eat by herself, and there was something deeply painful about seeing her sitting alone with her Bible and her face furrowed in lonely concentration. Dad had argued any real faith out from under me, but Mum still believed, although she didn’t bother with actually going to church. I used to wonder if things might have been better for her if I could have given her some little
ones to be proud of, but I soon came to realise that nothing would help. Mum had lost her youngest daughter, and even the blessing of grandchildren wouldn’t have begun to compensate for this loss. Dad, on the other hand, continued to rail about every subject under the sun, but the one subject he refused to take on was that of our Sheila.
Over the years, whenever I’d returned home I always knew that I could find him in his shed. I’d go down past the old cottages, then across the wasteland till I came to the patchwork quilt of allotments, with their turnips and runner beans laid out in obedient rows. He’d be there sucking on his pipe and bemoaning the fact that we were giving up our English birthright and getting lost in a United States of Europe, or the fact that one never sees men in collars and ties on Sundays, or expressing his continued astonishment that ordinary folk could have any respect for the memory of Churchill, a man who during the 1926 General Strike had, as Dad had been telling me since I was a small child, referred to the workers as “the enemy.” I would listen, knowing that I would never hear a word from either him, or Mum, about Sheila, but everything about their behaviour suggested a profound pain at having failed to hold on to one of their two children. It was, of course, easier for me; she was my younger sister, and although I missed having her in my life, I didn’t depend upon her in any way. I never had.
The young man who is weeding among the tombstones recognises me. We have one of those “nod and a wave” relationships. He seems to enjoy his work, or at least he never complains about it, which surprises me. I’m so used to young people who either don’t want to work, or who make it clear that although they are working they are doing so reluctantly. This young man’s work ethic seems to have been born in an earlier generation. In fact, he dresses as though he were from an earlier generation, with his flat cap and big boots. I stand and look down at my parents, their names freshly picked out with a wet cloth. I can feel the young man’s eyes upon me, and it suddenly occurs to me to ask him if he’s ever seen anybody else standing here looking at Mum and Dad. Maybe Sheila has visited out of some vaguely remembered sense of duty, choosing her times to coincide with my absences. For a moment I toy with the idea, but the truth is Sheila would never bother to cultivate such cunning. Not my Sheila, the seventeen-year-old girl who ran away from home while I was at university, and who showed up penniless on my doorstep. Once I’d recovered from the shock of opening the door on Sheila and her lopsided grin, I asked her in. She left her rucksack by the door and sat down on the edge of my single bed.
“Where have you been, Sheila? You look like a cat dragged you backwards through a hedge.”
She stared at the Jean-Luc Godard poster on my wall and said nothing, so I made her a cup of tea and waited for her to speak. I had concert practice that evening, but I knew that I wasn’t going to make it. While the tea was brewing I quickly excused myself and dashed down the dormitory corridor. I slipped a note under my friend Margaret’s door. I didn’t feel like explaining anything to anybody, so a note was easier. I told Margaret that something had come up, which it had, and that they would have to manage without me tonight. I hurried back to my room and closed the door behind me, then locked it. Sheila didn’t look up. I felt guilty, but I couldn’t help but notice how much bigger on her chest she’d become. I poured us both a cup of tea and then sat next to my sister, ready to talk. But she wasn’t ready to talk, and her eyes began to fill with tears that eventually spilled out and ran down her gaunt cheeks.
I must have lingered too long at the graveside, for it appears that I’ve missed the four o’clock bus. A woman of my age finds it both difficult, and a little undignified, to run. I sit on the bench by the bus stop and stare at the hordes of badly dressed schoolchildren milling about and shouting. I recognise the green sweatshirts, and the ties that hang down like cords that you might yank to turn on a light switch. Then I realise that I know some of the kids, so I look away and try to make myself as inconspicuous as possible. A doublechinned man, burdened with shopping bags, sits next to me. He was on the bus that brought us out from the village a few hours earlier, and he attempts conversation. “It’s still warm out.” I can’t help him, and so I smile and silently beg his forgiveness. He registers my reluctance and opens a copy of the evening newspaper. I look around and wonder how I ever managed to live in this noisy, filthy town. Mercifully, I now live in Weston, or in the “new development,” which the man next to me has no doubt already guessed. I’m sure that he sits at home at the bottom of the hill, probably by himself, judging by all the shopping bags, and considers me and everybody else in the new development to be interlopers. All of us, disturbing a pattern that has gone on for decade after decade until Stoneleigh came along to make them feel as though their shrinking lives, which were already blighted by closures and unemployment, were even less important than they had hitherto imagined.
It’s a little after five-thirty when the bus rolls slowly into the village. There are those who don’t stir, for they will be alighting at one of the small towns or lonely villages beyond Weston. However, I watch as my bench partner gets to his feet and struggles with his shopping bags, and then two younger women make their way from the back of the bus and join him at the door. I bring up the rear. The driver is a polite young kid who seems to specialise in this route, and he wishes us all, individually mind you, a good night. Strange, I think, as it’s still bright out, but I appreciate the gesture. Usually I would turn to the left and begin the short walk up the hill, but having read some of the back of the man’s evening newspaper it occurs to me that catching up on the news would be a nice way to spend the evening. I wait until the bus has moved off on its way, and then I cross the main road. Carla sees me coming towards her and, at least to start with, she’s a little shocked, as though I were the last person she wanted to see. Then she catches herself and looks somewhat nervously at me.
“Hello, Miss.” She is dressed to go out, with her eyes overly made-up and her hair neatly combed so that it fans down over her shoulders. If I’m not mistaken there’s even a dusting of glitter on her face. I look at her, budding all over, and done up like a promiscuous little so-and-so, but there is nothing that I can say to her by way of admonishment for she is no longer one of my pupils.
“Hello, Carla. I’m sorry I won’t be seeing you again.”
Carla shrugs, not with insolence, but as though to imply there’s nothing that she can do about the situation.
“I’m sorry too, Miss.” She pauses. “Is it true you’ll be going into a home?”
I say nothing, but I’m taken aback.
“It’s just that people are saying you’re ill.”
I stare at Carla who, despite her mother, is not a bad girl. Christ, I’ve taught far worse. In fact, as far as delinquency and bad behaviour go, this girl is practically an angel. I begin to think of what I’d do with her if she were my child. But she’s not my child or, if truth be known, even my friend. She asks this intrusive question because, like all young people today, she feels entitled; entitled to dress, behave, speak, walk, do whatever they please.
“Yes, Carla, I am ill, and it’s a bully of an illness.” The girl looks momentarily alarmed. “But you’re all right. It’s not catching.” Carla smiles weakly.
“What is it, Miss?”
“What is it? What do you think it is?”
Carla shrugs her shoulders. “I don’t know, Miss. Your nerves?”
I can see that the blushing girl wishes that she’d never asked the question, so I rescue her.
“I don’t think I’m quite yet ready for a home, Carla, do you?” I throw her a parting smile and move off into the newsagent’s, leaving her to wait for the bus that will no doubt take her into town for her night of teenage antics with her friends.
It’s a bit of a pull up the last stretch of the hill and I begin to tire. It has already been a long day and my hip has started to hurt. Too many years of sitting at the piano in the same position, said my old doctor when I first went in to complain about it. “You need
regular exercise” was his solution, but some chance, I thought, looking after Brian, trying to teach all day and taking on more pupils at night to make some extra money. And so the hip just got worse, until it reached the stage where it was difficult for me to walk any distance. That’s when the old doctor gave me the steroid shots and, miraculously enough, they seemed to do the trick. Now that I’m retired I do, of course, have a lot more time to exercise. But what use is it now? Dr. Williams told me not to think like this, but Dr. Williams is a specialist, not a proper GP. I can feel the evening newspaper getting damp in my grip, so I tuck it into my bag. And then, as I enter the cul-de-sac, I see Solomon. As usual, by himself, washing his car, oblivious to everything around him. He has a habit of keeping the car radio on, and a window wound down just a little bit, so that he can listen to light music on Radio 2. I hate this kind of mindless commercial rubbish, but I’ve never told him this for fear of offending him. He puts it on when he drives me, although he makes a point of asking first. I’m always accommodating and I say “fine,” so it’s obviously my own fault. I’m sure he isn’t going to throw a fit or anything if I say, “No, I don’t like it,” but generally I try to be pleasant. As I come up to him I realise that today there’s no music. He’s washing his car in silence.
“Is everything all right?” Solomon asks me this without looking up at me. For a second or so I’m taken aback, but I understand that it’s probably his way of being discreet. He’s allowing me my space. I stop and look at him waxing the bonnet of his car.
“I think everything’s all right,” I say. “I missed the bus coming back, but that’s about the highlight of my day.”
Solomon stares at me.
“You missed the bus? How did that happen?” He seems genuinely concerned, so I try to set his mind at ease.
“No emergency or anything. I just spent too much time with my parents.” He continues to look puzzled. “At the cemetery. Time just flew by.”
A Distant Shore Page 3