by Annie Bullen
‘This is Rose. I found her on the road. Look at her poor feet.’
Rose said nothing as Clem looked down at her feet, which, protected only by thin leather flip-flop sandals, did indeed appear to be in a bad way, with deep scratches and cuts and with a large blister across the toes of her dirty right foot.
‘She’s walked, all the way from Cornwall, looking for someone. I think she needs a drink.’ Kattie bustled off, leaving Clem and Rose regarding each other.
‘Do you mind – I think I’m going to faint!’ Clem leapt up in time to catch the girl as she slipped sideways. He managed to half push, half carry her to his chair just as Kattie returned with a bottle of whisky and three glasses on a tray.
‘It was the smell of those roses – what is that smell?’ The girl, enormous smudged eyes, great swatches of dark hair carelessly plaited into ropes which fell heavily forward, seemed to have recovered now. Her voice was slow, deep, with some kind of regional accent, Clem thought.
‘Roses? Oh, that’s the scent I’m wearing. Don’t you like it?’ Kattie, full of concern, was kneeling by the girl’s chair, patting at her knee.
‘Like it? Oh, yes. But it was very strong. In the car. It felt like – oh I don’t know. It felt like another country.’ Rose smiled for the first time and her small, tired face – very dirty, Clem could see in the light, and smudged with dark patches under her eyes – was that of a polite child responding to the gentle pressure of grown-ups.
‘Another country? What do you mean? Have you come from abroad? – I thought you said Cornwall.’ Kattie was anxious now to know everything about the waif whose outline had been picked up in her car headlamps as, driving back from her latest night class (small boat navigation), she had swung, too fast, round a bend, to see the slight figure cowering back into the hedge. Thinking that here was a child out alone and vulnerable in the warm dark night, Kattie pulled up and waited. The girl had walked slowly up to the car and had stood submissively by the open window while Kattie asked questions.
Yes, she was alone and she had nowhere to go that night. She was travelling alone and on foot from the West Country to ‘find someone’. She was a poet. She carried a large nylon bag with her, a squashy sausage-shaped thing. Kattie assumed that all her belongings were in this.
Kattie, still mourning the tearing away of Dorelia, found that her heart ached for this girl. But, as she urged her to get into the car which was indeed filled with the warmth of her rose-scented perfume, a surge of busy happiness overtook her and she drove home singing softly, glancing sideways at her little poet curled up quietly in the passenger seat.
Kattie and Clem never did find out about the ‘someone’ that the girl was tramping round the countryside searching for. Rose left them, several weeks later, on sandalled feet, dressed in the same thin cotton bundle of Indian type clothes and shouldering her roll of possessions, which as far as Kattie could make out consisted of a few notebooks, more shapeless cotton garments and one or two books. Two or three years later a small book of poetry arrived at Puttnam, pushed through the door in an envelope without a stamp. Not very good poetry, judged Kattie, at the same time experiencing a pleasurable thrill that the nurturing she had been able to give had produced some kind of talent, however small.
Rose was the first of many people whose will to exist alone crumbled under Kattie’s loving onslaught. Clem’s wariness about his wife’s state of mind faded; he recognized that the equilibrium was restored, the balance of his and Kattie’s life at Puttnam was righted, and he could resume the private London part of his own life.
But what of Dorelia? Helpless as she had been in the decision to send her to Switzerland, she had not struggled against it, although she had not been able to see any reason for the sudden banishing. She remained silent simply because there was nothing she could say or do. She knew that she had been perfectly happy before her exile and for a while she doubted if she would be again. Her banishment – for so she saw it – coincided with the onset of puberty. As a child Dorelia’s outlook on life had been one of cheerful response; she had Clem’s happy temperament. But now, with the new knowledge of loss and the adolescent suspicion of new ways and paths glimpsed in frightening flashes, Dorelia began to create a secret life for herself. She began to translate what she saw around her, other people’s actions, virtuous or otherwise, into scenarios in which she awarded herself the leading role. She became absorbent, a sponge soaking up snippets of conversation, odd anecdotes which were transformed into glamorous imaginary incidents woven around herself. Ducking and weaving through life at her new school, dancing from class to class, from one set of friends to another, Dorelia never completed her fantasies. Each was real, but frozen before it finished. She became a story-teller, a myth-maker, a long-legged girl who touched people lightly as she passed, holding on to very little.
One afternoon her French conversation class finished early. It was spring, the air soft and touched with warmth, the clear light casting no shadows on the valley below the school. Some girls from the same class were planning to walk further up the small mountain to the village, where there was a café selling cakes and hot chocolate. They would meet local boys there and listen to music. Dorelia decided to walk the other way. She pulled on a brown anorak, wound a warm scarf round her neck and slipped out of the front door with no very clear idea of where she was heading. She knew that there was a small boggy stream in the meadows at the foot of the mountain, winding to clumps of trees, a small wood.
The narrow road turned downhill, to the right. On one side there was a low wall made of stones casually piled on top of one another. A thickish hedge of hazel and young beech saplings laced together with bramble in bronze-tinged early leaf curved down the other side. As she neared the bend in the road, Dorelia heard the clump of feet, raucous laughter and excited male voices. Some instinct made her duck through a break in the hedge. She waited, very still, until the group of men had marched on past and then she looked around her.
She had been walking blindly, with no particular object in view. Now the landscape, unfolding to what looked like a small stream glinting at the bottom of grassy meadows in the near distance, was wide and comforting. Away from the confines of the walled-in road, the sheer emptiness of the space in front of her was inviting, and she felt exhilarated. The late afternoon was still soft and warm, dusk an hour or so away, pushed to the far horizon by the low sun. Dorelia’s feet, warm-booted, danced down the little track across the meadow as an immense sense of freedom, inculcated by the vast space and the emptiness, the removal of human contact, overtook her.
Her cheeks tingled in the spicy air and she began to run, the brown scarf streaming out behind her as she headed downhill to the water. Once or twice she stumbled. Large knobbly stones, chunks of worn flint, littered the springy turf and there were strange hummocks with tufts of coarse-bladed grass sprouting from them, dotted here and there like tiny burial chambers containing ancient secrets. The land made its way downhill in a series of small ridges which folded like the loose skin of a large animal. Dorelia stopped suddenly from her headlong rush to decide her exact destination, and she thought of the land breathing and moving quietly under its skin. She stared around her. Winding through the flint-strewn hum-mocked land were a series of small paths made perhaps by animals, rabbits or foxes. Dorelia’s brown boots were sturdy, laced to above her ankle, but she decided it was easier to keep to one of the tracks and started along one that wound away to the right to a point where the river, broader now and, she could see, marshy and soggy where it spilled into the meadow, met with a clump of large trees.
As she drew nearer she thought she could see stone amongst the trees, a finger of something man-made. She had slowed down to a walk now, screwing up her eyes against the warm light, squinting as she tried to make out what was hidden in the band of trees.
Half walking, half running, she reached the trees and saw that what she had at first perceived to be a solid clump of oaks were in fact ringed around a tall tow
er whose central pointer of stone, broken and crumbling at the top, poked up through the criss-cross of branches.
It was much darker near the trees. The river, shallow and sluggish, moved slowly around the far end of the clump, making a semicircle of black water behind the trees. The track, now smooth and well trodden, levelled and defined on either side by straight lines of curious half circles of stone set into the ground, marched straight up to the building which was framed symmetrically by the curve of the massive trees.
The broad vision of infinite landscape which had so excited and stirred Dorelia’s imagination now narrowed to this path, this tower, this door into the rosy-stoned building. The glimmer that was the beginning of dusk was behind her as she walked firmly forward, the echo of her steps swallowed by the mantle of oaks.
For just a moment she thought she saw a light through the rounded spaces in the stonework that were the windows of the building, but as she pressed her face against the wall to peer inside, Dorelia realized that part of the ground floor at the back of the tower was destroyed, so that in places the façade was all that was left. The gleam that she had taken as evidence of occupation was the last of the daylight flaring down through the trees. Dorelia screwed her face up into a pout. She had wanted to go inside to look out at the trees and the mountain (which seemed an awfully long way off now) from within. Then she perceived that the derelict crumbling part of the building was only a single-storey room. The wooden door was the entrance to a separate part – the tall tower itself.
Dorelia stood straight before the door and shivered. She saw that the light was fading fast and she knew that she would be late for tea and evening study. She squinted back up the slope and saw the first star of evening outlined in the pale inky wash of the sky above the mountain. For a second or two all the loneliness she had felt since her arrival in this country surged through her and she had an instant romantic vision of herself, a solitary figure in a vast empty landscape. She turned sharply back towards the solid reassurance of the now dark tower, stumbling a little as she did so.
Putting out a hand flat against the heavy wooden door to steady herself, she fell forwards as it swung open and found herself sprawled on the crumbly stones of a floor of a room whose outline she could only indistinctly discern.
She looked up and saw evening light filtering through a skeleton of massive rafters on the left-hand side of the room. To the right the space was dark, with a solid feel to it. As she peered into the murk, shapes assembled themselves and she saw a stair, twisting its way up. Immediately she pushed herself to her feet and ran, stumbling on the rough floor, to the dark stair. Putting her gloved hand on the wall, fingers splayed against the stone, she began to creep forwards, slowly upwards, shifting her hand against the gritty surface of the stone blocks. Light filtered weakly onto the stairway – not much, but enough to see the outline of each step. The first few steps ran straight, and then Dorelia realized they were curving towards the right, the right-hand side of each tread narrowing like a wedge of cheese. She shifted to the broader side of the stairs, now steadying herself with her left hand. A cool breeze filtered through the stonework and Dorelia’s fingers suddenly slipped into space, through a slit in the wall, a look-out slot. The walls were very thick – she had to push her arm out to its full length until her fingers reached the outside.
While she was pausing, feeling at nothingness, she thought she heard a noise, a clanking, scraping noise, and her heart hammered as she strained to catch it. She could hear voices, laughter. Dorelia was immediately pulled back to reality. As she stumbled towards the dark stairway she had forgotten the quick shiver of fear at finding herself alone in the landscape, in the dark tower. The exploration had shifted her into a dreamlike state, a figure locked into a fairy tale. Now her mind snapped back to normal awareness. She realized that her right knee was hurting from her fall. She felt the sore place, wincing as her gloved hand pressed against the torn skin. She peeled her glove off with her teeth, tasting the grit and the saltiness of blood. Probing, her long fingers found the rip in her woollen tights, the stickiness of her grazed leg.
She licked her fingers and listened again. Nothing now. Perhaps she had imagined the noise, or heard an echo from the faraway mountains as herdsmen, farmers, finished their work in the hills and packed up to wind down to the valley, to their homes.
She thought of her mother, bustling around in another country. Kattie and Clem were the only two figures who had ever loomed large in Dorelia’s consciousness. But, having not understood the reason for her banishment, she denied herself the need for them; she had absorbed the ache that was left, detaching herself from the need for confidence with other people, inventing instead a world where she moved alone and free, where everything was transformed as she chose. The image of Kattie, whom Dorelia saw involved in domestic creation, gardening, smiling as she pressed plants in the earth, laughing as she shifted pots around on the kitchen range, talking seriously as she bent over a piece of needlework, rolled in and out of the girl’s mind. It disappeared completely as slowly she started to take a step, and then another step, on and up into the tower.
A piece of loose stone rolled away under her feet, making her gasp. She steadied herself, hand flat against the wall. At the same time she heard the sound once more. Someone laughing. A long-drawn-out sigh. In almost total darkness her immediate impulse was to flee back down the twisting stairway, but she was frightened of falling down the crumbling steps. Her knee was hurting and she realized that she was very cold. A lump in her throat that was the beginning of panic made her choke and cough, and she moved blindly upwards, up one step, and slipped forwards as that too proved treacherous. Her head banged hard against the wall on the right, on the inside of the stairway, and she gave out a sobbing cry – anger, fear, frustration.
Suddenly there was light. A yellow flickering light bursting through a split in the wall. And then a dark figure blocking its source. Before she could grasp what had happened, Dorelia found herself pulled to her feet and dragged towards the light.
She knelt, crouched down in what she now perceived to be a wooden doorway opening miraculously through the wall of the dark tower into the larger wall of a narrow room. The silhouette of a young man stood dark and naked in front of her, between her and the light from an oil lamp.
She shook her head and pushed herself slowly to her feet. As she did so, she became aware of several different sensations. The smell of food, something savoury; another smell, spicy and smoky; a splashing noise, water sloshing gently. A woman’s voice, exclaiming softly. She turned her head towards that sound. In the far corner of the room was a large tin bath, a figure, sponge in hand, arrested in the motion of squeezing water down her back.
It seemed to Dorelia, on her feet now, very conscious of the figure close to her right arm, a long time before anyone spoke. The woman in the bath, long white back sparkling with drops of water, jewels in the yellow light, turned and smiled.
‘Who are you?’
‘My name is Dorelia. I’m …’ She gave up, and realized that this was the first time she had been spoken to in English since she had arrived in Switzerland.
‘Dorelia. Dooorelia.’ The young man speaking now, slowly, tasting his words, a lilt in his voice. Welsh? West Country?
‘Dorelia. It’s … I mean, my mother and my father, my mother, that is …’ She gave up again, aware of her invasion into a very private place. Bathtime, two naked people sharing water, a room, food and warmth.
‘Look, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t be here. I didn’t realize that anybody lived here. I must go.’
‘You from the school? Up the valley?’ The girl stepped out of her bath, shaking herself, wrapping a towel round her body. She was plump and fair. Her voice harsh, a London accent.
‘Yes. I went for a walk and got lost,’ Dorelia lied.
‘You hungry?’
‘Yes … I mean no. Look I must get back – to supper. They’ll worry, start to look for me.’
‘E
at with us if you like, there’s plenty here. Julian’s had a good day today and he’s not a bad cook. Look, I’ll dish up while he pops in the bath. You don’t mind do you? It’s such a bugger of a business heating the water we only do it a couple of days a week, so it’s important. You get in while it’s still hot, Ju, and I’ll put the things out.’ While she was still talking the girl had quickly rubbed herself dry and was pulling on jeans and a sweater.
‘Smoke?’
‘Oh, no. No thanks.’
The girl shrugged, lit a cigarette and started to put out knives and forks on a low table next to a small stove.
‘We heat the water on this and cook. Look. He got some pigeons today and I bought some bread. What happened to your knee?’
‘I fell. Slipped down there. You see, I thought this place was empty. I wouldn’t have come up if I’d known.’ Dorelia, enticed by the cooking smells and the warmth of the room and entranced by the spicy smell of the wood on the stove, was forgetting to worry about getting back to the school. She started to pace around the room, averting her eyes from Julian, who was now splashing in the bath.
‘I’m Julie. Silly really. Julian and Julie. The two jewels.’ The girl pronounced it ‘jools’.
‘I work in the café. Up the hill. It’s a mountain really isn’t it? No hills in this bleeding place, only mountains. Where’s your mum and dad then? Send you away did they?’
‘Yes. To finish my education.’
‘Oh yeah.’
Julie seemed to lose interest in Dorelia and lit another cigarette, which hung loosely from the corner of her mouth as she put a long loaf of bread and a large cooking pot onto the table.
‘Come on Julian. No chairs, I’m afraid.’ She gestured to Dorelia to sit down with them on the floor round the table.
Later as Dorelia stumbled home, lighting her way with the aid of a torch lent by Julie (‘Send it back up the café, there’s a love’), she decided that she would not visit the tower again. By the time she was back at school, scolded, bathed, lying in bed, she had tucked away the whole episode, detached herself from it. When she was tiny, Kattie, sometimes Clem, would read to her at night, fairy stories, legends, and she would drift off to sleep, night thoughts coloured by the images conjured up by her mother’s voice. But by morning, the essence of the story absorbed, the magic dissolved by daylight, those images were unreal.