Undercurrent

by Frances Fyfield

  The cry of the seagulls woke Henry from his doze on the pier. He was aware of a vague sensation of being watched. A long doze which left him consulting the time to find the day waning.

  The last bench had been sheltered and caught the sun; it had invited him to sit on it, but not for so long. Tired again. He blamed the influx of cholesterol having the same effect on his arteries as all those militants blocking negotiations somewhere in the countries of Europe beyond the horizon.

  He had dozed with the readiness of an old, old man, and the afternoon had struck him unawares. His eyes were rimmed with a brittle crust of salt. He rose stiffly, peered over the rails to the fishing platform, and saw again the broken boards and the sea, swelling gently beneath. He remembered the things he needed to do - buy a new hat, find another place to stay - and felt indecisive, fuddled by sleep and ashamed of it. He started to walk back the length of the Titanic towards the town, slowly.

  The shoreline met the sea in a curve. He felt, as he stopped, that he was approaching the rim of the world, a newcomer to it. To the far left he could see the suggestion of a cliff, at odds with the flatness of the coast, as if marking the beginning of new, alien territory a mile away. In the nearer distance there was the squat outline of one of the castles he had come to see, and for a moment, recognizing it from illustrations, he was disappointed. It seemed mean looking and close to the ground, squatting like a toad, instead of rising high against the sky into misty battlements like the castles of fairy tales, and it seemed sadly dwarfed by the redbrick block of flats next to it.

  Henry did not want to register disappointment, so he let his eyes wander, away from the dun castle walls, across a fine parade of white buildings to the junction and then to the houses which stretched out to the right. All of them seemed to be different heights and colours, pinks and blues and whites, red, pantiled roofs, slate roofs and a riot of chimneys. They looked as if they had been randomly built, each to its own idea, and then huddled together for warmth and company, the better to face the sea.

  Smoke idled from crooked chimneypots. By the time he was halfway down the length of the pier, Henry could imagine the houses shuffling together to fill the gaps; he could see greater detail; a variety of windows and widths of frontages, brave windowboxes sporting ragged bursts of greenery. He noticed with a curious pride that he could see the House of Enchantment in the distance, larger than its neighbours, with its distinctive turret worn like a hat making it markedly different from any of the others, although nothing was uniform.

  He imagined the streets they had walked that morning wriggling away behind this frontage into a warren of picturesque dwellings, each with a chimney stack for Santa Claus. The houses, from further back, looked as if they should have been inhabited by pixies; closer in, they had an utterly human and humane scale. Henry found himself grinning. The splendours of the big hotel, which simply disturbed the line of his vision with its obtrusive presence near the end of the pier, seemed suddenly inappropriate. Why would he want to stay there? He felt invigorated with a peculiar sense of homecoming.

  There was a bulbous sculpture at the pier entrance he had not noticed before. Men and boats and fish, all of rounded shapes, were intertwined in the design. It was metal, but weathered like stone.

  Henry patted it in approval.

  The breeze, which had died and, in its dying, lulled him into sleep, sprang back into life, and he missed the hat. He plunged downhill again, confident of his route back to the shops and the house which he decided to call home, for a day or two more at least, even With that bathroom. He wanted to be back there, watching the sky grow pink, looking at the view in reverse from his high, casement window long before dark.

  He noticed the details of buildings he had missed on the earlier route. . . ah, there was the library, but tomorrow would do for that. And then, turning into his path from a narrow road at the side, he saw a tall, slender woman, walking briskly away, her head and neck wrapped in a white scarf which trailed down the back of her long, dark coat. He could hear the click of heels on the pavement, louder than any other sound, but all he noticed was the luminous whiteness of the scarf. Some fine woollen cloth which drifted in the draught of her movement.

  A peculiar stride; it could be her. He hesitated, embarrassed and indecisive; her stride seemed to lengthen as if she was determined to increase the distance, and then Henry broke into a run. What did it matter if he touched her on the shoulder? No one could arrest him for that.

  He was stiff from sitting still; the body which he forced to run at home, for the good of its health, was reluctant to cooperate. The exercise regime had slipped since his father had died; everything had, and he was wearing too many clothes for comfort. The soft leather jacket was cumbersome.

  The whiteness of the scarf tantalized; Henry felt he could reach it, at least draw level and glance at the face before he committed himself to a greeting.

  He could say I'm sorry, but. . . , that would make it OK; then he tripped, stumbled and fell with agonizing slowness, breaking his fall against a wall with a jarring pain in his wrist that made him yell. He landed heavily on one side, lay there, winded and blind. There would be lump on his forehead. His heart was pounding.

  The sidestreet had been virtually empty, he seemed to recall, but now there was a crowd.

  'Eh! That was a tumble! What's your hurry? Are you all right?'

  'Oh, you've given yourself a knock. Up you come. Steady does it . . . There we are!'

  It seemed as if a dozen hands were hauling him to his feet. His face was level with the wrinkled, weather-worn face of a grandmother and her arm steadied him protectively. He smiled, automatically. 'I'm sorry. . .' he began.

  She grinned back. 'I should take more water with it, son, if 1 were you,' she said, and the other three people laughed, too, in relief. Henry felt ashamed, as if he had been drunk, falling down in the street like a bum, to be rescued by a woman a good thirty years his senior and, at the moment, twice his strength.

  Perhaps if he had stunk of booze, she would have dropped him back.

  'I should get home and bathe that scratch if I were you,' she was saying authoritatively. 'Where do you live?'

  'Down the shore. The rooming house with the towers. That way.' He jabbed a finger.

  'I'll walk with you.' Not an invitation, a command.

  And that was how Henry Evans came to be walking home, to a place he had never meant to stay, not in the company of a woman who had haunted his dreams, but with an old lady who might have been his mother.

  He found himself burbling to her about Francesca Chisholm. Probably concussed; ridiculously loquacious; something to be ashamed of later. Maybe that was why he had come away, to burble to strangers in a way he could not to friends. What friends? Which of them had ever understood his overwhelming grief at losing his equally shy father? Take a week off, Henry, it'll pass. It did not pass; it was a subdued madness of grief. Go to a counsellor, Henry. No. No. No. If I have to pay somebody to listen and straighten me out, I'd rather die crooked; I don't want to be straightened out. I want to talk to her. Because hers died too. And I didn't know what it could be like.

  'Why's that?' Granny was holding on to his arm. He forgot what it was he was saying. They were walking on the inside pavement, with the sea, choppy but docile, safely on the other side of the road, a presence rather than a threat. If only he could concentrate on where he was. He could see the turrets of the House of Enchantment coming into focus in the distance. The Holy Grail.

  'Because she'd know what I was talking about. You know what you talk about when you're twenty-two, twenty-three? Your damned parents. I criticized mine, but she was proud of hers.

  Loved him like mad. He wouldn't have been so different from the age I am now, I guess, Francesca's father.'

  'So?' They were walking steadily but slowly. Her grip on his arm had become his grip upon hers, so he slowed even further because he did not want to stop talking. It felt like a turned-on faucet, no, he was steeped enoug
h in English literature to know he meant a tap.

  'She could make me talk. And I only know now how much I let her down. Because she knew me and loved me and then when she got the news that her father had died, I really didn't know exactly what to do. Like she was leaving me, you know? And I had a plan, so I just went ahead with it. Left her to go home alone. No idea what she felt. No idea what she was losing, where she was at. Now I do. I guess I just wanted to apologize. Tell her I tried to turn round.'

  'Of course you do.' Granny stopped for breath. He looked at her for the second time. It was a fine old face, he noticed, encouraging him by attentive silence.

  'She'll have kids by now. Grown-up kids, even. She had a way with them, you know?'

  They had reached the door. For the last few steps he had been dragging her along and in the course of his last recitation, she had been actively trying to detach herself gently, turning away with the cautious consideration of a person about to sneeze.

  'Are you all right?' he asked.

  'Me? Oh yes, of course. You're home now. The boys will look after you.' She took a handkerchief out of her pocket and blew her nose. It had been quite a distance they had walked; Henry wanted to ask her in, offer tea and a ride home. But it was not his house and he did not have a car. She might live miles away. His manners were all adrift; he had talked nineteen to the dozen; he did not know if there was something he ought to do, like offer money or something; he could not even tell if he were dealing with rich, poor or middling. Confused, he was failing to notice the hardening of her tone. She was standing with her hands thrust firmly into her pockets, with something to say.

  'Francesca Chisholm let that son of hers be looked after by poofters. Poor little sod. What are men like that doing looking after a child?' The last word was almost spat. Then Granny controlled herself. She patted his arm and attempted a smile.

  'Eh, don't listen to me. You seem a nice enough man. You take care, now. No more falling over, eh? Not unless you're really pissed. No need otherwise, is there?'

  'You've been very helpful. . .'

  She pulled on the doorbell and hurried out of sight before it was answered. He watched her go.

  The hallway was richly warm and colourful as he stepped inside; the brindled dog yapped a welcome and sniffed at his trouser leg. Tim was dressed in the voluminous jellaba, this time held at the waist by a bulky sash of green silk. There were spectacles pushed back into his hair and he was waving a ladle.

  'Oh Senta, do stop. He knows you're pleased to see him. Aren't we all? Come in, Henry, come in.

  We were worried about you; thought you'd got lost. No sightings of you for hours. Did you enjoy the bacon and eggs? Oh dear, what have you done?'

  Henry was a medium-sized man (Henry Evans, Mr Normal, he had once heard himself described) while Tim was tall, staring down at the lump on his forehead with great concern. 'Not fighting, I hope?' Tim questioned. 'Not so soon? Peter!' he yelled in a voice surprisingly deep and loud. 'Come and take over!'

  The pair of them stood and surveyed him in the gaslight of the hall. Dirt on his trousers, lump on head, slight grazes on hands. They seemed to come to an unspoken conclusion, sealed by simultaneous nodding. 'Hot bath, don't you think, Tim, while you get on with supper and I deal with his clothes?' Another nod. Henry was frog-marched down the corridor, through the kitchen, into the bathroom he had loathed this morning, but which was now comfortingly warm. Tim turned on taps with a greater skill than Henry had managed when he'd secured this morning's trickle. Water gushed into the bath with the force and noise of an angry fountain; steam rose.

  'Put your jacket and keks outside the door when you're ready,' Peter said. 'I'll press them. And when you're lying in the bath, try and keep this pressed against that swelling. It'll bring it down.' He handed Henry a wad of damp white muslin, smelling sweetly of lavender.

  Henry did as he was told. This had become more than habitual. Handed clothes through a chink in the door, somewhat shyly, felt them plucked from his grasp and the door closed. Sank into a deep bath and held the muslin wad to his forehead. The room was clouded with steam; it was like bathing in a mist, floating free into profound warmth. From the kitchen, he could hear the radio sounding the hour. . . b eep, beep, beep. . . followed by the echo of big Ben: This is Radio Four news, overlaid with conversation.

  It occurred to him that he had never in his life been administered to by men, with the exception of his father when he had been a very small child, before they both grew into their gruffer courtesies, and that this sensation of being looked after, fussed over in a fashion bearing on the intimate should make him feel uncomfortable, and for a moment it did. The door opened a crack; he saw the steam rush towards it, watched as his trousers and jacket, neatly assembled on a hanger, were left on the knob and the door shut again. He told himself he should be deeply suspicious; men were not kind to men, especially strangers. It was odd, possibly sinister, but in the end, he could not be bothered to think about it.

  There was too much else. Such as why - when his falling in the street, just when he was so close, had made enough noise to attract those passers-by - why had she, whoever she was, failed to stop?

  Francesca would have stopped. Even if she had thought she was being chased by an enemy, she would have stopped out of sheer curiosity.

  The radio news droned on, made more important by the perfect English voice reciting it. That must have been where she learned to speak. From a glance at the back window as he rose in the steam and dried himself on a thick, rough towel, Henry could see that it was already dark. He was beginning to like this house. It had a pervasive influence of calm. It was free from all the claustrophobia he feared in strange places.

  I suppose we are profoundly influenced by the surroundings in which we have lived. I sometimes think that buildings are a bigger influence on life than anything else, including people. Not that anyone here could exist without being completely indifferent to the surroundings. There are no views; only faces.

  I must not think of the sea and yet, I do . . . miss it most of all. Even the sea smothered in weather with nothing but the sound of it.

  I am learning new skills. It's called occupational therapy. There is even a choice, so I've opted for the entirely non-intellectual as opposed to the library, which was far too obvious. I spend my days in the kitchen where the company is not curious and there is plenty of noise to block out the sea which I cannot hear and I have worked out who to avoid. I have a friend in the kitchen; I like the smells.

  Oh what drivel I write. Is this the best I can do? No, but I'm afraid to do better, I must simply do more. Steel myself for the anniversary of the day I arrived (anonymously, thank God) at this grand hotel, and all the goodbyes I shall have to say again.

  Better to write about nothing much. Think of the castle and the town, but not about who lived there.

  Including me.

  FMC

  CHAPTERFOUR

  'IT'S very good of you to help, Maggie,' Neil said, as he always said.

  'Not at all. A pleasure.'

  'I counted them in and counted them out,' he went on. 'Just like the vicar in church. Do you know, he keeps a running tally of his congregation, written down in a notebook, so that he can work out "seasonal differences"? Odd man. I would have thought it was perfectly obvious, like it is here.

  The colder it is, the fewer go out of doors. Doesn't matter whether they want culture, history or religious solace. Or even an excuse to wear a hat. Here we go.'

  They walked through the entrance which led from the castle's shop out on to the yard beyond, the metal of his steel-capped shoes ringing on the stones. They climbed the steps to the first battlement, following the route of the tourists, past the cannons, then down the steps and round the circular wall of the inner keep. Neil picked up a couple of sweet wrappers which lay on the ground, grumbling as he did so. 'When I think of what people put in their pockets,' he muttered, 'I'm amazed they should think that a bit more litter would make any diff
erence. Why not take it home with you?

  Who do they think cleans it?'

  The complaining was a standard accompaniment to the last trek round the castle before Neil closed the doors for the night. Not the whole castle; that would take half a day; simply the visitors'

  castle, a fraction of the whole and floodlit after darkness as they entered the gloom of the third bastion, past the display and down the long tunnel to the kitchen. There were deep, black bread ovens set in a wall, a vast fireplace for open roasting in an otherwise unfurnished chamber the size of a small church, surrounded by smaller rooms with apertures in the walls for cannons and holes in the ceiling for the escape of fumes.

  Then down the stairs to the lower level. They were in one segment of the castle's flowered shape, five semicircular outer bastions looking out on to an empty moat, five inner for the guarding of the central keep. King Henry's fear of French invasion had persuaded him to build an impregnable fortress of cunning design. From above, it looked like an open rose built in stone, while below, any soldier who got beyond the outer walls had to face the next and then the next, and no invader had ever made it. No foreigner had ever breached the safety of the central keep, although now they came in gentle hordes to pay their money and look.

  For Maggie, there was something indescribably touching about being inside a place which had once housed an aggressive village of hungry fighting men and now housed nothing other than a few of their souvenirs. It was as if the walls could only live and breathe with the help of occupants to warm it, and at night closed itself down in an enormous sulk. She knew why Neil appreciated company on the last round of the evening whenever he could get it, especially when they descended into the base of the third bastion.

  He might detest the tourists and love the place by day, but after dark he was afraid. Neil knew there were ghosts waiting for those prepared to recognize them, and he saw himself as cursed with that propensity. He saw ghosts everywhere; it made him an excellent storyteller, prone to wonderful embellishments for tourists, but each time he told stories about ghosts, he invented another and as soon as the creature was created in his mind, it remained in real existence. By now the place was teeming with them, especially in the runs.