Undercurrent

by Frances Fyfield

  The taxi moved off with evident relief and a horrible grinding of gears. He had the impression that the vehicle could find its own way back to the flatlands, to speed home on automatic pilot for the sake of a real fire in a warm garage. He wanted to weep. The driver grumbled under his breath because of the open window which made them both shiver.

  He got out in front of the House of Enchantment and paid what seemed a small sum. Almost a third world sum. He thought that might have been why he always went back to the East for his travelling; the cheapness and the idea that it might have been a deciding factor did not exactly cheer him up. So undemandingly demanding, the English. They had an aversion to making money.

  He crossed the road and sat on the steps which led from pavement to shingle beach. The cold seeped into his ass, arse, bottom, behind, bum, an English person doesn't have an ass, not even to go to work on. His spine, then. The cold was calming and chilling; he liked it.

  Then the dog with the warm muzzle inserted a fat, moist nose into the crook of his elbow as he held it tight against his side in the awful jacket. He felt the interference of a snout, burrowing away in there. Snout: an informant; a muzzle. He had looked it up.

  He moved his arm to contain the shoulders of the animal, loosely, exerting no pressure, no suggestion that it could not go whenever it wanted to go. The big black dog sat beside him, allowing the touch of his arm, both of them staring straight ahead.

  'You've got some secrets, I bet,' Henry said.

  I was always proud of my ability to keep a secret. The obligation to keep a confidence was one I learned early and it was one of the earliest surprises to discover that not everyone else did the same.

  It was exactly the same with promises. I would be the one waiting at the bus stop because I had promised, but no one else turned up, because there were promises which are not really supposed to be kept, just as there are secrets which are meant to be told.

  The instruction 'don't tell' might mean 'do tell', but only selectively, with the right interpretation. It might also mean what it says. To save a minefield of confusion, I’ve abided by my original principle of keeping quiet as the proverbial grave and denying the knowledge I've received rather than break the seal. The irony of this high-mindedness is that it turns the keeper of the secret into a liar while the teller of it goes on to share the burden with other close and confidential friends, all seventy-five of them.

  The one thing I've learned is never to confide anything vital about myself unless the person told is quite unable to repeat or understand. Confessing to a brick wall, in other words, someone who can't be moved or distressed, simply to get it off one's chest and rehearse out loud what to do.

  Which is why I took the coward's way out and told Uncle Joe, the day after. He was deaf, after all, and mimicked the act of listening with every sign of enjoyment. (Such dissemblers, the Chisholms.) I could decode what he said, but few others could. And he understood, poor soul, what it was like to face loss of reputation and disgrace. He might have forgiven me.

  I told him how the door was open; I hated closed doors.

  It was far too early and wet and Harry was fractious.

  Tanya appeared in new clothes, a jacket of shiny stuff she loved and wanted to show off. Harry clung to her; he always did. I encouraged them go out together. God help me, only on to the pier where I could see them, and not for long. She wanted to go; Harry wanted her to stay inside with him, but the lure of doing anything with Tanya was too great to resist. They went. The peace was marvellous. I don't know how long after that I realized I'd sent him out of doors without a jacket and I started to go down the stairs with it. Quite some time, I think. I crossed the road. She was huddled by that statue, trying to get inside it. Hysterical. Her sleeve was torn.

  There was a black dog running off the pier. Harry hated dogs; they knocked him over.

  That dog . . . It reminded me of how she had been when she first came to us and I tried to capture her on camera. A scared, vulnerable savage, with nothing to call her own and no ability to trust. Rudderless as a boat in a storm; she was nothing but a promise. Angela, somewhere, Neil's fishing stuff, he often left it. . ..

  I can't go on with this. None of us ever really tell the truth. It might be better to be deaf and dumb, like Uncle Joe.

  FMC.

  CHAPTER TWELVE.

  'I wish you'd turned up sooner,' Henry said to the dog. 'Your eyes and ears for a start. Love the coat.'

  The dog shuffled. Henry stroked the rough hair of its flank and tickled its chest. There was adequate flesh on the bones, contoured muscle on the legs and the animal, though still, was poised for flight. Don't let me hold you back,' Henry told it, removing his arm.

  The dog remained, turned a large head to sniff his face and then, satisfied, leaned against him an resumed contemplation of the sea. The water sounded suspiciously sullen beneath the mist, plotting something.

  Gradually, as the cold at Henry's back became acute enough to be almost painful, the dog seemed to hear a signal, shook itself and trotted away to the right. It had the gait he had noticed before, unhurried, even paced, like a distance runner with a long way to go and no doubt of the destination. Someone cared for the dog and someone had taught it to cross a road. An educated hobo with a place to sleep, so they had something in common. Henry thought, except that the dog, close to, was a handsome beast which left a fine coating of hairs on his jacket.

  Inside the house, catching sight of himself in a mirror in the hall, Henry wondered how he had become quite so sartorially challenged in such a relatively short space of time.

  The dim lighting of the hallway gas lamps irritated him, although they did him the honour of blurring his reflection. Gas lamps, in this day and age, for Godsakes, as if the house was not merely a unit for living but a piece of theatre. Which it was, he realized, looking at the details he had scarcely noticed before.

  The hall and the first stairwell were decorated with oriental hangings and above these, flags.

  The mirror was framed with ornate gilding and looked valuable until careful examination revealed the chips of gold paint. There was a reason for retaining the dim light of the gaslamps with their delicate sconces and flickering glow. Henry could hear the murmuring of the radio from the kitchen; the rest of the place was comfortably silent.

  He looked into the dining room, where the walls were covered with a variety of pictures, the windows draped with heavy, faded velvet and the mantelshelf covered with framed photographs set between two tall candlesticks which were moved to the centre of the table at mealtimes. The table itself was covered with a heavy linen cloth. Henry felt the surface with his fingertips, the mended patches which were invisible to the eye when the table was laid with its magnificence of mismatched plates and cutlery, the items individually charming but never forming a set.

  The carpet, like the runner on the stairs, was threadbare and rich in colours. Mess up the artful arrangement and all it would be was second-hand junk.

  The sitting room, currently empty of human life, followed the same pattern. There were gleaming fire tongs and old armchairs with hand-stitched covers to obscure the frayed ends of the arms, rugs lying upon other rugs, a small table polished to such a shine he had failed to observe its mended leg. Henry looked at the photographs, framed, it seemed, in driftwood, and saw the black and white image of two lithe young men dressed for swimming, standing against a backdrop of waves, laughing. There were no recent photos. Cameras cost money, Henry counted up what he had paid for his lodging and was embarrassed by his late realization of the stringent budget which must govern their lives.

  No phone, no wasted expenditure, no new possession of any kind, except of course the video in the kitchen, looking odd in there, like a garden spade in a bedroom. "

  He guessed the source of the video. Francesca had given her car to Angela, her books to the granny who had never wanted them, anything else useful in her apartment to various others. Did she use her gifts as blackmail? Was there a
price for receiving them, such as Angela going to see Uncle Joe and Peter and Tim guarding some votive flame for her dead son? Henry noted the decor of his own room with new approval.

  The ornateness of the ground and first floor fell away into sheer simplicity by the time he reached the second landing. Bare walls and striped wooden floors of sweet, yellow pine, the runner on the stairs muffling his footsteps, the old silk coverlets on his high bed the only colour in the room apart from the turquoise seat of a comfortable chair. A room for Van Gogh to paint in celebration of a minimalism which was not stark, but comforting.

  Peter was there, fussing over the fire, coaxing the kindling to light and embrace a log from the basket of wood he had hauled upstairs. A small bucket held the ash cleared out of the black iron grate. The missing shawl was neatly folded over the bedstead. Peter grinned at him, not quite comfortable with being seen on his knees, genuflecting to his own labours.

  'It is the cheapest form of heating, you know,' he said defensively. 'Especially if you go out and find it.

  We've got plenty of time for that. I think having time to make and mend is better than having money, don't you?'

  'Why did Francesca give you her video?' Henry asked, taking off his jacket and slinging it across the room. How nice to have a garment he could treat with contempt: he had an unaccountable desire to throw the contents of his suitcase, vitamins and minerals included, out of the window. Peter looked surprised.

  'Do you know, I was never quite sure why she did.

  It simply arrived with all her tapes. She must have known we'd never use it much, apart from looking at the one with darling Harry, 'cos we didn't even have a telly before. We've no time for it, it's so unstimulating. I can't see the point in sitting down gawping at a film unless there's someone in it you know'

  The flames lit the logs. Peter looked on with satisfaction, as if the fire was his own invention and his mastery of it a triumph.

  'There are other tapes?'

  'Yes, of course. Cartoons, Walt Disney. Home videos and kids' stuff. I must admit, I love The Jungle Book..:

  'Can I see them?'

  'Of course, you only have to ask. I'll bring it up here, shall I? Do us a favour, though. Keep Maggie off the booze tonight. Otherwise she'll get depressed and think about going back to her husband.'

  'I didn't know she still had one.' Henry adjusted the log with the toe of his shoe and watched sparks fly.

  'She doesn't. But she may be able to get one returned from the cleaners if she wants.'

  Henry was furious with all these ambiguities. The log crackled, as if laughing. He wondered how much extra money he should leave them when he left, only he didn't want to go. He wondered about the etiquette of relative poverty, remembered the same puzzle from other travelling days. He was feeling lightheaded.

  'Do you know where she is?'

  Peter looked at his watch. 'The pubs are open. She could be there.'

  'Well I doubt I'll keep her off the hooch; Henry said. 'It's my turn for that.'

  He would go back to the old man on the headland with a bottle of whisky. Just like they did in the old and new films, where all you had to do was pour alcohol down the throats of reluctant spies and out came vino veritas. Fat chance. It would not work with Maggie either, any more than it would with the damn dog. But he was still a tourist, obliged to experiment, and perversely, he needed a noisier place than this for analysing his thoughts.

  Henry had never been much of a drinker. He could hear his father say, what a pity, it did a man's career as much good as harm and loosened up the soul, while Henry himself thought it merely depressed it.

  Freedom from addictions up until now had not managed to save him from embarrassments, nor from the contemptuous eyes of contemporaries when he fell over his own feet. There were times, he thought to himself, when he may as well have been drunk on all the occasions when he was tongue-tied and sober.

  You prudish guy, he reflected as he donned the ghastly jacket and hit the road; prudish about drugs, trying the stuff once or twice and hating the way it made the company talk in monosyllables. He hated loss of control, but the hell with it; if control was going to be lost it may as well taste nice. He would do the famous English pub crawl, go native.

  The first beer in the first pub made him shudder.

  He sipped at the foamy scum of a clear, warm soup and wanted to gag. The pub was called the Smugglers but showed no sign of serving the fine wines available on the other side of the Channel, smuggled or not. They liked slop. They actually preferred this and did not seem to give a shit what they ate or drank away from home: just look at the menu on that blackboard. liver and onions, Irish stew. When he went home, he would take that notice as an abiding memory and laugh about it, but then a native from here would find hash browns equally unappealing. The greatest cultural divide known to Western man was not one of nationality, he decided; it was simply the food and drink and the difference between those who lived in cities and those who lived away from them.

  He sipped his half-pint to aid his own reflections, wondering if Uncle Joe ever got to a pub and whether it was wimpish to order a half-measure when the other men had pints. Forgetting his specs made him slightly myopic and dizzy, but no one else was looking at anything much, except at him. They were staring at him. Not consistently, he had to admit and not many of them either, because at this early point in the evening there were not so many to meet his gaze and let their own slip away into the surface of their pints or to the far point on the opposite wall.

  They were the sort of glances exchanged with a dead haddock in the fishmonger's.

  Conversation was lacking. A man came in and said 'Lo and then took his pint glass and went off to sit nursing it in a corner. There was an interval Henry marked before the customer moved or spoke and only then to present the same glass on the counter with another 'Lo, answered with a nod and a refill.

  There was the small clink of money. Isn't this fun. Henry thought. Are they always like this or is it me? The mist outside seemed comparatively attractive. He left his drink on the table and departed, pretending he was suddenly in a hurry.

  Which he was, but not out of need. He did not like the idea of going into one pub after another simply looking for Maggie: it made him feel like a father trying to round up a wayward child or, even worse, some jealous boyfriend. He had to admit the thought of a returning husband piqued him for some indefinable reason, probably because it was one more thing she hadn't explained to him and it irked him. All these subtexts.

  Henry considered his own life an open book from which anyone could read and he found it difficult to see why everyone else kept their pages stuck together. In the second pub, this time sipping wine and taking refuge behind a news paper, he came to the conclusion that the monosyllabic conversation between patrons was simply their natural, limited discourse; they just didn't go in for back-slapping and big greetings. In the third pub, he changed his mind. There was a woman behind the bar who responded to his polite request for a drink with a stony stare and then told him to fuck off in a quiet, but definite command which made him think better of asking why. He went. So much for an evening of riotous inebriation.

  Outside, he found himself looking for the dog. Henry could feel the dirty mark of disgrace on his forehead and remember the shrill accusations in the street. The fish and chips he ate sitting on a bench facing the statue at the entrance of the pier were solidly delicious, the more so for being served with spontaneous friendliness. There were only a dozen more pubs to go, increasingly crowded as the evening drew into night, and the prospect was distinctly unpalatable. Henry put the greasy paper into a garbage can like a good citizen and went back to the place he called home.

  He was becoming separated from anything he could think of as home. His empty house in the environs of Boston seemed utterly remote and the splendid modernism of the Fergusons plant where he might resume his career was equally alien. In the house, there was a bridge game in the room Peter called the parl
our and up on his own floor Henry found the TV, video and a stack of tapes.

  'Two can play,' Maggie said evenly. 'You can fling mud in the street against a nice and harmless man, how dare you? I can take a stand on the same corner and say how I found your daughter playing truant from school, sadly neglected by her mother.'

  'You bitch.'

  'Now there's another accusation I keep denying without it making much difference, I wonder why?' Maggie said airily. 'And after I've bought you a nice bottle of wine, too. Oh come off it and stop playing hard to get. I'm not a nasty witch any more than you are. Otherwise Francesca wouldn't have loved us. She wasn't exactly discriminating about the people she loved - look at her bloody husband - but she did have some judgement. Just drink it.'

  Angela's hand strayed towards the glass Maggie had poured and set down on her kitchen table. She looked at it longingly and knew the drinking of it compromised her. She had tried to shut the door in Maggie's face, but Maggie was stronger. The child was asleep and a shouting match would wake her.

  Trapped. She wrapped her fingers around the bowl of the glass to warm the red wine within and stop Maggie noticing that her hand was unsteady.

  'Just tell me why you locked Henry Evans in the castle overnight and disturbed my sleep, will you?

  That'll do for starters,'

  'Neil should have ... It was a mistake.'

  'No, it wasn't. Tanya knows it wasn't. Don't give me that crap. What was it you didn't want him to know? What's wrong with answering his nosy questions? What harm can it do?' Angela took hold of the glass and swallowed half the contents. Good: drink the rest, will you, Maggie urged silently. It makes fools of us all. '

  'He brings back the guilt, that's what he does,'

  Angela said, in a rush. 'He's made Tanya remember what she ought to forget. It's not bloody fair.' 'Why should you feel guilty?'

  'Are you mad or just stupid?' Angela yelled and then remembered, stopped, went at the wine again and took one of Maggie's cigarettes. She examined it between work-worn fingers and then put it back in the packet. 'Of course I feel guilty. I never liked Harry . . . there was something about him I couldn't like and I thought I was someone who loved all kids.