A Sweet Obscurity

by Patrick Gale

  She let herself back in then walked out to the back to take one last look. The sun was low in the sky, slanting across the neighbours’ walls and hedges. The Brandons at number six were throwing a barbecue. She caught the smell of singeing chicken fat and the murmur of polite, cultivated conversation. She knew these neighbours a little. Later wine would flow more freely, dance music would break the spell and food would burn, neglected. But for now the distant, burbling voices and clink of bottle on ice bucket stood for all she was about to renounce.

  With the attentiveness to detail she had brought to her last walk around the house, she noted the pot of deep blue agapanthus in full flower, which would not see another summer because Giles would not know to bring it indoors before frosts turned the tender bulbs to pulp. She noted that the ring of box hedging around it needed trimming and tried to picture the clump of little trees it would become through lack of care. But she noted too that the sounds from the nearby party were churning up in her familiar social fears she need never feel again.

  She and the baby would be all in all to each other for a while and then, as she re-entered the world, she would do it with more recklessness, she had decided. She would follow her heart, not her reason, befriend no one who frightened her into being someone she wasn’t. She had not yet decided how far to take Selina into her confidence. Selina dearly loved a secret and could undoubtedly keep one, but the knowledge might prove too weighty a bond between them and would surely prove a source of anxiety.

  Until Eliza burst into the hotel in her fury, Julia had been all set to return to Islington with Giles and secretly keep her appointment at the clinic, for the sake of saving a relationship it was clear could not survive parenthood or any enforced lurch towards marriage. She decided to leave him but keep the baby in the seconds after he stammered out to Eliza the unexpected story about taking nude pictures of Dido while she slept.

  Of course he was not a paedophile; she would have sensed such a thing by now. But the idea of him creeping up on Dido in the vulnerability of sleep, admiring her nakedness and capturing it on film inevitably made her doubt him and imagine how she would feel if he did the same to a child of hers, if not this baby then the next. Men were often jealously possessive of a woman’s past. Why should Giles’ desire not also be transferable to her childhood self, as presented in her child?

  She knew her revulsion was neither fair nor entirely sane. If his desire for Dido had been real, Giles would have had more sense than to blurt it out to the two women who had been mothering her. But she found reason not enough to dislodge it. Long before her train had brought her back to London and she was sat at her desk in the agency poring over lists of flats to let in the few, far distant boroughs she could afford, she had made up her mind that she wanted the baby, not the father.

  She had found a tiny flat above a greengrocer’s at the western extremity of Goldhawk Road. One room, a bathroom and a sunny, noisy terrace on the shop’s flat roof. Anonymous, easy for work, not too far from a hospital, it was hers for six months while she found her feet. As when grieving for a loved one it was unwise to make any major commitments soon after the death of a relationship.

  Weary, giving room to reluctance, she sat on the garden bench and was enjoying the scent from the bed of lilium longifolium she had planted where the unproductive apple tree had been torn out. It was time to go. She forced herself to stand and go back in, double locking the garden door behind her. Giles would be back before long and she had a horror of dealing with him face to face. She had always despised Eliza’s cowardice in leaving him with no more than a written explanation but could see now that it was only Eliza’s presence in the hotel that had lent her the courage to tell him to his face.

  The heavy scent of lilies seemed to have come into the house with her. The lily bed was the spot where weeks ago Eliza had assumed they would not mind burying a dog. Which was why, halfway through setting the burglar alarm, she remembered that the bloody dog was still in the freezer.

  She pressed abort and went down to the utility room to swing the freezer’s lid up then slammed it down again in disgust. There had been no miracle. The full black bin liner was still there, huddled in the opposite corner from the frozen yoghurt, peas, apple pieces and bagged up beef.

  She grabbed a pad and started to write him a note along the lines of I’ve called in to take my stuff and leave my key. Oh and your dead dog is wrapped up beside tonight’s supper. She realised it was an impossible task to do so with decorous neutrality however, and besides, he was due back any moment and she ran the risk of the messy parting she had hoped to avoid.

  She flung the lid up again, grabbed the bin liner and slammed the lid shut. This thing was best done without thinking too much. There would be a skip somewhere. There was always someone in this jumped-up neighbourhood restoring or rebuilding a house. She would find a skip, dump the bag and drive on. Eliza need never know that her wishes had not been carried out to the letter. Assuming Eliza ever told him, Giles could harmlessly believe his old pet was mouldering under his lily bed.

  She set the burglar alarm again, appreciating the haste it imposed on this last departure, forbidding nostalgia or brooding, hurried out of the front door, locked it behind her and tossed the keys through the letter box. Assuming he noticed them, they would be Giles’ first indication that she had visited in his absence.

  She drove with the bin liner on her left, in the passenger foot well, and both windows open in case it began to thaw and smell.

  The first skip was worryingly full and was just outside a supermarket. The second was in sniffing range of a nursery where local working mothers left their babies, so that did not seem right either. She drove on towards King’s Cross. There was sure to be another before then. But there was nothing so, caught up in the flow of heavy traffic, she was forced to drive all the way to Shepherd’s Bush. There the traffic did not permit her to stop, so she was forced on down Goldhawk Road, where there was a galling lack of skips. Could her new neighbourhood be so lacking in aspiration? She drove as slowly as she dared, scanning the passing turn-offs as she went and feeling seedy.

  Frustrated, she parked in the shadiest space she could find and lugged her cases one by one along the pavement and through her skinny new front door, waving to the shopkeeper who was now her landlord.

  It was smaller and noisier than she remembered. The air felt stale and somehow cooked and all the knobs and handles were greasy from decades of unfiltered cooking fumes from the cramped kitchen area. The dining table was a flap of Formica that swung back against the wall when not in use. Its ingenious use of a tiny space was even more depressing than the fact that it could never seat more than two.

  She brought in the rest of her things. She left the bin liner in the car and decided that, once it was dark, she would venture out to sling it in one of the big dumpsters at the back of restaurants. Restaurant waste was taken away every day. No one would know.

  Exhausted, she brewed herself a cup of tea in her new mug then, because there could only ever be a sofa or a bed here but never both at once, she made up the bed with the new sheets, bought like the mug during that day’s lunch hour, and flopped onto it to drink her tea.

  From bed the room looked slightly better. It had pretty plasterwork and a view across the so-called terrace into the leaves of two tall trees she did not recognise. Where their bus-battered branches did not quite meet yet she had a view of the shops and houses opposite.

  During her first, disastrous visit to Giles’ mother’s house, Julia had been subjected to a great outpouring from Trudy Easton about how much she used to drink, what she drank, how much she would spend on it, how she would hide the bottles from herself, how she would pass out in shops. It was more information than Julia felt remotely comfortable knowing about this scary woman she had barely met but she felt she must enter into the spirit of the conversation.

  ‘So why did you drink?’ she asked her. ‘If it was so awful and so bad for you. What were you trying to forge
t?’

  And Mrs Easton grasped her hand, which was even more disturbing than all the details about her years of degradation. ‘I didn’t want to forget,’ she explained. ‘I was after courage. Dutch courage. It’s true. It works. I was scared of everything and everyone. Scared all the time!’

  At the time of their meeting Julia had thought that Trudy took against her because she recognised another woman who wasn’t all she appeared to be and was worried of exposure by association. Now that it no longer mattered, she lay looking out of the windows and realised that it was not fakery but the symptoms of fear Trudy was recognising.

  Julia lay, a comforting hand on her belly, staring out of the window and realised she need never be frightened again.

  The houses were dingy but there were several restaurants, a launderette, a newsagent and her landlord’s stores. Across the road she could make out a chemist with a green neon cross in the window and a place with a sign that was a Dalmatian whose black spots lit up every few seconds with lurid pink and a Lebanese cafe called The Golden Star. She had been staring at the flashing Dalmatian for a few minutes, sipping her tea, wondering whether the curtains were going to be thick enough to blank it out at night, before she realised the sign’s significance and hurried over there.

  She waited her turn until a child with a mewling cat in a blanket and an old black woman with something mysterious and fidgety in a cardboard box had both been seen. The vet was good-looking in a dependable doctors and nurses fashion, an effect heightened by his white tunic and the jeans he was wearing underneath.

  ‘Well hi!’ he said, smiling, for all the world as if he knew her.

  ‘I’ve a dead animal to get rid of,’ she snapped. ‘A dog. Can you help me out?’

  ‘Of course.’ He looked suitably solemn and she regretted her abruptness. He was only being polite after all.

  ‘It’s in my car. Just round the corner. It’s a dog.’

  ‘Large?’

  ‘Fairly.’

  ‘Do you want a hand getting him in here?’

  ‘That would be very kind.’

  He slipped out ahead of her and let her lead the way.

  ‘It’s been frozen,’ she explained, as he lifted the bin liner out of the car. ‘He died a few days ago and I haven’t had time to…’

  ‘That’s okay,’ he said. ‘Easier to carry like this.’

  She followed him back through the waiting room, through the surgery and over to a little alcove where he laid the bag on a table. There was a garland of drying hops above a reproduction of an old painting of St Francis. It was, she realised, a kind of chapel of rest.

  ‘I’ll give you a minute or two to say your goodbyes,’ he said quietly and began to back out.

  ‘Oh, that’s okay,’ she said. ‘It’s not my dog. I mean…well. It was my boyfriend’s. Sort of. It’s…’

  ‘Complicated?’

  ‘It was. Yes. It isn’t any more.’

  Now that she was about to get shot of the dog Julia felt strange. Perhaps relief at the last practical task of a difficult day was letting in something more confusing than mere exhaustion. She felt giddy and slightly churned up.

  ‘What do I owe you?’ she asked.

  ‘Normally quite a bit,’ he said, ‘for cremation. But you’re in luck. I had to put down a cat and a guinea pig this afternoon. The man I use does a job lot and their fees will more than cover the cost. Unless you or your –’

  ‘He’s not. Not anymore.’

  ‘Oh. Right. Well unless you were wanting the ashes back.’

  ‘No. Not at all. And neither will…No. No ashes.’ She dithered. He made to leave her alone.

  ‘Sure you’ve said goodbye?’

  ‘Sorry. Yes. Absolutely.’ She still did not move.

  ‘You don’t remember me, do you?’ he asked, sounding amused and she caught just a trace of a familiar accent.

  She looked at him again, tried to picture him without his veterinary tunic, which was easily done. He had just cut his hair; there was an untanned stripe where his nape had been clipped.

  ‘Maybe if I fainted, you’d –’

  ‘Colin,’ she said, remembering now. ‘Colin Thomas. You said you lived in Trelill.’

  ‘I said my mother did,’ he corrected her. ‘I live upstairs.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘I’ve just moved in across the road.’ She was about to say over the greengrocer’s then remembered she barely knew him.

  ‘That’s funny,’ he said.

  ‘Yes.’

  He took a breath. ‘I’m sorry about your –’

  ‘That’s okay. He was a good age, apparently. Standard poodle.’

  ‘I meant your boyfriend.’

  ‘Don’t,’ she said. ‘Don’t be nice.’

  ‘All right then,’ he said. ‘You’d better go. So I can shut up shop.’

  ‘Yes. I will. But thanks.’

  ‘That’s all right.’

  She edged past him and opened the door to the street.

  ‘I’ll see you around, then,’ she added.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I expect you will.’

  The giddiness increased as she found herself back on the pavement. She needed food, blood sugar. Bloody baby. It was Friday. She remembered too late she had not cancelled her appointment at the clinic.

  ‘Julie,’ he called after her.

  She turned.

  ‘Julie Dixon. From Illogan.’ He was smiling.

  59

  They were planting the last variety of broccoli, the last of the last variety. Pearce’s back was beginning to move beyond mere ache to hurt. He was too big to fit comfortably onto the broccoli planter seats without stooping painfully to reach the planting wheel with each seedling. This was one of the longest fields on the farm, Tippett’s Gift, and would be every bit as punishing to harvest in midwinter as it was cruel to plant out in the glaring sun. The glimpse of the end of the long row coming up to meet them was a welcome sight. Beside him Lucy was about to run out of plants so he quickly grabbed a fistful of the ones from his tray and dumped them on hers. She was hoping to have earned enough from all the sessions she had put in on the planter to pay for some shooting lessons; once again, she had found Morris wanting.

  The row they were working on did not finish neatly at right angles to the end of the field. It was shaved off in one corner by the headland, the area along the field’s perimeter which they would use as a track during harvest. So they needed to stop planting one by one to leave room for it. Being used to this, Pearce kept one eye on the plants in his hand, one on the approaching headland.

  ‘Okay, Eliza,’ he called.

  Eliza stopped planting. She slipped off her seat, scratching her scalp under her hat, then walked back with a handful of plants to fill in spaces where she had missed a few. It amused him that although she claimed that nine-tenths of the tasks around the farm were a mystery to her, she was already so conscientious. He had caught her reading Farmer’s Weekly several times, or poring over ministry leaflets.

  ‘Okay, Joe.’ A friend of Morris’ who was helping out that afternoon sighed with satisfaction and stopped his planting but stayed put on his seat, lighting a roll-up the moment his hands were free. ‘And okay, Luce.’ Lucy stopped. She played a favourite game which was to lean as far back in the seat as she could without falling off, watching the plants recede behind her upside down. Pearce carried on planting until the end of the row.

  They banged the remaining plants out by tapping the trays against a hedge then slid the empty trays back inside a still. Morris drove the planter back. He would park it in a corner then speed on to another farm where he had agreed to help with a second silage harvest. Pearce drove his own tractor, towing the trailer with the emptied stills on it. Lucy and Joe hitched a ride on the back, swinging their legs. Eliza climbed up in the cab with him. Her bare arms and face were grimed up with earth and sweat like his. She was too tired to talk but sank onto a pile of old sacking and leant against him as he drove, pulling off her h
at to indulge in another luxurious scratching session.

  The radio was tuned to the five o’clock news. Suicide bombers in Israel. An assassination in Holland. Nervousness about the shift to the far right in European politics. Placid bulletins from a noisy world.

  ‘Who’s that?’ Pearce asked. There was a man in the yard talking to Morris through the open tractor door. Morris gestured back at Pearce’s tractor and the man looked their way and thanked him as Morris speeded away.

  He was extremely tall and thin and had on a pale, grey-blue linen suit over a white tee shirt. The effect would have been that of a humanised heron only he was completely bald, shinily so, and had eyebrows of flaming ginger.

  Eliza was struggling to peer through the muddy glass down at her level. ‘Villiers!’ she exclaimed. ‘Villiers Yates.’

  ‘Oh fuck,’ Pearce said, remembering the phone number he had written down and since lost.

  ‘You don’t know him?’ Her voice was alarmed.

  ‘No. It’s nothing. I was thinking of something else.’ He was thinking of money, of the secret ransom payment which the madrigal would always represent for him.

  Just how tall their visitor was only became apparent when Eliza jumped down to greet him and was immediately dwarfed. The poor man must have gone through life with permanent back ache from bending and a bruised forehead from when he forgot to, never fitting comfortably into cars or public seating, too long for any bed, unable ever to blend into a crowd. Closer to, Pearce saw he was younger than the baldness made him first appear, probably mid thirties like Eliza.

  He was so very immaculate and Eliza so very dirty that theirs was a meeting of aliens, a comical effect heightened by his genuinely failing to recognise her when she first approached.

  ‘Is that really you under there?’

  ‘Yes,’ she laughed. ‘And this is Pearce.’