Keeping the World Away

by Margaret Forster

  Neither of them was hurt. It could have been embarrassing, being thrown onto his back as she catapulted on top of him, but they both laughed, not at all shy. He’d helped her disentangle the offending skirt, and a slight scratch on her ankle, where something had cut through her stocking, gave him the opportunity to produce his handkerchief (luckily clean and unused) and tie it round. He pushed the bike back up the hill for her to the rather alarmingly grand house where she turned out to live. On the way, they chatted about cycling and bicycles. He told her that he loved to cycle, belonged to a cycling club, and went off most weekends on long rides, taking the train to various places outside London. She said she wished she could do the same. Then he offered to fit a guard to her back wheel so that her skirt could not catch in it again and, to his surprise, she accepted his offer. That was the beginning. They had never, of course, become lovers, though he had thought of himself as in love and he was sure Charlotte had felt the same. Who knew what might have happened, had it not been for the war starting just as they were really becoming close? But if it had not been for the war, he would not have met Stella.

  It distressed him that Stella had never known him as he used to be. He’d been so dreadfully afraid at first that what attracted her to him in that wretched hospital was his helplessness, and that it was pity which drew her to him. She denied this, but it had taken him a long time to believe she could see anything at all to love about him. ‘You’re brave,’ she said, and ‘You try all the time,’ and then, later, they discovered a shared taste for the same kind of music and the same sort of books, and she said no one she’d ever known could talk so intelligently about things. It didn’t seem a lot, to him, to inspire love, especially when so much of why he loved her was to do with her looks. She was beautiful, as Charlotte had not been.

  He’d met Charlotte again, briefly, after peace was declared, to tell her about Stella and to finish things properly, and he’d been shocked at the change in her. She’d written to him throughout the war, sisterly letters, but never mentioned how thin and worn she had become, though she’d told him how ill she had been after the death of her father. But then she’d been equally shocked by his appearance. They sat in the buffet at Victoria Station, a meeting which lasted twenty minutes but felt like twenty hours. He was ashamed of his prepared speech but also relieved to have made it, to get it over.

  The scone was delicious – light, fluffy, with a hint of cheese in it. He ordered another. Thank God, his taste buds were unaffected. Food was so important now, and drink, wine in particular. He’d gone off to war thinking of food as just a kind of fuel to keep his body running smoothly, not caring much what he ate as long as his hunger was satisfied. He’d used to drink beer, and occasionally a whisky. Since he returned, food was of much greater interest to him. Stella was a good cook, and he had picked up a lot from her. The kitchen had become as much his as hers. It was small but compact and there was a view of the estuary from the window, the best view in the cottage. It faced west, so that in the evening, when he was in the kitchen, wonderful sunsets illuminated the room. Going into the other rooms afterwards was a little depressing. It was a metaphor for his life, he thought, from brightness to dreariness, to gloom.

  But that was a lie. His life had not been particularly bright before the war. It was just that he had been thoughtless, or rather he had never thought about anything deeply. He went to the office, he did his not-very-demanding job carefully enough, he went home, he played tennis, he went cycling, he went to cricket matches, and was quite content to enjoy himself. These days, he couldn’t stop thinking how breathtakingly unprepared he had been for war. And then four years of it, and months in hospital with not the slightest hope of regaining what he had once had, that unworried existence. Only four years, and everything about him and his circumstances was changed for ever. ‘But you survived,’ Charlotte had said to him. ‘You’re alive.’ She meant he ought to be grateful. Her own life, and the lives of thousands of others, had also been dramatically altered, sometimes far more than his had been.

  There was sympathy in the eyes of the waitress when he paid for his tea, but he bore it stoically. He’d seen chaps in hospital smiling in spite of the most awful injuries just because someone was sitting holding their hand and being sympathetic. Sympathy hadn’t helped Alan at all when it came his way. It just made him bad-tempered and determined to manage without. ‘You are a surly fellow,’ Stella had reproached him. It was true, he was now. Pain had made him surly, fear made him surlier. Today, he’d set off for his hospital appointment, afraid that he was going to be told he was losing his sight and that nothing could be done. But, as it turned out, the condition was entirely treatable. He had the drops in his pocket. Nothing more could be done about the burns, nothing further could be done about his leg or his shoulder, which would always pain him, but his eyes were safe.

  He wanted to buy a present for Stella, something to make amends for his vile temper the last few days. There were no decent shops on this route between hospital and underground station. In fact, there were hardly any shops at all, only a few small grocery stores, and a couple of newsagents. He hadn’t the energy to walk to Oxford Street before going on to Paddington. Flowers, he thought, he could buy her flowers, when he got to St Austell, but then he remembered how late he would arrive. There would be no flower stalls. It would have to be scent, but where the hell was he going to get that? Then, just ahead, he saw what looked like a market. It ran down a side street, both sides of the road, crammed with open stalls. The goods on sale were not new but second-hand, maybe with some genuine antiques hidden among the bric-a-brac. Slowly, he began searching, looking for jewellery. Stella liked cameos; perhaps he would find an old cameo which could be made into a brooch or have a velvet ribbon threaded through it. He noticed he was being closely observed by the stall-holder whose trays he was scrutinising. The man, who had been slouching against the wall at his back, was alert. ‘Looking for something special, sir?’ he asked. There was a slight emphasis on the ‘sir’. Shouldn’t it have been ‘guv’ or ‘mister’, Alan wondered. Did he look as though he had money and was worth a ‘sir’? Or was it the war wounds? Shaking his head, he moved on.

  There were several book stalls, which he paused to browse over, almost selecting a very pretty copy of Gulliver’s Travels. Stella liked old books with decorative covers and this one looked Victorian, a deep turquoise colour with gold foil flowers embossed in it. There was a label pasted inside the cover, recording that the volume had been awarded to James W. Hayston for regular attendance at school, and proficiency in reading, in 1896. The man selling it wanted a shilling. But Alan decided he needed a more appropriate book, and passed on. The next stall was a mess. He almost didn’t stop at all – it looked heaped with junk. But a box caught his eye, and he asked the stall-holder if he could examine it. She handed it over, pointing out that it was in perfect condition, not a scratch on it. It was a biscuit box, made for Queen Victoria’s golden jubilee, the queen looking immaculate in her robes. But it was large, and awkward to carry. Handing it back, he watched as the woman moved her stuff about to make a space for it. ‘What’s that?’ he asked, pointing at something that had caught his eye. She hauled out a small picture, and showed it to him. He stared, recognising something in it but he couldn’t think what. Had he seen this room? Been in one like it? Was it a little like Charlotte’s? Her rented room had been her secret from her family. She’d decorated it herself. He remembered that the wallpaper was yellow and she’d hung a white lace curtain in front of the window. They’d kissed and fondled each other there, nothing more, and then afterwards she’d gone back home. It had all felt very odd to him, he’d never been able to understand why Charlotte had this room at all when she hardly ever went there. She’d said it was an indulgence, and she could afford it. It was a dream she’d once had: it meant something to her. She couldn’t explain more than that. The last time he’d been in her room she’d begun to tell him about a visit to Paris and then Florence which sh
e’d made with her father.

  Something stirred now in his memory but wouldn’t come to the front. ‘Do you know who painted this?’ he asked. The woman shook her head. ‘Where did you get it?’ She seemed evasive, shrugged, said she couldn’t remember, maybe her dad had picked it up somewhere – he had a cart, people gave him things. It had been in his shed for years and now he’d passed on she’d been left to clear everything out. He could have it for sixpence. The frame might be of some use.

  She didn’t have a bag, but she wrapped it for him in a piece of brown paper and obligingly tied it with string, making a little loop for him to hold it by. He thanked her profusely, feeling suddenly more cheerful, and gave her a shilling instead of sixpence. She was right, the frame might fit one of Stella’s own canvases if she didn’t care for the painting. It was a good-quality frame, dirty but easily cleaned. Shame he couldn’t clean it before giving it to her, but all he had to do it with was a handkerchief. It occurred to him that he might say he had bought it in an art gallery but she would know he couldn’t possibly have had time. He would have to tell the truth. Strange how telling the truth so often seemed unappealing these days. His brain was forever tempting him to embroider and enlarge, to make up stories where there were none. It wasn’t that he sought to make drama out of the prosaic – quite the contrary. To have bought the little picture in an art gallery would have been ordinary, normal, whereas to find it among a heap of rubbish in a street market was, by contrast, exciting.

  Paddington Station was chaotic and he had trouble making his way to the right platform. There was a group of people bang in the centre with great piles of luggage surrounding them and he had to step carefully over suitcases and cardboard boxes. The people were foreign. At first, all he registered was that they were not speaking English, and then he realised they were German. They were poor-looking people, not in the least threatening, their features drawn, their attitude one of exhaustion, but he started to sweat and had to stop to take deep breaths to steady himself. He remembered the Gare de Montparnasse, and lying on the stretcher, barely able to move, and the small, slight woman in black, wearing a hat with a green ribbon in it, who had bent over him and asked if he wanted water. He’d said yes, and she’d turned and asked, in French, one of the orderlies to pass her a beaker of water. He’d wondered what she was doing there. She didn’t look like a nurse. No, she’d said, she was an artist, she lived in Paris, though she was Welsh. She had calmed him for a moment. Amid all the hubbub and confusion she was quiet. She’d touched his cheek lightly with her hand before she moved on.

  The train was half-empty. He settled himself comfortably and unwrapped the painting, propping it up on the seat opposite so that he could study it. Stella would see things in it which he could not. He was used to that. She was always explaining to him what paintings were ‘about’ and he hardly bothered any more challenging her interpretations, though often he considered she spoke absolute twaddle. This particular painting would be a test. What did he think it was ‘about’? Nothing much. It was a painting of a corner of a room, an attic room, with a small table and a wickerwork chair in it. No people, though he realised that the flowers on the table and the coat and parasol on the chair indicated a human presence, a woman probably. ‘What does it say to you?’ Stella was always asking him in that affected way she had where art was concerned. He didn’t think it ‘said’ anything. It was restful, quiet, calm, that was all. If it said anything, it was speaking in whispers which he couldn’t hear. Once the train passed Plymouth, he fell asleep. Not properly asleep, but into a doze. This was happening a lot lately. He didn’t sleep well at night but instead went into a state of suspended animation which was not at all restful. He’d been like that in hospital, in France, always hazily aware of what was going on around him without being able to respond to anything they said to him. A nurse would ask if he were awake and he would be unable to reply that yes, he was, and in pain. She would pass on, convinced he was out for the count. It was how he imagined it would be to have had an anaesthetic which had only half-worked, leaving him conscious only to a dangerously limited extent. No good going to a doctor about it. He had too many other reasons to seek medical advice, all of them much more pressing.

  The light in the carriage was now very dim. Opening his eyes, fighting against his feelings of lethargy, he found himself staring again at the painting. He could hardly make it out. It was just a matter of shadows, the curtained window now the only light patch. He’d never lived in an attic. The cottage had one, but it was tiny and they used it to store cases and suchlike. Stella intended to clear it out and turn it into another bedroom, but she hadn’t got round to it, and he himself had seen no need to do so. What did she want another bedroom for? There were two, one each, and they had no children.

  It was dark when he got off the train, deeply dark, no moon, no stars. Walking home, the painting under his arm, he felt pleased with himself.

  *

  Stella thought the rooms in the cottage were too small, a succession of three rooms leading from one to another. She longed to knock down walls and make a space in which she could move and breathe easily, but it was impossible to contemplate – these walls were almost as thick as the solid exterior walls. All she’d been able to do was get Alan to lift off the connecting doors, leaving each room open, so that at least from one corridor-like end to another there was now a sense of distance. And she’d put down a single dark-green runner, going the whole length of the stone floor. But she still felt confined. Only in her studio, the glorified shed, her hut in the garden, did she feel comfortable. It was an ugly hut but inside its flimsy walls the room was large and square and there was plenty of light from the windows all around.

  But in the winter, it was too cold to work in it for long. Alan had fixed up a paraffin heater, and she wore thick jerseys and always had a scarf knotted round her neck, but eventually the cold would numb her hands. Today, though, it was summer, but she had worked in the cottage itself since Alan was not there to distract her. It wasn’t that he was noisy – he was a quiet man – but that his very presence broke her concentration. Even when she could not see him, she could somehow feel him there.

  She wished he could get a job that would take him out of the cottage in a regular way, a nine-to-five job, but there was no sign of that yet. He wasn’t well enough. The doctor provided him with certificate after certificate, attesting to his poor health, and now of course there was the new worry, his eyesight. But she’d made her mind up: if he was going to lose his sight, as he feared, she was going to insist that they left this cottage. They would not be thrown together so absolutely. She envisaged a modern house with two rooms either side of a wide hall, his on one side, hers on the other, and some common ground at the back. He would be upset, loving the cottage as he did, but she would not care. It looked pretty from the outside, and its situation on the headland above Charlestown harbour was attractive, but once inside she felt stifled. She had said nothing to Alan at the time, not wanting to hurt him when he had been hurt quite enough. They were near the sea and she had told herself that was what she wanted.

  Throughout the war, when she was living so far from the sea, she had yearned for the sight of it and vowed she would never move from the coast again. She walked most days on the beach here benefiting from the sea air and the invigorating winds. Place mattered in the end. She’d felt disorientated and adrift during her years in London.

  She had been painting all day. The moment Alan had departed she set up her still life – a jug, flowers in it, a plate alongside with a single red apple on the edge. They were positioned on a small table underneath the window, a round occasional table covered with a piece of green silk. The jug, a milk jug which held a pint and a half, was white, the flowers – roses – pink and white, the pink blooms almost fully opened, the white ones still in bud. The plate was green, but a paler green than the cloth. The light coming through the leaded window was not strong but she wanted just that faint touch of light. She pai
nted in water-colours, though oils were her preferred medium, because they were easier to manage in the cottage and because this still life was meant to be quick and delicate. The result was better than she had expected. She’d caught the fragility of the pink petals about to fall, the tight strength of the white unopened flowers, the roundness of the apple. Eight hours’ work and something to show for it. Maybe it would sell, if she framed it.

  She’d given herself a year to see if she could make even a slender living out of painting, a year as a reward for getting through the war. Alan had encouraged her. He had his pension, he could support them, and he had bought this cottage, right away from it all, out of money left to him by his parents. But in that first year after the war was over, she had made no money and spent a good deal. The hut had cost money, humble though it was, and so had all the materials she needed: the easel and paints, and canvases and paper. Alan had said not to worry, she shouldn’t expect success in a year. So a second year went by, in which she sold two paintings. She’d thought it might be the beginning of some modest success but it hadn’t proved to be so. Alan said it didn’t matter, but it mattered to her. Not the success itself but the encouragement it would have provided. She needed it: she had so little confidence, untrained as she was.