by James Wilson
‘Yes, I know, but … Oh, dear …’ She sighed, and dropped her gaze, and started worrying at a stray tendril of hair that had come loose above her temple. I began to relax, thinking I’d finally succeeded in putting her off. But then she abruptly looked up at me again and said:
‘But – this may sound awfully impertinent, I know – but I truly think … if you just thought about it … you’d see … it all comes from a misunderstanding. You feel … at least, I’m guessing you do … that the stories are somehow to blame for what happened to your daughter. You figure that if they’d been any good, they’d have been able to save her.’
Tears tortured my eyes.
‘But that’s to have a wrong idea of what you do,’ she went on. ‘You’re a magician – but not of the Merlin kind. What you do can’t prevent suffering – it can only make it more bearable. And it does. Wonderfully. As I can testify …’ She paused. Then, very gently, she said: ‘The question you must ask yourself is whether Elspeth’s life would have been better without Alcuin Hare and his friends, or worse. And I think you know the answer. I certainly do.’
I was crying – I could not help it – and my throat seemed to have turned to concrete. I got up, and starting edging towards the french window. Behind me, she said:
‘You do not betray your daughter by giving other children the same delight you gave her. In fact, what could be a lovelier memorial to her?’
I was boiling with some emotion so intense I could not tell whether it was anger or grief or self-loathing, or a mixture of all three. But I knew I could not hold it in for more than a few seconds – so I quickened my pace, hoping to have gained the safety of the garden before it exploded. As I did so, I glimpsed a blurred figure scurrying guiltily out of sight behind the box hedge at the edge of the terrace. I could not see the face, but something in the angle of the neck and shoulder told me it was Dolgelly.
The Vesuvius inside me finally erupted. I lunged at the french window and hurled it open, wrenching the handle so violently that it snapped off in my hand.
‘What the devil do you think you’re doing?’ I yelled.
There was no response. I ran towards the hedge. He immediately broke cover, and – despite his undertakerish suit and town shoes – sprinted across the lawn with astonishing agility. It was obvious I had no chance of overtaking him; so I spared myself the indignity of pursuit, and bellowed after him:
‘Do you know whose house this is?’
He stopped just short of the cabin and faced me. He said nothing, but slowly held up his hands, and formed the same strange ovoid sign with the thumbs and forefingers that I had seen him make before.
‘I’ve no idea what that means,’ I yelled. ‘But if I catch you trespassing on my property again, I’ll report you to the police!’And, without waiting to see his reaction, I turned and went back into the house.
Miss Dangerfield had finished her tea and was standing expectantly at the end of the sofa, like a passenger waiting for a train.
‘I’m sorry –’ I began.
‘No, no,’ she said, backing away. ‘I’m the one who should apologize. This is obviously an awfully difficult time for you. I can see it was wrong of me to impose myself on you –’
I shook my head. ‘Oh, that was nothing. Just some disreputable fellow who keeps hanging around the house. Please. Sit down again.’
‘No. Thank you. I really must be going.’
She had already half opened the door into the hall, so I had no choice but to say, ‘All right,’ and ring the bell for Chieveley. As we were shaking hands, I said:
‘You do understand, don’t you, that I am not being deliberately perverse? I should like to do as you ask, if I could. But it is simply not possible.’
‘I understand,’ she said, with a smile. ‘But don’t expect me to give up on it.’
I stood by the front door, waving my handkerchief as her motor-car chugged and fumed its way down the drive. To my amazement, I saw she was driving it herself.
*
The next morning, after a night in which I barely slept, and a breakfast I could barely touch, I hurried to the post office and sent a wire to Cyril Jessop:
Does holiday offer still hold? If so, yes please. C.R.
Less than two hours later, Chieveley brought me the reply:
Splendid. Make haste. C.J.
IV
Having effectively banished me from her life, my wife could not reasonably expect me to consult her about mine; so rather than trying to see her before I left – which would have given her the opportunity to argue with me – I merely scribbled a brief note to explain what I was doing. For a few seconds, I struggled with the urge to soften it by starting I am orf for my hols wiv Sirril Jesup – but then, reflecting that even that would seem to assume a degree of intimacy (or, at least, a kind of habitual complicity) that no longer existed, I contented myself with merely writing: I am going away, and do not know when I shall be back.
It is a complicated journey from Oxfordshire to southern Dorset; but the connections were so miraculously arranged that I never had to wait more than five minutes for a train, and it was still only late afternoon when I finally found myself approaching Jessop’s cottage in the hills above Lyme Regis. He called it his redoubt – the one place on earth he could return to, after weeks of wandering in his caravan, and be certain of finding a refuge from the noise and inanity of the modern world. And indeed, as my trap lurched towards it through the gathering dusk, and I saw the thick circling wall of hedges and the keep-like slab of the barn silhouetted against a fading March sky, it did strike me, for the first time, that it resembled nothing so much as a small fort.
Independence was Jessop’s watchword; so, refusing the driver’s offer of help, I shouldered my own bags, and staggered through the gate. The house itself – a low huddle of whitewashed cob under a beetling bonnet of thatch, set twenty yards back from the road – was unlit, and for a few moments I wondered if after all I had arrived too late, and Jessop had left without me. But then I noticed a square of paper fixed to the front door, and hurried up the path towards it. There was still just enough light for me to make out what was written on it – a single word, scrawled in soft pencil: Vannery.
I set down my bags, and walked round the house and across the muddy yard to the barn. The door was half-open, and the blackness inside tinctured by a yellow haze. I leaned against the jamb, and peered in. The interior – as always, when Jessop was at home – was dominated by the half-visible bulk of the caravan, which loomed and glinted like a decrepit dragon startled in its cave. A hurricane lamp stood on the platform beneath the fretwork canopy, sending faint hieroglyphic shadows on to the barn-walls. Below it, on the steps, sat Jessop, with a screw clamped between his lips, a screw-driver and a pair of seamstress’s scissors poking from his carpenter’s apron, and a large wooden hoop balanced on his knees. Something about his appearance – slight, and bent, and oddly creased – made me think of a newly opened nut still that bore the marks of the shell that had shaped it.
‘Don’t strain your eyes,’ I said.
The screw dropped. ‘Ah, Roper,’ he muttered, without looking up. ‘Forgive me. This thing’s being the very devil.’
‘Can I help?’
He shook his head; but when I retrieved the screw and held it out to him, he said: ‘Yes, you’re right, I suppose: three hands are better than two.’
‘We can make it four hands, if you like.’
He shook his head again. ‘I shan’t be needing more than one of yours, thank you. Just hold this for a moment, would you?’He handed me a heavy ring, then waggled his thumb to show where it fitted on the hoop. ‘There,’ he said, as he screwed it home, ‘that should keep old Tankard from breaking free and leaving us stranded in Farley Puddock or Dimbles Bottom. Why don’t you sit down?’ He got up, laid the hoop aside, and started gingerly probing the space beneath the caravan with his foot. ‘Sybil, bless her, has gone into town to get provisions for us, so you’ll be cosier her
e with me than in the house. Ah, here we are.’ He stooped down, and pulled out a little portable oil heater. ‘A bit new-fangled for my taste,’ he said, setting a match to it. ‘And’ll never be a substitute for the real thing, of course. But takes the chill off well enough if you have to be inside.’
I found an empty crate and kicked it towards the fire. ‘Is she coming with us?’
‘Hm, what, Sybil? Oh, no. No.’ He settled himself back on the steps, took up a tangle of straps and started teasing them apart. ‘Thought it best not to, this time. I mean, there are things you can’t ask a woman to put up with, aren’t there? And she doesn’t want to spoil our fun.’
I turned the crate over to make a stool and sat down. ‘That seems a bit hard on her.’
‘Oh, she’ll be happy enough to have a holiday from me. You forget what an exasperating fellow I am. In a couple of weeks you’ll be ready for a holiday from me yourself.’
I laughed. ‘Even so … The spring’s her favourite time, I know …’
He shrugged, then edged round to catch the light, and began minutely examining the stitching on a buckle. I could see his lips moving; but the noise that came out – a low hum, like the inconsequential muttering of a doctor at a patient’s bedside – was so faint that it was a couple of seconds before I could decipher what he was saying:
‘She really was dreadfully sorry, you know … As I was, of course. About your …’He shook his head. ‘A fairy child, Elspeth. Not of this world. Makes you wonder whether Life really knows its business, doesn’t it, when it snatches the best from us, and leaves so much dross behind? Financiers, and factory-owners, and politicians …’
I tried to speak, but my tongue had swollen in my mouth.
Jessop plucked a loose tuft of thread from the strap and fumbled in his apron pocket for a needle and cotton. ‘How’s Violet coping?’
That was easier. I swallowed, and said: ‘Oh, all right, I think.’
‘Still seeing her spiritualist friends?’
‘I’m afraid so.’
He nodded and glanced up at me. There was a kind of melancholy gentleness in his eyes that said: it isn’t something I’d do myself, but don’t be too hard on her: we must all take comfort where we can find it, mustn’t we? I shivered suddenly, like a man on a winter’s night who doesn’t realize how cold he has been until he comes in and feels the first warmth of the fire.
‘But the truth is,’ I heard myself blurting out, ‘I really don’t know. She seems to have fallen under the spell of a chap called Dolgelly – a medium, I suppose that’s how he’d describe himself – and he doesn’t want her to let me into the house, for some reason. So ever since I got back I’ve been living in the cabin.’
Jessop was licking the end of the cotton. He removed it for long enough to tch his tongue sympathetically.
‘Oh, it’s really not as bad as you might think,’ I said. ‘In some ways I actually prefer it. There’s certainly no denying it’s a lot more restful.’
‘Lonely, though,’ he murmured.
‘No lonelier than being in the van on your own, I’d have thought.’
‘I’m not in the van on my own very often. And when I am, I’m on the move. Surprising the people you meet on the road. A postman here. A sheep-drover there. So at least you have the illusion of company.’
The illusion of company. I’d meant to wait a day or two before mentioning Mary Wilson, until Jessop and I had had time to reestablish our old easiness with each other. But however long we spent together, I knew I should never have a better entrée. For a few moments I sat watching him. He looked the very soul of patient understanding, hunched over his sewing like a kindly grandmother. And surely, I thought, if he did not judge Violet, then he will not judge me?
‘I have had the illusion of company, too,’ I said.
‘Really?’
I nodded. ‘Or something like it.’
And then, before I could check myself, I was telling him. For the first few sentences I stuttered and stumbled; but soon the phrases were jostling each other in their impatience to get out. When I had finished, still staring at his work, Jessop said:
‘Oh, my poor old friend.’
‘Do you think I’m mad?’
He shook his head. ‘No, of course not. I think it’s all too understandable. You were hungry. You were tired. You were soaked to the skin. You craved the kind of warmth and comfort that only a woman can give you. And you knew …’ He paused, and cleared his throat noisily. When he went on again, he was mumbling so softly I could barely hear him. ‘You knew you weren’t very likely to find it at home. So when you chanced upon an attractive young stranger in peculiar circumstances, it was only to be expected that your feelings would be more than usually roused …’
‘But the feelings aren’t quite of that kind, Jessop.’
‘No?’
‘No. That’s what’s so unaccountable.’
He appeared to be completely absorbed in re-threading his needle, but I knew from a slight stiffening of his shoulders that he was waiting for me to tell him what kind of feelings they were, in that case.
‘I mean, that, obviously, was the first thing I thought of,’ I said. ‘But I’m not giddy and dry-lipped whenever I think of her. I don’t feel I’m about to drift off like an untethered balloon. I feel …Well, all I can say is that the few minutes I spent in her company seem like the most real experience I’ve ever had. As if what
is truest in me is somehow bound up with her.’
‘Hm.’ He pinched his lower lip and drew it out, like the end of a thick rubber band. ‘And all I can say is that love’s a strange animal. Sneaks up pretending to be something else entirely, and then, when it’s too late, rips the mask off and shows itself for what it is.’
‘If that were the case here, I can’t help thinking my eye would have fallen on someone a good deal softer and sweeter than Mary Wilson. My landlady at the pub, say …’
He shrugged. ‘Well, there’s no means of knowing, is there, except by seeing her again? Since you’re married and she’s married, that can only make the thing more painful for you, if I’m right. But it’s plain as a pikestaff you won’t rest easy until you’ve settled the matter, one way or the other.’
‘You think I should look for her?’
He nodded.
‘I don’t even know where she lives.’
‘You know she lives in Derbyshire. At a place called Langley Mill. Or somewhere close, at any rate.’ He was silent for a moment. Then he glanced up at me and said: ‘I’d been planning to venture into Devon. But I’m happy to go north instead. Only if we’re going to’ – jerking his chin towards the caravan – ‘we should be on our way. Even with Tankard at his best, it’ll take us a fortnight to get there, if we’re lucky.’
I was so moved and surprised I could only stammer:
‘Oh, no, you mustn’t … I mean, I couldn’t …’
‘Yes, you could. It’ll be easier for you if we go together. Won’t look as if you’ve had to make a special journey. You’ll have a pretext for being there – so if you do manage to find her, you can simply give her the book, and say we just happened to be passing.’
‘But what about you?’
‘Oh, there’ll be something for me to do, don’t you worry. There always is. You show me ten Derbyshire miners, and I’ll show you – I guarantee it – at least one bonnie fiddler, and a fine dancer or two, and a crafty-eyed fellow who’s a catalogue of old country songs, and’ll sing you half a dozen of them for a sup of ale. The trick is just to know how to burrow beneath the grime.’ He stood up. ‘Come on. Help me to get my recording-machine stowed.’
*
Imagine that one day when you are out walking, you come upon an enclosed garden, with a small green-painted door in the wall. You turn the handle and step inside – and immediately find you have somehow managed to slip back twenty years or more. You haven’t forgotten the present: you know it still exists beyond the walls, and you can even glimpse it sometim
es through the open doorway. You know, too, that at some point soon you will have to return to it – and that, when you do, it will be exactly as it was when you left it. But – for as long as you are able to remain there – you miraculously seem to know again the long-lost sensations of youth, in all their innocent, skin-tingling intensity.
So it was with the next ten days, as Jessop and I plodded northward in the van. Spring had not yet quite arrived, but you could sense it waiting eagerly in the wings – catch the sharp, urgent smell of sap, and see the stark outlines of the trees starting to soften under a fuzz of fresh green. And sometimes, when the wind eased and the cool air started to warm a little, you could hear the first tentative stammering of birdsong in the woods.
Every morning, we rose with the sun, and – our feet drenched with dew – padded across the meadow where we had spent the night to wash ourselves in a brook. Afterwards, sprawling luxuriously on an old tarpaulin, we would breakfast on home-made sausages from the local farm, or a couple of perch we had caught ourselves the previous evening. When we had finished – an almost religious ritual, this, that Jessop insisted on with quiet devotion – we would light our pipes and lie back for a few minutes, gazing up at the heavens and absorbing the peace that seemed to enter us at every pore. Then, as one of us cleaned and stowed the dishes, the other would fetch Tankard from his overnight lodging, and blinker him, and harness him into the shafts, ready for the day’s adventure.
We did not talk much as we went – not as a result of any awkwardness between us, but rather because we were so sated by the shared experience of jolting and rattling along the road, with the countryside unrolling magically before us and the breeze cutting at our cheeks, that any commentary would have been superfluous. Sometimes we would stop for lunch at a wayside inn, but more often we merely pulled up on the verge for an hour or so, and feasted on bread and cheese and beer bought in a nearby village, while Tankard cropped contentedly at the young grass. Then we would pack up and trundle on again, until fading light and a deepening chill told us it was time to look around for a resting-place. Having found a suitable field, and delivered Tankard over to the hospitality of the farmer, we would take ourselves for an hour or two to the closest ale-house – where Jessop would invariably cajole some wizened old fellow into singing a couple of songs, which he gleefully scribbled down in his notebook – before returning to our portable little kingdom, and building a fire, and cooking a simple dinner beneath the stars. And so to bed, to sleep until a new morning – and then get up, and pull on just enough clothes to be decent, and tramp shivering across yet another meadow, to wash in yet another stream …