Dad was in the merchant navy for two years. He joined as soon as he was old enough, and got drunk and made love for the first time in his first port, Naples. The ship was carrying lumber; he always remembered Italy as more than a country. ‘A bleeding state of mind, Italy,’ he told me once. We were driving slowly through Kent. He would have been alarmed by Marjorie’s driving.
‘They know how to build a car,’ she said.
‘You know how to drive.’
‘Does that surprise you?’
‘No,’ I said.
‘My father taught me when I was fourteen. Hell of an old bus we used to have.’
She had lived an exciting life, spoken her mind, and lived in different countries. Once she had nursed in West Africa; at a different time she had motor-cycled across Australia, when riding astride was not recommended for women. Aboriginals were amazed. She didn’t mind eating bugs with them, or taking all her clothes off for a ceremony. Then, in the night, she was gone. The Aboriginals thought the motorcycle was powered by her thighs, and the headlight shone because she wanted it to.
Her father had owned a shirt factory. Her mother’s alcoholism drove her away from home, and then a sense of adventure pushed her abroad. Her father had understood. Secretly he had wished he was her, but he couldn’t leave. He had been faithful to his wife, and wished she had had a real interest.
For the last twelve years she had lived in seclusion with three cats, a vegetable garden and the forest that grew all around her. She’d grown too old to travel, and wanted to live in her own house.
Wootton Fitzpaine, Catherston Leweston, Birdsmoorgate and Whitchurch Canonicorum were places on the signposts around Marjorie’s. I was born in Grays.
Her place was a lodge, set back from the road, a few miles from the next house. We’d driven into a forest. Trees were dark and solid on both sides, and where there were breaks in them, more trees stood in the distance, rising and falling like enormous waves. I didn’t anticipate the turning but suddenly she swerved the car and we swept up a long drive to an oval of gravel in front of the house. ‘There we are!’ she cried. ‘Home! Like the old place?’
I nodded. The dust cleared.
‘Old gamekeeper’s lodge,’ she said.
It looked bigger than it really was, an illusion created by a classical style. Small columns framed the windows, porch and door. The windows were leaded and the walls built of big, pitted blocks of stone. Marjorie leapt out of the car and said, ‘I could do with a drink!’ but I had to sit there, as if a great pressure was on my shoulders. There was a sudden, deep and unforgiving feeling in the air that blew past the car, stopped to look at me and then blew away.
We sat in her kitchen, in small armchairs. ‘I live in here,’ she said. ‘It’s the only room I can keep warm this time of year.’ There was a big table, a set of four dining chairs, two big cupboards and a Rayburn. Three cats were asleep beneath it. ‘My friend,’ she said, and patted the oven door. One of the cats woke up and yawned at her. ‘And here’s another.’ She poured some whisky, passed me a glass, said, ‘Sit down,’ drank hers and poured another.
‘Alice’, she said, ‘didn’t say why she wanted you to stay, but I can guess, if your father’s anyone to go by.’
‘What do you mean?’ I didn’t want Dad brought into it. ‘She said you needed a hand, so…’
‘He never got on with his life.’ She drank, held the whisky in her mouth for a moment and then swallowed. ‘Mind you, that wasn’t necessarily his fault. The male condition.’ She turned away. ‘You can’t help it.’
‘What condition?’
She didn’t choose to hear me. ‘But I suppose I owe Alice something, so we’ll do without the explanations.’
‘Why do you owe Alice?’
She looked straight at me and said, ‘I won’t ask you any questions if you don’t ask me any. No explanations for no secrets.’
‘I—’
‘Good,’ she said, and when we’d finished our drink she showed me to my room.
It was freezing in there. She had the room over the kitchen, mine was over the front room.
‘I didn’t get a chance to air it,’ she said. It smelt of damp sugar, an old cake tin, dust. I stood at the window and looked out. ‘Nice view out there,’ she said. ‘You’ve got that.’ She patted her hair all over. ‘You’ll see it in the morning.’
‘I can’t wait,’ I said.
She looked at me. ‘Are you being funny?’
‘Me?’ I said.
The night was solid, but I could see the silhouettes of gently swaying trees. In the distance, the horizon was split into two curves that joined in the middle. Marjorie pointed to some sheets and blankets on a table. ‘I put them out,’ she said.
‘Thanks,’ I said.
‘You know how to make a bed?’
‘Of course.’
‘Good. Then when you’ve done it you can peel me some potatoes.’
‘Potatoes?’
‘In the kitchen.’
She left me on my own. I shivered. There were pictures around the walls of the room - one of an old woman praying by a window, and another of a cat surrounded by mice. Some of the mice were pulling the cat’s whiskers, but it had a scheming look in its eyes, a big bushy tail and strong stocky legs.
We ate late. She told me she’d get me fixed up with boots and a decent jacket in the morning. She had a lot of stuff in a cupboard under the stairs. ‘Trousers too,’ she said. ‘But we’ll have to get the boots in town. What size are you?’
‘Nine.’
‘We’ll go to Bridport.’
She had gone to bed and I was sitting on mine when the phone rang. It was half ten. I heard her get out of bed, open her door and walk along the corridor. I put my head around my door.
‘What a time to phone,’ she said.
‘Shall I get it?’
She stopped and looked at me. Her face was inches from mine, and softer than before.
The landing was dark. One of the cats was sitting outside my room. ‘Certainly not,’ she said, and went down the stairs. When she reached the hall, the phone stopped ringing. ‘Typical,’ she said. I watched her come back up.
‘It might have been Alice,’ I said.
‘I wouldn’t be surprised.’
‘Maybe I should phone her and see…’
‘To Brighton?’
‘That’s—’
‘No one’, she said, ‘phones Brighton from this house,’ and she disappeared into her room. She was wearing a navy blue towelling dressing gown with a red dragon embroidered on the back; like a Hell’s Angel, or a Japanese priest.
When I undressed, got into bed and turned the light out, I began to feel my situation.
I couldn’t remember ever sleeping in a room that wasn’t illuminated in some way - even a crack of light between curtains was enough, but in that room there was nothing but total darkness. Even when my eyes got used to the light I couldn’t see anything beyond the faint outline of the bottom of the bed, and the wardrobe and chest of drawers against the opposite wall.
I started the night on my back; spent ten minutes like that and then turned on to my left side. I kept the blankets pulled to my chin. Breathing made my lips cold.
The house was quiet. Marjorie made no squeaks with her bed, the dust gathered in the loft, the Rayburn was damped down and the cats were out. Nothing moved in the freezing front room, or in the hall, on the stairs or outside my room on the landing. Outside, the trees breathed through their leaves and needles.
I turned on to my right side, towards the door. I never get to sleep quickly. I tried to imagine a blackboard. I stood in front of it with a piece of chalk, and the idea is to cover the board with chalk. Usually, you fall asleep before you finish the job. I never have.
Instead, I tried to remember the full names of the 1966 England World Cup squad. I got ten full names, but couldn’t remember Cohen’s Christian name. I know Geoff Hurst (hat-trick) is in the motor trade now, and one of them is an undertaker. I always said, ‘Even if that goal wasn’t a goal, we still won the game.’ In 1966 we were living in Deptford. We’d bought our first television and invited neighbours to watch the match on it. We were appreciated in our street. I remember looking outside at half-time and the city was deserted, as if people had been hit by a mystery virus that had struck the planet without warning from Outer Space. I was ten.
I strung thoughts and memories, turned over and lay on my back, and slowly felt my eyelids get heavier.
I slept for a few hours before I was suddenly woken up by the sound of a loud cough. A second followed, and then a twenty-second burst. I got out of bed, and thought I’d fetch Marjorie a glass of water at least.
I opened the bedroom door and left the coughing, which started again, behind me. I turned around. It came from outside. I stood with the doorknob in my hand. The milkman.
I went to the window and looked out. The sky was beginning to lighten, and for the first time I could make out some detail of the landscape around the house. I looked down. There was no milkman in the drive.
The house was totally surrounded by trees. Trees disappeared in every direction and as far as the two sloping hills on the horizon. I could see that most had been planted in ranks, but others were in disorganised clumps. Some still had their leaves, others were bare. I couldn’t identify any of them.
The sky was the colour of a train window, and looked thin. The cough started up again. It came from the other side of a high wall that ran beyond Marjorie’s property. I focused on this, but couldn’t see anything moving. Marjorie’s garden was a lawn, a few flower-beds, half-dug vegetable plots and a terrace. I could see the corner of a greenhouse and a wheelbarrow parked against a brick shed.
The coughing went on for a few minutes, but I didn’t go out to find out who was watching me peek between the curtains. I closed them again, and went back to bed, but didn’t sleep.