The sailor thinks he will never meet another woman like Jytte and then he meets Marianne who was born on Skopelos but moved to the mainland. She hated prunes. Her face pleaded, and every look she gave me I kept for ever. She had black eyes and long fingers. How many looks and how many women? How far does one man have to travel before he ends in the arms of one he never stopped wanting? I think about Marianne now and can see her face, but I have to concentrate if I want to separate it from other faces. I have to catch it, hold it, remember some port in some country some year when I was drinking too much and picking fights with locals. My mother had just died and I was about to apply for compassionate leave, and I clutched the man’s leather cap over my heart and wished myself beside her. I wanted to feel the last warmth leave her body, and hear the last breath; I had disappointed her. I wanted to tell her that I thought about her every day, and I wanted to watch her eyes follow a single cloud and close on a sunset; I had failed. I wanted the world to acknowledge her but it didn’t; it coughed like it always does on lonely people.
I’m with Marianne. We’re lying in bed. She doesn’t know it, but the violin we can hear is playing a lament for my mother’s soul. The music floats over the waterfront and it’s stronger than fate, but not luck. I hang my cap on the bedpost because that’s what she wants me to do, and though I always wear it in bed with a woman I cannot say no. She runs her fingers through my hair and down my chin. I’ve shaved for her.
‘Marianne…’ I say, but she puts a finger to my lips. She tips her head back and throws her hair over her shoulder. It’s long and brown. Her curtains billow, and the scents of jasmine and rosemary float in the air. A bottle of wine sits on the bedside table, and a vase of flowers. Her room has a balcony. I get up, wrap a towel around my waist and go to watch the street below, and the ships along the quay. I turn to look at Marianne, who has laid on her stomach and closed her eyes. Her left leg is pulled up, and her hands stroke the sheets. I am overcome with grief, and cannot make love.
‘Cry, darling. Cry for me.’
I want to stay with Marianne but I’d prefer to sail to Tilbury with a cargo of lumber and olives. That’s what she says. I cannot argue, for she is not the love of my life. I cannot tell her about my mother. I go back to bed, turn my face away from hers, and she holds on to me. We lie like that and she sleeps. I can feel her body heaving through the night, sighing and turning for someone else, mumbling another man’s name in a language I don’t understand. The moon sets. We’re in trade, and it suits us both.
I woke early. The sun rose, birds started their singing. I left the house, walked up to the vegetable garden and sat down. My early potatoes were showing, and a row of broad beans. I had raked and flattened an onion bed, and sown cabbage. I had bought a vegetable handbook, and learnt about the planting distances, and how you must protect your seeds from pests and disease.
I poked the soil with my boots. Back-lit clouds hung like dusters in the sky. The sea was calm. The tide ebbed. The garden was protected on three sides by a high stone wall I had repaired.
We ate breakfast slowly.
‘I live by the ocean. It’s a new house. I only bought it last year. First real money I’ve had for thirty years. Would you believe it?’ Elizabeth Green was still in my house. I pinched myself. She had brushed her hair. I sat so I could watch the light through the plastic shine on it. ‘I’ve got these picture windows. You can sit in the house and it’s like you’re on the beach.’
‘Where?’
‘Malibu. It’s beautiful.’
‘I’ve seen San Francisco. That was beautiful — ‘51, ‘53, twice in ‘56…’
‘You remember dates?’
‘Yes.’
‘Names and faces?’
‘Sometimes.’
‘So do I,’ she said, and she lit her first cigarette of the day.
‘You remember what you were doing in, say, the spring of 1950?’
‘April 1950… I was out of Liverpool bound for Valletta, Alexandria. The Levant. I got lost in Beirut, ended up sleeping in a bar.’ I remembered the place. ‘It was owned by a French woman. Sylvia. She was old enough to be my mother.’
‘Did you sleep with her?’
‘No.’
She blew smoke out as she said, ‘I got married in 1950.’
‘1950…’ I said.
‘Divorced six months later.’
‘Who was he?’
‘What was he,’ she said. ‘That’s what you should ask. He was Ray Lebox. Died last year. He was a lawyer.’ She slapped her forehead. ‘God! I should have known but you know how it is when you’re young. When you think you’ve got everything. He beat me up on our honeymoon night, stayed long enough to give me Jacob, then left.’
‘Bastard.’
She shrugged. ‘It was over before we kissed. Serves me right for not asking the right things. The only answer I got was to the question I never asked. He was the first person to tell me my career was over. Thirty years old, dead in the water. I didn’t believe him. I reminded him about Missing You and he told me: “That was six years ago. What’ve you done since then?” I told him I’d made a film a year since then. “But can you remember anything about them?” ’ Her voice dropped, and she asked me, ‘Can you?’
‘Mercy Cure,’ I said.
She laughed, bitterly. ‘Sure. Mercy Cure. That’s what that movie needed.’
‘It wasn’t so bad.’
‘Don’t lie to me, Michael,’ and her face hardened. ‘I can tell.’ Her lips thinned, and her eyes. ‘I used to be very gullible. Still am, sometimes. Dumb,’ she said, curling the word around her mouth. She leaned towards me so her face was very close to mine. ‘You won’t take advantage of me, will you, Michael?’
‘I don’t think I’m going to get the chance, am I? Dan’ll be here soon.’
‘Dan?’
‘The taxi.’
‘Oh, yeah,’ she said, and she held her mouth open, and I waited for her to say something else, something to give me hope, but she didn’t. She looked at the couch I had slept on, and the dog on the floor, and then turned away as the sound of the waves along the shore broke the silence.
The morning grew warm and still, and the tide flooded the beach. I had work to do in the garden. I left Elizabeth sitting in the kitchen with a cup of strong coffee and a cigarette.
I was sitting on the wall, rubbing some warmth into my knees, when Dan drove down the road and sounded his horn. I went to the bottom of the garden and waved to him, and waited for Elizabeth to appear, but she didn’t. I shouted, ‘She’s in the kitchen,’ and pointed at the house. Dan climbed out of his car, raised a hand and slouched inside. Gloria ran towards him. I called her back and we walked down together.
Elizabeth was not in the kitchen. I looked round the rest of the house but she was not there. ‘Maybe she’s down on the beach,’ I said.
Dan looked half asleep. We walked down to the beach. I said, ‘How was Plymouth?’
‘How did you know I was in Plymouth?’
‘Mr Boundy told me.’
‘Boundy,’ he muttered.
‘Yes.’
‘Boundy’s full of crap.’
I laughed but Dan didn’t. He was a thin man, young, with a gaunt face and dark, slicked hair. He smoked and chewed gum at the same time, and walked with his free hand in his pocket. When we stood on the sand he looked as though he did not belong there. He was wearing a black jacket, a white T-shirt, blue jeans and leather boots. He stared blankly at the sea and the offshore stacks, and didn’t move when I suddenly yelled, ‘Elizabeth!’
Gloria barked, I shouted again and then walked back to the ruins, and checked the weavers’ cottages. I called her name again but she did not appear. As I was wandering around the remains of the old farmhouse, Dan joined me and said, ‘I’ve got another fare at twelve.’ He tapped his watch and scratched his cheek. His skin was pale, almost translucent, and when he coughed I thought he’d burst. The dark and troubled soul of cab drivers… He struggled to light another cigarette, scratched his head and threw a nervous glance at the sky. He watched a cloud, and as it shaped over him, puffing and splitting in the stratospheric winds, despair drifted across his eyes. He looked at his boots. They were scuffed and dirty. He turned towards me, and for a moment I thought he was going to say something important. He looked as though he was about to snap with grief and a deep longing. I could taste the feeling in the air between us, salty like a memory I had of a similar longing. A cathedral of rage in my head, with blackened windows and a red roof. Overlooked on all sides, dripping with storm water, twisted with faded ivy. I said, ‘I’ll check the house again.’
‘Okay.’ He looked at the smouldering tip of his cigarette. ‘I’ll be in the car.’
She wasn’t in the house, but I found her purse on the sideboard. I picked it up and held it to my nose, put it back and went outside. I shouted her name one more time. Gloria lay down. I went to the cab and said, ‘Sorry. I don’t know where she’s gone.’
‘I’ve got to go.’
‘Here,’ I said, and I gave him a tenner.
‘Thanks.’ His voice was drifting. He took the money and slipped it into a purse on the dashboard.
‘I’ll be in Zennack this afternoon,’ he said, and he drove away. I stood and watched him go, then whistled for Gloria.
We searched the ruins again, and the beach, but there was no sign of her. I took the cliff path and started to walk towards the point. The dog ran ahead. The wind was strengthening. The sea swelled towards the rocks. I was afraid. We hadn’t said goodbye.
I never said goodbye to my mother. She had died in the front room of a downstairs flat I never slept in. I still see her there, alone in an armchair with a blanket covering her knees, staring through a gap in the curtain at a child riding past on a bicycle, and then, nothing. No hand to hold, no one to rush into the street wailing. Dust settling on her ornaments, and on the remains of her last meal. Her cat sitting outside, wailing at the back door. She sat dead for twenty-four hours until the milkman called the police. A few neighbours gathered to watch her body carried from the flat, and they whispered that it was a shame and a pity. She had kept herself to herself but they thought she hadn’t meant it to be that way. She had a son, but none of them had ever seen me.
I was guilty. I had neglected her and never said goodbye. I was not the sort of child a mother wished for, and I was ashamed.
The funeral was delayed for my return, and afterwards I signed off for a month, and lived in the flat. I wanted to hide and lose my own face. I didn’t want to spend any time with a whore. I didn’t move my mother’s things or clean the house. I lived with the curtains drawn, ate cold food and only went out at night. I drank in the Dock and Chain, where a man can sit undisturbed. During the day I read.
I thought I was paying penance for my neglect, but when I joined ship again I couldn’t concentrate on my work, on watch or on my navigation exams. I hadn’t said goodbye and I never would, I hadn’t told her that I always wore the cap, even in bed. I hadn’t asked her if she’d ever heard from my father. I had failed her, and hadn’t understood that I was needed.
I paid the price. I failed my exams. I began to lose faith in myself. I wore shirts with frayed collars and holed trousers. I told myself that I had done to my mother what my father had done to her. At Rotterdam and Antwerp, Valencia and Salerno I stayed aboard, locked myself in my cabin and left the bars and women to the other men. I didn’t want to leave another woman in my life. I read Russian novels about snow and balls and suicide until my eyes bled, and I went back for more. I wrote letters to my mother, set matches to them and dropped them from my porthole. I leant out to watch the flames tumble and hiss in the dock. I drank whisky alone, and only spoke when I was spoken to.
Halfway to the point there is a shallow crease in the land, and a fork in the path that leads to the place where I bathe. I stopped for a moment, then followed the way through a thicket of blown scrub and on to a narrow track. This wound down, bending back on itself until it reached a narrow shingle beach. The bathing place is at the far end, sheltered by a semicircle of rocks, protected from the swell by the point. I stepped on to the beach and called, ‘Elizabeth!’ There was no reply. Then I saw her in the sea, swimming out from behind the rocks, and my heart leapt in my chest, and I felt the hands pushing me again. The sun shone on her hair. She waved.
‘Hey!’ I yelled, and Gloria barked.
Elizabeth swam towards us and shouted, ‘This is great! Come on in!’
I touched my cap. ‘You missed your cab!’
‘Screw the cab! I’m having fun!’ And she swam back the way she’d come, and disappeared behind the rocks.
I sat down on the beach and watched the swell break over the stacks. Gulls flocked over them, screaming and wailing at their chicks, diving at each other and the sea. They are one of the pests I have to look out for in the garden. They will come for worms in freshly dug soil, and worms are the gardener’s friend. I have strung cotton over some of the beds, and this discourages them.
I was thinking about an old captain who kept window boxes on board his ship, and grew fresh lettuce and radish in all weathers, when Elizabeth emerged from the water and climbed on to the rocks. She was about fifty yards away, naked. She shouted, ‘Don’t look!’ I saw her back, she grabbed a towel, I looked at the stacks and the gulls. ‘I’m watching you!’ she called.
I stood up and said, ‘I’ll wait for you on the path.’
‘You stay where you are!’
I sat down again, and waited.
I told her that the cab would be in Zennack that afternoon but she pretended not to hear, and told me that she hadn’t swum in the sea for years, but she’d felt so dirty she had to, and now she had she was glad. ‘I’ve never had a bath like that.’
We were sitting outside, drinking. A single lark rose, crazed by singing. A pair of chickens came and pecked around our feet. She said, ‘My mother kept chickens.’ She laughed. ‘In New York!’
‘When?’
‘The thirties. They lived in the back yard. She left them when we moved west, but she never forgot them. I don’t think Mother ever forgot anything.’
‘Why did you move?’
‘I don’t know. Something bad happened, a man, I think. I don’t remember much. I was very young. I think she gave the chickens to some Greeks in the street. Greeks do good things with eggs.’
‘I know.’
‘And chicken. Do you eat yours?’
‘Ssh!’ I shook my head. ‘Not in front of them.’
‘Sorry,’ she said, and that was the first time she said that to me.
We stood up and walked up to the vegetable garden, and she asked if I’d seen The Grapes of Wrath.
‘Yes. And I read the book. “The dawn came, but no day.” ’
‘You read the book? Amazing…’
‘What’s amazing about it?’
She shook her head. ‘Steinbeck got it right. I saw those things. Farms drowned in dirt, people mad with thirst.’ She looked at the sky. ‘Some days the sun never shone, the dust blocked it out. One place we stopped I saw a dog eating an arm. A man’s arm. Can you imagine?’
‘No.’
‘Not the sort of thing a girl should see.’
‘How old were you?’
‘Six or seven.’
‘That’s young…’
‘The older I get the clearer those days become. I can smell the food we ate, and hear the crowds. Soup kitchens. We used to eat at soup kitchens.’
‘We had soup kitchens in the war.’
‘Where?’
‘London.’
‘I like London,’ she said. ‘That’s where you were born?’
‘Yes.’
We reached the garden, and I went first, skirting the vegetables until I reached the shed in the corner. I said, ‘Know how to use a rake?’
‘I don’t know what a rake is.’
‘Here.’ I pulled one out of the stack of tools. ‘I’ll show you.’
There were carrots to sow, the flavoursome variety called Short ’n’ Sweet. I had a packet of seeds in my jacket pocket. I had dug the ground in the winter, spread manure, allowed frosts to break the clods, and had forked it over. Now I took the rake, and starting at the top of the garden, began to work my way down. I stopped halfway, held the small of my back and said, ‘There’s nothing to it.’
‘Are you all right?’
‘Yes…’ I bent and picked up a stone. ‘If you find any of these, sling them on the pile.’
‘Have you got a pair of gloves?’
‘They’ll be big.’
She tucked her shirt in and hitched her trousers. ‘I’m getting used to big.’
‘Okay.’ I shouldered the rake and went back to the shed. There was a pair of leather gloves on a shelf, next to a pile of dirt and a jam jar of rusted screws I had been meaning to soak in oil. ‘They’ll be massive.’
‘Blisters or massive,’ she said. ‘I think I’ll go with massive.’ She put them on. They made her arms look like paddles. ‘Pass me the thing.’
I passed it.
‘Thanks.’
‘What day is it?’
‘Wednesday.’
She laughed. ‘When I saw this place I thought I’d stumbled into a nightmare.’ We were sitting to watch the sun set. ‘What twenty-four hours can do.’
I nodded but said nothing. I had been thinking the same. I was reminded of Marianne, drinking in a small café on the waterfront with people strolling by, pigeons pecking around our feet.
‘Twenty-four hours…’
I raised my glass.
She raised hers.
The air was scented with wood smoke, the sun whispered into the sea and the sky wrote music across its face. A split cloud split and that split split, and shreds sparked across the water.
‘You think you could never get used to something, but how wrong can you be?’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘This place. The longer I’m here the more I like it. The more I need it.’
‘That’s how I feel.’
‘You need it?’
‘Yes.’
‘Need,’ she whispered. ‘Want,’ she said, and that word hung in the air. ‘I want another twenty-four hours.’ Thank you for everything. She sipped her drink, and took a deep breath. The cat came from the house and strolled across the yard to the ruined cottages. There was a wren nesting there, and she was going to have it. ‘The quiet is a need, isn’t it?’
I agreed.
‘I love it so much.’
I mumbled, ‘You’re welcome.’ It was all I could manage.
‘Are you sure about that?’
‘Yes.’
‘Jacob’s expecting me tomorrow.’
‘Where?’
‘London. We’re flying back at the weekend.’
‘I’ll go to Zennack tomorrow. Give me his number and I’ll give him a call.’
‘You don’t know what you’re saying.’ She stared into her drink. ‘He’s very persuasive. There’s nothing he likes more than a challenge.’
‘I’ve known men like that.’
‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Jacob’s different to other people. No one’s ever said no to him.’
‘Maybe it’s time someone did.’
‘I should have spent more time with him.’
‘Don’t regret the past. It’s a waste of time. There’s nothing you can do about it.’
‘That’s easy to say.’
‘Would you regret not having another day here?’
‘Oh, yes. I want to go swimming again. And I want to see you sow some more carrots.’
‘Then stay.’
‘He won’t like it…’
‘I’d like it,’ I said, and I reached over and put my hand on her arm. I shivered. She looked down at it.
‘I bet you would.’
I took the hand away.
‘Hey,’ she said. ‘It’s okay.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Forget it,’ she said, and her voice chimed with loss and fright. The air was squeezed between us. I poured myself another vodka, and she lit a cigarette.
‘I can’t do that,’ I said, and I meant it. I meant it more than I had ever done.
You don’t know how quickly I realised that I never wanted you to leave, how complete you made me feel. You, my house, the dog, the fireplace.
I thought I was past falling so deeply, tumbling like a boy in scuffed shoes and a torn jacket.
You never said something without thinking first, you were stronger than all the things you had done, you had a girlish way of looking away and twirling a lock of your hair.
You had beautiful ears, and I wanted to rub their lobes.
I was sixty-eight years old. You were seven when I was born. What were you doing when I was seven? When I was twenty? Forty?
Did you think I was a handsome man? If I’d written to you, would you have replied? It doesn’t matter, not any more.
You said you wanted another twenty-four hours. You didn’t add ‘… with you’, but I added those words myself. I heard you say them in my mind and that was enough.
You said, ‘Why can’t you forget whatever it is?’
‘You…’ I said, and I tried to force my feelings out, but they would not come.
‘Yes?’ she said.
‘Please,’ I said. ‘Stay as long as you want.’
‘Do you know what you’re saying?’
‘I don’t care…’
‘You’re very kind,’ she said.
‘You make me kind.’
‘What? How can I do that? I don’t know you.’
‘Does that matter?’
‘What are you talking about, Michael?’
I shook my head now, and ran my fingers through my hair. ‘I don’t know,’ I said.