The letter came one Saturday at the end of April, when Imogen Doody was retrieving balls from the canteen roof. This was part of her job as caretaker, and the whole process represented an ongoing battle between her and the entire male population of the school. She knew they threw them up on purpose, but she had to remain one step ahead. Once she had the balls in her possession, she could confiscate them for a fortnight. It was a hot day, even hotter on the roof, so she was anxious to get down as soon as possible.
She could see the postman walking up the path from the main school building. Patrick Saunders, an odd man—the children called him Postman Pat. He ambled and stopped to talk to anyone who was interested, which meant his delivery times were unreliable. She remained where she was on the edge of the flat roof, not wanting to be seen, unwilling to talk to him. From her high position, she could see that he was nearly bald, and there were clusters of dark freckles on his head, brown against the unconvincing wisps of his pale hair. She didn’t like this glimpse of his frailty. It made her feel sorry for him, and she knew she wouldn’t be able to express that sympathy.
He rang twice, and kept shifting his bag from one shoulder to the other while he waited. Doody resented this. Why should she have to worry about his aching back? He chose to be a postman.
She threw down a ball—orange, soggy, in need of new air—and he jumped. He squinted up at her through the fingers of his free hand, and she was pleased that he couldn’t see her properly.
‘Why are you ringing the bell?’
He waved a letter at her. ‘I’ve got this.’
‘You can put letters through the letter-box. Get it? Letters—letter-boxes.’
He shrugged and turned away. ‘Please yourself. It’s registered post.’
‘Hang on,’ she called, and came down the ladder. He was waiting for her at the bottom.
‘It’s not addressed to you.’
Doody scowled at him. She put her hands into her pockets and pulled out a handful of small balls, multi-coloured and very bouncy. She dropped them, and they scattered in all directions. Their bouncing continued until they settled cheerfully into drains, corners, dips in the Tarmac, delighted with their miraculous escape. ‘So you ring the doorbell twice to give me a letter that you’re not going to give me?’
‘It’s your address, but it says Imogen Hayes.’
She tried to take it from him, but he moved it out of her reach. ‘That’s me. How many Imogens do you know?’
‘So why’s the name different? Is it your undercover name?’ He looked pleased with himself.
‘Yes,’ she says. ‘I’m a Latvian sleeper. Waiting to be activated. Perhaps that’s what you’ve got there. My orders.’ Anything would be more interesting than the reality of her present life. She reached for the letter, but he moved it away again.
Anger was brewing inside her, bubbling away ominously, but she wanted the letter, so she made herself speak in a calm manner. ‘It’s my maiden name. I was Imogen Hayes a long time ago. Now I’m Imogen Doody. Mrs Doody to you.’
He gave in. He was looking very uncomfortable, with beads of sweat on his top lip, his feet shuffling. She snatched the letter out of his hand and he didn’t resist. ‘You have to sign for it.’
She took his pen and signed the electronic screen he put in front of her. Should she offer him a cold drink?
If he’d done his job properly, he wouldn’t have been standing so long in the hot sun.
‘Thanks!’ she shouted at his retreating back.
He didn’t turn round. He let himself out of the gate and plodded heavily past the blue iron railings of the school. He was stubborn, but too pedestrian for a real argument.
Doody was pleased to have had the last word, and the fact that it had been a gracious word made her feel even better. She decided to make herself a glass of lemonade before opening the letter.
Doody sat opposite Piers Sackville of Sackville, Sackville and Waterman, and wondered how solicitors made so much money. The room smelt new, the carpet not yet flattened by passing feet, the gleam of the desk unchallenged by the sharp edges of stray paperclips or unprotected coffee cups.
‘Oliver d’Arby was your godfather, I believe?’
‘I wouldn’t be sitting here if he wasn’t.’
He remained distantly polite. ‘I’m relieved that my letter reached the right person.’ There was something phoney about him. Pretend interest, counterfeit sympathy.
‘I never knew him. He was a waste of time. Didn’t write, didn’t visit, didn’t send any presents.’ She could remember her hollow jealousy when Celia and Jonathan received presents through the post and she didn’t. As usual they were winning while she came last. After all this time, it still produced a dull, metallic bitterness that she could literally taste on her tongue. ‘He forgot about me.’
‘Apparently not. He’s left everything to you in his will. A cottage, all surrounding property.’
The bitter taste fled. Her head started to whirl and hum with snatches of thoughts. A faulty CD jumping tracks. Cottage—property—me? She tried to speak but, unbelievably, no words came out.
‘I can see that this is a surprise to you.’ His professional face slipped slightly, so that he almost looked gentle, but she wasn’t fooled. The man was an expert—he was paid to be nice.
What did she know about Oliver d’Arby? Her parents had only ever been mentioned him in passing. He had worked for the Inland Revenue and played the cello. It was the cello they remembered and described to her. How he had played it at the wedding, how he changed when he was playing, how they forgot about his tax-collecting. ‘But why did he leave it to me? I’ve never spoken to him.’
The solicitor smiled, openly and genuinely, and she was confused, unsure if she should believe in him or not. ‘Perhaps he had no one else to leave it to.’
‘Don’t you know? Aren’t solicitors supposed to advise people?’
He looked down at the will. ‘Normally, I might well have done, but unfortunately, this was long before my time. It’s dated the sixth of July 1966.’
‘I was only five years old then. Why would anyone leave all his worldly possessions to a child who’d just started infant school?’
He had some pages of typed notes, which he examined for a few seconds, turning the pages quickly. Nobody reads that fast. He cleared his throat. ‘It would seem that you’re not the only one never to have seen him again. He disappeared about twenty-five years ago.’
‘Twenty-five years? It’s taken that long to get round to telling me?’
‘The fact that someone has disappeared doesn’t mean we can assume he’s dead. The information has only recently come to our attention, and there are procedures to follow.’
‘So how did the information reach you?’
Piers Sackville coughed and almost looked embarrassed. ‘I’m afraid I don’t know. Someone must have informed us.’
Doody stared at him. ‘You mean there’s a secret—a big secret—and I’m not allowed to know?’
He looked indignant. ‘No, of course not. Someone else in the office must have the information. I’ll talk to one of my colleagues.’
‘Not a Mr Sackville, by any chance?’
‘How did you guess?’
He was gaining confidence. She could feel him altering the pace of the conversation, adjusting to her, and she didn’t like it. She wanted to reach over, grab the will and his notes, tear them up in front of his pseudo-kind face and watch his reaction. Then she would know what he was really thinking. Her fingers were itching, her breathing accelerating. ‘So when do you decide a missing person is a dead person? Do you try to trace him?’
‘It’s complex. We’ve had to make announcements, write letters, get a court ruling. However, I should point out that he was born in 1904. It’s rare for people to live beyond a hundred.’
‘Some do.’
‘Indeed. And let’s hope that both of us here will be in that fortunate position. But it’s not common, I’m afraid.’
‘I suppose it only matters if he leaves property behind. Nobody’s going to care otherwise, are they?’
He nodded, quite openly, with no hint of embarrassment. ‘Quite.’
Why does a non-existent man with no relatives make a will? Where does a seventy-five-year-old, cello-playing tax inspector go? On holiday and forget to return? Walking the streets? But what about the cello? Does he carry it around with him? Every park bench, every shop entrance would have to be twice as big for a man with a cello. Perhaps he had had a second home somewhere, with a wife half his age and four children. They’d all be getting old themselves by now, wondering why there wasn’t a cottage to inherit. Or did he go abroad and get kidnapped? Bad luck if there’s no one to pay the ransom. Perhaps he’s died in a plane crash, or a bomb in London, a body that can’t be identified.
‘It’s amazing that more people don’t disappear like that.’ Carelessly, slipping away by mistake.
Piers Sackville laughed this time, out loud, and Doody felt pleased with herself. He was beginning to notice that he was talking to a real human being. ‘I expect they do. We just don’t get involved.’
‘No.’ She resented the fact that she now knew two people who’d disappeared. Which way round did it work? She made connections with people who disappeared, or people who were going to disappear were drawn to her? ‘I’d be careful if I were you, Mr Sackville. People I know often disappear. It could be you next.’
‘Well, let’s hope not, Mrs Doody. I still harbour ambitions of reaching that elusive hundred.’
‘So what happens now?’
‘You sign a few papers for me, and then I give you the key.’
‘Mother?’
‘Imogen. How are you?’
‘Fine. I want to know about Oliver d’Arby.’ She didn’t want to discuss why she hadn’t phoned recently.
‘Who? Oh, yes, your godfather. Goodness, I haven’t thought of him in ages.’
Hardly surprising. She didn’t think of anyone except herself and the characters in Coronation Street. ‘Were you very friendly with him?’
‘Of course we were, he often came round. He was a pilot, you know.’
‘No, he wasn’t. He was a tax-man.’
She hesitated, clearly confused. ‘Oh, yes, I’d forgotten that. But he did fly planes—those little old-fashioned ones that people have as a hobby. He took us to an airfield once, long before you were born. Didn’t take us up, though—far too precarious. I wouldn’t have felt safe.’
A thrill of pleasure swept through Doody. Oliver d’Arby was a pilot, a Biggles character, a genuine link to her childhood. He assumed a new image in her mind, one that she felt she could identify with. A young man in flying goggles, taxiing out on to a grass airfield, raising a hand to her as he passed. The roar of the engine, the blue sky—
‘Imogen? Are you still there?’
‘Yes, yes.’ Doody pushed back her excitement to a place where she could examine it later. ‘Why was he my godfather?’
‘Because we asked him.’
She didn’t normally say ‘we’. The subject of Doody’s father was meticulously bypassed, driven round at high speed. But it wasn’t easy discussing their life together during Doody’s childhood without a passing reference to him. ‘Why did you ask him? He was much older than you—nearly sixty. Wasn’t he an odd choice?’
‘I don’t know. It was all so long ago, Imogen.’
There was no point in pushing her—she’d never produce any information. Doody imagined her sitting in the tiny hall of her flat, wondering if she’d have the energy to water her African violets, counting her pills in her mind, making sure she wouldn’t forget to take any.
‘Did you know he disappeared?’
‘Disappeared? What do you mean?’
‘Twenty-five years ago, he just vanished. Nobody knows what happened to him.’
‘How mysterious.’
Doody wondered if her mother had secretly kept in touch with him all this time and knew exactly where he was. But she couldn’t imagine why anyone as interesting as Oliver d’Arby would willingly maintain contact with her mother.
‘How did you know him? Where did you meet?’
‘Oh, I can remember that. He was a friend of my father’s—your grandfather. They were in the services together—I told you he was a pilot, didn’t I?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, I think they were in the war—it must have been the First World War, I suppose, a very long time ago.’
Doody made some calculations. Oliver d’Arby must have been ten at the beginning of the First World War, and her grandfather would have been even younger. ‘I don’t think so,’ she said.
‘You must stop doubting everything I say, Imogen. It’s not an attractive quality.’
‘But it can’t be right—’ She stopped. It didn’t matter. At least she now knew where Oliver d’Arby had come from. She might never understand his real connection with her mother or father. ‘And he played the cello.’
‘Did he?’
‘Well you’re the one who told me that.’
‘Then he must have done, I suppose, if you say so.’
Doody felt herself getting angry. This was the way all conversations went with her mother. The logic became slippery and facts shifted and abandoned their shape, so that she lost her sense of direction and everything became her fault.
‘I’ve been having trouble with my eyes,’ her mother said.
‘Have you had them tested?’
‘No, but I’m thinking about it.’
‘You probably need new glasses.’
‘It’s not easy, living on my own—’
‘Did you like Oliver d’Arby?’
‘Oh, yes, he was a lovely man.’
‘Was he married? Did he have a family?’
‘No—it was all rather sad. His wife died of some illness—pneumonia, I think—before we met him, so he didn’t have any children. That was why he was so pleased to be asked to be a godfather. But then he didn’t keep in touch. We never saw him again after the christening.’
Doody’s fault, then. ‘Did you find out why not?’
‘Not exactly, but I think it brought it all back, seeing the children he could never have. I distinctly saw something in his face when we went back to the house, as if he wanted to cry but couldn’t.’
Doody paused and tried to imagine her mother being compassionate, perceptive, caring. But it was a false picture. Her mother was just constructing the image that she felt would impress Doody most. Then Doody realised that the whole business of Oliver d’Arby not having children would have been out of date when she was born. He was too old—he must have gone through all that anguish long before. She decided that she wouldn’t tell her mother about the cottage—not yet.
Immediately after the telephone conversation, Doody collected together all her notebooks, pencils, sharpeners and rubbers. She arranged herself on the settee, leaning against one arm, cushions comfortably at her back and her legs stretched out in front of her. She picked up a new, unused exercise book and a pencil.
‘Chapter One’, she wrote—and stopped.
She couldn’t think of a title. The previous one didn’t have a title either, but that wasn’t important, because she’d already decided to abandon it. There were now six unfinished novels sitting upstairs under her bed, and she had no great desire to go back to them. She wanted to start afresh, to experience the surge of adventure and promise that came with a new idea. This was going to be the good one, the one that would go on to the end.
Her mind felt open, exhilarated by the discovery that Oliver d’Arby was worth knowing, a benefactor she would have approved of. She imagined meeting him, a thin, grizzled, ancient man, whose mind went backwards to the flying.
‘Did you fly a Camel?’ she would ask.
‘Sopwith Camels? Goodness, no. You couldn’t get hold of them after the war. We flew whatever was available.’
What was it like? She wanted to ask.
She wrote down a sentence: ‘The little two-winged Gipsy Moth came out of the sun, a tiny speck in the massive sky—’
She looked out of the window at the darkening sky, heavy with rain, and thought of Biggles, who had accompanied her through her childhood, a fictional friend who always came back. He didn’t die, or disappear. She still half dreamed that he would turn up one day, fly low over the school, land on the playing-field, ready to rescue her from her tedious, lost life.
‘Come on!’ he’d shout.
She would race across the field, in full view of all the children, leap on to a wing and lie flat, and they’d take off together, with an unknown enemy firing pistol shots at them. Escaping.
Sometimes he would resemble her husband, Harry.
She sighed and looked back down at the page.
Suddenly, Detective Inspector Mandleson, better known to his friends as Mandles, heard a change in the familiar sound of the engine—
Mandles had lived in Doody’s imagination for years. After Harry had left, she had felt the need to withdraw from reality. She had crept back to her childhood fantasy life, crawled into the hidden labyrinths of her mind, searching for comfort, and rediscovered Biggles. She transformed him into Mandles, recognising a need for her own hero.
The needle on the altimeter was spinning madly out of control, and the Gipsy Moth revolved round and round on an invisible pivot, heading directly for the drink—
It started to rain, big heavy drops splashing against her window.
Doody drove down from Bristol on the next Saturday to see the house. In her mind, she told her father that she’d become a woman of property, but she didn’t think he’d heard her. He was too dead for that kind of news. He wouldn’t believe her, anyway.
The cottage gate was on a corner of the village road, with only a narrow strip of cobbled pavement outside, where cars dashed past blindly. She liked this. It was not a place where people would stand and watch.
She opened the gate and waded through the long grass, pushing aside poppies, dandelions and forget-me-nots. Huge red petals flopped down from the poppies, leaving the centres black and quivering.
This belonged to her. She owned land, a house, a space. She wasn’t worried about the garden. She didn’t even care if the house was falling down. Now that she was here, she could feel that it was hers—it entered her body, creeping along her veins, taking root in her mind.
It was very strange to enter a house that had been empty for so long. The furniture was still there, waiting, unaware that it had been abandoned. To a sofa in a corner where the sun can’t reach, one year or twenty-five years is all the same. The house wasn’t like the Mary-Celeste, abandoned unexpectedly, a meal left half eaten on the table. Oliver d’Arby must have planned his departure. There was no washing-up waiting for attention, no grease marks on the cooker. Everything was tidy. Neat and ordered, like a holiday home. One night he must have decided to go, so he packed a suitcase. Then the next day he got up, had breakfast, made the bed, put out the dustbin and went. There were still clothes in the bedroom, suits hanging in the wardrobe, jumpers in drawers. But there was no underwear, no socks. So he knew he would be away for some time.
The furniture would have to go. She couldn’t live in the shadow of Oliver d’Arby even if he did play the cello, even though he was her benefactor and might still be alive. But she didn’t want to get rid of it yet. She would like to spend some time here first, guiltily finding out about him, painting a picture of him in her head, conscious that she had had no interest in him until she had known about the will. There was a bureau full of papers, letters, bills. She wanted to go through it, but needed some time for that.
She could do anything here, and nobody would know where she was. A place where she could go if she wanted to disappear for a while. No children, no headmaster, no bunches of keys. She had a picture in her mind. A house in the woods. A gingerbread cottage. Smoke curling out of the chimney.
She needed some expert advice because she’d never renovated a house before. Her brother, Jonathan, was the man for this.
Back at the school during the week, she phoned him. ‘Jonathan. How do you fix tiles on a roof?’
‘Find a reliable builder.’
‘I’m not going to pay someone. I haven’t got any money.’
‘I thought you worked all week.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous. I live on that money. I can’t afford to pay someone else’s wages too.’
‘Buy a book, then.’
‘No. You tell me.’
There was a pause and she suspected he was silently yawning. ‘Imogen—’
‘What?’
‘Are you sure this is wise?’
‘Don’t patronise me. I’m very capable. I’m a caretaker, you know, and I can do things.’
‘Fixing a few dripping taps and mopping up a leaky radiator doesn’t qualify you to rebuild an old ruin.’
How did he know what condition the cottage was in? Had he opened her letter and gone down there to inspect it?
‘Jonathan, stop trying to lecture me. I need your advice.’
‘You’ll need tools.’
‘I already have tools. Well, I can borrow them from school.’
‘You need to get a good DIY book. Honestly. If you see it illustrated you can work it out.’
‘I’m not wasting money on a book.’
‘The first thing you need is a ladder.’
‘Why didn’t I think of that?’
Actually, his advice was good. She borrowed a book from the library, but didn’t tell him. He would have many years of usefulness ahead of him before she’d finished.
On the next Saturday, Doody drove down with a ladder on a roof-rack and tools on her back seat, and parked in the road round the corner.
There was no one there. She was fenced in, or hedged in, and didn’t have to speak to anyone. No children to shout at, nobody to give her helpful advice. She was alone under the clear blue sky and the hot sun.
First, she went into the loft to look at the rafters. She needed to know their condition before she examined the tiles outside. She now knew about purlins, wall plates, ties, etc., and she could see it didn’t look good. Some of the beams were damp and rotten.
She went back outside again and consulted the book. It was not helpful. She read each bit several times, but it didn’t explain properly. It seemed to think she knew things already. It described what a roof looked like, how it was constructed, but it didn’t tell her how to mend it. She gave up on the book and went to stand in the garden where she could examine the roof. There were several gaps between the tiles. It might be possible to replace them, which would do for a start. If she could stop the rain coming in, the beams might dry out inside.
She stripped off as many clothes as she could, made her ladder secure and crawled on to the roof. She wanted to know exactly how many tiles were missing, and she needed a sample tile, so she could find the right ones in B&Q. She felt strangely powerful, under control. An aeroplane droned overhead and bees were buzzing round an enormous white lilac tree that was hanging over the front of the house. She could smell honey-suckle, even up here. After a while, she stopped counting tiles, and sat still, ready to fall asleep in the warmth of the sun. She could see the lighthouse, shimmering in the haze of heat, and the sea beyond, calm and tempting, the horizon blurring into the sky.
She looked down and saw a man standing inside her gate with a shopping trolley. For a few terrible seconds, she was seized by panic. It was Oliver d’Arby come to reclaim his house. She shouldn’t be here, sitting on his roof.
But this man did not fly Sopwith Camels or play the cello. It was obvious, even from a distance. He was tall with an untidy beard, wearing a suit and tie and boots. He had a huge nose. He was very ugly, but not a hundred years old.
‘Who are you?’ she shouted.
He looked at her but didn’t answer.
Doody first discovered serious anger at the age of eighteen, when it hit her like a surge of electricity and shocked her with its life-giving intensity. It had changed the nature of her existence, woken her up, made her think better. Now she has learned how to let it grow from a tiny pinpoint of light to a full-grown open fire, greedily hunting around for more fuel to burn. From the first moment when the spark ignites, a fierce excitement takes root inside her because she can feel something.
She knows that she irritates people by automatically taking the opposite view from them, but she’s waiting for the moment of self-belief, the rush of adrenaline that tells her she’s right and they’re wrong, that she’s indestructible. She doesn’t drink and she’s never taken drugs because she can’t see the point. They give an artificial high. Why bother when you can have the real thing?
This man is not predictable. When she trips over the roots in the grass and falls over, he comes back. She knows he’s there, even though she can’t look up, because she can hear him breathing. But nothing happens. She remains stuck and he doesn’t do anything to help her. She wriggles herself into an awkward kneeling position, scrabbling around in the long grass at the roots of the hawthorn, but there’s nothing without thorns that she can hold on to. When she finally manages to find a position from which to see him, she realises that he’s laughing. Shaking uncontrollably, gulping for air, tears rolling down his cheeks.
‘Very funny,’ she says. ‘How long is it going to be before you decide to help me? Five minutes? Half an hour? All day?’
But he keeps on laughing, twitching and jerking with the effort, completely unable to control himself.
‘Moron,’ she says. ‘Idiot, fool, imbecile.’
The trouble is, she needs his help. Her foot is caught upside down and her leg is awkwardly twisted. She can’t get into a comfortable position so that she can reach her foot and pull it out.
‘Haven’t you ever heard of being helpful?’ she yells at him, desperate to break up his hysterical laughter. ‘Didn’t you do the Good Samaritan when you were at school?’
He ignores her.
‘What’s the purpose of you?’ she shouts. ‘You’re ugly, you trespass on other people’s property, you steal shopping trolleys, and you’re incredibly stupid.’
Everything she says makes him laugh more. She’s not used to people laughing at her anger. It makes her feel insignificant. She stops shouting at him and settles herself back on the ground. She lies on her stomach, relaxes, ignores him, and contemplates the situation.
It’s like waiting with children. If they’re not listening, and you want them to stop what they’re doing, you just shut off and do nothing. Eventually they become conscious of the silence and give up.
So she lies still in the long grass and waits. The idiot eventually stops the hysteria, and his breathing becomes more regular. The roots of the hawthorn are in the shade, but she can see the sun a yard away and smell the heat of it coming closer. She hears the bees, a bird trilling—but she can’t identify it because she’s no good at birds. She’s never bothered about them before, never listened, never given them a thought. So now she finds she’s hearing a silence that is new to her. There’s quietness, calmness. A car drives up the road past the cottage, but she doesn’t mind that. It shows her the extent of her stillness.
She can’t hear him at all, so she moves her head round to see if he’s gone.
He’s sitting down close by, unmoving like her, and she realises that they’re sharing the same silence. They’re hearing things together: the crack of the hawthorn as it settles slightly into itself, preparing for the full sun; the crawling of a caterpillar past her arm; the rustle of the grass as it eases upright again, reasserting itself after being disturbed by their feet.
‘Well?’ she says at last. ‘Any chance of helping me?’
He’s unwilling, she can tell, but he moves towards her, and spends a few seconds examining the situation. Then she feels his hand on her leg. She jumps when he first touches her, but the hand stays there. Slowly, gently, he begins to untangle her. She waits and lets him finish. She likes the sensation of his calm hands on her leg.
He lets go.
She waits for a second and then tries to move her leg. It’s free, so she rolls over, away from the roots, and struggles to get to her feet.
He stands up and watches, but seeing her difficulty, leans forward to help. She tries to pull herself up on a branch of the hawthorn, but there are too many thorns, so she grabs his arm instead. He doesn’t react. He is solid and motionless beside her. She holds the foot still at first, then lowers it to the ground and puts some weight on it.
‘Ouch!’ She lifts it up again hurriedly.
The idiot man kneels down. He moves his hand along her foot, pressing as he goes.
‘There!’ she shrieks. ‘Ah!’ She tries to jerk it away, but he’s holding it too firmly, and she has to balance herself on his shoulder. ‘Let go!’ But her anger won’t come back. She looks for it and it’s not there any more. ‘I must have twisted my ankle,’ she says, sounding pathetic. ‘Can you help me back to the house?’
He nods, and they stumble together through the long grass. They would be more successful if he put an arm round her for support, but he’s not offering this service and she’s not asking.
The ladder is still up against the wall, tools strewn around at the base. He attempts to take her through the front door.
‘No,’ she says. ‘There’s no point in going in. It’s all dead. Been like that for years.’
He helps her to sit down again on the grass and lowers himself next to her. She’s conscious that he’s looking at her. Perhaps he’s dangerous. She is being helped by a man who could be a lunatic. Nobody knows she’s here. She’d be yet another disappeared person, buried under the hawthorn bushes, in the long grass.
She turns to examine his face, and he doesn’t appear to be dangerous. He doesn’t even seem stupid. There’s a scar on his left cheek, stretching from the corner of his eye, down to the chin, lost in the grey and black grizzle of his beard. His eyes, however, are remarkable. They’re bluer than she’s ever seen in real life. Frank Sinatra, Steve McQueen blue. As soon as she looks directly at him, he averts his gaze, but she’s seen his expression, his intelligence. If he’s a lunatic, he’s a clever one.
He gets up and starts collecting the tools into a neat pile. She has a very good idea.
‘Listen,’ she says, ‘you couldn’t do me a favour, could you? I need to get a tile down from the roof so I can buy some new ones. I want a sample.’
He pauses and glances at her. She can see the sweat on his forehead, the thoughts passing across his face, the quick turning away when he meets her eyes. He looks ridiculous in his navy suit and wellington boots.
‘It might be better if you took your boots off,’ she says. ‘It’s awfully hot, and you might slip.’
He doesn’t take his boots off. He climbs the ladder cautiously and, after fiddling for a while near the eaves, brings down a tile. Then he puts the tools just inside the front door. He pulls the ladder down and starts to fold it up.
‘Hang on,’ she says. ‘Maybe I haven’t finished.’
He stops, shrugs, then puts the ladder into the house as well.
‘Thanks a million. My ankle could be all right now, for all you know.’
He has a puzzled expression on his face. She can feel herself becoming irritated again. Why does he have to be so silent?
‘Say something,’ she says. ‘It’s not fair, me making all the conversation. I don’t mind if you want to shout a bit. We could shout at each other, see who’s the loudest.’
He avoids her eyes.
She sighs. ‘Please yourself.’
He’s completely still. She’s seen a street performer who paints himself grey and stands motionless long enough to give the impression that he’s a statue. Then, after a time, he twitches once, or winks, moves his head. People stop in amazement until a crowd gathers, waiting for his next movement. They always give him money before leaving.
‘You could earn a living with your skills,’ she says. She tries moving her foot again and it still hurts. ‘I can’t walk,’ she says. ‘I’ll have to ring for a taxi to take me to the station. I don’t suppose you drive?’
He doesn’t shake his head, but he’s not offering.
‘No, of course not. That would be too good to be true. Could you fetch my bag? It’s just inside the door—by the hall table.’
He fetches the bag and hands it to her. He’d make a good butler.
She digs out her mobile from the bottom of the bag. ‘I don’t suppose you know the number of a local taxi firm?’
He shakes his head.
‘No, I thought not.’
She rings directory enquiries, then arranges for a taxi to pick her up at the gate.
The man watches her, then goes back to the house and pulls the door shut. He takes the key out and hands it to her.
‘Can you help me down to the road?’ she asks.
They stumble awkwardly back to the gate, with Doody leaning heavily on his arm. He’s not very good at it, because he lurches around too much and they have to keep stopping to recover their balance.
‘Great,’ she says, when they get there.
His shopping trolley is still waiting for him.
‘I hope you don’t have anything frozen in there.’
But he does. She can see the fish fingers and the frozen chicken breasts. ‘Oh,’ she says. ‘You’d better send me a bill.’
He seems perplexed and walks off, pushing his trolley along the side of the road, avoiding the cobbles. Just like that, without a backward glance.
She watches him in amazement. Is he just going to walk away? ‘Hey!’ she shouts.
He stops, but doesn’t turn round.
‘Thanks!’ she shouts. ‘All right? I appreciated the help.’ He makes her feel guilty.
He starts walking again, away from her.
‘If it wasn’t for you, I wouldn’t have needed the help!’ She feels better.
A taxi drives up from the other direction and stops at the gate.