The Things I Know

by Amanda Prowse

  Like a toddler on Christmas morning, she ran back across the room and jumped on to the bed, landing on the mattress with a thud, where she buried her face in the pillow and let out a silent scream of pure joy.

  Hitch balanced the tray loaded with cutlery and a cup of tea on her forearm and walked it into the dining room, where Grayson sat. There was a momentary flare of sickness in her gut before she saw him – supposing he regretted his actions? Her fears of rejection were immediately assuaged as his fingers twitched and reached out to touch her arm, before deciding against it. She more than understood his hesitant desire to feel the warmth of her skin, as it was the same for her. Hitch was entirely unsure of how she should navigate the morning. This was like nothing she had experienced before. She was a little fixated by the curl of his fingers around the napkin in his lap and wanted so badly for him to take her hand that her chest ached with the longing of it. The cup of tea rattled in its saucer as she placed it on the table, and she giggled.

  ‘How did you sleep, Mr Potts?’ She smiled at him, a wide, unself-conscious smile which he returned, and she knew she would tuck his almost shy expression in a pocket within her heart to carry with her when he was far away – the prospect of which was enough to catch in her throat.

  ‘I didn’t sleep very well at all,’ he said honestly.

  ‘Oh? Most people say it’s one of the comfiest beds they’ve ever laid their head on, but you didn’t sleep?’ She looked at him with rising concern.

  ‘The bed is comfortable, but I couldn’t get to sleep.’ He shook out the white linen napkin and tucked it into his shirt collar.

  ‘Was it too quiet for you out here in the sticks? Maybe we could get you a recording of some sirens and some dogs barking to help you nod off tonight?’ She kept a straight face.

  ‘Ha, no need for that. It was quiet, but the reason I couldn’t sleep was because I was thinking about you. I thought about you as we walked back from the flat rock and I haven’t stopped thinking about you. But I like thinking about you. It makes me happy. I don’t mind that I didn’t sleep. I don’t even feel tired.’

  ‘Well,’ she whispered, for fear of giving in to the rising bubble of joy in her gut and whooping out loud, ‘knowing that makes me feel happy too.’

  She liked the way he spoke so candidly, and the soft, nervous manner in which he did so made the words entirely believable.

  ‘And how would you like your eggs today, Mr Potts?’

  ‘I don’t mind. At home I have a boiled egg.’

  ‘A boiled egg it is then. The girls have laid especially for you today.’

  ‘That was very kind of them.’ He nodded and reached for his cup of tea. ‘I do like eggs, but I always feel a little bit guilty about eating them.’

  ‘Guilty? Why?’

  He took a sip of tea and placed the cup back in the saucer. ‘Well, it’s all the chickens’ work, isn’t it? And a lot of effort, I should imagine. That little oval, carrying all their hopes and plans for the future, wishes for a family, maybe – they probably want chicks.’

  ‘But it’s not! They’re just eggs. There’s no cockerel. They can’t ever be chicks.’

  Grayson nodded. ‘Yes, I know that, of course, but I don’t know if the chickens do. It feels like cheating them a bit.’

  She laughed. ‘I don’t suppose they do know that, and it’s nice you’re thinking about all the work they do. I know they’d appreciate your consideration.’ She made a note to relay this to the girls. ‘Would you like some bacon too? And toast?’

  ‘Thank you, yes, please.’

  Hitch sang as she took extra care preparing the breakfast before waltzing back into the dining room with the loaded plate.

  ‘Can I sit with you? Would that be okay?’ She sounded a little sheepish as she put his breakfast plate in front of him, remembering his preference to eat alone, but she didn’t want to waste a second of his company.

  ‘I would really like that.’

  She watched with fascination as he picked up the knife and gave an expert tap to the top of the egg, before spooning out the little dome of perfection within. Sprinkling the mound with a few grains of salt, he paused before bringing it to his mouth. It was a very particular way of eating, almost a performance.

  ‘You’ve done that before.’

  ‘Once or twice.’ He smiled at her and ate the top of his egg. She found it nice to sit and chat, able to think of things to say and not at all tongue-tied, here in this room, where her family history dripped from the walls and pooled in puddles of nostalgia on the flagstone floor. He followed her gaze up over the black-and-white photographs in wooden frames that lined the shelves and windowsill, and the ornaments from a bygone era sitting polished on the mantelpiece.

  ‘This is a very grand room.’ He took a bite of his toast.

  ‘I suppose so. I’m used to it. It’s a bit dark. I think it could do with brightening up, but that’s not up to me.’

  ‘Where I live isn’t nearly so solid. I can see how a man could feel settled here, unafraid for the future. Everything feels safe and permanent.’

  ‘Too permanent sometimes.’ She let this trail.

  ‘It’s as though I’m in another world and I’m another person – and I like the person I am here.’

  ‘Me too,’ she whispered. ‘I like him very much.’

  The sound of her dad’s whistling filled the kitchen on the other side of the door. Grayson coughed and she sat up straight.

  ‘What time are you leaving to go into Bristol? There are buses that leave from the village – I can drop you up there. Or we can call you a cab, or if Pops is going into town I know he’d be happy to take you, if I asked him. If you can put up with his whistling.’

  ‘Thank you, Thomasina, but I’m not going into Bristol.’

  ‘You’re not going?’ She laid her forearms flat on the table and stared at him.

  ‘No.’ He took another sip of his tea. ‘There’s a lady called Liz at the bank where I work. She’s really nice, very good at her job. We have cubicles that are next to each other and she told me that I should do more of what makes me happy and less of what people expect of me. I didn’t really know what she meant until I woke up this morning and I knew that I didn’t want to go and talk at a seminar. I want to spend the day with you. My last day, really. I go back to London just after lunchtime tomorrow and so I want to spend today with you, if that’s okay?’

  ‘It is okay.’ She smiled. ‘I can take a bit of time.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘But won’t you get into trouble?’

  He seemed to consider this. ‘I probably will, but if the seminar’s finished, what can they do? It’ll be done. Over. Plus, I’ve never done anything to get into trouble before, never caused even a tiny ripple. A lot of my colleagues come in and sleep off hangovers, take sick days, leave early, but not me. I work hard, and I can’t explain why I think it’s okay, but I don’t want to waste today in a seminar, trying and failing to teach others how to do my trick. I want to be with you. It feels more important.’

  ‘It does?’

  ‘Yes.’

  His simple words were like food that filled her up and sustained her. He wanted to be with her and that made her feel very important indeed.

  ‘I suppose you could lie to them and say you have a tummy bug or the car broke down or something.’

  Grayson stared at her. ‘No, I wouldn’t do that. I never tell a lie. Ever.’

  The two stared at each other for a second or two.

  ‘I believe you.’ Hitch opened her mouth, about to say more on the importance of this honesty, when her mum came into the room from the kitchen. Hitch jumped up and began clearing the table of the now empty teacup and saucer.

  ‘There you are, Hitch!’ her mother tutted, as if addressing a wilful child. ‘Is she annoying you? She can sometimes forget that she’s here to serve breakfast and nothing else, isn’t that right, my love?’

  Grayson looked at her. ‘No, she’s not annoying
me. We were just chatting. She’s . . . really, really great.’

  ‘Is she now?’ Her mum spoke softly, as she pulled her head back on her shoulders and looked at their guest with her head cocked to one side.

  ‘I don’t know her very well, but if I had to say so, then, yes, I would say she is great.’

  Grayson held Hitch’s gaze and it was all she could do to laugh behind her palm as she busied herself with brushing crumbs from the table, aware of her mum standing with her mouth flapping, quite unsure of how to respond.

  Once Hitch had tidied the guest room with Grayson watching her from the chair in the corner, they stood in the field as she shook a fine powder in and around the chicken coop.

  ‘What are you doing?’ he said, wrinkling his nose.

  ‘I have to make sure I cover all the joints between the wooden planks and their perches, anywhere the red mites might be. They’re horrible little things that live in all the cracks and they come out at night and suck the girls’ blood and feed on them. It can kill them. I heard on the grapevine that a woman in the next village has them and so I’m taking extra care. I put this powder down and it means that, if we get any of the little pests, they have to crawl through this to get to my girls and the powder will finish them off.’

  ‘I’ve never heard of red mites.’

  ‘Well, you’ve never kept chickens!’

  ‘No, I don’t think they’d fare too well on the balcony and I don’t think they’d like it in the basement.’

  ‘You have a basement?’ This wasn’t something she’d envisaged for a flat.

  ‘Kind of.’ He sniffed. ‘Not so much a basement as an area of underground car park where each flat has a kind of cage.’

  ‘It sounds spooky!’ she said with a shudder.

  ‘It is a bit, I suppose. The pipes leak and leave slimy, greenish puddles on the path. And it’s quite dark, but I don’t mind it down there. In fact, I like it. Sometimes it’s preferable to listening to the incessant cackle from my mum and aunts.’

  ‘It’s good to have a refuge.’

  ‘Do you have one?’

  ‘Here, I suppose. This is where I come. When everything feels a bit noisy.’ She clambered out of the coop and fastened the door.

  They stood side by side and watched the plump-chested chicks, their feathery, crested heads pecking at the grass, listening to their bock, bock noise, exchanging the sound at regular intervals, which made it sound a lot as though they were chatting.

  ‘Yes, Daphne, we see you!’ Hitch tutted lovingly, as the hen came over and jutted her head back and forth. ‘It’s nice having someone to do chores with. My mum would kill me if she knew I was letting you help out. You’re supposed to be our guest, paying for the privilege.’

  ‘Do you let other guests help you out?’

  ‘Nope. Never.’

  ‘I’m glad.’

  She looked him steadily in the eye and wondered if he felt the same burst of happiness she did at nothing more than the admission of this shared, special, yet mundane thing. He bent sideways, to tentatively pet Buddy’s ears, and she noted the way in which her dog panted and stood close to his leg, accepting his touch.

  ‘Are you sure this is better than being at your seminar?’

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t know what the seminar would be like, but I can’t imagine having a better time than this.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear it.’ She whistled and Buddy ran to her side. ‘So tell me about your house.’

  ‘It’s a flat, not a house.’

  ‘So tell me about your flat!’ she tutted mockingly, but her eyes smiled.

  ‘It’s in a large block, one of six identical blocks that stand quite close together like dominoes. Everything is grey and the actual flat is small.’

  ‘Cosy?’ she asked with optimism, this one word making the whole idea more palatable, like honey in hot lemon or a spoonful of sugar after medicine. She wanted to paint a pleasant picture of his life.

  ‘Constricted,’ he corrected.

  She felt the smile slip from her face.

  Grayson continued, ‘And you already know about the storage cages in the basement – rows of them along the outside walls, all caged in.’

  ‘What do people keep in them?’ She was having difficulty imagining the dimensions.

  ‘All sorts. Ours is quite neat and everything fits, but some of them are overflowing with things people have shoved into every gap. I think it’s because, for someone like Mr Waleed, who had to pack up his whole life and come to England, it must be hard to find a place for all the stuff inside. As I said, the flats are small.’

  ‘What does Mr Waleed have in his cage?’

  Her eyes swept the outbuildings and Big Barn, as she tried to picture such a lack of space and rooms.

  ‘Things like rolled-up carpets, spare shoes and clothes, blankets, chairs, old beds, picture frames.’

  ‘It sounds interesting, like a flea market.’

  ‘It is interesting, but a bit sad too.’

  ‘Why sad?’

  Grayson looked out over the grass that bent in the breeze which whipped over it. ‘There are garden tools, hoes, spades and trowels. Old-looking things with wooden handles and thin strips of faded paint, and some have clumps of mud and dirt encrusted on them. And I think about that soil, which Mr Waleed will never dig again, or likely never walk. Soil from somewhere far, far away, where it was possible for him to have a garden, a patch of outside space. And it makes me sad because I think how much better it would be for his little kids to have their laughter rising up higher and higher into a bright blue, sun-filled sky, rather than stopping short on the roughly plastered ceiling of the bedroom below mine.’

  ‘What’s in your storage cage?’ she asked softly, loving his kindness as she kicked her heel against the lawn.

  Grayson looked down at his lace-up shoes, as if slightly ashamed and a little embarrassed to be making the confession. He gave a small cough to clear his throat and looped his long fringe from his eyes with his fingertip, tucking it behind his left ear.

  ‘I’m the only one who goes down there. It has my dad’s stuff in it,’ he whispered.

  ‘What stuff?’

  ‘Some of his books, some of his clothes.’ He took a breath and looked up, as if picturing each item catalogued in his mind. ‘His dark wedding suit, his narrow black tie for funerals, his soft woollen bathrobe with a gold rope belt, his box of cassettes. All written on in his tiny, neat script. He loved rock and roll.’

  ‘He did?’ Hitch said, smiling.

  ‘Yep, he really did. He told me once that it reminded him of his mum and dad and when he was younger. And when I was little, on a Sunday, he used to put his tapes on, just for a few hours. The whole flat came alive, jumping with the sound of Charlie Rich’s ‘Midnight Blues’ and Ray Harris’s ‘Lonely Wolf’. He and my mum used to dance, right there in the front room.’

  Hitch tried and failed to picture Pops and her mum doing something similar.

  ‘That’s the only time I remember my mum being truly happy. The two of them hand in hand, bopping around the room. They’d push the coffee table to one side and stack the chairs to make space.’

  ‘What kind of dancing was it?’ Hitch leaned in, curious.

  ‘You know, like jiving, I suppose. Standing opposite each other with their arms outstretched and their hands gripped, and he’d pull her to him like rolling a rug and then push her away again, still holding tightly on to her hand.’

  Hitch couldn’t help but picture herself and Grayson dancing in this way, beaming and breathless as she skipped and danced away from her man and then back to him, coming to rest briefly with her shoulder on his chest, her head beneath his chin, before the music upped tempo and off she would go again, wheeling back and forth. Bouncing on flexing knees and smiling, trotting and tripping in time and in sync, clicking their fingers and singing along with hearts beating fast, and her face flushed red, and the notes and fast beat filling the air with something that tast
ed like endless possibilities. And in her fantasy her bad foot was good and her fingers worked perfectly and her mouth was . . . her mouth was pretty.

  ‘I used to like watching them in secret from the doorway.’ He drew her from her imaginings. ‘I felt like I was part of the celebration and it helps now to remember that it wasn’t always gloomy. It wasn’t all uncomfortable silences, shifting feet and deep sighs. There were these pockets of happiness that shine in my memory even now, like bright jewels, precious and gleaming.’

  ‘It sounds like a happy house.’

  ‘Flat.’

  ‘Sorry, a happy flat.’

  ‘It was at times, but not very often.’

  ‘How old was he when he left?’ She wondered how someone went from a dancing, happy man to one who felt the need to leave his wife and son.

  ‘He was thirty-five.’

  ‘Where did he go?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Have you seen him since he went?’

  ‘No.’

  The upturn in his chin and his double blink gave a hint to the hurt and anger that lay beneath this one word, offered so definitively.

  ‘I can’t imagine what that must be like.’

  ‘It’s shit,’ he said.

  ‘Would you like to see him?’

  ‘Oh.’ Grayson paused, as if surprised by the question. ‘Yes, yes, I think I would. Or at least I used to think that, but as time goes on I’m not so sure. I feel quite angry and so I don’t know if it would be the best thing to see him. I don’t know.’ He shook his head, as if the dilemma were too much to consider.