Imaginative Experience

by Mary Wesley

  When Julia emerged from the house an hour later, clicking the door shut, hitching her bag onto her shoulder, she looked worriedly up and down the pavement.

  Sylvester opened the car window a little way. ‘He is here. I have kidnapped him.’ Joyful thrust a whiskery nose through the gap.

  ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing? Let him out at once.’ Her face whitened in fear then, recognizing Sylvester, she said, ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘And you?’ He held on to the dog, lowered the window a little further.

  ‘I have a job here, please let him out—’

  ‘Get in with us.’ Sylvester opened the car door. ‘Please.’

  ‘Why should I?’ She stood her ground; various pedestrians side-stepped to get by.

  ‘Please.’ He held the door open with one hand, keeping a grip on the dog with the other. ‘This would be much easier to manage if he had a collar,’ he said.

  Julia said, ‘He has never had a collar. Please let him go.’

  ‘Please get in.’

  A woman pushing a twin buggy laden with bald babies brushed past Julia; under their Cellophane hood the babies wailed. Julia got into the car. Sylvester pulled the door shut. Joyful thrust his muzzle into her face. Sylvester said, ‘Fasten your seat-belt,’ started the car and pulled away from the kerb. ‘We are going for a jaunt in the country,’ he said.

  Julia fastened her seat-belt in silence.

  Heading down Holland Park Avenue towards Shepherd’s Bush, Sylvester said, ‘I am so glad to have found you. I have been trawling the streets, getting funny looks from people who mistake me for a kerb-crawler. It’s quite embarrassing.’

  Julia’s profile was stern; she kept her mouth shut, breathing through her nose, her arm round the dog who sat upright between them.

  They joined the traffic streaming towards Chiswick onto the motorway. Sylvester said, ‘My cousin Hamish, whom you have yet to meet, is so impressed by what you have done to the garden that he wonders whether you would consider helping him with his?’ Julia did not reply. Sylvester said, ‘Oh well. We were discussing gardens and he wanted to get in touch with you, and I, feeling a fool, had to admit that I was finding it difficult, in fact impossible to contact you. He went into a long boring spiel about how he contacts his cleaning lady, none of it relevant. I did say that before I went to America you left notes on a pad about soap and things like that. By the way, I have to ask you, have you been coming in to clean?’

  Julia said, ‘Yes,’ her eyes on the road ahead.

  Sylvester said, ‘I wondered, because although I have left your money for you, as I did before I went away, you have not taken it.’

  Julia said, ‘You sent me a cheque from America. It was too much, I told you.’

  ‘So that’s it. I thought the house was keeping rather too clean to be managing on its own and that it couldn’t be the fairies.’ Julia made no reply. Sylvester ploughed on. ‘Hamish asked how I had come across you in the first place—Oh, by the way, his mother is my aunt Calypso who is not dead and who has not had a funeral—’

  Julia said, ‘Oh, that clarifies him.’

  Sylvester said, ‘Yes. Where was I? Ah yes, looking for you. Hamish suggested I telephone, as if I hadn’t tried. You appear to be ex-directory. I have also been to your flat and rung bells, got short shrift from your boorish neighbours. You seem never to be in. He next asked how I came to find you in the first place and I told him the notice-board in the corner-shop, so he said, or I think he said, “Try there”. I had, of course.’

  Beside him Julia’s mouth twitched into a smile; was this the moment when he could comment on her profile, tell her it was lovely? Not yet. He was driving fast now, spinning down the motorway, pleased with the new car, enjoying the feel of it. Soon they would be in open country.

  ‘I tried to find some trace of you in the corner-shop,’ he said. ‘I get my papers there, shop there, too. It’s a splendid shop, I like the owner. I like the way he takes the trouble to remove the stinks from the colour mags. I particularly enjoy his notice-board. There is an advertisement for what appears to be a non-existent goat; before I went to the States it was plain “Goat”, but now it’s become a “Young Goat”, it’s imaginary, he says.’

  Julia said, ‘He reads Alice Through the Looking Glass. Next week it may be a kid.’

  Sylvester said, ‘Thank you,’ grateful that at last she had spoken. ‘Were you by any chance in the shop, behind the scenes perhaps, when I went to enquire after you but lost my nerve?’

  Julia said, ‘No.’

  ‘But you might have been? He is your friend?’

  Julia said, ‘He thought it possible that you were the man who—’

  ‘The obscene caller?’ Sylvester took offence. ‘Goddammit, how could he?’

  ‘He wasn’t sure.’ Julia began to laugh. ‘He was being careful, that’s all. His wife is super-protective. She loved Christy, you see—she is afraid for me.’

  ‘Why should I hurt you?’

  Julia did not answer for a bit, then she said, ‘You could have left a message with the Patels.’

  Saying what? Sylvester wondered what sort of message. What he had to say could not be contained in a message, nor could what he had to say be said driving down the motorway at eighty-five miles an hour. ‘In the end,’ he said, ‘I remembered something my cousin said about finding the dog. I have searched Chelsea, Fulham, Kensington and Pimlico and bingo, this afternoon there he was on a doorstep. I remembered too that you had said he barked at your tormentor. He did not bark at me, did you, boy?’ Sylvester took a hand off the wheel and stroked Joyful’s head. ‘So I found you at last,’ he said.

  Julia leaned back in her seat and he realized that she had been tense but was becoming less so.

  Outside the light was fading into winter dark. He switched on the car lights.

  ‘Are you warm enough?’

  ‘Yes thank you.’

  ‘Rebecca, when she discovered that you were working for me, said you must be a gypsy, that Piper is a gypsy name,’ he said.

  ‘It is, sometimes. There are Pipers in Devon who are gypsies.’

  Later he said, ‘When you stopped the train and saved the sheep it seemed to be on its own. Where do you suppose the rest of the flock had got to?’

  Julia said, ‘I suppose they had moved up the hill. To another field, perhaps? Why do you ask? I had not thought of it until now. Why are you so interested?’

  ‘I can’t tell you at eighty-five miles an hour.’

  Julia crossed her legs and the dog, tired of staring at the road, slumped against her, nestling to sleep.

  Sylvester could not for the moment voice the only words that mattered, but sensed that it would be politic to keep talking. ‘I wondered when I tried to find you at your flat,’ he said, ‘whether if you were in you would threaten me again with a jagged tin of Chappie?’

  Julia said, ‘It was Winalot, actually. I mistook you for that man who has been bothering me.’

  ‘He complains that you deafened him.’

  ‘How do you know?’ She stiffened, drawing her knees up, sitting up straight.

  ‘Rebecca picked him up or she him; they were among the dancers at the street party. He was on the train, as I was, when you stopped it. I remember him. I suspect he followed you, I don’t know why, but that’s what I think.’

  ‘He accuses me of murder—’

  ‘According to Rebecca that’s a mild tease.’

  ‘Is he insane?’

  ‘He has been to see your mother.’

  ‘Good God, why?’

  ‘I rather gather your behaviour with the sheep roused his curiosity, in fact I know it did. On the train I thought he might be some low form of press reporter; I took a dislike to him. I could see it was reciprocated.’

  Julia said, ‘M-m-m. What else?’

  ‘He kept boasting about being a bird-watcher, a twitcher, and thought there might be a story.’

  ‘But why should he torment me
?’

  ‘Ospreys? Do you know something about ospreys? A secret lake? Migratory flights? Mean anything?’

  ‘Yes. Oh! He must have met Madge as well as my—as well as Clodagh.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘She is the only person I told about the ospreys. It’s not such a big secret. Ospreys come every year to a lake near some people I worked for in Somerset. We watched them, they were wonderful.’

  To keep her talking, Sylvester said, ‘Were you there long?’

  ‘A year or two. It was before, before a lot of things. I was happy. They said come back when I had to go and help when Clodagh broke her leg, come back when it’s mended.’

  ‘Why didn’t you?’

  ‘Giles. Giles was there with Clodagh.’

  ‘So you fell in love.’ Sylvester was surprised by his jealousy, at the bile in his voice.

  Julia snapped, ‘I got pregnant. I married. I had Christy, I—’ Her voice rose in pain. ‘He—’

  ‘And it’s no business of mine?’

  ‘Of course not,’ she shouted.

  But it is, Sylvester thought, everything about her is my business. And now I’ve hurt her, brought up the child. Oh bugger, what shall I say next? ‘I suspect,’ he said, ‘that Rebecca has been to bed with your heavy breather.’

  Julia said, ‘Goodness!’ in genuine astonishment. ‘Whatever next!’ Relaxing her tense legs, stretching them out, she crossed them at the ankles. ‘It would take the pressure off you,’ she said, ‘but does she know what she’s taking on?’

  Sylvester said, ‘She’s a tough lady. I daresay she will manage.’

  And Julia said, ‘If I tell you where the ospreys are, you could give their whereabouts to her to give him.’

  Sylvester said, ‘That would be generous, but I will keep the information up my sleeve in case the old girl needs help,’ and drove on for some miles without speaking, but curiosity, that insistent emotion, got the better of his silence and he asked, ‘Were there any happy times with Giles?’

  ‘Yes,’ Julia said, ‘a few. And you with Celia? Were there happy times with Celia?’ she asked brightly.

  ‘Quite a lot actually,’ Sylvester confessed, ‘but they sort of diminished.’ Then, because he desperately wanted to cross-question her and felt it was too soon, he said, ‘I’ll tell you all about her over dinner.’ Julia said, ‘Oh, are we going to have dinner?’

  And he said, ‘That is the idea, dinner and then a walk for Joyful,’ and then, his mind reverting to Maurice Benson, ‘I think that oaf tormented you because he thought you were weak. I could see from the train that you were in distress and he could, too. It’s the bully in the playground syndrome.’

  He was pleased when she said, ‘Let’s leave him to your Rebecca friend. The only time I saw him properly, he had a bit of watercress stuck in his teeth. If your friend saw that, she would tell him; I refrained.’

  ‘Soon,’ Sylvester said, ‘we will leave the main road and drive along a lane which meanders down a valley beside a chalk stream. There will be a village pub which will give us dinner. This will do,’ he said, slowing the car. ‘Let’s try this.’ He drove now along a road twisting along a valley bottom.

  Julia opened her window. ‘There is a stream.’ The dog stood up and, lurching across her lap, snuffled at the window.

  Sylvester said, ‘Didn’t I say?’ and presently stopped by a pub in a village street with the stream running along its length. They got out and stood on a footbridge while Joyful drank from the stream, then Sylvester pushed open the pub door, led Julia in, and asked whether they could eat.

  It was a quiet pub; a few people murmured round the bar and a small group sat by an open fire. They were shown to a table in a darkish corner where they sat and ordered their meal. There was not much choice.

  Sylvester was anxious. He said, ‘There is not much choice; are you happy with onion soup and grilled Dover sole? Fortunately there is some good wine.’

  Julia said, ‘Yes, I am,’ and, ‘It’s midwinter. It looks delicious.’ She was furiously hungry.

  The wine was poured. Sylvester tasted and approved; Julia drank. ‘Lovely.’ Joyful wandered away to sit by the fire.

  It had been relatively easy to talk in the car. Sitting in the dark without eye contact had been a help, he had gauged her mood by whether she relaxed her legs or drew them tensely up. Now, catching her eye across the table, he was tongue-tied.

  She said, ‘When did you find this lovely pub?’

  ‘I guessed it would be here.’ It had been a gamble, the sort of chance one would take as a matter of course in France. He had taken a risk and it had come off.

  ‘So you’ve never been here before?’

  ‘Never.’ He would have liked to say he had brought her here, taken the gamble, so that there would be no memories to butt in, so that the experience would be theirs alone, but he could not, any more than he had been able to say what he wanted at eighty-five miles an hour.

  The waitress brought their soup. Julia said, ‘Oh, looks delicious,’ and picked up her spoon.

  Joyful, who had been roasting himself by the fire, came back to them panting and overheated, and cast himself down to lie heavily across Sylvester’s feet.

  Julia said, ‘He likes you.’

  ‘Where did he come from? A really good lurcher is hard to find.’

  Julia said, ‘He found me,’ and described her meeting with the dog and her attempt at rejection and how, when she rejected him, she felt guilt and distress so that when he persisted she had given in and shared an extravagant fillet steak bought to celebrate the prospect of bringing the garden back to life. ‘I felt,’ she said, ‘that he knew he belonged to me and I to him.’

  I wish you would reach the same realization about me, Sylvester thought, watching her spoon in soup. He said, ‘He must have had an owner,’ and was amused when she said, ‘He has one now,’ and, catching his eye, ‘I am not in the business of looking into his past.’

  So they finished their soup.

  ‘Tell me about the Patels.’ Sylvester poured wine into her half-empty glass.

  ‘They are my friends.’

  ‘And?’

  She drank some wine. ‘I was pregnant. I shopped at their shop. One day Mr Patel asked me to help his wife, who was shy and afraid of going to the ante-natal clinic. She couldn’t speak English. So I took her along with me. She is a lovely person, we made friends. They are good to me, she’s had another baby but our—our children were the same age.’

  ‘Christy.’

  ‘Yes.’ Julia sipped her wine, looked away from him. A log fell over and the fire, flaring up, lit her face. There was pain in her eyes. She said, ‘She can speak a bit of English now, she seldom does but she understands all right.’

  ‘Tell me about your jobs.’

  ‘I work where you found us this afternoon two days a week for a man who is a car dealer. I don’t meet him; he’s at work. I work, too, for a woman journalist, same thing, same arrangement. There have been other people. Now there is you and your garden. I manage. When Christy was alive Mrs Patel minded him for me—it pays the bills.’

  ‘Didn’t your husband pay the bills?’

  ‘Erratically.’

  The waitress took away the soup plates, brought their Dover soles. ‘Everything all right?’

  ‘Thank you. Yes.’ What should he ask her now?

  ‘I thought you were going to tell me all about Celia over dinner,’ Julia said, picking up her knife and fork.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  SYLVESTER WAS AMUSED BY the way Julia tricked him into talking about himself. Eating their Dover sole, delicious, as were the accompanying chips and watercress salad, she had listened attentively. On through out-of-season strawberries and cream and a most excellent Stilton, which he ate with Bath Oliver biscuits and she merely tasted to keep him company, to their final black coffees, she had listened and munched and, should he flag, murmured a question to set him off again.

  Although they shared the bot
tle evenly, his tongue had wagged while hers stayed mute. Paying the bill while she went to the lavatory, Sylvester was lost in admiration. He had given her a run-down of his life to date. Infancy, school, father’s death, university, travels, choice of jobs, change of jobs, first love (in Paris, excellent for his French), second loves (Munich and Vienna, brushing up his German), his mother’s death, London life, the meeting with Celia (coup de foudre fizzling like a second-rate firework but try, try and make it work). He had even told her what book Celia was reading during their last conjugal conjunction—not Barbara Cartland, but as near as dammit. On to Celia’s departure, his mortification, hurt and relief.

  ‘The dinner was delicious, thank you very much.’

  He calculated the tip, doubled it and went to stand by the fire to await her reappearance.

  He had not yet told her his tastes in music, art, theatre, film or literature but that would come; he jiggled the change in his trouser pocket; nor had he told her what he had not been able to tell her coming down the motorway.

  Where the hell was she? She was taking a helluva long time over a pee. She had taken the dog with her. Had she scarpered? Christ Almighty!

  She had taken her coat when she left the table. He had heard departing customers start up their cars; she could have cadged a lift, done a runner? Oh, dear God! And all through the meal I burbled on about myself, my boring ineffectual life, when I should have been enchanting her with fascinating plans for our future. Oh God, what a fool! I should have found out whether she’s been to Venice. Would she prefer to explore Italy or France, or rather go to Peru? Has she seen the Alhambra? Would she prefer the West Indies or Japan? Will she be happy living in my house? Perhaps a cottage in the country? Is she keen on clothes? I’ve never seen her in anything but that black overcoat and jeans. I don’t even know what her legs are like, didn’t dare look that night. I’d love to buy her clothes. I’d love to give her things, have her always there to share jokes; and babies, would we dare? ‘Oh, dear God!’ he said out loud. ‘And now she’s gone.’