Love in a Mist

by Sarah Harrison

  So he had friends, but there was no evidence of a marital hinterland – no photographs of children, no telltale rogue possessions, no references to an ex (though come to think of it that wouldn’t have been his style); he appeared to be a member of that vanishingly small category, the baggage-free bachelor. No wonder he got asked to dinner parties: he represented a significant catch.

  At the very beginning I wondered if he was gay. Not because he showed no interest in me – I neither sought nor at that stage wanted that sort of attention from him – but because his kind of singledom was so rare. Even if I had been looking for something, this wasn’t the place to look. I wouldn’t have wanted to rock the comfortable boat. What we were, almost from the first, was friends. We fell into friendship not as something surprising, but as though it was something that had always been there, waiting for us to come along. Neither of us would have mentioned the other to anyone else, nor did we make any verbal acknowledgement of friendship between ourselves. And no-one observing us would have thought us chummy. During the working day – the only time we saw each other – we moved, comfortably, in our separate zones.

  I poured the boiling water – tea for him, coffee for me – added his milk and my sugar (in spite of repeated Lenten efforts I couldn’t wean myself off it), and we picked up our mugs. This was the moment when the day’s schedule, if any, would be mentioned. He was an easy, open-minded employer. I was that old-fashioned thing: an amanuensis or general factotum, he felt free to ask me to do more or less anything that was within my powers, and I was equally free to admit if it was beyond me. Today, though, was a departure.

  ‘I wonder if you’d read a couple of chapters for me and let me know what you think.’

  I didn’t blink. ‘Of course.’

  ‘I’d like your views on my female narrator.’

  ‘First person?’

  ‘Well, rather rash you might think, but yes.’

  Part of the currency of our conversation was that we affected never to be surprised by each other. We were two autonomous individuals (went our thinking), each with a quiverful of talents and competencies which the other one might not even be able to guess at. The corollary of this was that we had not to be surprised by gaps in the other one’s knowledge or skills. I had read and enjoyed a couple of Edwin’s books before coming to work for him, but I never expected to be asked for editorial input, and was secretly flattered. I wasn’t going to refuse.

  ‘I’d be happy to,’ I said.

  ‘Good. I’ve got to go out in an hour. I’ll give it to you before I go.’

  ‘Fine.’

  We went our separate ways, he to his pleasant work room in the back garden – ‘the potting shed’ – and I to my small office, which must once have been a boot room or scullery. By tacit mutual agreement I had never been into the potting shed; I rang him if I needed to talk to him. If I needed to go over there I knocked and waited.

  Edwin must have taken to me, because I didn’t have a dazzling CV. I hadn’t been to university and never even applied. I have no idea if I’d have got in. After A Levels I just wanted to work, to get my own life and earn my own money. I’d always done holiday jobs – chamber maid, waitress, shop assistant – and saw no reason why I shouldn’t do any one of those again while I took an IT course (even I could see that was essential). I worked in Felicity Fine Things in Salting for a year, itself a crash course in the retailer–customer interface. The residents of Salting were unfailingly polite and pleasant but from April to September the ‘grockles’ came in their hordes and in their funny shorts, mob-handed, off the leash and trailing flotillas of disaffected offspring. Admittedly Salting didn’t attract the more fiercely entitled holidaymakers, who went in search of sun and sand, not the pebbles and ozone of the English coast, but the visitors were still a different and more demanding breed.

  Fine Things was a gift shop – a superior one, but a gift shop nonetheless. The eponymous Felicity, a tall, hard-bodied blonde, was the business brains and her husband Ian, a retired police officer, was the buyer. He was avuncular and charming; she was scary and demanding. But my year there was useful and when I left I’d learned a lot, about stock-taking, accounting, marketing and how the world worked.

  After that, and with the experience and the IT course under my belt, I went on to first a hotel near Lyme Regis, where I was a sort of under-manager, in charge of bookings and day-to-day trouble-shooting, and then to a prep school where I was secretary for five years until I applied for the job with Edwin Clayborne. I was happy at the school, and might have stayed longer but for two things. My first proper, but vaguely unsatisfactory relationship (perhaps it was too proper) ended miserably, and that happened at a time when I was already becoming restless; the two things were probably not unconnected. I spotted Edwin’s advertisement in Private Eye of all places, it was ‘flexible hours’ for nearly the same money I was getting at the school. I applied in a spirit of what-the-hell, half expecting it to be some sort of joke or, perhaps, vaguely indecent.

  But it was neither, and to my astonishment I beat off extensive competition to land the job. I had only one interview, and he never told me why he chose me. But on those days – and this was one – when I had to pinch myself to believe I was here, I reckoned it was just because of my varied, down-to-earth experience. From my unflashy CV he inferred, correctly, that I could turn my hand to things. I was not a specialist but a generalist and so, in his admittedly more high-powered way, was he.

  In the interview, when I mentioned I’d read two of his books, he said, ‘Oh, did you? Good effort.’ I liked that, the appreciative note that was neither creepily grateful nor prickly. He didn’t ask me what I’d thought of them, either, so my carefully prepared response wasn’t needed.

  Today there was a letter from the Wine Society and a dozen emails, half of them website feedback forms, a pretty standard morning’s intake. The cat, Percy, lay on the windowsill gazing at me with slit-eyed disdain. Percy was a long-haired tabby with the slightly tufted ears of a Maine Coon, whose defining characteristic was his enormous size. He was easily the biggest cat in the close, if not the county, and Edwin had one photograph of him hunting (well, strolling around) on the green, which could easily have been passed off as an escaped panther. Like most of his kind he was idle, opportunistic and largely indifferent to those with whom he shared his space. Edwin claimed that Percy had been foisted on him some years ago by a friend who had moved house, but they had shaken down together.

  When I’d dealt with the feedback forms, replied to a couple of others and forwarded the rest to Edwin with my comments, I returned to my current ongoing task, trawling the web for sites, books and authorities on radical free-thinking schools over the past hundred years. This was for the next E.J. Clay, presumably the one with the female narrator – he was currently proofreading the one that was due out in the autumn. He was perfectly competent on the internet, but he liked me to get the spade-work done, to sift through for the best places to visit, ones I knew would suit him.

  At five to ten I heard the click of the French window, and Edwin appeared in the doorway, making a tapping motion with the knuckle of his forefinger.

  ‘I’m off. I’ve emailed you something to read.’

  I touched the keyboard. ‘There it is. Thanks, I’ll look forward to that.’

  ‘I’m sure I don’t have to say this, but – be frank, won’t you?’

  ‘Don’t worry.’

  ‘You’ll probably be gone by the time I get back, so see you tomorrow.’

  ‘See you then.’

  He hesitated as if going to add something but then just smiled without catching my eye and said, ‘Right.’

  He’d sent me a few thousand words, about forty pages, so I printed them off. I’d always rather read pages than a screen, particularly as I was being asked for a reaction. I wanted to look at this (the working title was Dead in the Water) just as if it were my chosen bedtime reading and not an extension of my work. I put the pages in a plastic w
allet, and the wallet in my bag. At one o’clock I forwarded the results of my researches to Edwin’s email, and left.

  I worked four mornings and one full day, the latter a moveable feast according to what was going on. In the afternoon I walked, shopped and did domestic stuff, and in the evenings I had classes, watched TV or met up with a friend. Only one of my real friends, Elsa, actually lived in the city, and she was married. I didn’t mind and I wasn’t lonely. My life was of my own making and I was happy with it.

  Today I had nothing planned, so when I’d eaten my Pret wrap I lay full length on the sofa with two carefully positioned cushions behind my head, and began to read.

  I went through the pages once quickly, then made some coffee and read them again slowly. When I’d finished I put them down on the floor beside me, folded my arms and crossed my ankles and gazed at the Artex ceiling. Elsa couldn’t understand how I lived with the Artex, ‘sperm mix’ as she called it. But I couldn’t have cared less – who looked at the ceiling? And if you did, as I was doing now, there was something soothing in the bobbly concentric swirls.

  How was I going to tell Edwin that he had got his character, Donna Wheatley, mostly right, but that getting something mostly right, like a watch that is accurate most of the time, is really not much use. The little bits that weren’t right sabotaged the rest.

  I closed my eyes to concentrate. The point was, I decided, that he was trying too hard to get the ‘female’ aspect right. Donna was a good character – dry, amusing, vulnerable but competent, and those qualities alone were enough to make her credible. There didn’t need to be references to leg-shaving and (God help us) periods; it was enough that we knew she was a woman and liked her. I was rather embarrassed at the clunkiness of these details, but touched by them too, and by the uncertainty which had prompted him to ask for my advice.

  There was a nice park near my flat – an open piece of ground landscaped around the foundations of a little Norman castle that had once been there – and I often went there to walk. The pretty changeable light of the morning had turned churning and grey, the April afternoon had turned into the tail end of winter rather than the early spring, but that kept the people away and I had the park to myself. There were a couple of seats inside what remained of the castle keep, and I went in there to sit out of the slapping breeze, to have a think. I felt that I had been given some sort of test. To fail would not be fatal (and anyway I might not know if I had), but I wanted very much to pass, and also to be honest.

  When I got back I’d decided to write my comments down. That way I wouldn’t be flustered into saying something I didn’t mean. I sat with my laptop at the little table in the living-room window. First time out I wrote far too much. When I read it through it sounded jejune and bet-hedging, every observation tempered and qualified. The second time I kept it short, one paragraph, saying how much I liked Donna but suggesting that he didn’t need all of the ‘female’ detail, some of which I itemized. When I’d finished I pressed Send before I could change my mind.

  Coincidentally, that evening was the first episode of a new cop show with a female detective. I noticed there were all sorts of things you could do on television, little touches, which in writing would have seemed too heavy handed. I pictured Edwin reading my comments and squirmed.

  The next morning he opened the door and we went through to the kitchen as usual. Nothing was said about my email. I thought I had either failed the test or he hadn’t read it yet – I wasn’t going to ask.

  When I went on to the computer I saw with a jolt of anxiety that he had replied.

  Thanks so much for that, most useful – noted and appreciated.

  THREE

  My parents weren’t like other people’s. Perhaps all children think that about their parents, but in my case my suspicions were confirmed by others. That said, the differences my school friends perceived were different from those I saw.

  ‘You’re so lucky,’ they said. ‘They let you do anything!’

  This wasn’t quite true, but it was true enough to give me a crackle of gratification. Not that licence as a teenager made me into a wild child. And childhood itself was a freer time than it is now. The ‘out all day on a bike’ thing was still common in the mid-seventies, and mobiles were still in the future so none of us could be checked up on.

  Other kids liked coming to tea at ours because we were allowed free access to the cupboards and fridge and could concoct what we liked – sandwiches made from chocolate digestives and peanut butter, white bread with crisps, custard-in-a-glass cocktails, tinned frankfurters with ketchup and sweet mustard out of a tube … even oven ‘dampers’ made out of white flour, water and sugar, with a hole poked in the middle for jam. Zinny would never have dreamed of eating these things herself, but was prepared to maintain a contingency supply for us.

  My friends were also impressed, though more ambivalent, about my calling my mother by her name. I was often asked, ‘Doesn’t that feel weird?’

  ‘No.’ It wasn’t weird to me; saying ‘Zinny’ was like saying ‘Mum’, because I’d never done any different. From my earliest days, that’s what she was.

  ‘Is that her actual name?’

  ‘Her name’s Zinnia. It’s a flower.’

  I got used to the wide-eyed attention. Much later I realized no-one was jealous of me. They were simply glad to have this unusual resource to hand. My situation must have appeared thrillingly bohemian but no-one wanted to swap places – they were glad to go back to their more ordinary homes where food was cooked and house rules applied.

  I don’t want to give the impression that we primary school kids were on our own when we went back to mine. My father, whom I called Dad, just like everyone else, would be there on these occasions, though not much in evidence. He would manifest himself now and then, not exactly to check up but to show the flag.

  ‘Hi girls!’ he’d say. ‘How’s it going?’

  I usually ignored him, but one or two of my friends would blush and say ‘Fine thanks’ as if he was really enquiring. He’d stand there in his stockinged feet, hands in pockets, hair ruffled, gazing at us.

  ‘Everyone happy? Anything I can do?’

  I’d shake my head, but the other person would usually mutter, ‘No thanks.’ And that was his cue to disappear.

  My father’s name was Nico. He worked as a sales rep for a well-known confectionery company, criss-crossing the country with a boot full of highly coloured, tooth-rotting merchandise (something else there was always a supply of in our house). The nature of his job meant that he was either away for days on end or at home ‘doing paperwork’. Zinny worked odd hours so having friends ‘to tea’ happened when my father was around. The paperwork happened in their bedroom. He lay propped up against the bed head with stuff strewn around and a biro in his hand; once or twice I went in and he dropped something very quickly over the side of the bed. His huge smile was meant to distract me, but I noticed.

  My parents’ distinguishing marks – in my friends’ eyes anyway – were these: my mother was glamorous, and my father was young. Also, Zinny was older than him and he looked younger than he was, so the difference was striking. It was just as well about the glamour, or his boyish manner and appearance might have made her seem dowdy. As it was you could see what the attraction was, and they made a charismatic couple, something I came to appreciate more as time went by.

  My father’s boyishness meant that we were like pals. He didn’t have the massive presence in my life that some other people’s fathers did. I had the distinct impression that far from being chief provider, he worked only because it would have looked bad if he hadn’t. He didn’t lay down the law, or stand between me and whatever dangers might be out there; he wasn’t the person who could sort anything out, fix problems and bicycles and broken chairs. In fact he stood in the same relationship to these things as I did: one of baffled helplessness. We were chums, laughing together at ‘the innate hostility of inanimate objects’ which were always letting us down. It
was as well that Zinny kept a comprehensive list of ‘little men’ in the back of her diary. We needed them.

  My mother wasn’t much on the domestic front either, but that was because she had a job she enjoyed, and preferred to be doing that, or anything, than cleaning. We had Mrs March to do that, who treated us all like children in the nicest possible way. If Nico couldn’t be there after school or in the holidays, Mrs March filled in. Zinny worked in the box office at the local seaside rep, in the town on the far side of Salting. She and Nico had complementary natures; they suited one another. His underlying indolence did not annoy her, and he wasn’t in the least diminished by her need to be busy.

  So that was good – for them, anyway. The question I asked myself was, where did I fit in? My parents were a near-perfect couple, but that didn’t leave much room for anyone else. I didn’t doubt that they loved me in an absent-minded way, and I wasn’t neglected, but I certainly wasn’t the focus of their attention the way other children were the focus of their parents’. My father was casual and playful and when he was around we often had fun. I was sure that when he was away he didn’t think about me at all. Zinny was busy and not around so much day to day – and even when she was she didn’t play or take me on outings. What she did do was interrogate. One instance will serve to illustrate this.

  ‘How’s school?’ she’d ask. This was usually when I’d just been dropped off by one of the other mothers in the lift-share scheme, when all I wanted to do was eat biscuits in my room.

  But there was no gainsaying Zinny when she wanted to know.

  ‘OK.’

  ‘I know it’s OK. Tell me what you’ve been doing?’

  ‘Nothing much.’

  ‘But what?’