by Peter Benson
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 sa
id 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.
13
Captain Perkins of the SS Mademoiselle Mabry was a small and unusual man. He mixed easily with his crew, officers and men, and uniquely among captains I knew, never ate alone. He was clean-shaven and always wore his cap. I sailed with him for three years from 1961, mainly on Mediterranean and West African runs.
In 1958 his son had died while he was chartered in the Pacific, and he couldn’t get home for two months. This tragedy, and his failure to be with his wife and child when it mattered, had scarred but not reduced him. He took solace in his crew; he treated them like a family. He recognised my grief and guilt, and though he was not a bitter man, told me that time did not heal. When I told him that I couldn’t stop dreaming about my mother, he said that all I could do was punish myself. I had to drown the guilt. I told him that I had tried to. I hadn’t been with a woman for over a year, I never went ashore, I lay on my bunk and read Russian novels. I drank alone.
‘You call that a punishment?’
I didn’t know what to say.
‘You must do more.’
‘How, sir?’
‘That’s up to you.’
‘What did you do, sir?’
‘That’s for me to know.’
If his son had lived he would have been my age. Captain Perkins was frank with me, and explained that he wanted to imagine I was his son. I told him about my father and he shook his head. He asked to see my cap, and ran his fingers around the lining. ‘Mate told me you were a lucky one,’ he said.
‘I don’t feel it, sir.’
‘Luck’s got nothing to do with what you feel, or how. Luck makes its own rules.’
‘I know, sir. My mother told me.’
‘And you can’t break them.’ He gave me my cap back. ‘Don’t lose it.’
‘I’m not going to, sir.’
We were carrying coal to Alexandria, ballasting to Odessa, loading Ukrainian grain and returning to the Tyne. The Black Sea was wild and unpredictable; we were stuck in Odessa for a week, sheltering from nines and tens.
I decided how I would punish myself. I threw a half-read book into the dock, watched it sink, went into town and did not buy a woman. I flirted with one but when the time came to leave the bar I shook my head and ordered another drink. She slapped my face and spat at my feet, and stormed into the night. I asked for the bottle, and beckoned another woman.
She came to my table. Her pimp watched from the back door. I asked him to join us. He was reluctant. I stood up and put up my fists, pushed the woman away and told him to fight. If my drink wasn’t good enough for him then he could fight. I stepped up. He pulled a knife.
The bar cleared, a woman screamed, glasses broke. Money rolled across the floor. The barman picked up a phone and began to dial. I took another step forward, lunged and slipped. The pimp caught me as I fell, aimed for my chest and stabbed my arm.
The pain was not what you would expect. It came as a thud from a long way off, a dull sound you try to place but can’t, and then suddenly it’s on top of you, pushing in all directions. I looked down, saw blood, looked up, saw the blade again, shouted, the blade was grabbed, the pimp floored and the barman put the phone down.
Blood, beer and ambulance. I remember the ambulance but I don’t remember the hospital. I was patched up, discharged and went to another bar.
I wanted to be hurt and humiliated in public. I wanted people to point and guess that I had abandoned my mother in London, in a damp flat where the dust settled on her head. Odessa was a dark city and matched my mood. I drank vodka, I slept alone in a room over a bar and listened to the windows rattle through the storms.
Do the dead think? Do they appreciate the livings’ sacrifice to guilt? Do the dead know what guilt is? Dead man’s hand, dead man’s face, are you the one with dead man’s eyes, wrapped in a piece of his dead wife’s lace? When we sailed for the Tyne in February 1961, I had been hit by a dozen Odessan women, and threatened with guns. I forgot one Tuesday completely. I was covered in bruises, and walked with a limp. The passage was slow, and I had time to think. Next time I saw Steffi I would ask her to bind me to the frame she kept in her back bedroom, and I would not scream for mercy.
‘I don’t think my mother wanted to leave this place, but she didn’t have any choice. She wanted to come back one day. When we left New York, when we started west, I think she imagined she wouldn’t stop until she got home. America was never her home. She missed this.’ Elizabeth pointed. ‘But she died.’
‘When?’
‘Nineteen-forty.’
‘What did you do?’
‘We were living in Anaheim, California. She worked in the orange groves. I worked in the orange groves. The farmer’s sister took me in. She had six kids. I suppose one more didn’t make any difference. She’d promised Mother.’
We were sitting outside to eat supper. I had cooked some eggs and bacon, and sliced some bread. The food was spread out on a tea chest. I had lit a lamp and hung it from the porch.
A fishing boat appeared around the point, its lights blazing, engine chugging, steaming slowly north. Gulls fluoresced over its stern. Their cries drifted on the breeze to where we sat.
‘The farmer sold out. They built Disneyland over the groves.’ She shook her head. ‘I went back down there a few years ago. I don’t recognise Anaheim now.’
The boat turned and began to steam south, taking a course parallel to the first.
‘The farmer made a fortune and moved downtown. Bought a plot of land and built a hotel. The Desmond. It’s still there, but it’s nothing like it used to be. It was a grand place.’
I watched her face as she talked. Her cheeks were full of blood and the creases around her eyes were like the crinkled petals of pink flowers. I wanted to touch them and then smell my fingers.
I don’t think she had thought about the flattened orange groves of Anaheim for years. The years devour events, memory grows lazy, life forgets its reason. The ocean comes to the shore and fingers the rocks along the tideline. Motels grow where trees stood, and cars park where men sharpened scythes. Cows and sheep grazed where aeroplanes land, but the sky never changes.
‘He was always there at the right place, at the right time. He was a lucky man.’
‘Who?’
‘Frank. The farmer, except you never said he used to be a farmer. He was a hotelier now, a good one too. He built a private cinema for his guests, and you could order anything off any menu at any time of day or night. Breakfast at one, dinner in the morning.’ She dipped some bread in her egg. ‘I don’t think he ever served a supper like this.’
‘Is it good?’
‘Yes, Michael.’ She tossed a piece of bacon to the dog, leant towards me and patted my arm. ‘Good. Better and better.’ She smiled. ‘When did I last feel like this?’
‘At the Desmond?’
‘Maybe. Maybe, before I met Joe Leben.’
‘The producer?’
‘Yeah… How did you know that?’
I shrugged and tapped my head.
‘Yeah…’ She gave me a long look, then said, ‘Joe Leben… He told Frank that I’d be perfect in a picture he was putting together. I think Frank wa
s glad to see the back of me, but it was the only excuse I needed. I was out of there.’ She looked sternly at me, and pointed a finger. ‘Ambition’s a killer, Michael, and I had it bad.’
‘Not any more?’
‘A little.’
‘What was the film?’
‘Little Jennie.’
‘I didn’t see that one…’
‘You’re lucky.’
‘I saw most of them…’
‘You were a fan?’
‘More than that.’ I looked at the floor and tapped my head again. I told her: ‘I was nuts. Kept a scrapbook. Used to cut out your pictures, newspaper clippings, that sort of thing.’
‘You didn’t!’
‘I almost wrote to you once. After Missing You.’
‘I’m missing you already…’ she breathed, exactly as she did in the film. Exactly. In my house. But then the face cracked, and she looked away with a grim look and thin, pursed lips, and she could have been someone else completely, some dangerous stranger with a hidden reason.
I first saw Missing You in 1946, in Liverpool, and I’ve seen it at least half a dozen times since. I can recall every scene.
The opening credits roll over an evening sky. The camera slowly pans from the zenith to the horizon. The clouds thin, and a Manhattan skyline appears.
As the credits fade, we pick up street sounds, reach ground level, move down the street and stop outside a hotel. Guests come and go. We focus on a couple who come from the hotel, descend the steps and walk slowly towards us. The man is George (Richard Wood) and the woman is Jane (Elizabeth Green). They stop and stand at the foot of the steps. She has medium-length blonde hair, and wears a pale coat. He wears a broad-rimmed hat and a dark coat. She shivers, and he holds her tight.
The camera closes on her face, and she says, ‘I’m missing you already.’
‘Me too, darling.’
‘I love you so much.’
He is leaving for the Middle East, where he will be supervising the construction of a bridge. She is not going to see him for six months…
An aeroplane is waiting at the airport. Its exhaust fumes blow across the foggy runway, the propellers feather and a piano plays a single chord. The lovers kiss and then George breaks away. Jane is left standing, her hand raised…
