by Susan Sallis
My hand, gingerly trailing the roughness of the wall beneath the water, felt the protuberance and curled around it cautiously, waiting for more sharp edges to lacerate the skin. But it was smooth. My hand gripped hard. The protuberance was perfectly round. The shape and size of a door knob. It was a door knob. Set in that ghastly wall about two feet below the level of the water surface was a door knob. And I gripped it very hard. That was what door knobs were for. Gripping. My hand gripped it and my floating body came to a halt and swung itself into a vertical position held completely steady by the hand and the door knob.
It was such a relief to be free of that wall and yet supported by it. I just hung on for a while, not even asking myself what I could do with this tiny respite. There was a sense of peace suddenly. No more struggle. I let my legs swing out behind me, my head only just clear of water. It was perhaps two feet beneath the surface. If my hand had not swept downwards at just that point, I would not have found it. I closed my eyes, smiling. I knew I was going to be all right.
However, it was not easy. I had to get a foot on that smooth, small protuberance. Then I had to stand up using the wall to keep upright. The pain of my own skin tearing with the ragged remnants of pyjama top was awful. What was worse was the possibility of the door knob suddenly pulling out of the wall. It felt rock solid, but it could have been rusted through or simply shoved in by some joker during the past eighty-odd years since the lake had first been excavated, and now, with my weight on it, shove itself out just as easily. But as I heaved myself on to the top of the wall and saw the moon still shining brightly on the amusement arcades and the crazy golf . . . it was still there. I collapsed on to my side, and when I began to shiver in the early morning air, I knew I was still alive, and I actually stood up on the wall, and with Mrs Bartholomew cheering me on, I walked to the paddling pool and then waded through the mud to the base of the steps and climbed them.
It was almost light when I got home, but I had seen no one and I prayed that no one had seen me. My feet bled on to the doormat. I showered and rubbed cream into them, and dealt with my hands too, then fell into bed and slept properly for the first time since it had happened. Almost a year ago.
When I woke I was different. I thought – for almost a year I had thought – that I wanted to die. Yet, when I was offered death in the early hours of that day, I had chosen to live.
Two
INVESTIGATIONS INTO THE accident, if accident it was, got nowhere. Before he died David Venables senior mumbled something about Viv being very depressed at the time, and a small rumour started . . . but was quickly squashed. Though they were a very private couple, it was well known that they were idyllically happy. The few people who had seen some of David’s skyscapes dismissed the couple as arty-farty types; others thought of them sentimentally as ‘the folks who lived on the hill’. But only the few who had watched too many documentaries about conspiracies entertained the thought of a suicide pact. And when the local computer expert was called to the hospital to retrieve some ‘lost’ files, and was able to confide to his wife that Vivian Venables had been just about pregnant at the time of the accident, she put two and two together and decided that they had been keeping an appointment at the gynaecology department. Any thought of suicide was discarded. Almost. It reared its head when old David Venables collapsed and died in December. There was talk of him not being able to face his daughter-in-law, blaming her for the death of his son. His friend, John Jinks, who was in the next room, revealed this when he told the matron of the home that poor old Venables had spoken of not being able to face ‘one more day in this hell-hole’. Mr Jinks was well known for stirring things up at Tall Trees. And though officially old Mr Venables had had a coronary, everyone knew he had died of a broken heart.
Before Viv was fully conscious, she repeated the word ‘steering’ several times, and the investigators tried hard to find something that would point to a sudden failure of the mechanism. It was impossible. The car had plunged down the side of the combe, ricocheting from tree to tree, rolling at one point, righting itself on a shelf of the cliff and then hurtling on and into an ancient beech that shed the last of its leaves like confetti over the steaming crumpled mass of metal. It was a miracle that four weeks later, Viv Venables came out of hospital and, at her own insistence, returned to the single-storeyed house buried in laurels and conifers. She had successfully suppressed all memory of the accident; though as she rarely spoke to anyone, gradually discouraged all callers, and never replied to letters or phone calls, it was impossible to know what she remembered and what she did not. In the following months, while the sun shone relentlessly and drought warnings became a part of daily life, people accepted that she was dealing with the tragedy in her own way. In spite of the drought, the foliage grew around the bungalow until it was like a beleaguered castle in a fairy tale, but Viv was certainly no sleeping beauty. She had never been overweight, but when people saw her jogging very early in the morning, they reported seeing ‘a bag of bones’.
‘She doesn’t seem to have a relative in the whole world. It would have been better if the old man had hung on till she was conscious,’ someone said in the Becket’s Head after one of these rare sightings.
‘He still thought she were going to die. It was touch and go,’ someone else put in. ‘Anyway, it’s against nature to outlive a child – that’s a well-known fact.’
‘But he loved her like a daughter,’ someone else put in. ‘He might’ve guessed she would need him.’
‘He had no choice in the matter, I reckon. He was knocking on, for Pete’s sake!’
‘Bit funny somewhere, though. I reckon a lot been hushed up there,’ said the first voice lugubriously.
It had been hushed up so successfully that Viv never even asked about her father-in-law. Someone must have told her that he was dead, but she never called at the nursing home to collect his things. She had no idea where his remains were. They told her that David’s ashes were in a crematorium in Bristol, where he had lived as a young man. His father must have arranged that. She told herself she was not interested.
It was that evening that she had started to run. Everyone called it jogging but they knew she simply ran as fast as she possibly could. Someone called her the Gingerbread Woman. Nobody could catch her.
Vivian’s story
It was almost three o’clock by the alarm on the cluttered chest of drawers. I had slept more than eight hours and a grey light filled the bedroom. It was raining, a soothing window-wash, therapeutic. That fierce, uncaring sunshine had gone at last. I lay very still and listened to the rain dripping from the overhanging eaves outside, and registered that the guttering wasn’t taking it and I had better get someone in to clear out the accumulated rubbish of the past year. Then I remembered the ladders, which must still be in the garage. I could clear out the blasted gutters myself.
But first, the chest of drawers where the tube of antiseptic cream I had used on my cuts and grazes was unstoppered and leaking everywhere. One of our many radios was behind the clock, unused, probably containing batteries leaking like the tube of cream. There was a clutter of photographs, mostly lying on their faces, but one of my mother smiled at me encouragingly. How she would have hated the mess in here! She had died when I was ten years old, but by then I had known her almost as well as she knew me. She was a natural home-maker.
I rolled out of bed, clutched a dressing gown around myself and made for the bathroom, where the tattered remains of my pyjamas still lay on the floor; they were horribly blood-stained. I smiled. Amazingly, the terror of last night had gone. As I had plodded on bleeding feet back up the zigzag of bends to the top of the Tump, I had been forced to face the fact that I had been given a choice. I could have let myself die; it would not have been suicide in the true sense of the word. An opportunity had offered itself quite outside my own volition: a small shove into oblivion. The alternative . . . a door knob. I knew my smile was rueful, to put it mildly; my early morning jogs so often took me along t
he unfenced coastal paths, where a step to one side would probably be the last one in this life. And I had not taken it yet. And I had not taken it last night when it had been quite literally thrust upon me.
I splashed water on to my face, gathered up the rags on the floor, and made for the kitchen and tea. While the kettle boiled I sat at the table and made a list which started: clean house, clear gutters, mow grass. Then I poured boiling water on to proper tea leaves in a proper teapot and inhaled the steam. And the front doorbell rang its infuriating ping-pong. I smiled again.
It was Mrs Hardy. Hardy by name, hardy by nature. Everyone else had got the message that I wanted to be left alone. Not Mrs Hardy. She was red-faced from the hill, and held up a hand before I could say my usual piece – that it was nice of her to call but I would prefer to be on my own.
‘No trouble. On my way to work. Evening shift.’ That was what she always said, too; she worked at Tall Trees, set in its own grounds where the road to the Tump degenerated into a track. My father-in-law had died there and had always said if Mrs Hardy hadn’t been married already he’d have made an honest woman of her.
She rummaged in her bag. ‘Brought you a few apples. Maybe p’raps you could pick some blackberries on one of your rambles. Makes a lovely mixture, blackberry and apple.’ She found the apples and hauled them out, waiting for me to say thank you but no thank you.
I wanted to cry. I said, ‘That’s so kind, Mrs Hardy—’
She looked up, alarmed and then shocked. ‘My dear Lord! The state of you! You had a fall, didn’t you? Them blessed jogs you takes, and so early every morning, too. I says to Hardy, I says, that girl could lie there for hours before anyone found her.’
I shook my head, almost laughing, but crying, too. ‘Have you got time for a cup of tea? I’ve just made a pot.’
She was seriously worried now, and saw it as an emergency, so, though she did not have time, she made it and followed me into the kitchen. Her eyes flicked around, then settled on the tray with the teapot and milk jug – as civilized as it possibly could be.
I poured and we drank together. Conversation consisted of exclamations from her and reassurances from me. She ended up on her knees with a roll of kitchen paper and the vinegar bottle, dabbing at my feet.
‘Vinegar or salt water, Mrs Venables. I always says, vinegar or salt water.’ She glanced at the drying rack and reached up for socks. ‘Salt water this morning—’ She tried for a grin. ‘Now vinegar. So you’ve had both. Can’t go wrong, can you?’ She eased the socks over my sore feet. They were stinging like mad, but I knew they would be all right; nothing to do with vinegar and salt water, everything to do with Mrs Hardy.
I said suddenly, ‘Do you remember Mrs Bartholomew, who used to be in charge of the lake?’
Mrs Hardy laughed. ‘There isn’t nobody within a ten-mile radius of this place who don’t know Mrs Bartholomew. Right tartar. But good and fair.’
I almost asked her about the door knob but that would have meant confessing to my . . . my what? My adventure. And she was late for work, too.
She wanted to take my shopping list, but I shook my head. I had repudiated all offers of help for selfish reasons. Now, there were other reasons. I didn’t know what they were, but they were imperative. Just as I had taken the car across country to the all-night garage in the early hours for milk and bread, eggs and cheese, so I would continue to do so. Different reasons. I would work that out later.
She hovered anxiously by the front door.
‘If all your rambles gives you comfort, well, you got to do them. But be careful. Remember the winter is coming on. Not good for you to get wet and cold. Night after night.’
I walked with her to the front gate. I had let the conifers grow wild – Mr Hardy had been volunteered to keep the garden down and I had simply shaken my head. The small bungalow was almost buried in foliage, a stranger would not know it was there; I certainly could not see who was passing. That might have given me a fleeting satisfaction yesterday; today I lingered by the gate watching Mrs Hardy climb on her bicycle and then turn right and disappear among the rhododendrons. Perhaps it would be good to ask Mr Hardy to take down the conifers to hedge level.
I returned indoors and cleared the tea things, made my bed, saw to the chest of drawers, then went into the cobwebbed garage and hauled out the ladder. It was five o’clock, two or three more hours of daylight.
At eight o’clock I wheeled the trolley into the living room. It held a plate of scrambled eggs, another pot of tea, and a small dish holding one of Mrs Hardy’s apples, baked and oozing sultanas, collapsing within its own skin. Rather like me, I thought, grinning with the basic satisfaction of having actually accomplished something. I wanted to eat; I wanted to see what the weather forecast was for tomorrow. If it prophesied rain it would give my satisfaction an edge of smugness, because the guttering around my little bungalow was clear of mud and weeds and would do its job however much rain arrived. I could not remember feeling like this.
The forecast was good. That was OK because I could mow the grass. I went on watching, marvelling that the television was still working perfectly after almost a year of hibernation. Of course I had heard – somehow – some of the things happening around the world. The floods earlier in the summer had made a teaching colleague homeless and she had written to tell me about it. There had been a plane crash somewhere; it had been headlined on one of the piles of newspapers in the garage on the Bristol road. A building society had closed its doors, and people had massed outside, shouting, some of them weeping. Somewhere in my head I had registered these things and then rejected them with everything else. I had told myself that the one lesson to be learned was that nothing really mattered. Someone – somebody who meant well – had said to me almost a year ago that I should get through just one day at a time. One minute had been too much of such pseudo-wisdom and I had turned away yet again.
Now I watched a young mother being interviewed about the possible abduction of her baby. She wept. I wept. I wept for her. I was actually weeping for somebody else. I thought of Mrs Hardy and her kindness, and I wept again. I went out in the darkness and stared at the roof . . . at the gutters . . . my gutters . . . and believe it or not, I wept.
That night I slept for twelve hours. The next day I walked to the top of the Tump, where brambles crouched around the wall of the nursing home. I picked blackberries and stewed them with the rest of the apples, and when Mrs Hardy called I handed her a plastic box of the mixture. For a moment I thought she was going to weep. I asked her whether Mr Hardy still had his chainsaw, and if so, would he be able to take the hedge down to shoulder height?
She nodded solemnly. ‘Course he would, Mrs Venables. And only too glad to do it. It’s a sign, you know.’
‘A sign?’
‘A sign you’re looking out.’ She smiled at the obviousness of her remark, and added, ‘Letting the outside world back in.’
I smiled, too. I had known exactly what she meant, but it did not help when the six o’clock news showed that the young girl who had wept to the world yesterday had been arrested today for murdering her own baby. I sat in front of the flickering television and put my hand to my throat. It was a terrible world; did I really want to ‘let it back in’?
The next morning, just before dawn, I jogged slowly down the three levels of sandy roads to the beach and then, as light silhouetted the pier, I turned and ran fast along the path to the lake.
It took about fifteen minutes, during which time the edge of the sun sent a weak path of light along the sea towards Becket’s Hill. The forecast had been right: it looked as if it was going to be a lovely day. Even so, that light, which should have continued into the lake’s corner, seemed to bend and wander into the sea towards Devon and Cornwall. The lake was still black and impenetrable.
I stood for a long time at the head of the steps leading down to the little promenade, getting my breath, staring down until my eyes could distinguish the concrete blocks, the old pump house. G
radually, black became grey and there were the dissecting walls between paddling pool, swimming pool, boating lake. And crouched on the cruel, flinty wall that had lacerated my feet and hands not very many hours ago, was a figure. Man or woman I couldn’t tell, human most certainly. The hump of a hooded sweatshirt was there, the sharp crook of knees as he or she hunkered just out of reach of the water. I stayed very still.
For what seemed like a long time, the two of us did not move. I had no idea whether he – or she – knew of my presence. My approach could not have been heard; I was wearing old tennis shoes, and though the tide was now coming in fast, the waves weren’t exactly crashing on the rocks, but even so the ebb and flow of constantly moving water would have covered my gentle jog. I did not think my silhouette would be visible against the woods of Becket’s Hill either. But I did not trust my luck; I could see the figure down there and he could probably see me. I knew by then he was male. As the light filtered around the lake, I could see that the arms supporting the long lean body were too muscular for a woman. The sleeves of his tracksuit fell over his hands, and the hood hid his face, but he was male. My memory remembered one of those invisible hands in the small of my back.
Very slowly indeed I bent my knees and began to drop out of sight behind the wall. Once there I moved back to where the path forked to the left and disappeared into the trees of Becket’s Hill. I straightened and jogged into their sanctuary. The path was carpeted with leaves and pine needles and was pleasantly springy. It swept around the back of the lake and emerged from the trees facing west; a perfect view of the islands. I stopped for breath again and looked over my shoulder. The lake was below and behind me; I couldn’t see it for trees. I moved to the edge of the path, sat down and slid carefully from tree to tree until there was space for me to look down on the water. It was like the old days, the whole corner was bathed in sunshine. Mrs Bartholomew had called it ‘a regular sun trap’.
