I Don't Want to Know Anyone Too Well, and Other Stories

by Norman Levine

“I don’t know,” she said.

  We left the Palace Hotel and walked towards the other main street for a Chinese meal. There are five restaurants in Riverside, all run by Chinamen. I led her through a narrow connecting side street. It was very dark. I didn’t want to bump into anyone from the school. I put my hand around her waist and drew her closer.

  “I know what you want,” she said.

  Over the meal she said that she believed there was a one and only. And you knew when he came along. And that it wasn’t right to go to bed until you were married.

  I didn’t say anything to that. She had guessed my intentions. But I expected even a refusal to be a bit more sophisticated than this.

  Outside, after the meal, we walked towards the river. It was cold and clear. I watched the neon signs from the other side reflect in the water as long bands of red, green, and the moving white of car lights. Neither of us had spoken for some time. Then she said, “I’m sorry.”

  “For what?”

  “I don’t know . . . I don’t seem to know how to behave with other people . . . They see me once . . . but they don’t see me again . . . I don’t have friends . . . I don’t seem able to give enough . . .”

  I took her hand. We stopped walking. I saw she was crying. I kissed her. But she was moving her head. It felt awkward, as if I was off-balance. I tried again.

  “I must go home,” she said immediately after we had separated. “I’ll miss the last bus.”

  “I’ll get you a taxi.”

  “I’d better come back by bus or else my sister will think something was wrong.”

  “Can’t you tell her you were out having a drink?”

  She became evasive. “She wouldn’t like it.”

  We walked to the bus station. She put her arm through mine. And there was a small green bus by the side of the building.

  “Will I see you again?” she said.

  “Of course,” I said.

  I watched her get on the bus. Then went and got a taxi that brought me back to the farm.

  Next day the first snow fell, then frost. And getting into Riverside became difficult. I came in on Friday night—when all the stores were open and the farmers were in for their shopping—looking for her. I tried again the next week.

  Then I had to spend Christmas and New Year with my parents in Ottawa. And it was after I was back and school had restarted that I read the notice of her death in the local weekly paper.

  I went to see the headmaster.

  “I’d like to take the rest of the morning off.”

  “Yes,” he said. “Is it a relative?”

  “No, a friend.”

  The crematorium was some distance away from Riverside and the taxi took twenty minutes to get there. I had never been to a funeral before. When I arrived there were only empty cars and trucks outside in the snow.

  As I entered the chapel I saw, on the right-hand side of the aisle, four people dressed in black with heads slightly bowed, sitting together. I instinctively joined them. On the other side of the aisle there were about twenty to thirty people—entire families with children—all with bibles, dressed in their everyday clothes. There was nothing sad about them at all. They looked lively and curious at the few of us in black.

  A cheerful man in a light grey suit took the service. And it was obvious that he belonged to the other side of the aisle. He quoted a lot from the Bible. And gave references to look up. And those on the other side did. They seemed to know the Bible well. I guess she belonged to them. And I wondered what it was that made her lose the certainty that they had. Sometimes the man in the light grey suit referred to “Sister Yuneau . . . this was not the end, it was only the first step.” And there was an occasional sob from one of the women from our little group in black.

  Half an hour later I was walking up to the entrance of the school. The New Zealander joined me.

  “Isn’t it a glorious day,” he said.

  “It is,” I said.

  The sun was shining. The snow on the ground and on the trees glistened.

  We could see our breath in the cold still air.

  FEAST DAYS

  AND others

  Because we were poor we lived in a semi-detached cottage in the country. Our neighbours were the Briggs. Mrs. Briggs ran the village grocery store. She was a plump woman, in her middle forties, with brown reddish hair that was permed in neat little waves. Sometimes I used to see her with a net over them. She had thin legs. In winter when she put on her coat and hat, the legs looked quite incapable of supporting the weight above them. She also had very white false teeth and a pink complexion that made her look freshly washed and blushing. She laughed at anything, whether it was funny or not. And said yes a lot of times, and nodded her head when people spoke to her. And she would say things like “As long as you’re happy that’s the main thing” or “It can’t last forever—”

  I would go get messages for my mother and take along my younger sister Kate because Mrs. Briggs always gave us a toffee each. When I opened her door the bell above it jangled loud enough for Mrs. Briggs to come from inside the house at the back of the store, and even from the back garden.

  Their back garden was neat. Mr. Briggs worked in the Heatherbell Nurseries two miles away. He would go off in the morning on an old bicycle and come back around half past five. In summer he worked in his garden before he left for the nurseries, and again in the evenings. In winter, only on Sundays, and then mainly in the greenhouse that he built himself. On Saturdays he delivered weekend grocery orders with Kenny in their shiny black Austin.

  Kenny was their only child. He used to go shooting in the fields and among the trees by the river. He would take his terrier, his air rifle, and go after rabbits, pheasants, pigeons, magpies. Sometimes I saw him come back with something.

  They had an older daughter. She was killed by a car while riding her bicycle on the road in front of the store. That was before my time. I only knew that every Saturday—when Mrs. Briggs locked up and Mr. Briggs and Kenny finished delivering orders—the three of them would go off in the car with flowers from their back garden to place on the grave. The cemetery was in the village at the top of a hill, a mile away, and known locally as “the beauty spot.” From there they would go on to Horsham or Cranleigh, to see a film. We knew when they had gone because they left the terrier tied up in the kitchen. And the walls were thin.

  Father was doing book reviewing for a London paper. He read the books and wrote his reviews at night in his room. In the morning he left the cottage after the postman had gone by. Sometimes he disappeared all morning and returned just before noon with a loaf of bread, perhaps some cheese and eggs, or minced meat, which Mother made into hamburgers, and which we all loved. He tried to arrange it so that we had the hamburgers on Sundays.

  When the review copies began to pile up on his desk he put them into a shopping bag and went to London to sell them. Mother allowed us to wait up for him. When he returned that night—the shopping bag filled with all kinds of delicious food—we had a feast. Usually the next day as well.

  When Father was not out getting food he fixed things around the cottage. The sink in the kitchen kept getting blocked. I would go into the shed, get the bundle of long rods—like those a chimney sweep uses—and screw them in, one to another, until they formed a long sagging bamboo pole. Father held one end, I the other, as we walked to the cesspool.

  It was in the back, dividing our land from the Briggs’, and covered with thick rotten planks. Father lifted the planks aside, then manoeuvred the sagging pole into the grey, greasy water, jabbed until he found an opening. Then pushed and pulled. He spent a long time doing this and emptying the lavatory bucket. He emptied the pail in the back garden among the nasturtiums that grew wild. He dug a hole, tipped the pail in it, then covered the hole with earth. The garden was stained with these mounds.

  The last
thing I watched him do at night was set the mousetrap. It was a small one. It had “The Little Nipper” printed on it and was stained with blood that had soaked into the wood. I would come down early next day to see what it had caught. There was a mouse every morning. Caught behind the head. Twisting the head and making the eyes wet slits. One of the ears was filled with blood and the delicate hind legs were also dipped in blood. My father took the trap outside to release the mouse in the garbage pail by the shed. But when he lifted the steel, the mouse remained stuck to the wood. So he turned the trap upside down. Two small drops—the size of its eyes, of a brilliant golden green-yellow—hung like dewdrops under the stomach. Father shook the trap, banged it against the side of the garbage can, until the mouse fell in.

  After seven or eight mornings it seemed that my father was catching the same mouse over and over again.

  On a Saturday afternoon in August there was a storm. It passed very quickly. One moment a low cloud, almost like a fog, swept across the fields, by the river. Then the hail began.

  We were all up in the back bedroom watching the hail turn the cricket field white. The house shook and hail cracked the windows. We huddled together and watched the pavilion tumble, then be blown like a piece of newspaper across the field.

  I went down with Father to the kitchen. The door had blown open, and hailstones swept in as if the coalman had dumped several bags. Before Father could shovel them out enough had melted to flood the kitchen. Then it was over. And there was a stillness, just like it was before it began.

  We went out to see the damage. The nasturtiums were flat, exposing the massive network of roots and stalks. Mr. Briggs’s greenhouse had all its glass broken. Under the apple tree the ground was thick with wet leaves and apples. Mr. Briggs’s plum tree was split in half. His beans, his celery, his lettuce, his flowers were a sodden tangle on the ground.

  Mr. and Mrs. Briggs, Kenny, and the terrier were also out inspecting damage.

  “I can’t find the garbage can,” Father said.

  “The last time I saw mine,” Mr. Briggs said, “they just took off.”

  Mrs. Briggs laughed at this, and for some reason we all found it amusing.

  I looked at the shambles of our garden, and the smashed gardens on either side of us. It was the only time I’ve seen our garden looking no different than the others.

  Then it began to rain. The river flowed over and swept down to the crossroads. The manhole by the pub was blocked and Ketchum, the village policeman, stood in high rubber boots directing traffic. The cars came through, one at a time, the water reaching over the running boards.

  By now nearly everyone was outside. Going from cottage to cottage. Finding out how many windows each had broken, and what details they remembered of the storm. Rumours spread. One man was supposed to have been killed by a falling tree. A bus collided head-on with a truck, killing both drivers. And in the middle of all this a strange excitement, almost of gaiety.

  The coalman’s son went around repeating to everyone, “This will make the nationals, just watch—it’ll be in all the nationals—”

  Mr. Pike, who owned the Shell garage up the road, darted about in rubber boots, carrying his pot-belly and wizened arm. “I’ve lived twelve years in South America. I’ve never seen such a storm.”

  Miss Honey, the retired schoolmistress, was taking pictures with an old box camera.

  And someone said, “It’s an act of God.”

  Towards evening, traffic increased. There was a line of thirty to forty cars, on either side, waiting to go through the water. The electricity had been knocked out, and the cottages were looking very pretty with candles in every window.

  No one wanted to go inside.

  Mrs. Briggs, her hair in curlers, had her head out of the top window, and watched the cars. We stood by the front gate. Father saw Mrs. Briggs and called out, “Some pile-up.”

  She drew the top of the dressing gown closer to her neck.

  “It’s just like London,” she said.

  The storm was a local one. The cars coming into Bogtown were not prepared for it. As they waited their turn they looked at the candlelit cottages, the people standing outside, and asked, “What happened here? Anything serious—?”

  Three weeks before Christmas Mrs. Briggs decorated her window with a small Christmas tree, electric coloured lights, artificial snow, crackers in boxes, and large boxes of chocolates showing winter scenes on their covers.

  A week later Mother decorated the living room of the cottage. She hung coloured paper chains from the ceiling and blew up balloons and hung those from the ends of the paper chains. Father cut a small Christmas tree from the wood, put it in a large biscuit tin, filled the tin with earth, and placed it on an overturned tea chest by the window.

  We looked forward to Christmas. Mother was evacuated to Cornwall during the war and lived with a childless couple on their farm. Since her marriage the farmer sent her a goose for Christmas. So that we were certain not only of eating that day, but of having goose.

  Then a week before Christmas odd things began to happen.

  There was this new policeman, Ketchum. I don’t think Father or Mother liked him or his missus very much, mainly because they were snooty. And he worked under the handicap that we liked his predecessor, Mr. Turbot.

  “I can’t see Mr. Turbot arresting anybody,” Mrs. Briggs said when someone had broken into the Shell garage.

  And she was perfectly right. Mr. Turbot ought to have been a schoolmaster instead of a policeman. He rode his motorbike gently up and down the main road. He directed traffic at school time, and gave the smallest kids candies. Mrs. Turbot sometimes met Mother on walks and she would hurry over to tell her secret.

  “I’ve got another heavy puriod,” she said in a Yorkshire accent.

  But Ketchum and his wife kept to themselves. Mrs. Ketchum was a small mousy woman who dyed her hair various shades of blond and rarely said anything more than hello. But rumour had it that someone had seen her in front of her bedroom window with a pair of castanets doing a sexy Spanish dance.

  Five days before Christmas, Mr. Ketchum knocked on the front door and when Father opened it, Mr. Ketchum had a bundle of things in a shopping bag.

  “Someone left this on the bus—it’s perishable stuff—I thought you might be able to use it.”

  There was cream, grapes, eggs, bacon, and a small roast. We had a feast that day.

  But by next morning Mother began to worry about the goose. Father asked the postman, and the postmistress at the sub–post office, who also had a tea shop at the crossroads. He walked to the main post office by the church at the top of the hill. It hadn’t arrived.

  However things worked out all right. For on Christmas Eve, my mother’s father and Mother came down from London to spend Christmas with us. And they brought with them a duck, Christmas pudding, enough coal for both fireplaces, lots of fruit and pressed meat, nuts, and presents. Grandad had asthma for as long as I can remember. He found it very difficult to breathe, nor could he walk very far, but had to stop and take out an atomizer and spray some stuff inside his mouth. They often came down unexpectedly—usually on a Sunday—bringing with them food and coal. And after dinner Grandad would wander around the cottage fixing things. Like Father he was good at fixing things with his hands: the bad wiring in the cottage; Mother’s second-hand iron; or some toy that had got broken. When he and Gran left they always gave Mother a few pounds.

  That night I stayed awake. From the partly open window I couldn’t see the trees that bordered the field across the road, but I could hear the dripping. Everything seemed to be dripping outside. A vixen barked from somewhere near the pub up the road, but closer were the soft clicks of the dripping leaves.

  Next morning Kate and I went downstairs early—Father hadn’t set the mousetrap—and began to open the presents. Kate had a top that spun all sorts of bright-coloured
sparks. I had a book and a pen. The baby had a rattle, building blocks, and a tambourine. Mother got a box of Mrs. Briggs’s chocolates and smelly soap, and Father some cigars. We wished each other happy Christmas. We had the duck and Christmas pudding with the brandy burning over it, tangerines, chocolates, and nuts. Then we sang carols and went for a walk. The dew clung to the bushes and leaves. And you could see the spiders’ webs, for they were outlined by small drops of rain.

  In the afternoon Grandad fell asleep in a chair. And when he woke we posed for photographs that he took in the back garden. They played with Kate and the baby. And after tea we played Scrabble. By eight o’clock it was time for them to go back. They left some money with Mother and I walked them down the dark road, past the police station, the pub, and up from the crossroads to the slope that led to the railway station. Grandad had to stop and struggle for breath every few yards, and use his atomizer. Gran was healthy and walked a bit ahead. We weren’t sure what time the train came, but there was only this one back at night.

  We walked up, slowly, through the mist. I now could see the light from the bridge.

  “I don’t remember going over a bridge,” Grandad said.

  “It isn’t a bridge,” I said. “It’s just the part over the railway tracks.”

  Then he had to stop again and rest.

  “I’ll run ahead,” I said, “and see when the train’s supposed to come in.”

  On the damp platform there was a couple seeing someone off. A baby in the man’s arms, and a young woman with a pram. The clock said eight thirty. There was still another seven minutes. I started back. As I came near the slope I saw a waving flashlight.

  Gran was running down the slope with the flashlight and crying.

  “What’s happened?”

  “Oh, Nick, it’s Charlie. He couldn’t help it.”

  “What happened?”

  “He had to take his pants off at the bridge.”

  She started to weep again. “He said to me, ‘Susie, you go ahead, don’t wait for me.’”