The Other Occupant

by Peter Benson

  I finished the job, and enjoyed it, but by lunchtime I needed a fix of traffic and pedestrians. The Colonel had left - cleaned out of Vestas. In forty-eight hours he’d been only the third person I’d seen. I was beginning to hear silence as a faint buzz in my ears. I complained about it to Marjorie as we ate vegetable soup, warm bread and cheese. She said ‘We’ll go to Lyme. I’ve got to do some shopping.’

  We parked, and while Marjorie looked at the sea and took deep breaths, I admired the car-park and the shops. Some of these were shut although full of holiday souvenirs. A couple of faded pennants advertising ice-cream fluttered in the wind.

  Lyme was a modern town with some old houses tacked on the front and sides. These houses, and the old walls of the harbour, rebuked the rest. The town had history if it made money. Signs on telegraph poles warned dog owners to look out.

  Marjorie shopped while I sat on a wall in the main street and watched traffic jam. I enjoyed the smell of petrol fumes, and the busy people as they walked up and down. I bought a local paper and sat on a wall to read. The hot story of the week was ANGER OVER PRIME FREE TRADE SPOT.

  The town clerk had been offered prime sea-front premises, rent free. He was planning to set up a shop. The premises were owned by the town council. The decision to let the clerk set up this shop had been taken at a closed committee meeting.

  The town mayor had said it was in the public interest that the decision was made behind closed doors. ‘The matter was thoroughly debated, points were raised and discussed and the decision was upheld,’ he said. ‘He’s a first-class town clerk,’ he concluded.

  Local traders had been campaigning unsuccessfully for years for permission to trade on the sea front. Another story was about Valentine’s Day. Romance was not out of fashion in Lyme.

  I went to a café for a coffee. From my seat I could see some men repairing the masonry around a flight of steps that led from the raised pavement to the road. When Marjorie joined me I said, ‘I can’t get used to these little places. But I’d like to…’

  ‘Good for you!’

  ‘Everyone knows everyone else, don’t they? You couldn’t get away with anything.’

  ‘Nothing,’ she said, and she ordered a Danish. When it came, it had a small sweet cherry on the top. She put this on the side of her plate and ate the pastry first. It had mashed apple inside.

  I drank some coffee and asked about the Colonel.

  ‘What’s to tell?’ she said. ‘He comes round, we play cards, he loses and goes home. He’s very formal.’

  ‘Military.’

  ‘I wasn’t going to say that. He never talks about it - I think his work was all a bit hush-hush.’

  The coffee was hot.

  She said, ‘They used to call them gentlemen, I think.’ She popped the cherry in her mouth, chewed it and wiped the corners of her mouth and her fingers on a paper napkin. ‘A man’s got to have a sense of humour. Hilary’s a bit stiff.’

  ‘A bit stiff?’ I laughed.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, refusing even to smile. ‘He used to live with his mother. She only died a couple of years ago.’

  ‘She must have been ancient!’

  ‘Getting on…’ She laughed.

  ‘What’s funny?’

  ‘He had a lift put in the house so she didn’t have to climb the stairs. She was very frail. It was a proper lift, like in a hotel. The real thing. He always insists on the best.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So she didn’t mind using it, but was worried about getting stuck between the floors. So he bought a lumberjack’s axe and hung it—’

  ‘In the lift?’

  ‘Yes!’ She slapped her thigh and roared with laughter. ‘I always imagined her in there, swinging at the doors with that axe. Steel doors - she could hardly lift a dinner knife!’

  I laughed.

  ‘I don’t think Hilary thought that one through.’

  I was thinking about having a Danish but she finished hers, stood up, whacked me on the head with her gloves, said, ‘Come on!’ and left a tip.

  We walked back to the car slowly; she took my arm.

  ‘Good shops in Lyme,’ she said.

  ‘Are they?’

  ‘Yes. You’d be surprised.’ She showed me a goat’s cheese she’d bought, and some fresh fish.

  ‘I’ve never had goat’s cheese before,’ I said, smelling it. It smelt of piss.

  ‘I think it’s good for the circulation.’

  ‘Which circulation?’

  ‘You know what I mean.’

  There were some hippies sitting on a greasy slope near the car-park. They were eating sandwiches and laughing about something. An old bloke with a beard was putting bottles in a bottle bank. Some of the gardens of the houses around the car-park were tidy and attended. Marjorie made me stop for a moment so that she could catch her breath. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘It’s not like me.’

  ‘Do you want to sit?’ I took her arm and pointed to a bench. She shrugged me off.

  ‘No!’ She looked angry.

  ‘Just take your time then,’ I said.

  ‘There’s not enough of that.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean… ‘ she said, but didn’t finish what she was going to say. She walked past me to the car.

  There was a sign to a footpath that ran along the coast in either direction. Some serious walkers were heading through the car-park. ‘They’ve butchered those,’ Marjorie said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘The cedars.’ She pointed to some enormous trees beside the road. ‘Butcher anything.’

  The bungalow and house gardens we passed on our way home were neat and private. Marjorie drove fast; I kept my brake foot pressed to the floor. She noticed this and said, ‘I’ll brake. You relax.’

  ‘I am,’ I said.

  The Alfa Romeo 164 3.0 V6 cost £17,925.00. For an extra £2325 she could have had air-conditioning, alloy wheels, a sunroof and a CD player. Marjorie didn’t have any CDs. An underdoor light came on when the door was opened and lit up the road to make entering and getting out of the car easier in badly lit areas.

  We accelerated from 0 to 60 in 7½ seconds, taking a different route home. Instead of turning into the forest where I expected she drove on, past Lambert’s Castle and through Marshwood.

  At Birdsmoorgate, she stopped in a lay-by beside a cottage, and rested for a moment to admire the view that folded out below us. The fields were bright green, dotted with trees and clumps of woodland. To the right, the forest stretched along a ridge as far as the eye could see - in the distance I could see the sea between two hills. It was quiet there. The garden of the cottage we were parked next to was well tended.

  ‘There aren’t many places like this,’ Marjorie said.

  ‘Like what?’

  She looked at me. ‘Are you serious?’ she said, and when I didn’t reply, looked away again.

  ‌7

  Mum didn’t like cars. The only time I ever got her into one with no trouble was when we bought Bruce from Battersea Dogs’ Home. She dressed for the occasion, in a blue dress she’d last worn to a wedding and a green hat. She looked ridiculous but dignified. I held the passenger door open for her, so that she could step into the car with ease, like the Queen.

  ‘How far is it?’ she kept saying.

  ‘Only a couple of miles. Half an hour.’ We were sitting in a traffic jam.

  ‘We could have walked it.’

  I said, ‘Enjoy the view,’ and pointed to the river.

  Bruce waited for us in a cage. He didn’t bark or wag his tail and pant when we stood in front of him. He had two empty bowls and a bed.

  ‘He’s an example to us all,’ Mum said, when she saw him. The official nodded and said, ‘He’s a dear, isn’t he?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘He’s called Bruce.’

  ‘Bruce?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It suits him.’

  I kept out of it.

  Bruce enjoyed t
he drive home. He and Mum formed an instant bond. He knew exactly who she was and what was required of him. He looked at me suspiciously, and bared his teeth. Mum said, ‘No! That’s Gregory,’ so he sat back and rested his head in her lap while she stroked his jowls and ears.

  I was going to say that I could stay longer than a week when Marjorie had an accident. I was outside with a spade. She’d demonstrated the correct way to dig a vegetable garden. You make a trench and fill it with earth from a second trench, weeding as you go. Birds came from the forest and lined up along a fence to watch. One came as close as the wheelbarrow, and dived for worms.

  ‘I don’t know why I bother,’ she said. ‘Nothing grows, but I’ve got to try. I feel guilty if I don’t.’

  ‘Guilty?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. She coughed. ‘Have you ever been to China?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘If you had, you’d know what I mean.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘If they can hoe it they’ll cultivate it. There’s a lot of mouths to feed in China.’

  ‘But this isn’t China.’

  ‘But it’s the idea,’ she said. ‘You’ve got to act good sense, even if you don’t think it all the time.’

  ‘If you say so,’ I said.

  ‘No! That’s the whole point! Not if I say so. It’s got to come from you!’

  ‘Right,’ I said.

  ‘Right?’ she mumbled. ‘Right? What right?’

  I didn’t know.

  She didn’t insist on knowing.

  The trees shaded the garden for all but a few hours in the middle of the day, and pine needles were no good as a mulch, but she said, ‘It’s got to come from you,’ again, before handing me the spade and going indoors to roll some pastry. Two of the cats sat on the doorstep and watched me; the other was hunting in the woods.

  I’d been working for ten minutes when I heard a cry from the house and the noise of a chair going over. I dropped the spade and ran to find Marjorie lying on the kitchen floor. She said, ‘Bloody hell.’

  ‘What happened?’ I said.

  ‘I got old.’ She tried to move. ‘Ouch!’ she yelled.

  ‘Have you hurt yourself?’

  She gave me a withering look. She held her arm. ‘I think I’ve broken it.’

  ‘That bad?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘And it gets worse.’

  ‘How?’

  She paused, with her mouth open, ready to say something.

  ‘How?’ I said again.

  ‘You’ll have to drive me in.’

  This wasn’t what she meant to say, but it had to do. Whatever she wanted to hide was showing.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Dorchester, I suppose.’

  ‘In the Alfa?’

  ‘What else?’ She smiled. ‘Your dream come true?’

  I couldn’t disguise my pleasure. ‘One of them.’

  She made me wash my hands and change my trousers before I drove. She sat in the passenger seat and moaned about adventuring round the world and never a slip, but rolling pastry and look at me now. She thought she was stupid, but I disagreed.

  ‘Most people die in bed,’ I said. ‘So that must be the most dangerous place you can—’

  ‘Gregory?’ she interrupted.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘If you’re going to say anything, make it sensible.’

  When we got to Outpatients, she refused to believe the doctor was qualified. He was very thin.

  ‘I assure you that I am,’ he wheezed. He had a plasticised name tag to prove it.

  ‘You could have got that anywhere,’ Marjorie said.

  ‘That’s true,’ he said, ‘but I didn’t.’

  He was patient, even though he had been working hard. He called me Marjorie’s son. She laughed. I winced. He called a nurse and told her to arrange for Marjorie to be X-rayed.

  Marjorie was grateful for my presence, but refused to let me accompany her to X-ray. I sat in the waiting room and watched a sculptor.

  Dorchester Hospital was a new building, and decorated with bright blue and red window frames, gables, pipes and wooden slats. The different wings met around courtyards - the sculptor was working in the biggest of these. He was carving a fountain and waterfalls out of blocks of rock. He was covered from head to foot in dust. There was a shop run by volunteers in the waiting area, and some countryside and house magazines.

  The sculptor was having trouble with an electric grinder when the doctor came back and said, ‘She’s broken her arm in two places.’ He yawned. ‘Very brittle, old people.’

  ‘She’ll be all right?’

  ‘Oh, yes. Of course. She’s a fighter, but I think, as a precaution, we’ll keep her in for a couple of days.’

  ‘Keep her in?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘She won’t like that.’

  ‘She doesn’t. But sometimes in cases like these, there can be an element of delayed shock. We’ll be running a few checks while she’s here.’

  ‘Shock?’ I said. ‘I don’t think you could shock Marjorie.’

  ‘All the same.’

  An undernourished nurse took me to Marjorie’s room. The hospital was like a hotel. There were exhibitions of paintings and photographs on the walls, and the wards were divided into small rooms. I had never seen Marjorie in bed before. ‘Look at me!’ she cried, when she saw me. ‘And they want me to stay in!’

  Her arm was plastered. She was wearing a hospital nightie. I offered to fetch her one of her own, but (1) she wasn’t having me rummaging through her things, and (2) I wasn’t driving the Alfa more than I had to.

  There were two other women in the room. One was asleep. The other was reading a newspaper.

  A doctor came and told Marjorie that she could leave the following afternoon. I told her I didn’t mind staying on at the lodge for as long as she took to mend. ‘Thank you, Gregory,’ she said.

  ‘I’ve nowhere else I’ve got to be.’

  ‘It’s still good of you,’ she said, and she gave me a list of things that had to be done.

  I left her breaking the ice with her companions by saying, ‘I could do with a drink. Anybody got some whisky?’ The sleeping one didn’t stir; the other shook her head and went back to her paper. Marjorie couldn’t cross her arms, so she fiddled with the hospital radio and headphones, until a nurse came and sorted them out for her.

  I felt as if I was in a dream as I drove back to the lodge. The road from Dorchester was switchbacked and straight; every now and again a glimpse of the sea appeared between dips in the hills. There were vast stretching views of the fields and hills inland and as the sinking sun coloured everything gold, for the first time in my life I wasn’t worried by the countryside, or by the thought that the car I was driving would break down. Sheep moved across the fields like lights. I cruised at seventy. The instruments were unfussy, the engine was as smooth as silk and the gearbox just stiff enough. The seat was adjustable. I’d told Marjorie I’d be careful.

  I got back to the lodge as the sun was setting, wiped my feet, put the kettle on and studied Marjorie’s list.

  Keep Rayburn in

  Finish digging

  Feed cats (½ tin each plus biscuits)

  Chop and stack wood

  Phone Colonel Franklyn

  I made a pot of tea, memorised the list and fed the cats.

  On my own in the old gamekeeper’s lodge, with the Alfa parked outside, I could imagine myself as the boss. Marjorie didn’t have a television, so I was listening to the radio and reading another book about trees when someone knocked on the door. It was half past eight, dark outside.

  I hadn’t heard a car in the drive, or footsteps on the gravel. By the time I reached the front door, I had counted all the people it could have been.

  Three.

  It was Sadie. The first thing she said was, ‘I’ve never got this far before.’ The light was fading but I could see her face clearly. She didn’t have any spots.

  ‘What?’r />
  ‘Up to the front door.’ She peered in. ‘It is a bit creepy, isn’t it?’

  I shrugged. ‘You get used to it.’

  She edged towards me. ‘When we were kids we used to dare each other to knock on this door.’

  I couldn’t imagine her as a kid. She asked me if I wanted to come for a drink. I explained about Marjorie’s accident, and said, ‘I can’t leave the place. I promised I’d keep an eye on things, but there’s some beer in the fridge. Do you want to come in?’

  ‘Do you think I should?’

  ‘Who’s watching?’ I said.

  She looked over her shoulder at the forest. At night, it seemed to come closer to the lodge. The trees grew together, so they made a solid wall of gloom that grew out of the sky’s darkness. I didn’t notice any clouds, but couldn’t see any stars either.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said, nervously. ‘You never know…’

  ‘Come on,’ I said. ‘You’ll get cold.’

  ‘OK.’

  We sat by the Rayburn and drank out of cans. She loved cats. We talked about satellite TV, the ozone layer, trees and farming. She didn’t want to work anywhere else but on a farm, but wished she had more time to herself.

  ‘Where’s Nicky tonight?’ I said.

  ‘Up the pub. I was meeting him there.’

  ‘Does he know you’re here?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And you were going to turn up with me? He’d have liked that…’

  ‘Nicky’s got to learn,’ she said. ‘I’m not a bit he’s bought for his car.’

  ‘That’s obvious,’ I said.

  ‘It might be to you,’ she said, and moved closer. ‘Nicky’s not too bright.’

  ‘You’ll be all right,’ I said, feeling a rushing build in my body. I reached out and patted her shoulder. She took my hand and held it against her cheek.

  ‘Will I?’ she said.

  ‘Yes.’

  We finished our drinks.

  ‘I like you,’ she said.

  ‘I like you too.’

  ‘Aren’t we lucky?’

  ‘Very.’

  I offered to make her some toast, but she wasn’t hungry. ‘Are you going to the pub?’ I said.

  She shook her head. ‘I’d rather stay here.’

  I fetched some more beer. ‘It doesn’t feel so creepy now?’