The Other Occupant

by Peter Benson

  ‘How’s the room?’ the woman said.

  ‘Fine,’ I said. Sadie was giggling behind me. ‘Lovely view.’

  ‘Isn’t it?’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Isn’t it a lovely view?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I said it was.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘But you asked if—’ Sadie tugged my arm.

  ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘I’d love to walk round the harbour.’

  ‘Cobb,’ said the woman.

  ‘What?’ I said.

  ‘It’s the Cobb.’

  I felt light-headed, and ready for anything. I didn’t argue. I said, ‘OK,’ and followed Sadie out.

  We walked around the harbour. There weren’t many boats in the water, but some fishermen were being picturesque with nets. One of them told us to ‘Bloody watch it!’

  The harbour walls were built in the 1820s by a gang of masons under the command of Captain William Fanshawe (Royal Engineers). I thought that the walls didn’t have to be so beautiful and could have been more practical, but they were as practical as they needed to be, and more beautiful than they needed to be. There were subtle curves and angles, dips and rises, and a worn, leaning flight of steps to the top.

  I said, ‘Do you want to go up?’

  Sadie said, ‘Again?’

  I said, ‘Come on.’

  ‘Already?’ she said.

  I waited for her at the end.

  When she joined me, she said, ‘It’s like a big chop, isn’t it?’

  The air was fresh and salty; the coast, as it ran east to Portland, was obscured by low cloud. I cupped one of Sadie’s buttocks in my hand - she put a hand over mine and squeezed. A fishing boat came into the harbour with gulls over its masts. The sea was running in deep, long swells.

  ‘Lyme’s always made me feel randy,’ Sadie said. When a strong gust of wind almost blew us off our feet, she leant into it and swept her hair away from her face with a quick, easy action. ‘Don’t ask me why…’

  ‘I wasn’t going to.’

  From where we stood, the town looked like part of fairyland. The sun was going down, and a few lights came on. Clouds hung in ribbons across the dimming light, and all the time the sea washed up and back below us.

  ‘Isn’t it beautiful?’ she said.

  ‘Yes.’ I didn’t look at her. ‘Like you,’ I said.

  ‘And you.’

  ‘You, you, you and you!’ I yelled, but the wind and the sea stole my words.

  As we walked back to the car, we held hands and talked about Marjorie’s cats, fishing, and the generous proportions of some of the houses we passed. I could feel an unusual surging in my body, like snow was falling in my stomach. Sadie didn’t have long legs. Her eyes were green and she had a little mole inside her right thigh.

  ‌18

  On Tuesday, 7 March, Marjorie gave me instructions as usual. The most important job was to hoe the garden. The beans were showing. Also, I had to tidy the greenhouse and chop more logs.

  There were enough logs to keep her going, but she said, again, ‘You can’t have enough logs.’

  I didn’t argue.

  I fetched the tools. A flock of seagulls had flown inland to irritate a rookery on the edge of the forest. The rooks put up a loud show with their caws, and flew sorties against the intruders.

  I was hoeing when a car drove slowly up the drive, parked in front of the lodge, and a smart couple climbed out. They were both carrying briefcases. He was wearing a brown suit, she was wearing a skirt, jacket and a hat.

  I propped the hoe against the wheelbarrow, wiped my hands on my trousers and went over. They approached me, smiling.

  ‘Good morning,’ the man said.

  ‘Can I help you?’

  He opened his hands as if in blessing. ‘Isn’t it a beautiful day?’ he said.

  I nodded. ‘What do you want?’

  The woman smiled at the man and said, ‘Did you know that the love of God is everywhere, and—’

  ‘The love of God?’ I said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Yes’, I said, ‘Why?’

  ‘It’s—’ the man began.

  ‘Are you Jehovah’s Witnesses?’ I said.

  ‘We’re all witness to—’ the man said.

  ‘We’re Orthodox Jews,’ I said. I knew this statement sent Jehovah’s Witnesses packing.

  ‘Praise the Lord!’ cried the woman. ‘Our faiths have so much in common!’

  I had a busy day in front of me. I held up my hands, palms to the front and said, ‘We’ve got nothing in common,’ and I started to walk back to the garden.

  The Witnesses didn’t move. They stood where they were - I felt their eyes in my back as I picked up the hoe. I heard an upstairs window open. Marjorie stuck her head out and shouted, ‘You heard him! Clear off already!’

  They didn’t argue. Her gaunt face and streaming white hair could have been plucked from hell or beyond, where Witness was denied and dead men walked. ‘Clear off!’ They drove a Morris 1300, a horrible car with a transverse engine you couldn’t work on, and a body that rusted if you spat on it.

  I went back to work and remembered shopping in Camden Town when a hippie tried to sell me a record of music recorded by people with a guru. My mother had just died. I was having trouble adjusting to the loss, and in an angry mood.

  The hippie claimed to have found peace, and said that freaked-out Peter Green, ‘finest British-born blues guitarist’, played on the record. ‘But he’s not freaked out any more.’

  I freaked. ‘He freaked because people like you led him up the garden path!’ I yelled.

  ‘The garden path’, said the hippie, ‘is a very real place to be.’

  I gave him one more chance. ‘And what are you doing? Giving them away?’ I pointed to the records.

  ‘No, man. They’re five pounds fifty.’

  ‘Five fifty?’

  ‘They’re good sounds.’

  I hit the hippie, and as he went down, kicked the records out of his hands and into the road where they were damaged by traffic. I laughed when the hippie tried to get his own back by biting my leg - I chopped him down. ‘Stitch that!’ I yelled, and stalked off.

  Mum died when she’d finished telling me her life story, with Bruce on her bed. He felt the moment she died. I’d gone down to make a cup of tea - the kettle was coming to the boil when he started whining. At first I thought the noise was in the water pipes, but then I heard him scratching at Mum’s bedroom door.

  I went up and he bolted past me when I opened the door - Mum was in bed with a surprised expression on her face. She’d never had a visit from a pools representative, but death must have felt like that to her. I closed her eyes, straightened the bedcovers, phoned the doctor and let Bruce into the garden, where he howled at the fence until next-door complained.

  I was chopping wood by the store shed when I heard a gunshot from the lodge. At first I thought it had come from the woods, but when the echo cracked in front and behind me, and a pane in Marjorie’s bedroom window shattered and glass rained down on the path that led to the vegetable garden, I put the axe down

  and chased into the house.

  Time slowed down, but I didn’t let it hold me back. I kicked my boots off, scared two cats away from the Rayburn and knocked a chair over. It was too hot in the kitchen, and I hadn’t washed the breakfast things.

  I never imagined that Marjorie would commit suicide. Even when I saw the gun for the first time, it didn’t occur to me that she might use it on herself. She wasn’t mentally ill. I believed her like I believed everything she said about nature.

  The previous evening, I’d told her that Sadie was happy to have the cats. When she said, ‘You could do a lot worse than that girl,’ I believed her. When she pointed at the shotgun and said, ‘The garden needs protection,’ I believed her. When she’d said, ‘Maybe you should leave and not come back,’ to Nicky, he had believed her.r />
  In times of crisis, it’s easy to notice things you hadn’t noticed before. I bolted across the hall and up the stairs - I noticed a picture on the wall by the stairs window. It was of a naked woman sitting on a chair, drying herself. The woman had her back to us; one arm was resting on the chair back while the other used a towel on her hair. The colours were white, orange and brown. Underneath, someone had written Woman Drying Herself, Degas (1834-1917). I took all this in in a moment, and then, in one bound, was standing outside Marjorie’s bedroom.

  I put my ear to the door. It was painted white. I couldn’t hear anything. I felt a line of sweat on my top lip; I wiped it away before I put my hand on the knob, took a deep breath, turned it and walked in, blinking.

  ‘Don’t you knock before entering a woman’s bedroom?’ Marjorie said. She was sitting on a chair by the window, with the gun resting on the sill.

  ‘I heard a shot!’

  ‘I told you, didn’t I? As soon as the beans are up those bloody jackdaws are down.’

  ‘Jackdaws? I didn’t see any!’

  She laughed. ‘That’s because I frightened them off!’

  ‘You frightened me.’ I pointed to the window. ‘And you broke the window.’

  She looked at it and then at the gun. She nodded. ‘I forgot. It kicks like a mule.’

  ‘Marjorie?’ I said.

  ‘Yes?’ She steadied the gun and crouched to sight along its barrel.

  ‘Be careful.’

  ‘Ha!’

  ‘Don’t laugh.’

  ‘What do you expect? Be careful!’ She shook her head. ‘I could shoot before I could walk. My father—’ There was a knock on the door downstairs.

  It was Sadie. She had been running. ‘I was in the woods! I heard a shot…’

  ‘Come in,’ I said, and when we were sitting in the kitchen, I explained. She thought it was funny.

  ‘Why does everyone think it’s funny?’ I said.

  ‘It’s not really,’ she said, but laughed again.

  ‘I was expecting to have to scrape her off the ceiling!’

  Sadie leant towards me, stroked the side of my face and kissed my lips as Marjorie shouted, ‘Who is it?’ down the stairs.

  ‘Sadie!’

  ‘Bring her up!’

  We went upstairs. The three of us sat in the bedroom with the window open and the shotgun resting on the sill. Sadie had some twigs in her hair - I reached over and picked them out.

  ‌

  ‌‌Part Four

  ‌19

  I did not expect to be affected by spring, but my thoughts turned as flowers appeared in the hedges and sheltered hollows in the forest. I didn’t mean to think about Sadie, or worry so much about Marjorie. I was there to muck in but my heart began to drip for them. I felt it at work in my chest, speeding up and reminding my brain. I tried to stop it by drinking, but that only clotted the drips, so they hung inside, swinging when I moved. When I held my hands out I couldn’t stop my fingers shaking. I couldn’t concentrate on anything for longer than a minute without either one face or the other floating by. Sometimes they came together, but didn’t look at each other, only me. Their lips moved, but I couldn’t hear what they said. I might be chopping logs, digging, mending a fence or washing up.

  Sadie had soft lips, but didn’t look athletic. She’d been closed and sad when I first saw her. I saw her come out of her shell - the more I saw her the further she came, and the more beautiful. I came to her by accident, and to love her as my heart ordered. I didn’t resist. I had never argued with it before. It had never given an inch or me a chance. It’s an old story.

  Sadie had soft lips, but you don’t have to know how soft. She said, ‘I know what you’re thinking.’

  I said, ‘How?’

  We were walking along a track that ran beneath some beech trees, dipped towards a cattle trough and then up Conegar Hill. The Colonel had told me that the last ravens in Dorset bred on Conegar Hill. I said, ‘How?’

  Sadie said, ‘I can see it in your eyes.’

  ‘What am I thinking?’ I said.

  I had been thinking about Marjorie. She was fading fast. She wanted to enjoy the sun but asked to have the curtains closed during the day. The light hurt her eyes, she said, sighing. The Colonel had come to play cards, but she wasn’t strong enough to hold a hand, so he had sat by her bed and read a story about headless men and women stalking each other. She was losing her will, but tried to concentrate.

  ‘You’re thinking about Marjorie,’ Sadie said.

  I nodded.

  Sadie had pale skin, it suited her. She’d washed her hair the night before and it blew in long brown screws around her face. Her lips were almost not pink. Wild snowdrops, primroses and daffodils grew in the hedges and spread over the fields.

  ‘I never met anyone like her,’ I said. ‘She doesn’t want to let go. I know she’s in agony, but she only complains if I fuss over her. She doesn’t complain about the pain. Sometimes I think she might be a witch. Not a bad one, though.’

  ‘A white witch…’ Sadie said.

  ‘She’s got some power, but it’s not enough.’

  ‘I wish I’d known her before.’ She shook her head. ‘You’re stupid when you’re a kid.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said.

  We crossed a tarmacked track and over a gate into a field. The path led to the top of the hill and a wood of beech, larches and Scots pine. ‘I wish I’d known you before too,’ she said.

  I felt lucky.

  When I was eight I felt lucky to have Dad. I never knew that I was the most important person in his life, but I’m glad I didn’t. I didn’t want to grow up to disappoint him.

  When I was eight, he bought two tickets to the FA Cup Final. It wasn’t a cold day, but Mum made me wear long johns. I wore one of Dad’s scarves. Before we left, we had some hot tea. Mum said she was going to put her feet up while we were gone.

  West Ham were playing Preston North End. Dad bought some cocoa outside the ground, and we sat in the car-park to drink it. Some people were eating sandwiches and arguing about Bobby Moore’s fitness (a cruel, false rumour).

  Compared to Upton Park, Wembley Stadium was a revelation. Compared to the swelling pain I began to feel in my gut, a headache was nothing. When we finished the cocoa, we had our tickets clipped, and jostled and climbed through the dark, curved tunnels that led to our seats.

  We passed a gents on the way. Dad asked me if I wanted a piss. I said, ‘No,’ casually. I didn’t mind using a urinal when I was just wearing trousers and pants, but I wasn’t showing men in there that I was wearing long johns. As we climbed the terrace to our seats, I got a stabbing in my groin - it made me wince. By the time Dad turned to look at me, I felt OK, and he looked OK - and when he looked OK I felt OK, because I loved him.

  A band was playing hymns. I sat back, but then buckled in my seat, tears came to my eyes and Dad said, ‘Are you OK?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Greg?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘What’s the matter?’ He leant over me and held my shoulders.

  I took a deep breath.

  I was determined to see us crush Preston. The pain went away. ‘I’m OK,’ I said. Dad took his hands away, and I stood up and yelled, ‘Come on, Hammers!’

  The pain came back with a vengeance as the ref blew the whistle to start the match. As I twisted in the seat tears shot into my eyes and blinded me. I screamed and slipped off the seat. I felt Dad scooping me up and carrying me away, down the terrace and back to the tunnels beneath the seats, where the noise of the crowd was hollow and frightening.

  Then I was in a St John’s Ambulance room where no one knew what the matter was. My belly was tight and swollen. Someone called for an ambulance. Dad carried me out. There was a big nurse called Gladys who held my hand and patted Dad’s arm. She had to be careful where she sat, so she didn’t overbalance the ambulance.

  At the hospital, no one knew what was wrong with me. Doctors came and felt me, I
had a blood sample taken, I was X-rayed and embarrassed. When I buckled with pain, the doctors stood back and observed me carefully and then whispered to each other. Dad kept a hand on me all the time. His face was white and his eyes shiny.

  Eventually, someone decided that my gut had got twisted somehow. Dad asked if I could have something for the pain. A nurse fetched a pill, and then I was put in a quiet room where he held my hand while the doctors went to an office to discuss me. He didn’t know what to do. The corners of his mouth quivered. We could hear the match on a radio somewhere above us, but no details.

  There was five minutes to play when I felt something relax inside me and I asked to have a piss. Dad helped me off the bed and sat me on a toilet behind a curtain. I waited for a moment before pissing for about three minutes. The relief was unbelievable. My belly went down like a burst balloon and as I finished we heard a great roar from the radio, and a doctor came into the quiet room. Dad smiled, explained and said, ‘I think he was embarrassed to take his long johns down in the gents.’

  The doctor joked, ‘I would be too!’

  I looked at the doctor. I took Dad’s hand and he led me out of the hospital. West Ham 3, Preston North End 2. Dad never said he didn’t mind missing the only chance he ever had to see the Hammers win the FA Cup - maybe luck had nothing to do with it.

  If luck has nothing to do with it, and ‘romantic’ means anything, I thought it was romantic on Conegar Hill, but Sadie didn’t. As we approached the wood, she stopped suddenly as a loud, mocking laugh rang out of the pines. ‘Hear that?’ she said.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Ravens.’

  We stood by a hedge and listened to them call. In the field below us, a woman in a raincoat was checking sheep. There was no telling, I thought, what would happen at any turn down any road. Across the valley behind and below us, a continuous stream of traffic wound its way along the A35. We were all killing the world, so I didn’t blame anybody then. Put the blame on anyone and you put it on yourself. You can’t do everything by yourself, so you can’t do anything - like for us, there is no solution, only extinction.