by Peter Benson
I did not run, but we did move quickly, and when we reached the hackney, I ordered the driver to whip his horse into a sweat, for we had an appointment to keep. I did not have to repeat the instruction, and although we moved fast and faster still, I felt like a man on a slow winter railway train, leaning forward, pressing his nose against the glass, looking out at the cold and wondering how anyone can live out there, so alone and lost in dreams that have bought the wrong ticket. Lights burning in the daytime. Clothes frozen on a line, a cat picking its way along a wall. Snow. Trees, houses and a stream of fury bursting over the heads of anyone who saw us. Listening to the sounds of the tracks, watching my reflection on the glass, looking through the reflection, turning away. The smell of old food. The end of things and loneliness that drills into your heart and will not turn back. And as we crossed the river, I wished I was still a pleased book valuer with comfortable rooms and pictures on the wall. I wished I still believed in reason. I wished these things, but all my wishes crashed and the pieces scattered. I saw them spread out before me, every one drifting away in a suspension of its own solution. Isabel sat next to me and I looked ahead, looked at her, and she turned her head. It was impossible now, and there was only one thing we could do. Her scales glittered, the yellows glowed and the browns deepened, and as her eyes grew bigger than dishes they reflected mine, and I saw all my fears bound by her.
Norfolk
A few weeks after his retirement, about a year before I was asked to value the Buff-Orpington collection, I do not know how long after my mother was killed, my father invited me to his new home in Canterbury. We sat in his sitting room. He looked tired and bent, and could not concentrate on anything. The salvation of archery was to come, and the sooth of the butts and targets. The cathedral bells chimed the hour and, after drumming his fingers on the mantelpiece and sighing at the empty fireplace, he gave me a sealed envelope. It contained the deed to the little wooden house in Norfolk. It was in my name. He said he had bought the place when my mother was alive and it had been their intention to move there one day. Now he said, “I want you to try and find the happiness we never could.”
“Thank you.” This was barely adequate, but I said it anyway.
“I never want to see the place again.”
“Why not?”
Saying “Why not?” to my father was not something he encouraged, but now, with Dover behind him and boxes of possessions in the hall, he began to relax and showed me a side to his nature I had not seen before. He told me that until my mother’s death he had lived a devout and pious life, but after the accident had suffered a loss of faith that left him shocked and on the verge of serious melancholy. “We were so very close, David,” he said. “Words like love are bandied about too easily, but I believe we truly loved each other. I was guilty…”
“Of what?”
“I should have sought consolation in my faith, done as I preached, but I took my grief out on the church, my parishioners…” He looked me straight in the eye, and I looked back at him, again, something he had never encouraged. “And I may have taken it out on you.”
“No you didn’t.”
He looked at me, shook his enormous head and said, “I think I did. In fact, I know I did. I didn’t understand.”
I did not argue. There was no point as he sat there wearing a plain collar for the first time in decades, and I sat with the deed to the place in Norfolk resting on my lap and the sound of the river running beside the house. I stood up, went to the boxes in the hall and carried one of them upstairs, while he made a jug of lemonade and opened a packet of his favourite biscuits.
Isabel and I caught a train to Norwich, and I hired a horse and gig from a man who knew my father from the old days. It was late afternoon when we left his stables and took the road over the flat lands to the coast. I drove fast, but it was not fast enough for us. Isabel was cold, and although I had wrapped her in every blanket I could carry, she shivered as she dozed. The evening crept up on us, so by the time we reached the head of the track that leads to the place, the way was moonlit. But the horse was sure, and I could see the ruts, and when the house came into view, I pulled over, stopped the cart, and as the horse heaved, the noise of the marshes grew around us and the place rustled its beautiful sound.
“Home,” I said, and we sat for five minutes, and listened and tipped our heads back.
She climbed down first, and I showed her the way through the gate, down the thin garden, over the lawn, past the bushes, the borders and the pond with the statue of a dog.
I climbed the steps to the veranda, unlocked the door and let it swing back on its hinges. The smell of oranges and dust and stale wine drifted out.
We stepped inside, and while I lit candles, she stood by the kitchen table and sniffed. She went to one of the side windows, looked out and touched the curtains. She turned and at first I thought she was going to cry, but then the twitches in her mouth turned up and she whispered, “I love this place.”
“Good,” I said.
“It’s as beautiful as you said.”
“I know,” I said, and I laid the fire.
She went to the bedroom, came back, stepped outside and said, “Can I hear the sea?”
“Yes.” I pointed. “It’s over there.”
“Where’s the nearest village?”
“A couple of miles that way.”
The fire started to blaze, and I hung a kettle over the flames while she sat at the table and picked at a splinter of wood.
“Are you all right?”
She carried on picking until the splinter broke off. She turned it over in her fingers, then looked in my eyes and said, “Did I kill him?”
“He was breathing when we left.”
“He deserves to die.”
Half of me did not want to agree, but the rest did, so I nodded and said, “Maybe he did. Maybe.”
“He did.”
I nodded, but there was no time to say anything else. I had to stable and water and feed the horse.
When the sun set, the sky bowled over the marshes and lit up with gashes of orange and pink. A flock of curlews flew to their roosts. A chill hit the air, but Isabel wanted to sit on the veranda. I wrapped her in blankets, carried her outside, put her in a chair, draped an eiderdown over the chair, put a scarf around her neck and a woollen hat on her head. I sat next to her. After supper she had felt sick and needed some of her potion. I injected her, she slept for an hour and then she wanted to smell the sea. She took deep breaths and rustled in the blankets.
As we settled down, a long, low boom echoed across the marshes, hung in the air and faded away. Another came, closer, and then the first again, like someone blowing across the top of a bottle. Isabel sat up, turned and said “What’s that?”
“A bittern. It’s a bird.”
“I know what a bittern is.” The second called and the first answered.
“They sound like something else.”
“They’re very shy.”
Boom.
“What are they doing?”
“Calling to their mates.”
Boom.
We listened to the sound, and as the dusk’s breeze blew, the marshes began to whisper. I thought about telling her more about bitterns and how they stab rivals to death with their beaks, and each has its own call and they walk by grasping the reeds with their toes and using them as stilts because they hate getting their feet wet, but she said, “Have you got a kite?”
“No.”
“That’s a pity.”
“Why?”
“I’d like to fly one. Do you like them?”
I nodded. “I used to fly them on the cliffs. The white cliffs of Dover. Shall I buy one?”
“Yes please,” she said, so first thing in the morning, while she sat up in bed and drank tea, I rode into Sheringham. The lady in the shop remembered me from years before, asked after my father, and said she thought my house needed a coat of paint. “We were down that way last month,” she said, “a
nd I hope you don’t think we were prying, but we did have a little look over the garden gate, and Henry noticed the way the wood was showing through. I know he’d be happy to do the work for you.”
“Let me think about it,” I said, and while she served another customer, I chose a red kite with a long tail. After another conversation about the importance of proper house maintenance, I left the shop and crossed the road to the second-hand bookshop. I could not help myself.
I scanned the shelves quickly and was disappointed. I found a worn two-volume encyclopedia of British birds, but most of the stock was the stock you see in every second-hand bookshop: scuffed books waiting for strangers, frightened, lonely books, lost in nothing but their own stories. And here and there a book with an unbroken spine, an unread story, the saddest thing in the world. Gasping words and wheezing sentences, vain clauses, deluded characters screaming for someone, anyone – be with me, please. Listen to me. Hear my voice. I am here. Fading in a dusty row at the edge of the country with no one but Mrs Price, the biggest gin drinker in Norfolk, for company. Biographers, novelists, poets, travel writers waiting for luck or nothing. I bought the two volumes of birds and then rode back, and when Isabel was dressed and ready we left the house and walked through the marshes.
Pure daylight changed the look of her skin. It did not seem so shiny. The yellow was paler and the browns not so deep. When we reached the beach she ran to the tide line, waited for a wave and raced it. The shingle rustled and a good breeze blew off the sea. There were a few other people walking there, so we headed towards Blakeney Point, and when we reached an empty place where the beach flattened, I asked Isabel to hold the kite while I walked away and unravelled the line. I was about to tell her to let go when the wind gusted, ripped it out of her hands and spun it into the air.
It rose quickly, and as I played the line out she ran towards me and yelled, “Let me fly it!”
I have no idea what a good kite-flyer looks like, but I think she was one. She had an instinctive feeling for what the thing was going to do next. When it started to dip, she twitched the line and pulled it back, gave out another yard and let it soar. Then she dropped her hands and it made a huge circle in the sky – the tail whizzed, she unravelled another yard and it climbed again.
“I used to fly kites!” she yelled. The wind whistled and shingle raced back with the tide. “On Stonebarrow!” Her voice ripped away and strips came down. “We used to send messages up the string!”
“Who for?”
“For the angels!”
“Did they read them?”
“Of course!” And she dropped her hands and let it whizz again, and the tail thrummed as it dived towards the beach.
“What did they say?”
“Hello!”
“Hello?”
“That’s what we used to say.”
“Who’s we?”
“Simon and me. My brother.”
“And did they send an answer?”
“Never!” she said, and she spun on her heels, dropped the line behind her back and watched the kite swoop left, right and drop and climb again.
We flew the kite for an hour. We played out all the line and, as we watched, some gulls came and dived at it for a few minutes, then lost interest and flew away. Her arms got tired easily, so we took turns, and when she had had enough she sat on the sand and watched me. I tried to do some tricks, but failed and began to reel it in. When it lost air it dropped and dived into the beach, flapped, somersaulted and died on the shingle.
I reeled in the string. She took my arm and we walked back to the house, over the dunes and through the reeds, and I propped the kite next to the front door.
“Yes…” she said.
“Yes what?” We sat on the veranda.
“This is the place.”
“What do you mean?”
“This is the place…”
“Yes?”
“I can die here.”
“You can what?”
“I think you heard me.”
I did not raise my voice, but felt a rush of anger, pushed it back, stamped on it and kicked it into the corner. “You’re not going to die, Isabel.”
“I think I am. I think I will. I was thinking about it yesterday. And this is the perfect place to do it.”
“What do you mean?” “Don’t be foolish, David.” “I’m not being foolish.”
“It doesn’t suit you. Think about it. I’ve got nine phials left.” She pointed at the case. “Whatever happens, I’ll run out by next week and then…” She took one out and held it to the light. “And then…”
I remembered the sound of two violins in a song I know, a sound of such longing and melancholy I used to hear it playing in my mind when I went to sleep, and wake up with it still playing.
“What are you thinking?”
“I think…”
“Yes?” She folded her arms and bent her head towards me.
“I think my friend William will have the answer. He’ll tell me what’s in those phials, and know how to make some more.” I touched her face and ran my fingers over her lips.
“Professor Hunt…” she said. “He was a genius. Is William a genius?”
“I don’t think so.”
“No?” she said on the veranda of the house with the birds singing in the marshes and the kite flapping against the propped door.
“No.”
“Then I don’t think he’ll have any answer at all.”
We went inside, and she sat down while I stoked the fire. Then I made some tea, and while it brewed we listened to the wind and the gentle sucking of the ground, and I thought about how the reeds were like bars to our lives, keeping us safe and holding us in, and leaving us wanting nothing.
Isabel dozed, and after she had eaten an apple, she washed and went to bed. She put her head round the door and whispered, “Good night.” Her skin looked flat, like land as dusk whines across the horizon and birds call. I held my arm up and said “Yes”, and then sat back with a volume of my new encyclopedia. The engravings were very beautiful, but when I started to read the text, my eyes began to swim. I had started to wonder if I should buy a pair of reading glasses when she called my name. I went in to see her. She was sitting up, staring straight ahead and rubbing the scales on her arms. I said, “I thought you were asleep.”
She shook her head and said, “I was thinking about what you said.”
“What did I say?”
“You know.”
“Do I?”
“Yes. And I was thinking about something else.”
“What?”
She ran her fingers up her arms to her neck and stroked her chin. “If I wasn’t like this…” Her voice trailed away.
“Yes?”
“Would you?”
“Would I what?”
“You know,” she said.
“No,” I said, “I don’t know. Tell me.”
“Would you want to walk out with me?”
I did not have to think about it. “Yes,” I said, and as I said the word, she let the eiderdown slip down, looked at the patterns on her stomach and drew a figure of eight around her breasts with her fingers. “Sometimes I think I could love this skin, be proud of it. Show it to people and not care what they think. Then I think I’m mad.”
“You’re not mad.”
“Not even a bit?”
“No.”
She let the eiderdown fall to her waist. She pointed at a place on her thigh where yellow and brown scales alternated in a spiral. “This is my favourite part. I think it’s like a flower.”
I sat on the edge of the bed and looked at it. She took my hand and pulled it towards her leg and laid it over the spiral. I said, “Can you feel?”
She nodded, shifted to one side of the bed and said, “You can get in.”
“I’m not sure.”
“Why not?”
“Because… because it’s not made for two people. We’ll break it.”
“Please�
�” she said.
There was nothing I could say, so I got into bed, put my arm around her and she put her head on my shoulder. When I kissed the brown oblong that crossed her forehead, tears appeared in her eyes and ran down her cheeks. She felt cold and dry, and I found a place where a couple of scales were peeling away. I licked my finger and rubbed them down.
She said, “You’re a kind man.”
“Sssh.”
“But you are.”
“I don’t feel kind.”
“What do you feel?”
“Difficult,” I said. “I don’t know. A week ago I felt fine. I was pleased with myself. Good job, nice rooms. A few friends…”
“And now?”
“Something’s changed.” I looked down at her. “You know that. But it’s more than anything obvious, you know, because of this.” I touched the scales around her eyes.
“Who are your friends?”
“There are a few people at work.”
“Anyone special?”
“I’ve got an old friend from university. Timothy. We go drinking sometimes, but most of the time I like my own company too much. My own company and these…” I pointed to a shelf of books.
“What’s your favourite book?”
“To read?”
“What else would you do with a book?”
“In my profession there are a hundred things you can do with a book.”
“Like what?”
“You don’t have to read to enjoy them. You can stare at them. Value them. Touch them. Catalogue them. Stroke them. If you’re a barbarian, you can even tear out pages and frame them.”
