by Sarah Moss
ALONE ON A HILLSIDE IN JAPAN
Despite the tightly shuttered windows, despite feeling unable to use his alarm clock in a place where only paper screens divide one sleeper from another, Tom manages to wake early. Kneeling on his futon, feeling with his fingers to edge back the screen and then the shutter to hold his watch to a trickle of grey light in the blacked-out room, he sees that it is five o’clock. If he can move quietly enough, he has an hour and a half to himself after three days of sharing a cabin with Makoto. After three weeks, now, in which there have been periods of a few hours when he cannot see another person but no time at all in which he cannot both hear and be heard. Europeans do not know, he thinks, that there is a form of solitude for each sense, nor what luxury it is to have all five every night. Not, of course, that he does not look forward to sharing his nights with Ally, but it has already occurred to him more than once that a part of the art of marriage must be to learn to see solitude in its double form.
He left his clothes arranged in order on the floor beside him last night, to make this easier. He sits on the edge of the futon to take off his pyjamas, and locates his drawers and the drawstring at the front of his drawers, trousers and their buttons, socks. Undershirt and then shirt. His hand knocks against the screen’s wooden strut as he reaches through the sleeve and the heavy breathing on the other side, Makoto’s breathing, pauses. He must be sleeping right against the screen. Tom holds his breath and Makoto grunts, settles.
In the porch, shoes back on his feet at last, he can’t move the sliding front door. It rocks a little but won’t shift and suddenly he wants to kick it, put his big white fist through a paper wall: must it be so hard for a grown man to take a walk before breakfast? He steps back, drops his shoulders. The door is only bolted, an ingenious arrangement that would indeed make it impossible to open from the outside but perfectly straightforward from here. He thinks again about Makoto making the opposite journey, learning that there are other ways of opening and closing doors, of putting food in one’s mouth, of urinating and defecating. It is no wonder the Japanese are so keen on European engineering and medicine; the laws of physics and biology seem to be the only constants between nations and even then, Makoto has assured him, in many cases Japanese medicines work well on Japanese bodies. Supporting as much of the door’s weight between his fingers as he can lest it squeak or rumble, Tom closes it and finds himself at last alone.
The sun has risen behind the hill, but the forest around the house is still in deep shade, and the grass heavy with dew. Nothing is awake, he thinks, hearing only trees breathing in the wind, and behind them, the slow heartbeat of the Japan Sea, but as he moves away from the house, as the woods close around him, a bird calls above his head, and then another answers. Although he means to walk, even to swim, he stands still as a spy while the forest resumes its conversation: more bird-talk, high in the canopy and at his own height in the undergrowth, something small rustling near at hand and something bigger further away. There is a drift of spice in the morning air, like cinnamon or nutmeg, and the suggestion of heavy flowers. Lilies or orchids, funeral flowers that don’t grow outside in England. The forest floor is blanketed with last year’s half-composted leaves, a lattice of fallen branches interwoven with shrubs. Tom picks his way over to a pathway leading inland, uphill.
Threading the trees, the path is barely wide enough for one person and it winds so he can’t see more than a few tree trunks ahead. He wanted a vista, somewhere to stand back and take a wider view, but this is like pushing through hundreds of the half-curtains, his gaze repeatedly veiled. Still, someone has made a path so it must lead to something. There may be a summit, an achievement. He speeds up, feels a flush of sweat across his back and tightening in his thighs. Good. The bamboo leans over the path, meets above his head, and dark fronds reach down to brush his face. If it gets much narrower, he thinks, he will have to turn back, but he knows he won’t. And then over the drumming of blood in his ears and the hiss of bamboo leaves, he hears a more purposeful sound. There is someone else, or something else, moving on the hillside, something that pushes through vegetation. He stops. He had forgotten that there are bears. We always carry a bell, Makoto said, because bears prefer to avoid humans unless they are starving or the human is near a cub, but they will attack if they are surprised. The creature is getting nearer. He should shout, he supposes, or sing, but the instinct to hide is too strong. Tom freezes, barely breathing, willing his heart itself to beat more softly. The bamboo beside the path ahead bows and waves wildly, and then the bear (or boar, or wolf, or maybe person) stops also. Perhaps it can hear his respiration, his circulation, the seep of sweat in his pores and the shedding of dust from his skin. Perhaps it can smell him. They wait, Tom and the other. They breathe, listen. And then the bamboo flattens and he catches—maybe—a glimpse of a dark flank as the thing lumbers away. He leans on the green canes, breathing loud now and fast, black blood bounding behind his eyes. His vision blurs, but perhaps it was just a monkey, a Japanese macaque, or a badger (are there badgers in Japan?). He is unhurt, anyway, well and strong and alone on a hillside in Japan. After a moment, hearing the birdsong again and the bamboo sighing in the breeze, he continues, as if the creature’s turning away were a kind of acceptance, as if it is all right for him to be here now.
The bamboo ends, and now he can see down through the trees, and up through more trees. He crosses the curve of the hill, the sun warm on his shoulders. Steps lead up through the wood, stone steps so high that sometimes he has to brace his hands on his knee to pull himself up. They go on, up out of sight, and he follows although it is really time, high time, he was turning back to the house and Makoto and the day’s work. There, at least, there will be achievement, measurable change; the building is almost complete and the lenses sent from England ahead of his coming wait in their boxes. Some things are the same, gravity and light. Some things do here exactly what they do at home. He is not obliged to creep through the woods in search of something to understand. He chooses it.
There are a hundred and five, or maybe four, steps, and over the last few stand wooden arches like the letter pi. He comes panting, red faced, into a clearing, and is on top of the hill, looking down over the treetops towards the house, whose shutters are now open, and the beach where turquoise waves spread themselves on white sand, and the headland where the waves are darker and bounce glistening against the cliff and from the rocks that now, at low tide, are plain to see, at least by daylight and on a clear day. Stone figures stand around Tom, and in the centre of the clearing is a wooden building with an open veranda. He approaches the sculptures. The further ones are no more than slabs of rock set on end, rounded and smoothed by years of wind and rain, but in this company their curves suggest shoulders, waists. The nearer figures have stone draperies, or perhaps a form of armour, head-dresses shaped like bishops’ mitres and snarling, caricature expressions on their stone faces. Someone has tied cloths around the necks of several, apparently at intervals over many months because the some are wisps and rags where others are only tattered and faded. It was a considerable act of faith, he thinks, to carry such stones through the forest and up a hundred stairs. He imagines women climbing up here to give scarves and bibs to these idols, priests struggling through winter weather to conduct ceremonies here where the outline of the whole island is laid out. He takes the clean handkerchief from his pocket, one of the ones on which his mother embroidered his initials when he first went to university, bows to one of the scowling gods and knots the linen square firmly around its neck. He resists the urge to back away from their presence as he leaves the temple.
A BASKET OF BLACKBERRIES
She is trying to decide whether to light the range when someone knocks on the door. With her shawl, she is only a little cold, nothing a brisk walk wouldn’t remedy, and no one needs tea when there is good clean water to drink. But the laundry has been hanging damp in the house for two days, and she has learnt that on the third day clothes
begin to smell of mildew and by the fourth it is necessary to wash them and begin the cycle again. She must not use the requirements of efficient housekeeping to justify or excuse her self-indulgent desire for the pleasure of warmth. If you had done the laundry earlier in the week, Mamma would say, if you had not made tiredness an excuse for procrastination on Tuesday, it could all have dried outside on Wednesday morning and you would not find yourself wishing to waste Tom’s money on coals now. Oh be quiet, she thinks. She bores herself, sometimes, with these spirals of guilt and obligation, with the waste of time and effort. She remembers Aunt Mary telling her that Mamma is a difficult woman, that Ally and Tom’s happiness will depend on Ally’s ability to exercise her own judgement rather than deferring to Mamma’s ideas. And she has exercised her own judgement, has she not? She has married Tom, and here she is in Falmouth. Listening to the ravings of madwomen instead of helping those whose need—whoever it is, he or she is coming round to the back door, over the loose drain-cover in the passage way. The seagull squatting on the roof tiles above announces her. A plump woman in mourning, a stranger.
‘Mrs. Cavendish?’ The woman rests her umbrella against her shoulder and holds out her right hand. She is older than Ally, dark hair brindled with grey tucked under a black straw hat, her black skirt darkened by rain. Her hand is warm and dry. She smiles. ‘I am Mrs. Cummings.’
Mrs. Cummings? Ally’s Falmouth acquaintance is so small that it is scarcely possible that she has forgotten someone.
‘The vicar’s wife. Miss De Rivers suggested that I should call on you, and indeed I have tried several times. You are often from home.’
A charitable visit. She is to be the object of concern. Of Miss De Rivers’s concern. She does not usher in Mrs. Cummings.
‘In that case it is kind of you to persist. I work in Truro most days.’ She does not wish to mention the asylum.
Mrs. Cummings nods. ‘You are a trained nurse, Miss De Rivers tells me.’ Rain drips from her umbrella onto Ally’s skirt.
‘A doctor.’ Ally pulls herself together. ‘Mrs. Cummings, if you wish to shelter from the rain you are most welcome to come in, but whatever Miss de Rivers may have suggested, you need not add me to your doubtless onerous list of parish visits. I am sure you have many more serious demands on your time.’
Mrs. Cummings looks away, at the water running along the channel in the slate paving at her feet. ‘Indeed, Mrs. Cavendish, there is much need in Falmouth and that is part of the reason for my call. It is not my habit to press myself upon those who worship elsewhere. But I wished also to tell you that there are many wives, from all walks of life, living alone in this town while their husbands are away at sea, and therefore many societies and clubs where you would find a warm welcome and much sympathy for your position. Either I or Miss De Rivers would be pleased to furnish you with introductions, should you care for them.’
Ally must look to them like an ordinary woman, like someone who can join a club and find things to say to other people.
‘You are kind to think of me, Mrs. Cummings. You and Miss De Rivers. But in truth I have no gift for such gatherings, and find my time quite filled by my professional obligations.’ She swallows. Here, in Mrs. Cummings, is the straight road to the work she once promised Mamma and May that she would do. Here is what her sponsors always expected of her. Welfare work. Healing the poor and helpless. ‘But Mrs. Cummings, should you ever find in your parish work that there is urgent need for medical assistance, perhaps where there is no means to pay, you may always call upon me.’
Mrs. Cummings turns her umbrella. ‘Do you mean to say, Mrs. Cavendish, that you are really a doctor? That you are qualified to practice? I have read, of course, of women students, but I had not thought—well, it is a surprising idea.’
Ally steps back. She will, she thinks, light the fire after all. And make herself a pot of tea. ‘If there is ever need, you may summon me. Good afternoon, Mrs. Cummings.’
The rain blows up the river, leaving the air washed under a pale sky. Warmed by Aunt Mary’s lapsang souchong, Ally rearranges the clothes on the airer, closes the range and sets out for a walk. Wasting your time in self-indulgence, hisses Mamma. But she has not been sleeping well, she argues, and outdoor exercise would always be the first prescription for insomnia. She takes the basket, in case of blackberries. If she goes out around Pendennis Head, along Invalid’s Walk and then right along the coast to Maenporth, by the time she comes home it will be falling dark, the questions about how to use her time solved for another day. She will write to Tom, who will like to hear about the coast and the hedgerows, and maybe also to Annie, to whom she could perhaps confide something of her troubles, of the way Mamma’s voice always in her head becomes louder and angrier now she is so much alone. Enough. She will not think of Mamma now, with shadows coalescing around buildings and plants under her very eyes as the sun strengthens, with the tide so high against Flushing pier that the passengers leaving the ferry can step down onto the dock and now with the waves beginning to sparkle. The fields have been ploughed, and the great beech and oak trees above Flushing beach are turning. Autumn is here, the northern hemisphere leaning away from the sun, the first season of Tom’s absence, and when those fields are harvested again he will be home. To every thing there is a season, she thinks. Ecclesiastes was not one of Mamma’s preferred books, but even so Ally’s mind supplies more of the verse: A time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which has been planted . . . He hath made everything beautiful in his time. And although she stopped attending church after May died, there is consolation in the words. Here is beauty in time, in the turning of the trees, the rising and falling of the water, in the slow breathing of this land.
She did not bother to unfasten her hair and brush it all out yesterday. It is not as if anyone sees her on her day off. And now, watching the sweeps of her brush in the mirror, she cannot quite recall why it is necessary to primp oneself before visiting the asylum. The patients, in their arbitrary dress and sewn-up hair, will hardly observe a dishevelled chignon. The nurses’ objections to her presence go far beyond any niceties of presentation. Perhaps, she finds herself thinking, the asylum may be a rare place where a person’s physical appearance, even a woman’s plainness, is truly of no moment. A place where only the mind matters. She shakes her head, and then catches herself in the mirror, head waggling, mouth crammed with hairpins, alone in a silent house and reflecting that a lunatic asylum might offer forms of sanity missing from the wider world. It is not an impossible idea, certainly not an impossible ambition; one might even argue that since the wider world drives some of its citizens to madness, an asylum for their cure should by definition be run on healthier lines than the rest of society. Even so, she thinks, even so. Usually she would make a plait and then tie knots with it until the knobble of hair is short enough to pin up. Her fingers hesitate. No. Today, for the asylum, for the patients, she will do it properly, as Annie taught her.
The post has not yet come. She will still catch her train if she leaves in five minutes, if, for example, she sweeps the kitchen floor now rather than leaving it for her return. If she puts that stocking into the mending basket, and shakes the dust out of Tom’s knitted blanket covering the landlord’s garish armchair in the sitting room. She takes the blanket out into the garden, an armful of dusty wool that she should have noticed earlier. The mizzle has come back, but between the houses she can still see across the water. Only the Flushing ferry is moving. The sailing boats hang broken-winged on the flat sea. There are many reasons, of course, why a letter would be delayed. She unfurls the blanket, thousands of stitches representing hundreds of hours of Tom’s mother’s time. It is probable that she thought of all of those reasons the year May died.
‘Let me take your brolly, Doctor,’ says William. ‘We’ve maybe had the last of the sunshine now. Be like this till spring.’
Ally shakes her umbrella—Tom’s umbrella—over the doorstep before furling it. �
��But it’s warm enough for the time of year.’ Soon be Christmas, she thinks. What on earth will she do for Christmas? Perhaps she will offer to join the patients for dinner. It will be a hard day, for those who remember.
‘And your basket, Doctor?’
‘Thank you, William, but I’ll keep that.’ She is suddenly embarrassed. Perhaps this was a foolish idea.
He smiles at her. ‘Just so you’ve not got the keys in it, Doctor.’
She rattles her skirt. ‘In my pocket as always.’
All the nurses and even Dr. Crosswyn carry keys on a chain around their necks, like some kind of primitive jewellery or medal, a heavy badge of sanity. If Ally were a patient, she thinks, she would not like to speak with people who were forever jangling the keys of her confinement on their bosoms.
She starts with Ward Two, saving Four for later. Mary Vincent, the nurse says, weeps frequently, for no apparent reason. She ate nothing until she was told she must be force-fed and saw another patient undergo the procedure, and now it requires only a reminder of that sight to persuade her to take nourishment. Ally frowns; it is true that there are a very few patients who would apparently starve to death without such treatment, but she sees no one here in any danger of such an end. What’s more of a problem, says the nurse, is that Mary Vincent touches herself, and not only in bed at night either. And her so young! It doesn’t help that Mrs. Minhinnet talks as she does, the filthiest things the nurse has heard yet and she’s been here ten years. God knows where she learnt such things.
