Spring Tide

by Chris Beckett

  Anxiety eats at her constantly, and almost literally so, for it’s anxiety that burns up the calories and makes her so painfully thin. But Aunt Angelica is much too proud to ever speak of fear, and so she talks instead about irritation and displeasure, about feelings trampled, and rights infringed.

  ‘You don’t have to see him, though, Aunty,’ I point out. ‘He’ll stay downstairs. He won’t call on you. Remember we agreed that with him? He won’t disturb you in any way.’

  My aunt lowers her cup, her large eyes bright, her large lips curling in patrician scorn.

  ‘He won’t call on me, you say? Oh really, is that so? Honestly, David, how can I be expected to believe that, in view of the history? Have you forgotten that he once came right up here – right up! – expecting to be invited in?’

  ‘Yes he did, but that was five years ago. And I spoke to him afterwards, if you remember. I explained to him that you didn’t like it, and that you wanted to be left alone. If you recall, he was very apologetic. He told me that he was just trying to be friendly, as he is with his other three tenants, and he hadn’t understood how you felt. And, as you know, he promised faithfully he’d never do it again.’

  ‘“Oh Angelica! Angelica!”’ Angelica distorts her whole face as she mocks Dr Hodgson’s soft voice, making it sound not just mild and tentative, as it certainly is in reality, but weak and wheedling too. ‘“I wondered if I might pop in for a chat?” And it was three years ago, anyway. Get your facts right, David. Three years, nine months and twenty days, to be exact.’

  ‘Okay, three years then, Aunt Angelica. That’s still a long time. And that was all he said. He didn’t come into the flat. He didn’t ask anything of you. And when you told him to go, he went. It’s just that he owns the house, and he thought it was a shame that you and he couldn’t be on friendly terms as you used to be. It’s not as if —’

  ‘It’s not as if what? It’s not as if he ever returned my feelings? Is that what you’re going to say? That it was all in my head? Ha! Some chance, David! Some chance! By all means believe that if it makes you happy, but he and I both know that’s a lie, even if he’s not man enough to admit it! That man was positively slavering over me, David, positively slavering! But he’s had his chance, and he’s not getting another.’

  Angelica laughs grimly.

  ‘And then of course there was that time I heard him shouting. Do you remember? Shouting and crying down there, late at night, all by himself.’

  ‘He apologised for that too, if you remember. You asked me to speak to him and he apologised. He’s only human, Aunt Angelica. Life is hard for him as it is for most of us. He was upset with himself about something and he started shouting. It wasn’t aimed at you. It was about something else entirely.’

  ‘Or so he says, anyway. Or so he says. I’m not quite so trusting as you are, David, I’m afraid. Not so trusting at all. But who cares anyway? I don’t want him here, and there’s an end to it. If he’s really got business in this town, which I very much doubt, why can’t he just stay in a hotel?’

  ‘But like I keep saying, it’s his house. If you really don’t want anything to do with him, you could move somewhere else yourself, but you’ve always —’

  ‘You’re always nagging me to move, aren’t you? Somewhere cheaper, perhaps, is that the idea? So I won’t use up your inheritance?’

  This is a preposterous charge. There’s absolutely no chance of her finding anything cheaper than her present flat, whose rent hasn’t increased for a decade, but there’s no point in my saying that, so I keep quiet.

  ‘This may be his house,’ Angelica adds, ‘but it’s my home.’ She must know that the thing about my inheritance is nonsense. She has very little money, and will have none before she’s through. ‘Why should I move out because of him?’

  When I next visit, Angelica is fretful.

  ‘When will he arrive? You must tell me, David. I must know in advance, so I can be quite sure I won’t have anything whatever to do with him.’

  She gives a characteristic sniff, contemptuous and haughty. My aunt seldom ventures beyond the door of her flat, but she acts like the queen of the world.

  ‘Not that I won’t know anyway,’ she adds. ‘You are your mother’s son, David, completely rhinocerosskinned, and you don’t have my sensitivity at all. But I can feel things, and I always sense his presence through the floor. The weight of him plodding around, and those big slow clunky thoughts going round and round in his head!’

  ‘Listen, Angelica. Listen. You mustn’t distress yourself, but he —’

  ‘He’s what? He’s what? Oh dear God, David, you’re not telling me he’s here already?’

  ‘Yes, he arrived when —’

  ‘He’s here and you didn’t tell me! How could you! How could —’

  She breaks off. She is so transparent. It’s just occurred to her that, if she admits to not knowing he’s here already, she’ll be undermining her own claim to be able to detect his presence and sense his thoughts.

  ‘Yes, of course, of course,’ she says crossly. ‘I can feel him down there now. That heaviness. Those heavy thoughts going round and round and leading nowhere. I noticed them earlier. But you’d specifically promised me that you’d tell me in advance and so I’d persuaded myself I must be wrong.’

  She’s very agitated now and gets up to fetch her cigarettes from the dresser, fumbling one out of the packet, lighting it, drawing deeply and then laying it down in the glass ashtray that always sits beside her on its slightly grubby doily. Almost straight away she begins to take another cigarette out of the packet, and then remembers the first one. Another person might be amused by her own absent-minded mistake, but Angelica never laughs at herself. She pushes the second cigarette back into the pack, and tosses it crossly down.

  ‘He arrived in the early hours,’ I tell her. ‘You were probably still asleep. He won’t disturb you, and very soon he’ll go out.’

  ‘What time will he go out? I must know what time. And the time he’s coming back as well. I often look out of the window, you know. Often. It’s my view, my peaceful view, and he’s no right to spoil it by making me worry that I might see him there.’

  I look out of Angelica’s window myself sometimes, when I find myself alone in the living room – it is a lovely view, and I always admire those rows of blue slate roofs, climbing the hillside opposite – but I’ve never once seen my aunt look out for the pleasure of it. The only occasions I’ve ever observed her pull back the curtains is when she hears some noise in the street below, some potential threat. She has no resources spare for mere curiosity. She is in a permanent state of emergency. Everything is in the service of defence.

  ‘I’ve already got the times,’ I tell her.

  Knowing how she’d fuss, I spoke to him earlier on the phone. It was extremely embarrassing, asking my aunt’s landlord to spell out the precise times when he would leave and return to his own house, but of course he was as gentle as ever.

  ‘I’m so sorry that Angelica and I have had this misunderstanding, David. It seems to cause her so much distress. I really do assure you that I only ever intended to offer her my friendship, but in my clumsy way, I somehow gave her the wrong impression. And then, when I tried to put her straight, I got that wrong as well. I really am so sorry. I’d ask you to pass on my apologies but, from what you tell me, that would only upset the situation even more.’

  ‘And he mustn’t look up,’ Angelica adds. ‘When he comes in and goes out he must not look up! Do you understand? David, answer me! Do – you – understand?’

  Why do I put up with this? Why do I keep coming here to be bullied by my mother’s mad sister, who never asks me a single thing about myself, and never wonders, even for a moment, whether I might have worries or troubles of my own? Am I really doing this out of altruism and family feeling, or am I just submitting to her power?

  For she is powerful, that’s the strange thing. Angelica is so utterly terrified of the world that she doesn’t le
ave her flat for months on end. And yet, somehow, she still wields enormous power. ‘I’ll tell him, Aunt Angelica. As to those times you asked for: he’ll be going out at —’

  ‘I don’t even like you speaking to him, you know. It really isn’t very nice for me having to talk to you when I know you’ve spoken to him earlier in the day. In fact, to be frank with you, David, I’m surprised that didn’t occur to you.’

  I’m really cross now. ‘Well, what do you want me to do, Aunty? I need to speak to him, don’t I, if you want me to find out about his movements?’

  She’s noticed the sharpness in my voice and, just for a moment, I can see her considering it. But then she hears some sound – she’s very sensitive to sound – and imperiously holds her hand up for silence.

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘Just a toilet flushing, Aunty.’

  ‘Just a toilet flushing, you say. Do toilets flush themselves, then, David? It was him flushing it, you mean. Him. Did you think you could leave out that obvious fact?’

  ‘Him flushing it, then.’ Once again I can’t quite keep the irritation from my voice. ‘But now it’s quiet.’

  My aunt glances at my face. She has certainly registered my annoyance, but she’s not planning to flatter it with her attention, for if there’s one single thing in the world she’s not afraid of, it’s me. She sniffs.

  ‘I notice you still haven’t told me when he’s going out and coming back.’

  ‘He’ll go out at nine thirty and return just after five.’

  ‘He mustn’t come back any earlier then. He’s told you his plans, and now he must stick to them. If he finishes his business sooner than expected, he’ll just have to sit and wait in the park. His so-called business, I should really say, because I’m not fooled, David, even if you are. I know perfectly well that he just comes here because of me. It’s utterly pathetic, but it seems that’s how he gets his little kicks.’

  ‘I really don’t think it is, Aunt Angelica. You’re not quite such a big figure in his mind as he is in —’

  ‘Not back before five. You must make him promise that.’

  Angelica is waiting. She’s beside the window, hiding behind the curtain but peeking out. It’s 4.30 in the afternoon.

  ‘What are you doing here at this hour?’ she demands, dropping the curtain immediately and stepping back with a flounce. ‘I sometimes wonder what they pay you for, David, in that job of yours. Don’t you have work to do?’

  ‘I thought I’d check if you were alright.’

  ‘Well, obviously I’m not. How could I be alright, when he’s on his way back here? He’ll probably be early. I know his timekeeping of old. So I was just having one last look at my lovely peaceful view before he spoiled it.’

  ‘Those blue roofs, eh? Those blue roofs climbing up the hill?’

  ‘Yes. But why do you say it in that sarcastic way? I must say you’ve been very unpleasant and sarcastic lately, David. I don’t know why you’re out of sorts, but I don’t think it’s very grown-up or fair of you to take it out on me.’ She snorts. ‘I suppose you were trying to hint that I was looking out for him, were you? Some chance! He should be so lucky. He – should – be – so – lucky.’

  She crosses the room, picks up her cigarettes, fumbles the lighter open with her shaky hands.

  ‘Well, alright,’ she says. ‘I was looking out for him. But only to check that he kept his promise. Only for that.’

  My tiny aunt pulls deeply at her cigarette, exhales, then glares defiantly out at me with her enormous eyes from the middle of a poisonous white cloud.

  •

  Angelica is listening.

  She is really listening. She’s standing quite motionless in the middle of the room, her head tipped over to the right, her right ear positively straining towards the floor. She even holds back a wisp of her featherlight hair so as not to obstruct her hearing in any way.

  ‘He talks to himself, you know. I can hear him talking all the time. “Mumble, mumble, mumble,” he goes. “Angelica this, Angelica that, Angelica three bags full.”’

  She stands up straight. She lets that little wisp of hair fall back over her ear. She looks for her cigarettes.

  ‘You think I make it all up, don’t you? You really are so like your mother.’ She shrugs, lights a cigarette, draws deeply on it. ‘Well, you can believe what you like, David. It’s entirely up to you. But he does talk about me. Of course he does. How could he avoid it, when he thinks about me all the time?’

  ‘I’m sure he does think about you. I’m sure he really does care about you, as he cares for all the people in this building. And in your case, he remembers how it was, before… well, before you developed these feelings for him, when the two of you could just be friends. He wishes things could be like that again.’

  ‘He puts it all onto me, does he? How very convenient.’

  ‘He’d like to see you. He told me so himself. In fact he said he’d love to see you if —’

  ‘That’s enough! That’s more than enough. You promised me – you promised me, David – that you wouldn’t pass on a single word he said.’

  She cocks her head, pulls back her wisp of hair, listening once more with all her might. Then, apparently hearing nothing new, she stands up straight.

  ‘He had a visitor yesterday evening. I couldn’t tell who it was.’

  She takes another long draw on her cigarette, looking over at me all the while in a sideways, sneaky sort of way.

  ‘And you are certainly not going to tell me, are you, David? That would be quite against all those high principles of yours.’

  Getting no reply from me, she cocks her head again, and listens to the floor for a few seconds more before giving an irritated shrug and stubbing out the cigarette. I don’t know anyone who can consume a cigarette as fast as my aunt Angelica.

  ‘Typical of him, really. “I know what I’ll do,” he says to himself, “I’ll invite a mystery guest. That will arouse Angelica’s interest! That will get her going!” Well, let me tell you this, David, I’m not the slightest bit interested. Not the slightest. Some floozy no doubt, some little tart. What concern is that of mine? In fact, even if you did try to tell me who the visitor was, I wouldn’t listen. Certainly not. I’d block my ears and make a sound like this.’

  She sticks her fingers in her ears, and chants ‘Na na na na na!’

  •

  Angelica is angry.

  ‘Why didn’t you say he was about to go?’

  She is pacing around her room, smoking furiously. Her face is pale and taut.

  ‘When was it anyway? Last night? Oh I knew it! I just knew it! I heard the door as he crept out. He tried to do it quietly of course, the coward, but he’s always been a clumsy oaf. And then I heard a car starting up, down towards the end of the street. I suppose he thought I wouldn’t know it was him if he parked right down there at the bottom, but I knew alright. I knew it was his car. I heard it pause at the turning and then move off again. And then afterwards I heard the silence. No thoughts down there any more from beneath my floor. No mumbling and muttering and thumping about. Just silence once again.’

  She glares at me.

  ‘Don’t smirk at me in that knowing way, David. You look just like your mother. I heard all of that, all of it, whether you believe me or not. But you hadn’t told me, had you? You’d let me down yet again. You’d absolutely promised you’d tell me, and yet you said nothing. And so naturally I doubted myself.’

  She turns and hurries through to the little kitchen at the back of the flat, running, almost, in her eagerness. Pulling back the curtain, she presses her face against the window to peer down at the tiny back yard, with its empty washing line and its concrete slabs and its five metal dustbins in a row, with the flat numbers marked in yellow paint: 27 A, 27 B, 27 C, 27 D, 27 E.

  She turns back into the room.

  ‘All night I listened to the car. I heard it going through the streets, and then up the motorway. Birmingham, the North, Scotland,
up and up and up. All those lonely places in the night. All those cold orange lights shining down… I knew he’d gone but you hadn’t told me so I thought perhaps I was going mad. You – should–-have – told – me!’

  ‘He had to leave earlier than he thought. He’ll probably be back again next year, but —’

  ‘It’s entirely up to him, David. Why should I care? What difference does it make to me?’

  She turns once again to the kitchen window, looks down at the bins. Those blue roofs wind unnoticed over the hill.

  ‘I expect he’s left all kinds of rubbish down there.’

  ‘I shouldn’t have thought so. He’s only been here a day. What sort of rubbish did you have in mind?’

  Angelica snorts.

  ‘All kinds of rubbish,’ she repeats firmly. ‘He always does, the great lout. He leaves a trail of the stuff wherever he goes.’

  When I go back later in the day, I find Angelica outside.

  She almost never ventures down the stairs – a van delivers her shopping and the man carries the bags up to her – but now she’s come down, and out through the front door, and into the great terrifying space under the sky. As I arrive, she’s making her way round the back of the house, using her left hand to maintain contact with the building’s reassuring wall, and keeping up a constant muttered monologue to hold the world at bay. She hasn’t noticed that I’m here.

  ‘All kinds of rubbish,’ she says to herself, with that haughty little snort of a laugh and, though she herself lives in Flat E, she heads straight for the bin marked 27D.

  ‘Aha!’ she mutters as she lifts the lid. ‘I knew it.’

  At the bottom of the bin she’s seen a small plastic bag, such as might line a wastepaper basket. She still hasn’t noticed me as she reaches in, with a grunt of effort and pulls out the bag, emptying its contents onto the ground. There’s an apple core, a free newspaper, a box that once contained a ready-cooked beef lasagne, and the soiled metal tray in which the lasagne was cooked. But what interests her is a little scrumpled ball of blue paper. It looks like a discarded letter, or a draft found wanting and thrown away. One corner is stained brown by the lasagne.