by David Park
Her face was featureless, unremittingly plain, like a page that hadn’t been fully printed so there was no story to be read, no mystery to be explored. Like the rest of her body it had started to slide into plumpness and it was obvious that, if nothing intervened to stop that slide, before long she would grow fat, her present nervous gait transformed into a waddle. He nodded at her over the rim of his cup to show his appreciation of the Bovril, then tried to block out the sudden image of her on the back of a playing card. She smiled politely in return and he noticed for the second time how brown her eyes were and that they hadn’t lost that earlier moistness. It gave the impression that she had been crying and it pleased him: he liked tears in a woman and derived a pulse of pleasure from imagining how Miss Morgan’s beautiful almond eyes would glisten when he berated her for the inadequacy of some aspect of her lesson plans. But he’d be well prepared and be able to offer her a pristine white handkerchief, neatly folded, with which she could dry them and afterwards he’d keep it until the final traces of her tears and scent had vanished. Best, too, to have a back-up in case he needed one for his own use. Two handkerchiefs in separate pockets – important not to get them mixed when the appropriate moment arrived.
‘Would you like a biscuit, Mr Peel?’ she asked, offering him a plate of digestives. As she leaned forward the electricity went off and the bars of the electric fire snuffed into a brief memory of brightness. ‘Dear, dear, there’s no end to it,’ she said, shaking her head resignedly. ‘I’ll light the fire – I set it this morning before going out.’ And indeed she had, for a mound of scrunched paper and sticks bristled in the grate and there was a scuttle laden to the brim with great, grainy knobs of coal which glinted when she struck a match. She had removed the fireguard and was down on her knees at the hearth as she lifted pieces of coal with tongs and placed them carefully on the sticks. He thought she was a little premature with the coal and would have considered it more prudent to have let the sticks catch first, but he said nothing and, holding the cup of Bovril in both hands and staring over its rim while she set up a little rhythm in the work, he studied the posterior presented to him. It was a full one, but not, he had to concede, unshapely. ‘Cushioned’ was the word he would use if he were asked to describe it. He felt a sweep of tiredness wash over him and he had to resist the impulse to get down on his knees and rest his weary head on that soft pillow.
‘Having trouble, Miss Lewis?’ he asked, glad to distract himself from the impulse with the sound of his voice. ‘Perhaps the sticks are a little damp.’ She had started to blow air into the base, in a steady and confusingly unnerving stream of air. His pulse rose a little and he pushed the remainder of a digestive biscuit into his mouth. He liked them better when they were buttered and pressed together. But beggars couldn’t be choosers. Not that he was a beggar. Not by any stretch of the imagination. ‘I think there’s some snow coming down the chimney,’ she said, squirming her body into one final blow. A few flames sniggered into ragged life and then some of the sticks caught and started to spark. ‘Well done,’ he said, resisting another impulse to lean forward and pat her on her rump. ‘It’ll soon get going now,’ he added, intrigued by his own benevolence. He had almost finished his Bovril and knew it was the right time to go, but he was infused with a tiredness that robbed him of impetus.
‘I should be going now,’ he said, draining his cup but making no attempt to get out of his chair. More life appeared in the fire. It held his gaze like a magnet. She stood up and went to the window. ‘It’s still coming down,’ she answered as she touched her cheek with a black finger, leaving an inky smudge. ‘Why don’t you wait a little while longer and see if it eases off?’ He pretended to consider the offer before letting himself be reluctantly persuaded. ‘Perhaps, just a little while,’ he said, settling back in the chair and letting his fingers absorb the final vestiges of heat from the cup.
She stoked more coal on the fire and in a short while it broke into a blaze of pleasurable proportions. She had taken her coat off and he had followed suit. She had advised him to do so in order that she could place it close to the fire and try to get it dried before he set off again. For a few moments she had disappeared from the room and on her return she was wearing slippers. They were red and embroidered with gold thread and they made him think of something vaguely Eastern, and, while he watched her set a series of stunted candles along the mantelpiece, his thoughts wandered to the world of harems and potentates. Of Miss Morgan, the most recent acquisition, on nightly request. But as he watched her arrange the final candle and then sit down in the chair opposite his, the exotic edge of his imaginings floundered and then faded. Then while they both stared at the fire he felt the moment take on a new ambiance – that of the domestic – and as he gingerly savoured its flavour he found himself forced to admit that it wasn’t entirely unpleasant.
‘Your journey to school this morning must have been terrible,’ she said, smoothing a cushion. The black smudge still nestled in the dimple of her cheek.
‘It wasn’t easy. And there was hardly a soul about: most people obviously didn’t relish the challenge of the conditions. In some stretches of the road mine were the first steps in the snow.’ He paused to let the image sink home. ‘But when you’re responsible for children, you have to put other considerations second. Once or twice it got a bit hairy but the conditions weren’t entirely unfamiliar to me so that was an advantage, I suppose.’ He paused again to wait for her to ask why that was, but she merely nodded as if she understood. He paused also because he wasn’t sure why he had said it and didn’t know the answer he would give if she did. He stared at the climbing flames of the fire and said: ‘I used to do a bit of mountaineering in my younger days – went on a few expeditions – and often climbed above the snow line.
‘I didn’t know,’ she said. ‘Sounds very dangerous.’
‘There’s always danger but if you are well-prepared and don’t take foolish risks, then . . .’ He didn’t finish his sentence but still stared at the fire, where Hillary and Tenzing made the final ascent to a blue-tipped summit. ‘In climbing you work as a team but one of the hardest things is not always being able to make the final push to the top – but that’s the way it works and you have to accept it.’
‘And you took part in expeditions?
‘A few in my time,’ he said, but then sensing that the conversation might lead into difficult terrain, added, ‘I lost a good friend once – I owed it to him to go on living. I’ve never climbed since.’ He glanced at her and saw her eyes widen. ‘Don’t like to talk about it.’
She nodded and said nothing for a while before offering him another cup of Bovril. He declined and shook his head slowly, lost in the tragedy of snow and crevice. She took his cup from him and carried them both into the kitchen. As he heard her rinse them, his eyes drifted to the painting of the couple kissing. Such a thing to have hanging on your wall! The holding of hands, their closed eyes, the way their heads seemed to fit together – he took it all in. What possessed her? He felt a skip of panic as he pondered the possibility of her being some fifth columnist, a Trojan horse he had brought inside the gates. Did he really know what went on when she closed her classroom door? But no matter how hard he tried to stir his sense of unease into something stronger, it subsided in the moment he watched her predictable, unaltered self return to her seat at the fire.
‘It’s coming down like there’s no tomorrow,’ she said. ‘Absolutely no end to it.’ It was getting darker but she made no move to light the candles. ‘I’ve never seen the likes of it.’ He smiled as if to say that she mightn’t have, but he most certainly had. ‘Can I get you anything else, Mr Peel?’
‘No, thanks,’ he answered, stirring a little in the chair, thinking that maybe she was giving him a signal that it was time to go. ‘I suppose I should be going, not sitting here inconveniencing you like this.’
‘There’s no inconvenience – I wouldn’t be going anywhere or doing anything that I’m not doing now, and you can�
��t venture out in that blizzard, no matter how many expeditions you’ve been on.’
He glanced at her quickly to see if there was any trace of irony in her face but it was as open and uncalculating as always. She put some more coal on the fire and in a short while the flames sent feathery flurries of light into the falling shadows. ‘These are the only candles I have, so I need to save them for later,’ she said. ‘I’m afraid I’m not very well prepared – I used most of them in January. Thought we’d seen the back of the snow then.’
‘Well, if you’re very sure I’m not keeping you back, perhaps I would be better holding on until it eases a little.’ He sank back in the chair and felt the heat massage his shins. Close to where he sat he caught a glimpse of a picture in which a young woman garlanded in flowers appeared to be drowning. It was all very peculiar. He had a picture of his own house, filled with shadows and the snow pressing down on it, the fire dead in the grate and cold seeping into every corner. He looked again at the painting. How was it women got themselves into such situations again and again? The woman lay on the surface of the water as if waiting for a prince to rescue her. He listened to Miss Lewis prattle on about a burst pipe she’d had in January’s cold snap and thought that she would wait in vain for such a rescue. He noticed the slightly uneven edge of her teeth, the little gap that made certain words lisp a little; the way the firelight flared her cheek into a blush.
He prided himself on knowing women, of understanding the way their minds worked. After all, he had worked with them for many years and considered he had good insights into their thinking. It was true, he had to concede, that his acquaintance with women in the full sense was rather limited but he told himself that this was more by choice than by any failure on his part. There was an early, not entirely successful, episode with a girl he’d been to college with, and in more recent years a brief liaison with the landlady of a boarding house in the Isle of Man, though the relationship had not survived two holidays. In that particular respect he considered it fortunate that he had extricated himself from what might have led to a most unsuitable marriage and a future tied to catering for the ravenous appetites of Belfast holidaymakers and the provision of cheap cabaret. He stretched his legs closer to the fire and allowed himself a smoulder of pleasure while he remembered the one and only frantic coupling on a bed whose springs squeaked, and in the afternoon sky outside the squeals of the gulls plucked at the sky. And as always he thought of water – the slop of the tide against the keel of a boat, the oily transfer of lurid colours in the harbour, the scraping shuffle of the sea over a bed of shingle. He glanced again at the picture of the young woman sinking into the water. Spots of snow plopped into the fire, making it hiss and spit like an angry cat. But even though his memory tried to keep the moment warm, it was over ten years ago and as time passed it became more difficult. Some day he might turn to it and find nothing left, find it all used up.
‘Would you like a piece of toast, Mr Peel? I could do it by the fire, now the electric’s off.’
A piece of toast? Yes, he’d like a piece of toast. There was something a shade undignified about it but he hadn’t eaten since his breakfast and, after all, special circumstances . . . She lit two of the candles before going to the kitchen and returning with a toasting fork and four rounds of bread and a packet of butter, then set the butter on the hearth to soften. ‘Allow me,’ he said, taking the fork from her and spearing the bread. He hunched forward on the chair, glad of an excuse to pull closer to the fire and happy to display his expertise. This was campfire stuff, real campfire stuff. When he had it toasted he passed it to her on the end of his fork and she transferred it to one of the plates and covered it in butter. He had never known a bit of toast could taste so wonderful. This must have been what it was like in the Blitz – people pulling together, people sharing things. Now it was the elements, rather than Nazis, they were fighting against but the principle was the same. She hadn’t pulled the curtains but all he could see outside was a settling greyness and an occasional spit of flake against the glass. Looking at it only served to increase his feeling of snugness and he lingered over the final piece of toast.
Sometimes the candles flickered for no apparent reason and when they did the clatter of pictures seemed to come alive and for a second it seemed as each one of them was an eye looking at him, taking him in, before it blinked closed again. She still had the smudge of black on her cheek and he saw too the spreading web of measles on her legs. The fire was warm but at the back of him he felt a wash of cold pushing off the street and into the hall and he knew that this was the only tolerable place in the house.
‘Have you always lived here?’ he asked, stifling a sudden shiver.
‘Since I was a child. My mother died last year so the house is mine.’
‘Last year?’ He couldn’t remember a death or a funeral. ‘I don’t remember . . .’
‘It was during the summer. She had been ill for some time.’ She shuffled her feet and his eye caught the embroidered slippers. ‘I haven’t had time to get the house done up yet. She didn’t like change and now I’ve got the opportunity I seem to have run out of steam.’
‘So these pictures are your mother’s,’ he said, his relief rushing to the surface.
‘No, the pictures are mine. I started putting them up the week after the funeral. Running out of space now. Something to brighten the place up. Something to make the house mine. My mother was very fixed in her ways.’
‘Right,’ he said, nodding as if he understood when he didn’t. He felt a certain resentment that she had kept her mother’s funeral private and so robbed him of one of the social obligations of his post, of the opportunity to bestow appropriate sympathy. But as he pondered the pictures he was at least able to attribute them to the destabilizing force of grief. No doubt with the passage of time she would come to her senses and see them as an embarrassing aberration. After the deaths of his own parents – barely a year between them – he, too, had felt a momentary uncertainty, felt subject to a new and unsettling lack of focus. Still, it had passed and so, too, would these pictures. He tried to think of a new conversational direction.
‘Any plans for the summer holidays?’ he asked.
‘No, I haven’t really thought about it yet. Have you?’
‘Nothing fixed yet,’ he said, trying to smother the raucous images of that moment in the Isle of Man by resettling himself in the chair and staring into the fire. Compared to Miss Lewis she was a rather bony, sharp-featured creature, rodent-like round her mouth and teeth. He’d had a lucky escape there: another burst of weakness and she’d have sunk those same teeth in so deep that there’d have been no shaking them off. The chair was very comfortable. He glanced over at Miss Lewis and wondered what it would feel like to be with a comfortable woman. Someone soft and cushioned. Like sinking into a feather bed. The thought made him feel a little sleepy. He tried to stir himself. He’d have to be going soon: he couldn’t put it off any longer.
‘My coat must be nearly dry by now,’ he said. ‘I really should be going.’ He stood up, knowing that if he didn’t stir himself into physical activity he’d never make the move. ‘It’s been very good of you to put me up like this.’
‘It was the least I could do,’ she answered, also getting out of her seat. ‘Your coat’s still a little damp,’ she said feeling it with the tips of her fingers. ‘I was about to make a little tea – nothing hot, I’m afraid, and nothing terribly fancy – just something to get us by. Would you like to have that before you set off?’
‘That’s very kind of you but I feel I’ve imposed on you long enough and I suppose there are lots of things I should be getting on with at home,’ he said with no idea as to what those things would be other than shutting out every draught and trying belatedly to kindle as much heat as possible. It was an increasingly forlorn prospect. Special circumstances. ‘If you’re sure it’s not putting you to any trouble?’
‘No trouble at all,’ she said, scampering towards the kitchen,
then returning for one of the candles. ‘It’s getting dark: I’ll have to get more candles tomorrow.’
‘I’ll keep the fire going,’ he called through to her, as he started to stoke it with more coal. ‘It’s a real life-saver.’ There was the clink of plates and the thin tinkle of cutlery. In a few minutes she returned carrying a tray with a plate of corned beef, a little cheese and two slices of brown bread, apologizing for its paucity when she handed it to him. He accepted it graciously but had to fight hard to prevent the hunger churning and tumbling in his stomach from making him shovel it down. Something to wash it down would have been nice, and even as he had the thought she returned to the kitchen and he heard a rummage in a cupboard and the clink of glasses. It was a bottle of whiskey, its swirling golden content glinting like the coins in a treasure trove. She held it nervously in both hands, pressed against her stomach, and for a second he thought she was going to return it to its cupboard. He knew he had to help her.
