Missing
Page 14
She washed the dusty blanket and hung it on the line to dry before taking the dog out. On her way through town, she paused to knock on Robert’s door, though he was never there. She walked on, as far as the surgery. She kept a wary eye on the overcast sky, thinking of her blanket on the line, but she could see that the sun was trying to come out, and indeed, in the time that she was in the ear clinic, the clouds parted. As she walked the dog home, with a new clarity in her ear, her sense of being muffled and separate began to retreat. She had a feeling of reconnection, as if she had been underwater and was finally surfacing.
The brightening morning was so springlike that she wondered if, on returning home, she might see buds on her plants. She could sit at the window, looking into the garden. She had a new life of Lawrence to begin. She would turn a page and find him newborn; he would once again be young and spirited.
I meant to be home long before now. I imagined returning in the late autumn fog, out of which I would emerge as Jessie stood in the doorway, waiting for me; or leaving footprints in a Christmas frost as I crossed the yard. But I have been gone from one year to the next and when I finally arrive – with a John Denver song in my head, ‘Take Me Home, Country Roads’ – Jessie is not standing in the doorway. The door is closed; it is locked.
I take out my key and insert it into the lock. When I turn it, a part of me expects to find that it will not move, to find that the locks have been changed. But the key turns and the door opens, allowing me in.
I enter and call out, ‘Jessie?’ but there is no answer. I walk further into the house and call again, but there is no response. The house is cold. The first thing I will do is see to the heating.
The dog’s food bowl is empty. I call, but the dog does not come either.
The postcards I sent are on the kitchen windowsill, although the most recent one at least is missing and maybe never arrived. I take a look at the kitchen calendar, trying to think what day it is; I’ve lost track. I fix on a square in the middle of the month, which I think could be today, either today or tomorrow. There’s a note in Jessie’s handwriting, in pencil: a departure time. All the squares beyond it are blank.
The house is quiet, apart from the sound of it trying to settle.
Acknowledgements
As ever, I’m indebted to my editor Nick Royle and my husband Dan for their careful readings of this novel, for astute feedback and for helping to iron out my lumps and bumps. I am also grateful to Dan for his constant love and support, and for his patient description of a nighttime visit to a creepy abandoned convalescent home with his camera. Thanks to Jen and Chris Hamilton-Emery at Salt, who continue to be brilliantly supportive and enabling. Thanks to my son, Arthur, for never being short of ideas and hugs. Thanks to Sarah, Chris and Emily, for hosting us and exploring with us in the Scottish Borders. And thanks to the other Nick Royle, at the University of Sussex, for pointing me towards Mark Twain’s essay ‘Mental Telegraphy’.
I have drawn on two D. H. Lawrence biographies: Flame into Being: The Life and Work of D. H. Lawrence by Anthony Burgess, and D. H. Lawrence: The Life of an Outsider by John Worthen. My line ‘the wind muttered at the window and the trees shook off the last of their leaves’ is a nod to D. H. Lawrence’s poem ‘At the Window’. I have quoted from Robert Browning’s version of The Pied Piper of Hamelin. I have described the work of the German children’s author Jutta Bauer, specifically Schreimutter and Opa’s Engel. The short story that Jessie refers to in Intercourse is ‘Observations About Eggs From the Man Sitting Next to Me on a Flight From Chicago, Illinois to Cedar Rapids, Iowa’ by Carmen Maria Machado in Year’s Best Weird Fiction, Vol. 2, eds. Kathe Koja and Michael Kelly, Undertow Publications.