Sweetheart, Sweetheart

by Bernard Taylor

  “Yes, I knew him.” She paused. “More’s the pity.”

  I watched her as she turned the corner and walked down the lane. Heavy-footed, I made my way on up to the cottage.

  In the kitchen I saw, so neatly set out on the table, ham, cheese, butter, bread and pickles. Being mothered like this was a new experience for me. I just picked at the food. I wasn’t hungry.

  I went upstairs afterwards. The first things I noticed were my cases—half packed, and then the rose lying on my pillow. I was grateful for the work on my luggage; I wasn’t so sure about the rose.

  Strange, even with so many thoughts, so many new questions that threatened to scramble my brain, I still managed to get off to sleep without taking a pill.

  From the study the next morning, early, I telephoned Doctor Reese. I could tell by his voice that he hadn’t been up very long; he sounded slightly put out. When he heard my voice his own took on a wary note.

  “Hello . . . what can I do for you?”

  “I’d just like to—to check on something you told me . . .”

  “. . . Yes . . . ?”

  “The night my brother died—you said a local taxi-driver was the first one to find him . . .”

  “Yes, that’s right. He called me, and the ambulance. Why, what’s wrong?”

  “Did you know—Colin had someone with him on that night?”

  Silence at this.

  “I’ve just found out that Elizabeth Barton was there when it happened,” I said, “So why didn’t she call you?—or the ambulance? You said he’d been dead about two hours when you got there . . .”

  “Yes.”

  “Elizabeth Barton was close by when he smashed up his car. But she did nothing. He just—just lay out there for two hours. He might have been saved.” My voice was rising in anger. “He might have.”

  “I told you,” Reese said, “he was gone beyond any help. He died outright, I know that.” There was a brief pause, then he said, “Are you sure Mrs. Barton was there?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s . . . odd . . .”

  “Yes, it is—odd.” I wished I could see his face. Was he as bewildered as he sounded? I prepared to hang up: “Well . . .”

  “How’s the arm today?” he asked.

  “Oh—okay, thanks. Fine.” I remembered the way I had stalked out of his house. “I’m afraid I was a bit steamed up when I left you . . .”

  “Forget it. You were naturally upset. Believe me, I do understand.”

  “I didn’t even thank you—not to mention I didn’t pay you.”

  “There’s no charge.”

  “Of course I must pay you. I’m not one of your regular patients. I don’t believe in free treatments. Tell me how much I owe and I’ll send it to you.”

  “It’s on the house. Forget it.” He was sounding quite relaxed now. “Just have a good journey. You can send me a postcard.”

  “Oh, I didn’t tell you,” I said. “I changed my mind. I’m not leaving now.”

  10

  At eleven-thirty I phoned She­lagh. Her voice came slightly slurred as if I’d wakened her from sleep. Which I had. She mumbled, yawning:

  “David, do you realise what time it is here?”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, “but I had to be sure to catch you while you were in.”

  “It’s half-past six in the morning. Where would I be going at this hour?” There was a short pause, then she added: “Something’s wrong. What is it?”

  “Nothing, except—I won’t be coming back today after all.”

  “What’s happened?” she sounded wide awake now.

  “. . . There are one or two things I have to sort out.”

  “What kind of things?”

  “Oh . . . Look, I’ll write to you . . .”

  “I don’t want you to write to me. I want you to come home.”

  Home . . . “I’m sorry, I can’t. Not just yet.”

  “What’s going on? I don’t think you’re in a fit state to be there alone.”

  “I’m okay. I’m all right now, believe me.”

  “How can I? And when I think of how you were yesterday . . . I mean, you’ve had a bad shock. How can I believe you’re all right?”

  “I am . . . Look, I’ll try to call you later. The cottage phone’s working okay now . . .” I tried to make my voice sound casual, reassuring. “Go back to sleep now . . .”

  “You don’t fool me with that tone,” she said. “Dave, I think you should get away from that place. I don’t think it’s good for you.”

  “I’m okay. Really.” We were going round in circles now.

  “Well, when do you think you will be coming home?”

  “. . . Soon . . .”

  “How soon?”

  I fumbled for words, gave up. In the end I said, “Go back to sleep, She­lagh. I love you. I’ll talk to you soon.”

  I put down the receiver before she had a chance to say anything else.

  Earlier on I had telephoned the firm of architects where Colin had worked. I knew that at the time of his marriage he had given up full-time employment there in favour of a part-time arrangement that would enable him to strike out on his own in a freelance capacity. All I learned now, speaking to one of his former workmates, Ingham, was that Colin’s­ appearances at the office had grown fewer and fewer, and that towards the end of his life they had hardly seen him at all. Colin had last shown up, Ingham told me, just a few days before Helen’s death . . . And that was all they were able to tell me . . .

  It was after that that I had called the travel agency and cancelled my plane reservation. And that made it final, my decision to stay on.

  Now, after speaking to She­lagh, the reality, the awareness of that decision brought with it a sense of peace. I could feel it stealing over me. I wondered at it. My reasons for staying were tied up in a whole string of questions, each one as disturbing as the next; and yet there was this peace. And somehow it had nothing to do with the rest of it. It was a separate thing—quite apart.

  And I realised then that I took that warmth, that contentment from the cottage and its immediate surroundings. But no—not quite. I didn’t take it—it gave of itself . . . It’s hard to describe my feelings. I sat there, very still, my bandaged arm on the smooth polished wood of Colin’s­ desk, and let the love and the welcome that was there surround me, enclose me. I looked at the room, smelled the smell of it, the faint scent of furniture polish; I smelled too the scents that drifted in from the garden—the grass, the shrubs, the flowers; and everything—by touch, sight and smell—and even by sound, with the gentle creak of my chair—brought me a sense of well-being. I would go back to New York at some time, of course. I must. I would have to. But not yet. Not yet. Later.

  In a drawer of the desk I found Colin’s­ address book. Alan De Freyne wasn’t listed there, but in the B section I saw Elizabeth Barton’s name and below it an address in Hillingham, which was scored through. Underneath that there was a London address and telephone number. When I dialled it the ringing tone just went on and on. I’d try again later . . .

  Looking from the window I saw, over to the side, the patch of ground that still lay wild and choked with weeds; a bit of Colin’s­ unfinished work.

  Clearing the patch didn’t prove to be as easy as I’d anticipated. By the time I sat down to eat with snagged fingers and aching back-muscles only half the area had been cleared. Still, I was pleased with it. Pleased with myself.

  Jean Timpson was pleased too. Pleased that I was staying on. I could tell. As she set down my lunch she looked at my bandaged arm and said, “You mustn’t overdo it . . .”

  In the living-room afterwards she brought coffee in to me.

  “Don’t go,” I said as she moved back across the room.

  She stopped, waited; and in spite of all my good intentions I blundered in. “Would you say,” I said, “that my sister-in-law was—was—generally unhappy . . . with my brother . . . ?”

  She didn’t answer. Well, she
must be sick of my questions. Since I’d got here I’d done nothing but give her the third degree; continually raking over the ashes of the painful memories she wanted to consign to the past. All I was doing, over and over, was reminding her of a bad time, and bringing back to her the guilt she had taken upon herself. Was it any wonder, I asked myself, that her fingers clenched as she stood there?—that one hand lifted and twitched uselessly at the ribbon in her hair?

  “I have to ask you,” I said. “You’re one of the few people who was in any kind of regular contact with them. There doesn’t seem to have been anyone else—apart from Mrs. Barton and Doctor Reese. But it was you most of all . . .”

  She nodded. I said:

  “Doctor Reese had apparently been treating Helen for some time.”

  “Well, she couldn’t sleep.”

  “. . . And he knew that, I suppose.”

  “Well, it’s a natural thing, I should think, to want some kind of medicine when you can’t sleep.”

  “How bad was it?”

  “Towards the end she wasn’t sleeping at all. And it was really getting her down, you could see. I remember I heard her on the phone, asking the doctor for sleeping-tablets. I don’t think he gave her any, though, not going by what she said.”

  “What was that?”

  “She just got very—angry, sort of. She put the phone down on him.”

  “Did you know she was going to have a baby?” I asked.

  She nodded.

  “Perhaps,” I said, “that’s why he wouldn’t give her any sleeping-­pills.”

  “I expect so.” She was so eager to be gone, I could see. She was almost wilting under my eyes. I moved my gaze, focused, beyond her head, on the portrait of the Temples. “I wonder how he made out in the United States?” I murmured. I was thinking of my own time there, my own departure, my father’s scornful goodbye. We had something in common, Temple and I, I reckoned; we had both chosen America to escape to. But had his reasons for going been any more positive than my own? Had he gone in search of a new life in the New World—or had he gone only to escape the hangman’s noose? Had he been running to or running from?

  I shifted my glance and re-read the words of Emily Brontë’s poem; I wasn’t at all surprised that Colin had taken the sampler down. I wasn’t at all sure that I could live with such depressing sentiments—beautifully though Margaret Lane had wrought them. I passed on, away from her sadness, and latched on to the photograph of Miss Merridew as she smiled her sepia smile and cuddled her cats. And that brought me on to Girlie, Helen’s kitten—and so back to Helen. There was no end to it.

  “Helen’s cat,” I said. “You told me she was trying to get it down from the roof . . .” I paused. “Did you see it?”

  Jean Timpson shook her head. “Well, no, I can’t remember that I did. But does that matter? I mean, it was there.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “Your brother—he told me.”

  After a good deal more work I left a finely raked patch of soil—redeemed from part of that minor wilderness—and rang Elizabeth Barton’s number again. This time I got the engaged signal. After that I got, from the operator, the numbers of the only two De Freynes in the London directory. Neither turned out to be the one I was looking for, but there, experience had taught me that things just didn’t happen as easily as that. Still, at least I knew where Elizabeth Barton was . . .

  After I’d cleaned myself up I called the local garage/car hire/taxi service and asked for a cab to take me into Reading. Once there, at the station, I didn’t have long to wait before I was sitting in a train bound for London.

  From Paddington I got a tube to Turnham Green and, with the aid of my street guide, eventually stood before a neat little house with tubbed trees standing on either side of the front door. I rang the bell, and just moments later the door opened and a rather pretty woman stood there wearing a light sweater and blue jeans.

  I saw recognition leap into her eyes, and even as I opened my mouth to speak I saw another woman appear in the background of the hall. For a second our glances met. I watched her eyes widen, a hand lifting to her mouth. I saw her mouth open, her head go back as she gave a frightened cry of alarm.

  The next moment she had run forward, snatched the door from the grasp of the other woman, and slammed it in my face.

  On my way back a light spattering of rain fell. It only lasted a few minutes but I could see in the skies there was more up there, waiting to come down.

  I looked forward to my return to the cottage with a feeling of slight impatience mixed with a vague, unexplainable sense of excitement. Behind me lay my abortive attempt to see Elizabeth Barton. And there had been nothing I could do about that. I had rung the bell twice, and waited, knowing all the while that my waiting was pointless; they weren’t going to open up to me again. I had obviously been a most unwelcome visitor . . . It only made me more determined that at some time Elizabeth Barton and I would meet. She had the answers to several questions that must be answered . . .

  For now, though, I could do nothing further about it. So for now—forget it. Before me lay my cottage, my own sanctuary—safe, secure; there I would feel welcome and at home.

  No Jean Timpson anywhere around when I arrived. I was glad. Glad to have the place all to myself. It still wasn’t five o’clock. In the kitchen I made a cheese sandwich and a cup of tea then went out into the garden. Over to the west I could see the dark clouds still moving up, but at the moment the air was sweet and dry. A cool breeze blew. When I’d finished eating I left my plate and cup on the seat, picked up my rake and walked to the patch of ground I’d been working on. As I approached I saw that the shower of rain had given the soil a deeper, richer colour. Perhaps tomorrow I could finish my work on it—and maybe then it would be ready for planting—with something or other; I’d have to talk to Timpson about that.

  Then, as I drew closer, much closer, I saw the large round letters that had been scratched into the earth:

  WELCOME HOME

  11

  Jean Timpson, I silently asked, what are you playing at . . . ?

  The sight of the words there brought a slight panicky feeling. I could feel my heart beating faster. It wasn’t fear—I don’t think so—unless it was the fear of simply not knowing how to cope with the situation . . . I felt strangely disturbed.

  While I looked down at the earth I saw its colour darken still further as the heavy clouds obscured the sun. At the same moment I heard, faintly, the ringing of the telephone.

  It was She­lagh.

  “What’s up?” I asked her.

  “I’m hoping you can tell me that. I just want to know whether you’ve decided when you’re coming back.”

  Through my other ear I heard the rumble of thunder, coming nearer, and the first splashes of rain on the window-panes.

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “You must have some idea . . .”

  “. . . No, I don’t know . . .”

  “It all sounds so—vague. I wish you’d come on home. You don’t belong there.”

  She was wrong. This was exactly where I belonged; where I stood now, in my beautiful cottage, with the rain lashing the windows, and the birch- and elm-trees complaining in the wind. “I’m perfectly fine,” I said.

  “I think it’s rather—morbid,” she said. “Before when you called you couldn’t wait to get away, and now you don’t seem to know what you’re doing.”

  “Please,” I said, “try to understand.”

  “I’m trying to. But—what are your plans? Am I included in your plans?”

  “Of course.”

  “How?”

  “Oh, She­lagh——” I said—and dried up.

  “Are you still there,” she said.

  “Yes.”

  “Oh, to hell with it.”

  The dialling tone sounded in my ear as she hung up on me.

  I poured myself a large scotch and sat there in my comfortable armchair watching as the wind whipp
ed through the boughs of the trees and hurled against the glass in sudden gusts. I thought about the people who had sat in this room in the past looking out at the rain: the first Gerrard and his young wife; his son, his grandson with his Welsh bride and their daughter, Bronwen—who had married the handyman who had loved the dairymaid. Then the Lanes—Margaret and her husband, John—whose newly-wedded bliss was so soon blighted; then Miss Merridew, the cat-lover. Then Helen. Then Helen and De Freyne. And then Helen and Colin. And now me . . .

  By the time I’d finished my second drink the rain had stopped. I opened the kitchen door and the smells of the garden came to my nostrils, lingering gentle in the rain-washed air, sweet, fragrant. I moved wonderingly along the path that skirted the lawn while the raindrops fell from the overhanging leaves onto my hair. I breathed it all in, that scent, so special, so completely indescribable, that comes from a garden on which rain has newly fallen.

  When I got to where my rake lay beside the patch of earth I could see no sign of the words any more. The rain must have washed them away. Perhaps, I thought for a moment, I had only imagined it . . . My head felt light after the heavy scotches I’d drunk; I’m not sure that I was even thinking very clearly. But anyway, somehow it no longer seemed important whether the words had been in the soil or in my imagination . . .

  I found myself smiling. So what if Jean Timpson had overstepped the mark; it had been the nicest, most original welcome card I’d ever had.

  That night, after Jean Timpson had cleared away my dinner things and gone home I settled down in front of the television. I might never have been away, I thought; there was a party political broadcast where the opposition party said they had the answer to the country’s ills; following that a documentary about the rising crime rate—not nearly so amusing—and after that a play in which all the characters seemed to answer each other with questions. Switching to another channel I was just in time to catch the climax of some British horror movie where there was a battle going on for some poor girl’s immortal soul. Lots of blood, flashings of crucifixes and cries of anguish. I left her to it, flicked the off-switch, went up to my room and found another rose on the pillow.