A New Map of Love

by Annie Murray

  ‘Hello, Mr B,’ she said with her usual Berkshire verve, though muted by an awareness of dealing with the bereaved. ‘How are you today? (No don’t slobber on my skirt, Monty, there’s a good boy.)’

  ‘Oh . . .’ George rammed his hands into his trouser pockets. He had a suit on today in a rather loud brown and green tweed. The one Win used to say made him look like a bookie. ‘I’m quite all right, thank you, Vera.’

  As he spoke he wondered, did that sound crusty? Maggie said he was a crusty old thing – but only on the outside.

  ‘Are you?’ Vera came up close, still holding the basket she brought in every day containing Vim, folded dishcloths and other mysteries. In a motherly way she looked into his face. There was something unnaturally pink about her lips. He was used to Win wearing red lipstick, which appeared obviously like lipstick and suited her dark looks. But the pink stuff just made lips look more like lips, only with some sort of raging inflammation. He caught the familiar, chemical smell of hairspray.

  ‘You poor thing,’ Vera went on. ‘Oh I did feel bad for you yesterday. That you felt . . . Well, that you couldn’t . . .’

  ‘Ah, yes.’ George looked down again, finding a couple of sixpences to chink in his pocket. ‘Yes. Sorry. Couldn’t really . . . You know . . .’

  ‘Oh don’t apologize, Mr B, we all understand.’ Vera put her basket on the table and pulled out the pink rubber gloves she wore to do almost everything. ‘Really we do.’

  One of the gloves was inside out, the reverse side an unnerving flesh colour.

  ‘Oh dear,’ Vera sighed, pulling on the left glove, which was the right way round. ‘Poor Mrs B and poor you. She was such a lovely lady.’

  ‘She was.’ It was true, he knew.

  ‘You must feel dreadful. I mean if anything happened to Alan . . .’

  ‘Yes,’ George agreed. He shook his head as if he had run out of words, mainly because he had. ‘But thank you for the meal last night. And another delicious pie.’

  ‘Oh it’s nothing – you’re more than welcome.’ She put her mouth to the other glove’s opening and blew into it. A pink rubber hand inflated momentarily in front of her face. ‘If there’s more I can do, you just let me know.’ Both gloves on, she started running water into the sink, swishing in the soap. ‘I’d best get on.’

  ‘Yes – get on. Good idea.’ George released his hands from his pockets.

  ‘No one holds it against you that you’re opening today,’ Vera remarked over her shoulder.

  Until that moment it had never occurred to him that they might. Heavens, was this another sign of his callousness?

  ‘I thought I would,’ he said uncertainly. ‘No point in – you know – moping.’

  Vera turned with a sudden sweet smile. ‘No, of course not. You’re very brave, Mr B. That’s what I think. The others all said how brave they thought you were.’

  ‘Ah?’ George doubted this in the extreme.

  ‘They said they’ll all pop in and see you’re OK.’

  Who? When? Oh good Lord!

  ‘How kind. Right – well, I’d better be off. Clarence’ll be here.’

  ‘Oh,’ Vera chuckled. ‘He certainly will. Like the weather.’

  As George reached the door he paused. ‘I suppose now I’ll have to advertise for someone to help run the place.’

  Vera’s frame seemed to stiffen. Slowly she turned to stand sideways on to the sink in her flat black shoes, one hand still in the washing-up water.

  ‘The thing is, Mr B, I know I’ve only been filling in and that, but I’d . . . I’d really like to carry on,’ she said, a blush seeping up through her cheeks.

  George was startled. Vera was the cleaner and he had not got any further in thinking about it than that. He had to admit, though, she had far exceeded what he’d expected. He had hoped for a bit of dusting, being civil to customers and answering the phone. But she had shown a real prowess with people and had taken on the books, Win teaching her what was needed.

  ‘If . . .’ she added hesitantly. ‘Well, if you don’t mind. Course, I’m probably not what you want.’

  Surprised, George perceived before him a creature with a need.

  ‘Won’t it be too much for you, Vera?’ He stepped closer to her again. ‘What with all the other things you have to do – cooking, cleaning?’ She had taken to cooking for him as well, bringing platefuls over.

  ‘Oh I can do all that. That’s nothing.’ She sounded dismissive, irritated almost and glanced away, out of the window. For an alarming moment George thought there were going to be tears. But she looked back at him, her eyes serious. ‘I just . . . I don’t know much about the business. I feel a proper chump sometimes when the customers come in – ’specially ones like that Lady – whatshername . . .’

  ‘Byngh.’

  ‘With an “h”,’ they both said, and laughed.

  ‘Oh you don’t want to take any notice of that old trout,’ George said. ‘Terrorizing everyone in that Daimler of hers. She’s a blasted menace.’

  Giggles burst from Vera. ‘She is a bit. But the thing is, I’d like to learn, Mr Baxter. I’ve never done much and I was never any good at school. And all the things here are so old and beautiful. I love working here. I think I could learn everything if you’d teach me – and you didn’t mind?’

  This solution had not occurred to him but until now he had not got around to thinking of any other. During Win’s last months they had all just muddled along. He felt relief at this notion and touched by her feeling for the trade. For an awful second he found himself wishing that Vera was not married to Alan, or to anyone and that they could just . . . But no. No.

  ‘Everyone has to start learning somewhere,’ he said. Vera, still blushing, was listening as if her entire future happiness depended on him. ‘I don’t see why not. Let’s give it a try.’

  ‘Oh thank you, Mr Baxter!’ She brought both hands up to her chin as if in prayer, Sqezy bubbles sliding frothily down her right arm.

  ‘Not at all.’ George, turning to go, paused again. Was this the moment to ask whether a pie filling other than rhubarb might be a possibility? But courage failed him. They had made enough progress already this morning.

  ‘Mr B?’ Her voice was sombre now.

  ‘Umm?’

  ‘If you’d like any help, when it comes to it – with Mrs Baxter’s things?’

  Things? Of course. He hadn’t thought. There’d be clearing out. Organization needed. Wherever did one begin?

  ‘Thank you, Vera. That might well be a great help. Perhaps just not quite yet . . .’

  ‘No,’ she said gently. ‘Of course not.’

  3.

  Clarence dismounted from his bike at the gate as he always did. He wore, as he always did, a black gaberdine mackintosh, tightly belted, and a sludge-coloured tweed cap. His one concession to the weather was a hand-knitted scarf in sulphurous yellow – the wool unravelled from goodness knows what previous garment – tucked in most precisely at the neck.

  Barring the war years, Clarence had been cycling over here to work from Wallingford, six miles away, since the dawn of time. Possibly earlier.

  ‘Morning, Clarence,’ George saluted him from the front step, his breath unfurling white into the air. Monty barked as usual. As usual Clarence ignored him. ‘You managed to get here then?’

  In fact there had been no more snow overnight. George was trying to flatter his efforts, even provoke that most rare thing in Clarence – a smile.

  Clarence nodded curtly, his greyhound features not altering. ‘Don’t know as I’ll be able to get back though, come this evening.’

  Optimism was not part of Clarence’s repertoire. Nor, in general, was conversation. Today though, instead of passing straight to the workshop after this garrulous outpouring, he wheeled his black bicycle over to George and looked up at him, eyes dark as the flints scattered across the chalk hills.

  ‘Sorry not to come back to the house like, yesterday. Only Edith didn’t feel up to it. Upset
her a bit.’

  When George had stepped into the chapel at the Crem the day before, he saw Clarence and Edith Collins standing right at the back like two testy-looking rooks. Clarence, startlingly, wore a black trilby while Edith, in a black and white dogtooth-patterned coat and black pork-pie hat, wept quite violently into her handkerchief throughout the short ceremony. Edith was several years older than Clarence and at least three times his girth.

  ‘Not at all, Clarence,’ George said, omitting to mention that he had not even been at the house himself. ‘It was good of you both to come. Win would have been very grateful.’

  Win had in fact thought Clarence was a ‘miserable old acid drop’. However.

  Clarence nodded. He looked as if he was about to say something more, but clamped his lips over yellow pegs of teeth and wheeled his bike off to the side of the barn. His right trouser leg was tucked into a mean-looking black sock. George saw him yank the trouser free of the sock as he walked and straighten it out with an irritable kick.

  George noticed that everyone was behaving gently with him. Alan, Vera’s husband, a slender, black-haired man who also spoke after long intervals of deliberation, came over as he arrived, took his cap off and shook George’s hand.

  ‘Good to see you, Mr Baxter,’ he said, as if George had been away somewhere worrying for several months.

  Even Kevin the apprentice – who had not, so far, been notable for his fineness of feeling – said, ‘Mornin’, Mr Baxter. You doing all right, are you?’ in such a stirringly tender voice that George found himself almost tearful and had to hurry back into the house.

  4.

  Business was slow because of the weather. George found it hard to settle. He wandered between the workshop, where he got under the men’s feet, to the house, where he got under Vera’s. Finally, mug of tea in hand and Monty at his heels, he slunk out to the garden shed. He had a workbench in there where he sometimes did fretwork and other repairs. There was a comforting smell of wood shavings and varnish. Keeping the door ajar so he could see out, he lit the paraffin stove and soon got a fug up. He settled in the wicker chair with his pipe, a rug over his knees, took off his tie and undid his top shirt button. Monty sprawled on an old blanket.

  If George leaned forward he could just see the tarpaulined nose of his boat, Barchetta, sticking out from beside the shed. Thoughts of dipping oars, of sunny afternoons on the river at Wallingford cheered him. The arches of climbing roses that in summer screened the shed completely were winter sparse, so that through them he could make out the lawn edged by crammed, rose-filled borders, the washing line slung across from end to end.

  ‘I know you’re hiding from me out in that shed,’ Win used to say in occasional fits of choosing to examine their marital realities. ‘That’s why you planted all those roses.’

  ‘Not hiding,’ he would fib, to her doubting eyes.

  ‘Don’t pretend to me, George. It’s so silly. You obviously feel you have to get away from me. You’d rather spend your time with that dog of yours.’

  A huge silence would open in him like a cave. Where to begin? What words for what he really felt? He was doing his best just to get by.

  ‘Getting out from under your feet,’ he resorted to. ‘So you can have your cronies in without me hanging about.’

  ‘Don’t call them that. It makes them sound like a coven.’

  There was no safe response he could make to that either, so he’d get it in the neck all over again. They were her friends. At least they wanted to be with her. And so on.

  Twenty-six years. Well, the war sort of counted, though he was away nearly four years. Already it all seemed like a dream. She had been there, all that time, and now she wasn’t. He missed her. Of course he did. All those years they had spent together. Yet, shameful, in a way he could hardly admit, was the realization that she scarcely seemed to have touched him – not deep down . . . This lack, he felt, must be due to some grave fault in his nature and stopped that train of thought before it went any further.

  He polished off a few Lincoln biscuits with the tea. Exhaustion weighed on him. Perhaps he was wrong to have opened the shop today. It was gloomy in the shed, though the door and window gave him strips of brightness. After laying the pipe in a saucer on the floor, he closed his eyes. On the screen of his eyelids he saw a leaded library window, lit by sunlight; the full, pink head of a rose pressed against it, seeming to watch over him, smiling. The image warmed and loosened him and, for a while, he dozed.

  Half waking, he heard the telephone ring but no one came to trouble him. In his drowsiness, the new state of his life was gradually becoming apparent, not now in an ecstatic vision, but in melancholy. The truth of being alone sank into him: no wife, no children, no brothers or sisters to reflect back his childhood. He stared muzzily at a small patch of sky before his eyes slid closed again. Perhaps he should get out of the house. Would it be wrong of him to go to the pub this evening?

  5.

  Very late that night, he walked Monty along the lane behind the house. The snow, now frozen, crunched under his feet. From an icy, cloudless sky, a three-quarter moon looked down with what George felt to be an aloof, mocking gaze.

  Monty was sniffing about somewhere out of sight. Just ahead was the beginning of the track to the Wyldes’ farm. George stopped, feeling the cold air sting his nostrils, the heavy sit of his coat and the general befuddlement resulting from several pints in the Barley Mow. He thought back to the smoke-hazed light of the bar and gave a groan.

  For a start, as well as the usual drinking crowd – his pals, Bill, Roy and the others – John Wylde, Maggie’s husband, had come in. He didn’t drink there often. As a farmer he was early both to bed and to rise. John came up and shook George’s hand. He was a stocky, earnest-looking fellow with a shy manner. When he did look at you he had a rather penetrating gaze. Tonight, George mistook this for an ability to see into his own mortified soul. Fortunately, John put George’s bumbling inability to construct a sentence down to the incoherence of grief.

  ‘Sorry to hear about Mrs Baxter,’ John said, as he held out his hand.

  ‘Eeurgh . . .’ George began. They shook hands, solemnly.

  ‘Well . . .’ John left a masterfully timed pause before nodding towards the dartboard. ‘Team’s waiting.’

  George sat with his pipe lit, listening to chat about the impact of the weather on Bill’s car, the carelessly thrown cigarette butt that had set unfortunate Graham Sellers’ thatch on fire, the potholes in the Didcot road. Now he was on to his third pint he was gathering courage. That woman was behind the bar tonight – Barbara. He could see how it felt talking to a woman who was not known to him. After all, it had been a long time . . . Through the smoky air he kept seeing glimpses of her black hair, parted in the middle and fixed up at the back, a sheen on it under the lights. She wore a Windolene-pink sweater. He kept thinking about her. She must be at least, what, thirty-five? She was a compact woman, with a handsome if forbidding face with strong black eyebrows. So far as he knew, she lived somewhere on the other side of the village and he had seen her once or twice along the lanes. Though she often worked in the pub these days, he had never had anything resembling a proper conversation with her. Maybe, he thought, now was the time.

  ‘My round.’ George rose, gathered orders – a half of mild, one cider and three pints of Morland’s – pulled his shoulders back, straightened his collar and advanced on the bar. He aimed to look masculine, noble and boyishly appealing all at once. He rested one arm on the bar while Barbara pulled a pint for some bloke in a swanky leather jacket. George’s eyes moved, seemingly beyond his command, to her chest area. The sweater was a polo-neck, ribbed and tight, emphasizing even more the interesting apparatus at the front . . .

  ‘So d’you want a drink or not?’

  It seemed not to be the first time she had asked. She had moved to face him across the scattered beermats on the bar, a jar of maraschino cherries and a pot of cocktail sticks. Her arms were tightly folded ac
ross her chest as if she could read his mind. George retreated a step for a second, driven by the force of her glower.

  ‘Er . . . Ah, yes! Of course.’ He leaned on the bar again. ‘Hello – good evening, Barbara, dear.’ He smiled, waiting for her face to do something more encouraging than it was currently. But the glower deepened.

  ‘My name’s Brenda,’ she snarled.

  George was so flummoxed by her terse reaction that he clean forgot what the orders were and had to go back and ask. The others weren’t slow to cotton on.

  ‘Ha ha – is she giving you a hard time? George’s gone and riled Brenda – look at ’er face! Go on, George – she won’t bite you!’

  He received plenty of ribbing over this and laughed along with them. But he still felt clownish and humiliated, which, in the presence of women generally, was no novelty.

  Following Monty’s progress through the darkness, he thought of Maggie with mournful longing. Maggie was the one woman he had ever known who had not made him feel like a fool. Even with Win, the least intimidating woman he had been able to find, it had happened eventually. Slowly, increasing over time, he had felt inadequate and forever in the wrong.

  He stopped at the end of the farm track. He could see no lights. Maggie and John must be tucked up together. Suddenly he felt cold and very sober. He and Maggie had slipped into their little arrangement, just for a short time. And now they had to slip out of it again. He was not in love with Maggie Wylde and he did not believe she was in love with him. But at the thought of never lying in Maggie’s arms again, his heart buckled with sorrow. Because – and what an admission – in his fifty-seventh year, it was with Maggie that he had discovered a joyful freedom in lovemaking that he had never known before.