Hartsend

by Janice Brown

  She walks out of the ocean like that actress in the old Bond film. He pretends not to see her walking up the beach towards where he sits on the veranda shaded by palms, he keeps his head down, keeps going with the sketching. All day it’s been hot. Now it’s late afternoon. Maybe there’s going to be thunder and a quick rain. Her shadow falls across him. She says hello. He grunts, as if he’s too busy to notice her. He’s so famous for his art now, he doesn’t like visitors.

  Maybe they met somewhere else the day before, she was buying mangoes and the bag burst and he helped her pick them up, and she offered him one as a reward, and that was it, and once he left, she asked the stall holder who he was, and now she’s tracked him down. Leaving tiny grains of sand from her soles, she goes around the room. It’s on two levels, with a high ceiling. She loves everything she sees: the paintings, all originals (but not his own, these he’ll show her later), the subtle colours, the sound system, every piece of furniture. He keeps quiet about the fact that these are exclusive pieces he’s designed himself. He’s won awards for design, big international prizes.

  She wants to see what he’s working on, but he says, no, it’s not ready. Now she says she’s hot and thirsty, so he puts down his pencil, makes her something with ice, some drink she’s never heard of. She tastes it and says it’s wonderful. He acknowledges this with a modest nod of the head. She’s wearing a one piece swimsuit in the same creamy colour as the dress she’d had on the day before. A butterfly darts in through the open wall, and settles on her shoulder, attracted by her perfume. He reassures her, tells her what kind of butterfly it is, because he knows that sort of thing. He asks if she’d like him to put on some music. He can smell her hair when she kneels down beside him to look at all his CD’s. She undoes her sandals, or maybe she doesn’t have sandals on, since she was swimming. Or maybe they’re in her canvas bag with her towel and sun-cream. She lies back in one of the recliners, running her fingers along the butterscotch Italian leather …

  The ring of the phone woke him. The heating was off and the air in the room was freezing. He looked at the bedside clock. Half one. The phone rang until it rang out. Seconds later the whole thing repeated itself. He lay for a while waiting. Silence.

  Wide awake, he went down to the kitchen and heated some milk. There were strange-looking pastry things in the fridge, and small cooked potatoes with bits of green stuff on them, but luckily there was still some bread in the box. He made himself a sandwich with red jam. His hand hurt a bit, so he ran cold water over it for a time. Sandwich in one hand, milk in the other, he stared at the phone in the hall. He put the mug down on the ledge and dialled 1471. It wasn’t a number he recognised. He pressed three.

  ‘‘Hullo.’’

  A male voice.

  ‘‘Hullo? Who’s that?’’ it repeated.

  He put the phone down without answering.

  Going like a fair

  When Duncan returned to work the Library was depressingly quiet, with only a few students around, and none of them needing assistance. More importantly, little Mrs Fleming who brightened his mornings and chatted with him while she ate her packed lunch was missing, afflicted by a viral infection, which was a great pity, as he had rehearsed a conversation in which he would ask about her Murder Mystery evening, and she would learn about the new bird book, which he had brought with him. Mrs Fleming was quite interested in birds, and quite interested in poetry, so he felt she would be very interested in a book where the two were combined.

  So far he had been surprised and pleased by how accurate the poems were in their choice of detail. Hardy’s robin poem was the only one he had encountered before, (There was another poem in the collection, ‘‘The Darkling Thrush,’’ but he was keeping his rule, and hadn’t reached it yet.) and though he liked the first three verses, he disliked the last one, not merely because Hardy allowed his robin to die of starvation, but because in Duncan’s experience, birds fluffed up when sick and did not resemble balls when dead. Besides, although he had never been able to discuss this with a poetry expert, he was unsure about the bird knowing how it felt to be dead. Since he was very fond of Hardy’s poems, it was easier to leave the last verse unread.

  However, this new book was proving more than satisfactory. He had allowed himself to glance at the afterword, written by one of the editors, and it seemed to him to be as poetic and accurate as the chosen poems. He was, in fact, beginning to feel rather excited, like someone discovering a new continent, like the chap in the Keats poem who stood on a mount in Lebanon, or wherever it was. Perhaps Mrs Fleming would be back soon.

  His bus journey home was uneventful until they came within two miles of the village, where the nearside lane was cordoned off and a queue had formed. Eventually they reached two police cars with lights flashing. A uniformed officer signalled to the driver to open his doors, spoke to him and went away.

  The bus driver swivelled round and shouted, ‘‘Right, everybody. We’ve got a wee problem up ahead. Big Sam’s chippie’s on fire at the moment.’’ He talked on over the buzz of voices. ‘‘So we’re no’ goin’ through the village. We’re goin’ off by the old farm road and back on at the other side at Bogend. So if any of youse want to walk the last bit, you’d better get off now.’’

  Duncan stepped down out of the warmth of the bus, grasped his umbrella firmly, and pulled his scarf a little higher. The smell of smoke was apparent even this far away. With his long stride, he was soon ahead of the others. He had never been inside Big Sam’s establishment and was unable to feel a great sense of loss. Besides, he was forever lifting greasy cartons and paper from where they had been stuffed into the back hedge. It seemed that a portion of fish and chips could be consumed in the time it took the average teenager to walk from the shop to that part of their hedge bordering the shortcut through the golf course. He had never visited the Tandoori Takeaway, or Ming’s Oriental Restaurant either but sometimes they too made their presence felt. On a summer evening with the French doors open, the breeze would now and then blow from the north, wafting the smells of fried pork, papadums and curry all the way from the centre of the village.

  None of these establishments had existed when their house was built. None of the roads was tarred. The doctor of the day had owned the first motor car; the District Nurse used a bicycle. In summer the children went shoeless. Year round, each Friday, they watched the big plough horses being shod where Mr Ming’s restaurant now stood. When the school bell rang, they hurtled across the old bridge. Being late mattered in those days. The blacksmith’s shop had still been there in his own childhood, though the horses had gone.

  People were milling about on the traffic-free High Street, everyone cheerful and excited as if some festival had been announced. The side street itself was cordoned off, and blocked half way along by two large fire engines. There was plenty of smoke, but no flames that he could see. An ambulance and a couple of police cars were parked beyond the fire engines. Someone had put up a step ladder on the pavement, and there was a man with a camera on it, while others were holding mobile phones high to take photographs. Going like a fair, Duncan thought: bustle and jostling and shrieking children and yelping dogs twisting on leads to get at one another. The village sergeant and constable were trying to soothe a group of irate-looking bystanders. He recognised one of the local councillors, who on seeing him, waved, as if to say, Come over here, Mr Crawfurd, I’ll tell you all you need to know. Duncan nodded in a non-committal manner, slowly turned himself around, and began to walk away. The man had a habit of pausing for breath in the middle of sentences, so that you could never interrupt without talking over him, besides which, having lived in Hartsend all his days he took it for granted that the village was the centre of the world. His conversation moved inevitably into detailed news about people he assumed Duncan knew and cared about, or worse, news about people those people knew, who might be dead, missing, or living in Patagonia for all Duncan knew or cared.

  He felt a gentle tap on his arm.

&nb
sp; ‘‘Lesley? Shouldn’t you be at work?’’ What a silly thing to say. It sounded like criticism. ‘‘My bus was diverted. I’ve had to get off at Peathill,’’ he added quickly.

  Should he ask how she was? His mind tossed up suggestion after suggestion and the slight wind was enough to blow them away.

  ‘‘Did you get your boots?’’ he said finally. They were walking side by side, and he had to bend a little to hear her over the noise around them. He had forgotten how short she was.

  ‘‘My boots?’’

  ‘‘Mother gave them to your neighbour the other day.’’

  ‘‘Really? ’’

  He remembered the gentleman friend.

  ‘‘I think you … had a visitor.’’

  ‘‘I’m sorry. Was that you? I didn’t realise …’’ An ambulance siren submerged the rest of her words. ‘‘… Mary Flaherty. It was very difficult.’’

  ‘‘Yes,’’ he said, wanting to be helpful.

  ‘‘I’ve just been to see her, but I don’t think I did much good.’’

  ‘‘Oh dear, that’s a pity.’’

  ‘‘Has she spoken to you?’’

  ‘‘Well,’’ he said. ‘‘I’m not sure I ought …’’

  They had to separate to go round two young women with prams. What had Mrs Flaherty to do with the boots, he wondered. And what was difficult? Was the family in trouble? He understood the son-in-law had not yet found employment. He hoped Mrs Flaherty hadn’t been pestering Lesley to help the man in some way …

  ‘‘Isn’t that her son?’’

  ‘‘What?’’

  ‘‘Her son,’’ she pointed to a dark-coated figure leaning against the window of the Hospice Shop. ‘‘She said he’d shaved all his hair off. Peculiar thing to do in the middle of winter, don’t you think?’’

  A girl in a beige-coloured duffel coat came out of the shop. She said something to the boy, and they turned in the direction of the New Bridge.

  ‘‘I know that girl. That’s the minister’s child,’’ Duncan exclaimed.

  ‘‘Hardly a child, Duncan.’’

  Lesley had stopped. He stood beside her. They watched for a moment. Should he express approval or disapproval? Or change the subject? Could he tell her about his new book? It was glowing quietly in his briefcase. ‘‘Darien,’’ he said out loud. That’s where the mount was, not Lebanon. He’d known whole chunks of Keats by heart once.

  ‘‘Pardon?’’

  ‘‘Oh. Nothing,’’ he said. Yet at once he wondered if she would like to see the book. She might understand his delight.

  But she was saying goodbye then and see you again soon, and pushing open the door of the shop beside them, and gone. Taken aback, he stood outside the shop for a while, his explanation ungiven, until, noticing from the window display that it was the ladies’ hairdresser, he grasped what had happened, collected himself and walked on.

  He crossed by the old metal footbridge, letting the ferrule of his umbrella trail with a series of rapid clicks along the wire mesh. Then he realised what he was doing. Fortunately it wasn’t scratched. A clear thought rose above his mind’s restless surface. Lesley was always discreet, but her tone of voice had given the game away. The Flahertys were Catholic. The son had formed an attachment with the Protestant daughter of the local minister.

  He could understand Mrs Flaherty’s distress, although frankly it was ridiculous in this day and age. Nor was it right of her to trouble Lesley, not at this time. Lesley had no-one to protect her.

  ‘‘You’ve led such a sheltered life, Duncan,’’ Mrs Fleming had said more than once, smiling, as if a sheltered life was something bad, as if sheltering her baby was not Mrs Fleming’s own first priority. As if sheltering his family was not the first priority of a husband, even Mrs Fleming’s husband, a man with beads on a leather string round his neck who held his baby under his arm like a parcel.

  I want to shelter Lesley.

  The idea grew and grew until everything else was gone from his mind. The terrible completeness of it stunned him.

  It brought no delight. Instead he felt as if he were walking towards a huge blockage, a wall, something that would stop him in his tracks like the immense steel buffers at the end of a station platform he’d seen once as a small child.

  The wind had shifted, what little wind there was. It blew now from the north, bearing the acrid smoke from the ruined shop further along the valley, lifting it in a long plume, dark against the pearl-coloured sky.

  Treasure

  She was a very beautiful child. Her face had been dirty that first day and he had ached to wipe it clean for her, but he knew instinctively that this would have been a mistake. Her eyes were wonderful – generous, innocent but aware at the same time. He knew children’s eyes were big compared to the size of the face, so that they would be more appealing, a louder cry for the parent’s care, as it were, but he had seen a lot of very plain, mean-eyed children in his time. It was easy to tell she was a gentle soul from the way she held the feather, from the fact that she’d picked it up in the first place and hidden it protectively from him. She was so solemn, agreeing with him that eggs should never be stolen. He looked round the room, wondering what small treasure he might carry in his pocket the next time he went for a walk. What might he give her? What would she like?

  Clamped

  Harriet recognised Ryan through the shop window, just as she was putting her coat on. She made some excuse to June and went through to the back, hoping he’d be gone when she came out.

  He wasn’t.

  ‘‘Comin’ to see the fire?’’ he asked.

  ‘‘I’m going to the Post Office.’’

  ‘‘There’s nothin’ much to see now, anyway, unless you like dirty water. I took some photos earlier.’’ He patted a bulge in his coat pocket. ‘‘They might come in useful.’’

  ‘‘Good for you,’’ she said.

  ‘‘There’s no’ been excitement like this since McIntyre’s cows got out the dairy.’’

  ‘‘Before my time,’’ she said.

  The whole of the village was on the streets, it seemed: several shop owners in their doorways, young children sleeping or getting impatient in pushchairs while their mothers talked, and drivers whose cars were stuck in the parking inlet arguing with Brenda, the lady traffic warden, who had one hand clamped on her ear while she tried to talk into her phone. Clamped. That’s quite funny, Harriet thought. Not funny enough to share. Not with him.

  Across from them in the Millennium Garden the Pensioners Refuge looked deserted. All the old men seemed to have come over to the edge of the grass to see what was going on. One of them had a mug in his hand. Another had lit a cigarette and was coughing badly.

  She was being unfair. He wasn’t that awful. At least he didn’t smoke. He looked better with his hair gone than he had before. It was just that he made her uncomfortable. She couldn’t help speaking the way she did. She sounded so posh, but they weren’t posh. They hadn’t been posh, even in Aberdeen when they had money …

  ‘‘I’d better get on,’’ she said.

  ‘‘Wait.’’

  ‘‘I’m sorry?’’

  ‘‘There’s a thing you could do for me. Help me with.’’

  He pulled out something from an inside pocket. The brooch.

  ‘‘Come in the shop with me.’’

  ‘‘I’m sorry?’’ she said again.

  ‘‘Come in with me, and I’ll put it back.’’ He began picking bits of fluff off the scrolled silver leaves.

  ‘‘You can’t. … You shouldn’t have taken it in the first place.’’

  ‘‘I only did it ‘cause you were expectin’ me to.’’

  ‘‘What?’’

  ‘‘Come on, admit it,’’ he looked from the brooch to her. ‘‘You were watching me out of the corner of your eye, like a fucking raptor in the jungle.’’

  The word was like a slap. She turned, her face burning. That word still had the power to sicken, no matter how often she
heard it. Overhearing was bad enough. To have it so close, to have it said to her …

  He had caught up, was walking next to her again. She kept her head down. He said nothing more, but he didn’t go away either.

  When eventually they reached the Post Office, he said, ‘‘I’ll wait here.’’

  ‘‘Please don’t bother. I might be quite a while.’’

  There was no queue. The letters were weighed. She pocketed the change and the receipt. He was leaning against the window, rocking slightly, as if some tune was playing in his head.

  ‘‘I’m perishin’. You want to go to the café?’’ he said, the minute she reappeared.

  ‘‘No, I have to get home. Goodbye.’’

  ‘‘I’m not good enough, is that it?’’

  ‘‘What?’’

  ‘‘What, what, what? I’m offerin’ to buy you a diet Coke, no’ cocaine.’’

  ‘‘I have to go home.’’

  ‘‘Sure you do. OK. How’s Kerr?’’

  ‘‘He’s fine. He’s off bouldering with some friends.’’

  ‘‘Bouldering? What the fancy fuck’s that?’’

  ‘‘Don’t!’’

  ‘‘Don’t what?’’

  ‘‘Use that word.’’

  He stared at her, eyebrows raised.

  ‘‘You’re no’ real,’’ he said.

  The road was clear. She darted over, walked quickly, ready to run if need be.

  His voice pursued her, ‘‘I said, you’re no’ fucking real!’’

  Margaret doesn’t work here anymore

  Lesley lay back with her head in the basin, agreed that the water was fine for her, and let the junior begin the shampooing. She recognised the girl, one of the more pleasant children whose uniform and appearance had always been neat. The mother had been a willing helper at parties and days out. Sick notes were spelled correctly, written on proper paper, not on a page from a jotter.