Authors: Elizabeth Jane Howard
‘I wonder whether you would mind if I washed my face in the sink?’
‘Of course not.’
When she had fetched him a towel, she said, ‘By the way, when you were unpacking the tea chests, did you by any chance come across a leather diary?’
He had been laving his face under the running tap and now enveloped his head in the towel before replying.
‘Diary? No. What sort of diary?’
‘Red leather – rather battered. It may have been inside a large envelope full of papers.’
He said at once, ‘Oh, well, if it was in an envelope, I wouldn’t have seen it, would I? I was particularly careful to see that the chests were empty before I took them out to chop up
for kindling. Of course, there was such a mass of papers – scripts and stationery and such – that I might not have noticed a diary when I was putting it all away. If it wasn’t in
the envelope, I mean. I put all those sort of things on the bottom shelf because it was the only one wide enough to take them flat. Do you want me to have a look for it?’
‘No. If it’s there, I’ll find it.’
After a pause, she said, ‘I need to go shopping tomorrow.’
‘Right. What time would you like to go?’
‘Oh, I should think about ten.’
He had finished drying his face, and now picked up his mug of tea off the table. He began to drink standing. There was a faint but unmistakable feeling of tension. It was almost, she thought, as
though she had accused him of losing a diary of which he knew nothing. Usually he sat at the table and asked her if she would mind his having a cigarette.
‘I’m sorry if you feel I’ve lost your diary or papers or whatever,’ he said. ‘I do assure you that I took the utmost care of all your things.’ It was uncanny
– the way in which he seemed to know what she was thinking.
‘Of course you didn’t lose it. It’ll turn up. I may even have left it in London. Please don’t think I was accusing you or anything like that.’
He smiled then, and took out his packet of Silk Cut and offered it to her.
She refused; she had a headache.
‘It’s the weather,’ he said, looking at her with concern. ‘There’ll be a thunderstorm tonight and that should clear the air.’ A moment later he said,
‘You’re not afraid of thunder, are you?’
‘No.’
‘Because if there
is
a storm, I could keep you company till it was over. You could tell me about Chekhov. I would really like to know why you think he is the second greatest
playwright in the world. Not because I disagree, I just don’t know about playwrights as you must do.’
‘Not this evening. I think I’m going to bed early. But you can borrow the plays if you like. They are in three volumes.’
‘Thank you.’ He finished his tea, rinsed the mug under the tap.
‘May I go and get the book?’
‘Do.’
‘I’ll put it in a carrier-bag in case it starts to rain before I get home. Good night. I do hope your headache will go. And thank you for this.’ And then he made the same
gesture with his fingers to his lips that he had made on the bridge on the evening when she had been driving to London.
He was gone. She heard the garden-gate latch click, then silence.
She went to the front door, which she had propped open to get more air into the cottage. The sky was leaden, there was not a breath of breeze and the birds were silent. It was a relief to be
alone. She looked at the garden, so neat and promising now, the lawn mown, the hedge each side of the garden gate freshly trimmed. In the sunniest corner against the cottage, he had made her a herb
bed, the mint planted in a large pot stood beside it – he had told her that otherwise it would invade everything. He was a good gardener, an interesting and unfortunate man, but she did not
want his misfortunes to prevail in her life. It was, undoubtedly, a piece of luck that somebody so knowledgeable and reliable had turned up; in fact, his presence made it possible for her to live
in the cottage in her present state. It was odd how quickly he had divined that she thought he might have done something with her diary but, then, people of that sort were always touchy or
sensitive about whether those employing them considered them honest. She remembered, years ago, an extremely nice, hard-working Portuguese woman, who had cleaned her flat and done her ironing
– and indeed anything else she was asked. When one day Daisy had exclaimed that she could not find her cheque book and wondered aloud where on earth it could have got to, the woman had given
her one look, taken off her apron, put on her coat and hat and left. Two days later she had received a stiff little note saying that the woman was unaccustomed to being accused of thieving, and
would therefore not be returning for work. Daisy had gone to her flat with the money owed, had apologized, explaining that it had not occurred to her that Maria would take her cheque book (what use
could it be to her?) but that had proved to make matters worse. So she might take
other
things. Folded arms, a refusal to take the notes owed and offered.
Yes, no doubt Henry had a bit of that attitude in him, and if he was smarting from being dispossessed of his home – and, she supposed, his local friends – not to speak of the sense
of bitterness and failure that an acrimonious separation or divorce so often induced, then he was all the more vulnerable. Well, she was vulnerable in some ways (although, of course, only until her
leg was entirely healed) and he in others. She made herself an omelette and a green salad, and opened a bottle of Macon, before she remembered that, with a headache already, drinking any of it
might start a migraine.
The air was so oppressively hot that she had a tepid bath before going to bed. When she opened her windows wider for the night, she saw a split-second streak of lightning racketing across the
sky and counted. The thunder was far away, but the storm had begun. The beginnings of a thunderstorm always reminded her of
Rigoletto
and when she turned on her radio there was the quartet
from the last act in full voice. This coincidence was curiously comforting. By the time it was finished the storm was well under way – with lightning that briefly illuminated her room and
louder and far more immediate rumblings from the crashing clouds. She fell asleep as the audible, heavy rain began.
She woke early. The rain had stopped, but the sky was not clear: it was as though there was a pause before more thundery weather. The air smelt fresher, but it was still oppressive. She put on a
sleeveless denim dress and sandals, and went downstairs and into the garden. The stone of the path glistened and the little plants that had been put between the cracks all looked wonderfully
revived by the rain. She went out of the gate. She would walk up the lane as far as the canal bridge, something she had meant to do for several days. They had told her that she must walk every day,
and she resolved now to do this before breakfast every morning and then again if she felt like it later. But as the bridge came in sight, the rain began again – unspectacular steady stuff
that did not feel like a shower at all, more like the beginning of a downpour. So she turned back, and as she neared the cottage, heard her telephone ringing: an unusual hour for anyone to be
calling her – unless it was some calamity.
She opened the gate and began to run up the path, but halfway there, she slipped on the stone and fell, heavily, awkwardly, striking the side of her head as she hit the path. A misty, random
thought, Why do I keep falling? and then she could remember nothing. Nothing until someone had taken her in his arms and in a voice full of tender anguish was saying, ‘My darling – my
dear love, my darling Daisy. What have you done to yourself?’
It
was
more than a week before she came: a nerve-racking ten days, days when I no longer dared to use the cottage as I had become accustomed to doing. It was certainly
out of the question to sleep there, but it was also mildly dangerous to have a bath or cook in the kitchen. I did manage a couple of the former, very late at night when I was careful to use every
scrap of the hot water so that there would be no evidence of it having been on if she came the next morning. I would boil a kettle to make tea or coffee, and after a week I began eating up the more
perishable supplies that Katya had bought. After all, even if Daisy found out that they had existed, I could truthfully say that Katya had told me to use them before they went bad. But they were
uneasy days. I picked primroses in the mornings and set them upon the kitchen table. I went up to her bedroom and cleaned it, and then I made her bed. One morning was spent making tea for the
telephone engineer who set up the telephone upstairs for her. I spent afternoons potting up the seeds I had grown, most of which were doing very nicely.
I retied the tape round the envelope containing the letters: it was surprisingly difficult to get the knot into exactly the same position on the tape as it had originally been, but in the end I
managed it. I looked carefully at the diary. I had replaced the letter from Jason between the pages where I had found it, but looking closely at the broken leather strap could see the pale leather
beneath the red exterior. I solved this by moistening my finger, dipping it in wood-ash from the fireplace and rubbing the pale bits gently until they looked dirty and as though the break had
occurred some time ago. Then I wedged the diary beneath the envelope on the bottom bookshelf. I waited faithfully in the cottage for the hour every morning when Katya had said she would call, but
she did not.
And then, on a Friday morning, when I had finished with the plants I went into the kitchen to eat my lunch and generally make sure that I had left no signs of occupancy, when I heard a car in
the lane. I seized my sandwiches and was out of the back door in a flash without even giving myself time to lock it. I ran behind the garage just in time to see a car disappearing on the road
towards the village. It had not been Daisy’s car, but it had given me a fright. As I went back to the cottage, to look once more round the kitchen before leaving it and locking up, I wondered
why
it had given me such a fright. Cars went up and down the lane fairly regularly – not often, but several times a day – and I had never bothered about any of them until now.
Then I knew, somehow, that her arrival was imminent. I had missed having a cup of tea, and the thought of the boat depressed me – boats get more and more uninviting the less time you spend in
them – so I decided to walk to the village pub, have a few drinks and see if the landlord would knock me up something hot: she did lunches at weekends so she would presumably have already
cooked something.
I didn’t spend long at the pub; it was empty when I got there, but the landlady didn’t seem particularly pleased to see me. ‘Quite a stranger,’ she had remarked, without
smiling. I explained that I had been working. What had actually been happening was that I had taken to buying my drink and lugging it back to the boat in my rucksack for the simple reason that I
preferred drinking alone, and got more value for money that way. Pub shorts were useless to me since I could not afford enough of them. I asked for a barley wine and a cigar, but when I mentioned
food she said she didn’t have anything but packets of crisps and peanuts. Then two more customers arrived who she was clearly far more pleased to see, so I drank the barley wine and kept the
cigar for when I got back to the boat. I knew the two men who had come in by sight, but had no desire to know more than that. I have to admit that my own sex bores me, and their presence precluded
my coaxing any real food out of Mrs Wilks. I am not prepared to risk losing out with a woman in front of any man.
But, as I trudged back in no very good frame of mind and got to the cottage, there was the car – her car. It was parked in front of but outside the garage. I walked quickly past, as close
to the garden hedge as possible. I did not want to be seen as I was pretty sure she was not alone. Katya would have driven her, I supposed – or possibly (a worse thought) Miss Blackstone. But
never mind who she had come with, the point was that the long vigil was over; she was here, and soon whoever it was would go away and I would have her to myself. Life with her was about to
begin.
Once I was back at the boat I poured myself a large vodka and lit the cigar. I was no longer in the least hungry, but I wanted to celebrate. Also, now that she was safely back, I had immediately
to consider the best course to take with her. Her wariness, her slight wildness (which I found erotic) had none the less to be treated with the utmost sensitivity and care: get things wrong and I
could wreck everything. Perversely, I almost wished she had been away longer so that our intimacy could have increased in the comparative safety of letters. Contrary to what most people say, it is
possible to undo the written word with more of them. They think the spoken word easier to erase, whereas in reality it is made indelible by the speaker’s tone of voice, movement and
expression – all capable of a powerful imprint. In writing it was possible to say that one had not
meant
quite what had been written, and to compose some alternative sense that was
usually accepted.
I gave myself a second drink and fell upon my bunk just as it began to rain.
I slept until six. The rain had stopped. I was ravenously hungry and ate my lunch-time sandwich with a cup of Nescafe. In the morning, I decided, I would turn up at the usual time and discover
that she had arrived. Meanwhile, there were a good many hours to fill. When it was dusk I would go up to the cottage by way of the wood, to see if I could discern whom she had brought with her,
possibly catch a glimpse of her – even if she was simply a dark shadow moving about the lit rooms.
This idea proved to be hopelessly frustrating. I could see smoke rising from the chimney and hear music playing – piano mostly – but the hedge was too high and thick to allow a view
of the ground-floor windows and I dared not stand at the gate to look in, as the last thing I wanted was to be caught hanging about by either Katya or Miss Blackstone. If she had been alone . . .
but she wasn’t. If I wanted to see without being seen, I would have to wait until it was dark.