The Railway Station Man (25 page)

‘You'll get knives and forks in the drawer behind you. I don't know what you're talking about at all. You've got less equilibrium than anyone I've ever met. Do you like herbs in your omelette?'

‘Of course. Do you love me?'

She burst out laughing. She threw the knife across the room, clattering it into the metal sink. She picked up the bowl and walked with it in her hand over to the Aga. She stood there a moment with her back to him, before reaching to the cupboard for a small black iron pan.

‘I don't know,' she said at last.

‘I suppose that's not too bad an answer.'

He was meticulously spacing the knives and forks, the round rush mats, the wine glasses.

‘Why do you wear your shirt in bed?' she asked.

‘I would have thought the answer to that was obvious.'

‘I'm not exactly a thing of beauty. Aren't those things forgettable?'

‘Mutilation is an indignity. I like to preserve what dignity I can. It's pride, I'm afraid, Helen. Will you allow me that?'

‘Yes. I'll allow you pride. Do you like your omelette runny in the middle?'

‘No. Eggs should be hard.'

He poured them each a glass of wine.

It was the cat who woke Helen in the morning. Having jumped on to the bed, as was his custom, fairly early every morning, and found his pillow space to be occupied, he sat himself on Helen's chest and proceeded to stare morosely down at her face. After a few minutes she opened her eyes and stared back into the yellow ones that were staring at her. Beyond his head she could see blue sky through the window, the white frame reflected the hard glitter of the sun and a million dusty particles seemed caught in the morning light Amazing, she thought how that one shaft of sun creates reality and mystery at the same time. Hard-edge solidity at the window, then diffused, nothing defined any more, objects almost shimmering further into the room. Everywhere pools of dark. The cat bent forward and rubbed his head on her face. She disentangled a hand from the bedclothes and scratched at the top of his head.

‘I suppose breakfast is in your mind, crude cat,' she said.

‘Breakfast is in my mind too,' said Roger's voice from beside her.

She was startled.

‘Had you forgotten about me?' he asked. ‘So soon?
La donna è mobile
.'

She laughed.

‘No, no, no. I hope you haven't been awake for long thinking about breakfast.'

‘Just a few minutes. The cat and I have had a small confrontation. I don't think he likes me.'

‘He's just confused. He's a creature of habit. You're in his space. What time is it anyway?'

She looked at his watch.

‘Eight.'

‘Late. I'm usually up long before this. I've usually had two cigarettes by eight.'

‘Well, I've at least saved you from that.'

‘True. But on the other hand, the Aga may have gone out. It's also a creature of habit. It likes to breakfast at half past seven …'

She began to hustle herself out of bed. He put his hand on her shoulder, holding her.

‘Don't go.'

‘I must.'

‘Rubbish. Let the bloody Aga go out. Stay here with me. After all…'

She shrugged his hand off her shoulder and got out of the bed.

‘No.' Her voice was faintly exasperated.

The cat jumped down from the bed and rubbed himself around her bare legs.

‘Even for Paul Newman I wouldn't let the Aga go out.'

She took her dressing gown from the back of the door and put it on. The cat dashed out onto the small landing and waited at the top of the stairs for her to follow. She hunted round on the floor for something to put on her feet. The rope soles were under the bed. She bent down to pull them out. His fingers grappled into her hair.

‘You're being very unromantic,' he said.

‘I'm too old to be romantic.'

She shuffled her feet into the shoes and stood up.

He lay there already looking abandoned.

‘There's too little time,' she said. ‘Far too little time.'

She almost ran out of the room and tripped over the cat outside the door and they both fell several steps before she grabbed the bannister and landed angry and undignified half-way down the stairs. The cat fled round the corner and into the kitchen.

‘Bloody cat,' she yelled after it.

‘Are you all right?' Roger called from the bedroom.

‘No bones broken. Dignity impaired. Suffering from mild shock. Blood pressure going crazy. Otherwise everything all right.'

‘It's a judgment on you for being unromantic. What's so great about Paul Newman anyway?'

He stood in the doorway looking down at her, the bedspread draped around him. She stood up slowly, creaking and crackling like a pair of cheap shoes.

‘Just the glorious unattainable.' She began to laugh. ‘You look like a Roman senator. Heroic and noble.'

And crumbling. One half of the face removed by the worms of time and weather. I like the idea.'

One of her shoes was at the bottom of the stairs. She hobbled down and put her foot into it.

‘Do you want a bath?'

‘Roman senators spent their time having baths.'

‘You'll find towels in the press in the bathroom. There'll be breakfast in about half an hour. Ave atque vale.'

‘Miaow,' screeched the hungry cat.

Aga revived, the cat content and asleep on the chair in the porch, they sat, almost accustomed to each other at the kitchen table, eating toast. He was amazingly adept, she thought. He seemed to be able to cope more neatly with his one hand than she had ever managed to with two.

‘Did you never think to have an attachment of some sort… a false arm … you know?'

‘I tried. Yes. Years ago. When I was still in hospital. They all thought it would make life much easier for me. I found it a bit repulsive though. Things might be different now, but then, what they offered me was quite crude and … well… repulsive is the best word I can think of. A lot of straps and things.' He smiled. ‘I was allowed out one weekend to stay with my father and I went off for a walk and dropped the damn thing in the river. They were quite cross really. All of them. Yes. Quite cross. They considered I was ungrateful. I thought that was funny. There was a lot of trouble round about then.'

‘What sort of trouble?'

‘Trouble.' He looked vague. ‘Prison and that sort of thing.'

‘Prison? You've never been in prison, Roger. What on earth are you talking about?'

‘It was prison all right. I wanted to go to Oxford. I had it all set up. They made allowances in those days for chaps like … injured … you know… allowances.'

He looked past her out of the window, his eye, reflective, had lost its blue energy.

‘I could have managed.'

‘I'm sure you could.'

‘I wanted to be shown how to start my head working. I knew I had to do that before I could do anything else. No, they said. Damn it all, I'd passed those exams at school. Place all ready waiting when you come back from the war, they said. I could have managed.'

She was making a ring of cigarettes on the table, each one standing upright like a soldier, on its filter end.

‘No, they said. You're not fit yet. Not fit to look after yourself. Not fit. When you're fit we'll reconsider. So, it was prison.'

‘Not prison,' she said, keeping her eyes on the cigarettes. ‘You told me yourself, a nursing home.'

‘Genteel bars at my window, so that I couldn't throw myself out. A shadow always there, always walking behind me, watching me read, eat, sleep. I wasn't even allowed to lock the bathroom door. The degrees of comfort are irrelevant, the disciplines are irrelevant. A prison is always a prison.'

‘What had you done to them?'

‘I hadn't done anything. They just wanted me to be normal. Fit. Fit to be taken about in polite society. Our hero son. Polite, hero, son. Heroes should be grateful for the passing admiration in the eyes of others. Grateful for a pension. Grateful for the small attentions we throw to them. Grateful to be alive. I didn't want to fit in or to be fit. So they thought it was best to shut me up somewhere. They used to tell me how much money they were spending on me.'

He smiled again. The scar beneath his eye-patch puckered with the strain.

She saw it suddenly in terms of textures, painful colours mixed on the palette. A line of light ran from the black patch down to the jaw.

‘It was my money. They had nothing to complain about.'

‘That's over, a long time ago,' she said gently.

‘No. Now at this moment perhaps I'm free from the ghosts. But any moment, without any warning, Helen, they take over my mind … and my body. Pain and ghosts. I become imprisoned again.'

‘Those are all images of the past. I'm inept at this sort of conversation. It's all over now. Stop conjuring up nightmares. Leave the past alone. That will be your freedom.'

He said nothing for a long time. Little pulses beat beside his eye and in his throat.

‘Why are you doing that with the cigarettes?' he asked at last, his voice normal.

She flipped her hand and the standing cigarettes fell down. She began to put them back into the box.

‘I get quite nervous,' she said. ‘When people talk. I talk so seldom to other people. I feel disadvantaged. It wasn't inattention, I assure you.' She laughed. ‘Like Mrs Hasson, I suffer from nerves. Luckily no exeema, just straightforward nerves.'

He stood up suddenly, the tension gone miraculously from his face. ‘Up, up, woman. Go and dress yourself. I'm going back to the station to collect the car and have a word with Damian and then we'll go and have our picnic at the Devil's Well. Tobar na … whatever you call it.'

There was no strong west wind blowing. The flat rocks were dry, the reflections in the narrow pools were without movement. Through the mirrored sky you could see clearly the sloping sides covered with barnacles and wisps of weed. Limpets clung just below the surface of the water and a discarded claw from some tiny crab lay among the pebbles on the bottom of one pool. She wondered how she could translate to canvas the opaque mystery of reflection imposed on the reality of granite, weed and shell. Odd, she thought, I've always looked through the reflection in the past, disregarded that dimension. Such blindness. Untrained eyes.

He took her arm and they walked to the edge of the blowing hole and looked down. Far below them, in the darkness, water plocked, glittered for a moment and was still, plocked again.

‘When Damian's boat is finished,' said Roger, ‘we'll get him to bring us close in, to see the entrance to the cave. It must be very low down, totally covered, I'd say, at high tide. I wonder why they called it the Devil's Well? It's not a well at all.'

‘It looks like one from here. Those smooth sides look almost man-made. It's not till you see it in action that you realise what it is. A spout. The Devil's Spout would have been a better name. Wouldn't it?'

She bent down and picked up a small stone and wondered whether to drop it into the hole. She decided against that traditional gesture and instead turned away from Roger and walked to the edge of the rocks. She threw the stone out into the sea and watched while it dropped out of her sight. A gull, interested for a moment, changed course, floated down almost to the water and then without any apparent effort rose back to its original flight path once more.

‘I get vertigo,' shouted Roger. ‘I always have the terrible temptation to jump from heights.'

She moved back from the edge towards him.

‘It would be such an exciting way to die. They say you become unconscious quite quickly, so you wouldn't feel the nasty bit at the end. You'd just fly out of life. That appeals to me.'

‘Too nice a day for morbid thoughts,' Helen said. She stared down at the flat rocks.

‘Do you think these rocks are neolithic?'

‘I haven't the faintest idea what they might be.'

‘ “Of or belonging to the later stone age.” That's what the dictionary says. Not much help. I did some paintings of them and wondered whether I could call them neolithic or not. The OED is usually more helpful than that.'

‘That's probably helpful enough if you know the difference between the later stone age, the early stone age, the bronze age, the ice age. I'd use the word neolithic if it pleases you, if it seems right.'

‘I'd better not. Some elderly geologist would be bound to complain.'

She bent down and stirred in a shallow pool with her hand.

‘Will you marry me, Helen?'

Oh damn, she thought, straightening up, shaking the drops from her fingers. The tiny stains dried almost at once, leaving the rocks unblemished.

‘Helen.'

He was just behind her.

She was suddenly conscious of a lark's song spiralling above her and she stared up into the sky, trying to catch sight of the moving bird. Roger spoke her name again, a foreground to the distant warbling.

‘No,' she said.

‘Did you hear what I asked you?'

‘Yes.'

She turned round and looked at him.

‘Thank you. Yes, I heard. Thank you very much, but no.'

‘Why not?'

She laughed a little.

‘Men always ask why not.'

‘I mean, is it because of the way I am … physically? Is that it?'

‘No.'

‘I love you, Helen. I never thought I'd find myself in this position. I never thought I'd find anyone that… I never thought I could love anyone. Perhaps we could be happy, Helen.'

He picked up her left hand and held it to the whole side of his face. It felt almost feverish, she thought.

How unkind of God to dangle the prospect of happiness in front of me at this moment in my life.

They stood in silence for a moment. The lark continued to sing.

‘You don't love me,' he said at last.