Falling (3 page)

While I was shopping I asked who lived in the cottage near the canal bridge. A lady from London – just moved in – a Mrs Redfearn. I asked if there was a Mr Redfearn, but that was not
known. Looking back, I realize that even then I was considering the possibility of Mrs Redfearn as I then thought of her. If there
was
a Mr Redfearn I would go no further. Experience has
taught me that there is very little point in pursuing women who are seriously, or even socially, married. You have to battle with their better natures – always the dullest part of them
– and there is the danger that the husband will cotton on at the wrong moment. In any case there are quite enough women on their own to make pointless the pursuit of those already spoken for.
I suppose when I was far younger, I did not understand this: the presence of a husband made romance more exciting and, of course, there were women, although with one exception I hardly encountered
them, whose position in life made reckless effort worthwhile. Poor Charley, I thought: poor rich Charley! It was extraordinary how relatives’ interference was invariably destructive. But in
Charley’s case they thought of nothing but money, which was why, I suppose, they had so much of it, and they were prepared to pretend that the drunken sod to whom she was married was a better
bet than I could ever be. Anyway, after that débâcle, I avoided married women.

As I trudged back to the boat with the first consignment of shopping I saw that the car had gone. On the other hand, there was smoke rising from the chimney, so presumably Mrs Redfearn had
simply gone out to lunch. Or
they
had gone out. I had suddenly an intense desire to walk through the jungle garden up to the cottage and see what I could of the inside. If there was anyone
in the cottage and they accosted me, I would say I had come to enquire whether they needed a gardener. The sitting room did actually have red walls and clashing pink curtains. There were two very
large sofas and, in the middle of the floor, several tea chests that seemed to be full of books. I noted also a number of very large cushions with bits of glass in their embroidery. A fire smoked
reluctantly on an enormous hearth but there was no sign of anyone.

I moved past the sitting room and the front door to the side where the kitchen must be. If I could see cups or mugs lying about, I might have some idea of how many people had had breakfast.

The kitchen had windows front and back, was two rooms knocked into one. It had, apart from the usual kitchen things, a round pine table on which the remains of breakfast for one still lay. Of
course, all that told me was that Mrs Redfearn had come here alone; for all I knew she might be fetching him from the station at this minute. Somehow (and this is
not
hindsight, I do
remember the feeling very clearly) I had the intuition that she lived alone, was either divorced or a widow.

I remember so well the curious prickling that comes after that little shot in the dark when one
knows
a small piece of something without the slightest reason for knowing it. For a split
second, I knew that Mrs Redfearn was going to be of paramount importance in my life. I need look no further: here she was going to be.

In the middle of these discoveries, I heard the car return. I had just time to get back down the path and outside the gate before she appeared round the corner of the hedge. She was tall,
wearing a long raincoat and boots, and a man’s black felt hat set rather far back on her head. She was carrying shopping-bags and stopped a moment when she saw me.

‘What can I do for you?’

‘I thought there might be something I could do for
you.’

‘Oh?’ She had reached the gate and we were face to face. Her eyes were grey and she looked wary. I launched into my garden bit.

‘I suppose I do,’ she said. ‘I hadn’t got round to thinking about it. Let me just go and dump these.’

As she walked into the cottage, I heard the telephone ring, and after a few minutes she reappeared and asked if I could come back in the afternoon at about three.

I agreed to that, reflecting as I went about my domestic chores that most, if not all, women are addicted to the telephone. At that point I wanted to find something ordinary about her to still
some of the violent surging of excitement that seeing her had engendered. It may seem extraordinary to an outsider, but I had only to look on her face to find it beautiful. I have a theory about
this, because it is something I have found several times in my life and when I have told the woman concerned she has always questioned – and in some cases totally misunderstood – me. It
has something to do with looking for the first time at someone with
no
preconceived notion, picture, image, whatever you want to call it, of them at all. I can, if I choose, look at a new
face and experience a sense of complete discovery and at the same time recognition. Then I
know
them – for the duration of my looking – and so, inevitably, I love what I see and
know. One woman argued that this could only be true if I was predisposed to love them anyway, to which I simply replied that something did not have to be true with everyone to be true with some. I
certainly don’t love everybody, but I also
see
very few people and those who I see I love, or have loved.

And now Mrs Redfearn had joined the club.

Another thing about this kind of seeing is that it imprints itself indelibly on my mind. With all the pictures that I have of her now, I can at any time shut out the present and conjure that
first sight – when I was within two or three feet of her and our eyes met. I knew that she was sizing me up, or trying to do so, but there was something more to her look than wary appraisal
– a wildness, a fear, a familiarity with disappointment, these things so instant and glancing that most people would never have caught anything of them, but after a lifetime of passionate
interest in the nuances of response I am finely tuned; nothing of the kind escapes me. I think I knew then that more of her life had been endurance than enjoyment.

I observed other things ... I estimated her to be in her mid-fifties: her complexion was pale and clear but it was inscribed with myriad tiny lines, round her eyes, round her mouth, and deeper
marks between her eyebrows that had in turn the narrow arched symmetry often seen in Elizabethan portraits. I could go on like Shakespeare: item, one nose of a shape known as aquiline; item, one
mouth – or pair of lips – small, also pale and rather prim excepting when she smiled. But I am anticipating: she had not yet smiled at me, nor had she taken off her hat.

Naturally I got to know all kinds of details, physical and other, but nothing I subsequently learned altered or belied my first impression.

I went back to the cottage at three. It was still, not a breath of wind, and the chilly sunlight made every leaf in the hedgerow and on the towpath livid. From the bridge, I could see her slated
roof; the road sloped steadily downhill from the bridge to the village nearly a mile away. I could not see any smoke from the chimney, and for a moment I thought that perhaps she was not there.
Then I thought, no, people from London were not used to open fires. I would offer to relight it for her.

I was right about the fire. She had taken off her mac, but she was wearing a black, roll-necked jersey that looked like cashmere and over it a jacket of thick wool embroidered with poppies.

‘Oh – hello. Thanks for coming back. Sorry about the telephone, only it was long distance and I didn’t want to have to ring them. What do you think you could do about the
garden, then?’

‘I haven’t looked at it yet. I thought that was something we should do together.’

I felt rather than saw her glance at me and then she said, ‘Oh, well, it can’t be much colder out than it is here.’

We walked out into the middle of the overgrown path.

‘I’ve only just bought this place.’ She sounded doubtful, as though this might have been a mistake.

‘It’s this jungle round it,’ I said. ‘Cottages need their setting and that means their garden, however small. Think of
Lark Rise.
Cottages always have a garden. In
the mind’s eye.’

‘What?’

‘Flora Thompson’s book.
Lark Rise to Candleford.
Village life at the turn of the century. Very different from now.’

‘Oh, yes. Yes, I did read it – years ago.’ Again I felt her looking at me – and looking away. ‘I was wondering why on earth I
did
buy it.’

‘I know you were.’

Another covert glance, and then she said distinctly, ‘Of course, I would need a price for doing the whole thing.’

I sensed that reading her mind – understanding her – would only make her shy like a nervous horse.

‘I just want a few rough measurements, and then we can discuss what you would like indoors. If you like.’

‘The fire’s gone out and I’ve run out of firelighters.’

‘I don’t need them.’

She said nothing to this, but held one end of the tape while I measured and wrote down the dimensions on the back of an envelope with Charley’s gold pen, which I was pretty sure she would
notice. Nothing was said, however, until we had finished (the measurements were hardly extensive or difficult) and she had led the way back into the cottage. I said, ‘I apologize if I was
pushy just now, but I’m one of those people who leap at any chance to light a proper fire.’

‘Go ahead. There’s some newspaper and sticks in that basket.’

‘And logs?’ There seemed to be only one lying about – far too large, like a great rafter.

‘I think in the back of the garage. And there is a wheel-barrow, because I found one full of logs outside the back door.’

‘Right, I’ll get them.’

All the time I was collecting the logs and wheeling them cottagewards, I thought about her voice. I hesitate to use the word girlish, but it was high and very clear. Somehow it was a shock
coming from her, instantly making me imagine her much younger and more vulnerable than her present appearance implied. But it was a very pretty voice, ageless, and charming to me.

I must say here that I am very sensitive to voices – to pitch, to timbre, to accent. I can imitate other people, including myself in earlier days; having adapted my way of speaking
considerably. For the last twenty years of his life my own father would not have recognized me on the telephone. At any rate, I was fortunate that she had a voice that could charm me. At that point
I wanted, was determined, to be charmed. I was also nervous – at this stage a very small thing could jeopardize the enterprise entirely. This was also a time (which, of course, I knew from
past experience) when getting Mrs Redfearn to take an interest in me was a challenge, an adventure, more of an exciting game than an affair of the heart. So the first aim must be to encourage one
thing to lead to another.

I returned with the logs and set about the fire. She offered me a cup of tea; I accepted. I asked if she had paper on which I could draw her garden for her. I sensed that formality reassured
her. I spent longer than I needed sitting back on my heels watching the fire, and then watching her as she went to and fro from the kitchen for the tea and some shelf paper, which was all she had,
she said, for me to draw on. She put the tea-tray on to one of the glass-embroidered cushions. ‘Haven’t got a table for here,’ she said. ‘Got to get one.’

The firelight made the room feel warmer at once. Outside dusk coloured the sky and I knew that there was going to be a frost. I noticed the sky because she was drawing the curtains, ‘to
keep the warmth in’.

Eventually we were each sitting on a sofa opposite one another, and she offered me a cigarette. I had to get up to light hers for her.

‘Do you always wear a hat?’

‘Of course not. I forgot it.’ She pulled it off and tilted her face for the light.

She had the most amazing hair of a kind I’d never seen before in my life. It was dark, brindled with pure white, and sprang richly from her head in small curls that, if her hair had been
longer, would have been ringlets. But the most unusual thing about it was its fineness. It looked like gossamer or the hair of a fairy and must have made anyone seeing it for the first time want to
touch it.

She asked me to switch on the lamp that stood by my sofa, which was good because the light from the new fire was romantic but unrevealing. She poured the tea into two striped mugs and started to
talk about her garden. She had always loved the idea of having one, but knew next to nothing about gardening. She didn’t want anything elaborate. ‘You made me feel rather nervous when
you said you wanted to draw a design – I can’t afford to spend thousands of pounds on it, you know.’

‘Of course not. It was more for me to find out what you want.’

‘I told you, I know so little about it that I don’t even know what I like.’

‘Like art critics, you mean? They never seem to me to have the faintest notion of what they actually like.’

She threw back her head and gave a little shout of laughter.

‘What on earth made you think of that?’

‘I read.’

‘I wasn’t laughing at you. It’s just so true.’

‘Does the truth make you laugh?’

‘Very much, sometimes. Why not?’

‘Isn’t the truth important to you, then?’

She gave me a look that was both incomprehensible and daunting, and threw her cigarette into the fire. ‘I’m not much in the market for philosophical forays. We’re meant to be
talking about my garden.’

‘Right.’ I became at once professional. I know enough about gardens to know that I don’t know nearly enough, but I still know more than most people or, with many of them, have
been able to give the impression that I do.

So I plunged into things like aspect, soil tests, high or low maintenance, the pros and cons of deciduous or evergreen foliage . . .

‘Look,’ she said in the middle of my spiel, ‘all I want is a simple, nice cottage garden. You know, roses growing up the walls and lavender and those tall flowers with long
spikes that people used to embroider on tea cosies – holly-hocks! Them. I don’t want anything grand or elaborate. I shan’t be here much for the next few months anyway.’