Falling (31 page)

Trust, she thought, some time later as she lay awake in the dark, trust was not necessarily followed by love – of any kind. Or perhaps, at least, not love of a certain kind. But as she
lay, trying to still her mind and sleep, pieces of things he had said recurred in his voice – the times when he had said them, his capable, gentle hands, cleaning the dirt out of her wound,
massaging her feet one evening when they had been so cold ... At this she experienced a sudden, astonishing jolt, as though there had been some collision at the bottom of her spine. For some time
after it she lay rigidly still while the sensation ebbed slowly away, leaving her weak and, to her confusion, sick with longing.

She was asleep when he brought her breakfast and pretended to remain so while he put the tray on the table beside her, and drew the curtains. There was then a pause when she could hear no
movement and knew that he was looking down on her. This made her feel uncomfortably vulnerable, so she went through the motions of waking.

‘It is a beautiful morning,’ he said. ‘You should really be having your breakfast in the garden. Would you like that?’

‘Tomorrow.’

‘Right. I’m going to do some bedding out before it gets too hot. But I’ll hear if you want anything. Just give me a shout from the window.’ His tone was matter-of-fact.
He smiled nicely at her and went.

She read the note again with her coffee. It seemed to her then that she had been making too much of the whole thing. He obviously cared for her, in a way, and after last night she had to admit
that she found him an attractive man. No more than that. But what on earth did ‘that’ mean? She was not constantly finding men attractive – it was not usual. Well, everybody found
some people attractive – that did not necessarily involve a passionate or heady affair. He could easily be courting her with an affair in view without caring for her in the least; in fact,
that was most likely to be the case. And she, in common, she imagined, with most women, was familiar with that situation. The only differences were how convincing the men were – whether one
fell for it hook, line and sinker or merely hook. Well, she had had experience of both kinds, she had fallen in love and thought it returned; she had experimented once or twice with men who wanted
her to go to bed with them because she had felt she ought to want it too, and the fact that she seemed to have been more of a conquest to her lovers than a lifelong object of affection no doubt
reflected as much upon her as it did upon them. She had wanted too much, and they too little. In those cases no harm – indeed, almost nothing – had been done. She had concluded that sex
without love did not do much for her.

There was nothing extraordinary about that, but now, for the first time in her life, she wondered whether she had taken this romantic view for granted – that it might not invariably be
true. How about sex and good companionship? Sex and affectionate friends? Surely a great many people in the world would be happier if they deliberately settled for that? Perhaps they were and they
did, and perhaps
she
had landed up as she was because she had applied the same rigid standard to what had possibly been very different situations. It wasn’t a question of romance with
Henry – on her part, anyway. The things that he had said to her that in the night had seemed so overwhelming, now contracted to the commonplace behaviour of any man courting a woman he wanted
to make.

These conclusions relieved her; she felt calmer and more resolute – able to be pleasant, kind and cool to him. It was really time, she reflected, as she picked her favourite yellow and red
checked Madras cotton shirt from the drawer, that Henry went back to his boat: she did not need him caretaking at night any more.

I had put out a box of night-scented stocks, a box of white cosmos and a box of ‘Bowles’ Black’ pansies before she came into the garden, and for a minute I
sat back on my heels and watched her. She wore a black linen skirt, a red and yellow shirt tucked into her waist and the yellow suede belt with a silver buckle. She had a red straw hat and her feet
were bare. Her arms were full of her books and papers – her work. She walked over to her table not yet in the shade of the big tree.

‘Would you like me to move it for you?’

‘No, thanks, I rather like the sun.’ Her tone had a kind of amiable distance about it and my heart sank. I collected my empty seed boxes and took them to the shed. It crossed my mind
that she might tell me she no longer needed me to sleep in the cottage. It was a frightful idea, and the more likely the longer I thought about it. If she wanted to give me my
congé,
how on earth could I stop her? But I
had
to stop her: time was running out anyway, as she was getting better so quickly now that any minute she would be driving, having her friends to stay
(she had talked of this once or twice already) and, worse, going to London and only appearing at the cottage at weekends. If she sent me away now, I might lose everything. I lit a fag – the
last in my pack, which reminded me that we usually went shopping on Thursday afternoons. An idea came to me – risky, by which I mean uncertain of success, but in the absence of anything else
worth considering. I sat on the side of the wheelbarrow and thought.

Of course, I also thought, moments later, that I might simply be imagining her coolness. My letter might very well have made her feel shy, and an appearance of distance was one of her ways of
dealing with that. I would feel my way, but as a means of pre-empting my being turned out, I resolved to show her the boat.

It had become a custom for her to take her lunch on a tray in the garden when she would invite me to share it with her. I always waited to be asked, and I was always asked. Supper was another
matter. She usually ate it in the sitting room – until lately, by the fire – and I sensed that I was not wanted. She would read, or play music while she ate. I would usually go out then
– for a walk, or to the village pub where I could please myself what I drank, and where I had lately become more popular since I had more money to spend. Daisy had insisted upon paying me
very much more than she had as her part-time gardener, added to which I no longer had to buy my food. She had begun to cook, soups and salads or sandwiches for lunch and grills or casseroles for
dinner. But what soups, what sandwiches, what casseroles! After years of Hazel’s ill-cooked and dull, stodgy meals, and my limited repertoire on the boat, Daisy’s food was a revelation.
The various herbs and salad stuff I had planted for her – radishes, coriander, basil, spring onions, dill and various lettuces – were all doing quite nicely. It was another way of
making myself less dispensable – those sorts of things need watering, thinning out, weeding and protecting from pests if they are to flourish. I spent the rest of the morning on that; my
instinct was to keep away from Daisy until lunch-time. I did not want a casual injunction laid upon me from across the lawn; better a proper conversation at the garden table.

Accordingly, when I found her in the kitchen making sandwiches, I went and cleared her papers off the table, then carried her food out for her.

‘You’d better bring yours out too,’ she said. ‘You want lunch, don’t you?’

‘Please.’

I saw that she had brought her list pad out with her on which she had already written.

‘Shopping list?’

She nodded. ‘Anything you want for the garden?’

‘I’ll think.’ I had noticed by now that in spite of her apparent calm she was nervous and also that she thought she was concealing this. She remarked that she thought she would
invest in a washing-machine. I agreed that it would save a lot of trouble.

There was a brief silence. Then we both spoke at once and both stopped. I indicated that she should speak first.

‘About your letter. It isn’t so much that I don’t believe what you say as that I’m not sure that I want you to say it.’

She had given ground again, ‘was not sure’.

‘I only asked you to believe me. I will try not to say things that you’re not sure you want me to say.’

‘So what
were
you going to say? Just now.’

‘To tell you the truth, I was worrying about my boat. It’s not in a very good state. I was wondering what, if anything, I could do about it.’

‘I know nothing about boats. What sort of things do you need? Because we could get things this afternoon, if you like.’

‘I don’t know. I’d have to go and have a look at it first. I’ve been neglecting it rather.’

‘It’s because you’ve been doing so much for me.’

‘That’s nothing. I’ve just been lazy about the boat. I don’t like it enough, you see. There are people who simply love messing about, painting things, polishing things,
even scrubbing things. They’d never do any of that in a house, but a boat is somehow – I don’t know – different.’

‘Is it one of those lovely painted boats – you know, roses and castles on doors and things?’

‘Lord, no. It’s just a thirty-five-foot motor launch, only the engine’s never worked since I’ve been there. Like nearly everything else about it. All the same I should go
and see what else has gone wrong.’

There was a pause, and then she said, ‘I should rather like to see it. Perhaps it isn’t as bad as you think. Perhaps I could help you clear it up a bit.’

‘Oh! I think you’d be horrified. I don’t think I could bear to expose you to such a shambles.’

‘I wouldn’t mind. No, I’d like to see it.’

I protested a bit more until I finally gave in with graceful gratitude. It was agreed that we would have a quick look before we went on the shopping expedition. I would have preferred more time
to set the scene, but on the other hand it was better that she should see the boat before she made any suggestion of my leaving the cottage.

We went in the car as far as the bridge and parked on the towpath side of the canal. I explained about having to use the canoe and she seemed acquiescent, but when she saw the boat drunkenly
moored on the opposite bank, she was suitably impressed.

‘Yes,’ I said, seeing her face, ‘she’s been taking in water for weeks now – needs regular pumping out among other things. Sure you want to go through with
this?’

‘Sure.’

I helped her into the canoe, unearthed the paddle from its hiding place in the reeds and we set off. I held the canoe firm while she climbed aboard, and then got off and secured the painter. We
stood in the cockpit, which was faintly awash, and then I unlocked the doors to the saloon and ushered her in.

‘Mind your head.’

I knew that the place would be in a fair old state, since I had left it pretty messy the morning I had found Daisy on the path, and I had only been back once to collect some clothes, but it
exceeded my wildest dreams. Apart from the somewhat oily water seeping through the duckboards, the bunk was soaking since the roof of the cabin had long since ceased to resist rain, and we had had
several quite heavy storms. The bedding (I had not made up the bunk) was mildewed; the stove, whose doors I had left open, was full of damp grey ash that had gushed on to the small piece of filthy
carpet that I had always meant to take to the local tip. The remains of my breakfast that last morning, and, come to that, my supper of the night before, a hunk of bread covered with grey mould, a
half-full bottle of milk that had congealed to an unearthly green. The portholes were opaque with condensation and grease, the whole place covered with dust in which one could write
one’s name, and smelling both stuffy and rank. The small sink was piled with pots and pans that I had used; the sink basket was a hotbed of fungus. I saw Daisy taking all this in –
could see that she was appalled, even revolted.

‘The trouble is, that quite apart from cleaning it up, it will still leak like a sieve – from the hull as well as the cabin top.’

‘Couldn’t it be repaired?’

‘It could, I suppose. But they’d have to take her out of the water, and God knows what they’d find when they did, and I guess that the cabin top has simply got to be renewed.
The moment you have a boat out on a slip they can charge what they like.’

‘But if it’s your
home—’

‘It doesn’t belong to me. Look, let’s get out of here. I can tell you the story of the boat on nice clean dry land.’

I locked the cabin doors and got her into the canoe and paddled back to the towpath side.

When we were back in the car I told her about the Watsons and his getting a job abroad for three years and offering me their boat while they were away. ‘They only used it for weekends and
short holidays, otherwise they lived in London.’

‘Couldn’t you write to them and tell them what needs doing and then they could tell you what they wanted to have done about it?’

‘It may seem extraordinary, but the fact is that they didn’t give me their address, and it didn’t occur to me to ask for it until after they’d left.’

There was a short silence, and then she said, ‘I suppose you could get the cabin roof repaired, and take it out of whatever rent you pay.’

This floored me. If I told her that I didn’t pay any rent, she might expect me to pay for the repairs myself: if I agreed to her idea, I would be faced with paying for them anyway. I had,
in fact, taken the boat on the understanding that there was to be no rent in exchange for my looking after it – ‘maintaining’ was the word used.

‘Actually, although I
do
pay a peppercorn rent, I gave it to them as a lump sum as they needed it for their journey. Anyway, it wouldn’t begin to mount up to these sort of
repairs. I’m appalled at the domestic mess I left it in. I’ll set about cleaning all that up, and see if I can fix a tarpaulin over the cabin roof to keep out the worst of the rain. But
the hull has always been dicky. At one point they wanted to sell the boat, but when the prospective buyers turned up and saw how much water she made – and I was forever pumping her out
– they all backed off. I’m sorry I subjected you to such squalor.’

‘I wanted to see it.’

Much later, when we had finished our shopping, I said, ‘So, you see, my looking after you has not been a onesided business at all. Thanks to you I’ve enjoyed a warm dry bed, not to
mention delicious meals, for weeks now. It will be quite a shock returning to my old way of life.’