Falling (9 page)

Should I leave it at that? Or was it too faint a signal? I decided to copy out the letter and sign it, letting the last sentence be a postscript.

When I had done this I put a PPS on the next line: ‘I’ve just read this and the last sentence looks rather odd. I’ve no idea where it came from: please ignore it. H.
K.’

This last injunction was, of course, a way of drawing her attention to it. She had been gone now for nearly three weeks and, except for Miss Blackstone’s missive, I had heard nothing.
Apart from clearing the garden (which was not quite so far forward as I had intimated in my letter), I had not been idle. I had decided to find out as much as possible about Mrs Redfearn. The
library yielded very little. A
Writers’ Who’s Who
(1972) did not list her. I was then introduced by the assistant librarian – a woman of an uncertain age who I knew had a
soft spot for me – to the
International Authors’ and Writers’ Who’s Who.
Again, there was nothing. By this time the assistant was by my side and when I exclaimed over
the omission, asked me who I was looking for.

‘That’s not her working name. She was married to that marvellous actor Jason Redfearn – her name’s Langrish. Daisy Langrish. I remember the papers were full of their
romance; she was years older than him and she wrote that whole series – he played Pip in it, he’s stunning. Look under Langrish. Coming, Miss Howarth.’

She was, of course, right.

‘Langrish, Daisy Jessica b. Feb 1927 m. 1 Stanislav Varensky, m. 2 Jason Redfearn. Education Roedean and LAMDA.’ There followed a quite formidable list of her plays, half a dozen for
radio, one or two for the theatre, a large number for TV and four or five film scripts. Her address, given as c/o Anna Blackstone, somewhere in Covent Garden.

I had seen one of the films. It had been about a Walter Mitty-like character living one day of his life simultaneously as his imagination dictated and as it really was. I remember that I had
enjoyed it, although in my experience nobody is actually so unconsciously divided. Still, good entertainment was what it was after
and
some of it was very funny. Then I had seen
Great
Expectations
when it was repeated one summer, during the last tolerably peaceable weeks with Hazel for whom Jason Redfearn was a number one pin-up. I got quite sick of her going on about him,
and as we had long ceased to have any sexual interest in each other this was not jealousy on my part, mere boredom at almost anything she said. I did not realize until some time after I married her
that she had few or no interests outside her job – she was a physiotherapist at the local hospital and ran two evening classes a week for expectant mothers, on top of which she was always
involving herself in various local enterprises. Some would say that these
were
interests and we had rows about that. What I meant was that she had no interests compatible with mine. She
never read a book, and was always complaining at the way in which she alleged I was wasting my time with them. Enough of her. I really didn’t want to write about or even think of her for a
single moment. I had far too much to do and to think about.

My days, which used to slow almost to a standstill from lack of incident, now succeeded one another like compartments of a train, linked and smoothly proceeding down the line I had laid out for
them.

I would wake in my bunk, stretch out my hand to clear the condensation from the porthole to see what the weather was like. It was nearly the end of October and an Indian summer. Mist rose from
the canal, so white and dense that the water itself was concealed, and when I got up and pulled on my jersey and opened the cabin doors the air was sharp and the cockpit wet with heavy dew. I would
make tea and eat a bowl of Grape Nuts with the news and weather on the radio, and by the time I had shaved, the silvery-yellow sun was eating the mist, revealing the pewter-coloured canal in the
faintly warmer air. Twice a week I went to the village to shop, always stopping at the cottage, where four mornings a week I would do some work in the garden. The cottage contrived to look both
snug and forlorn, and as the days went by my urge to get inside it became an obsession. It started by my digging one day when it began to rain, and I thought of getting in simply for shelter, but
of course the front door was securely locked, the back door likewise and all the windows were shut. I trudged back to the boat and got sodden – hadn’t brought my mac. Thoroughly
bad-tempered, I realized that my plan to clean the whole place up had gone by the board – I had done nothing since my meeting with Daisy (as I now thought of her). But I had no heart for the
drudgery involved: it took quite enough time to get food, make it, clear it up and get my socks washed, etc. I sat that day eating the last piece of a pork pie and thinking how I could get into the
cottage.

I could break in. This, while perfectly possible, presented difficulties. As I was fairly sure that no keys had been left in it, I would have to go on breaking in, and if I left a window open or
glass broken from the first essay, others might have the same idea. I could write to Daisy with some reason for it being necessary for me to get into the place and ask for a key. But what reason
could I give? And would she not suspect me of being unduly pushy, presumptuous or worse? Unable to solve this, I fell back upon counting the advantages of getting into the place. There would be
countless books to read, running water (I could even have the luxury of a bath, a fire, room to move around) but, most of all, it would give me the chance of finding out more about Daisy. That was
the point. The creature comforts were completely unimportant compared to that.

Evenings without alcohol in the boat were long, and accustomed as I had been to writing my account of Helen, I found myself wanting to write, but not in the least wanting to continue with that.
It was literally the end of a chapter. I hoped, of course, that at some point Daisy would want to know something about me, but I had had no reply from her about the roses and therefore had to find
legitimate reasons for writing a second letter. This left me at a loss, until the idea of writing not
to
but
for
her occurred.

Where to start?

The beginning for me was when my mother died – or, rather, just afterwards. I was five and a half. I can, of course, remember many things before the turning-point, that grey November
afternoon when my father came down the stairs to the kitchen where I was playing, and picked me up to set on his knee before telling me that Mammy was gone.

I remember wondering what he meant. She’d been upstairs, in bed, ill, for days and days, and I’d been in the kitchen all the afternoon.

‘I didn’t see her go,’ I said.

‘Passed
away,
boy!’ He sighed. ‘Well, never mind. You’ll find out soon enough.’

After that, a woman from the village came in and spent a long time upstairs while my father had gone to fetch the doctor.

I had got back down on the floor to spin my tin lids, but somehow I didn’t want to go on doing that. I didn’t want to play. I wanted to eat. It was past my tea-time and meals for the
last two weeks had been strange and unsatisfactory. Even baked beans, which I liked, were always cold. I got up and went to the little larder at the end of the kitchen. Nothing much there. I took a
half-empty pot of strawberry jam and found a slice of bread in the bin. My mother had always spread my bread for me – with marge and then jam and never enough of the latter. I took the pot
and tipped it – like a sandcastle – on to the bread and it came out easily, a red, glistening mound overlapping the crusts. I bent over it and licked it and the jam went on to my chin
as well. I stuck two fingers into it and groped for a whole strawberry, which was delicious. I kneaded the jam into the bread so that when the top was finished the bread would taste good. Licking
it off my fingers was a good slow way of eating jam, and it was much nicer eating without people telling you all the time how to do it. A few bits dropped on to my clothes and some were too far
away to lick off and my hair got in the way but it stayed back if I stroked it with my hand.

It was nearly dark. The kitchen was always dark anyway as it had very small windows – we lived in the Lodge at the gates of the east drive of the Big House. I could have climbed on a chair
to turn on the light, but I never minded the dark.

I remember all this so clearly because it was just before the woman came down from upstairs and told me my mother was dead. I knew what dead meant because of rabbits, and birds in the winter. It
meant she wasn’t going to move or do anything for me any more.

‘Poor little mite. I’ll stay till your dad comes back,’ she said. She switched on the light. ‘Whatever have you been
up
to? You’re a right mess and no
mistake.’ She tried to pick me up.

I sat on the floor holding the jammy bread with both hands.

‘Dad said I could have it. It’s mine.’

She dislodged one of my hands and I hit her.

‘Go away. I don’t want you.’ She was stronger than me, and she lifted me off the floor still clutching the bread and sat me on the draining-board. She smelt horrid –
years later I recognized the smell of Jeyes Fluid and whenever I smell that I think of her. She filled the sink with water and when she wrenched the bread away from me I began to howl. Her fat
fingers were unbuttoning my clothes, pulling the shirt off my shoulders, dragging down my shorts, peeling off my vest. I tried to bite her, and she slapped the side of my face as she hoisted me up
again and plunged me into the sink.

‘You’ll not get the better of
me,
you monkey,’ she said, and turned on the tap so that the cold water poured over my head.

My father came back with the doctor and they went upstairs.

‘I’m washing the boy,’ she said. My father cast a look at me and I could see he didn’t mind what she was doing to me. I felt suddenly that I didn’t mind either. I
didn’t count, with anyone. It was then that I think I must have realized for the first time that my father didn’t care about me – had no love for me at all. The only person who
had cared was my mother, and she had left me. I sat, shivering, unresisting in the sink while the woman fetched a towel and my pyjamas, lifted me back on to the draining-board, dried me a bit and
clothed me again. My lack of resistance softened her.

‘Stop crying now. You’re a big boy. Big boys don’t cry.’

She began to wipe my face quite painfully with a cloth that smelt like her and I thought I would be sick. But just then the doctor came downstairs followed by my father.

‘And how’s the little fellow?’

‘He’s recovering fine.’ The bitterness in my father’s tone was apparent. The doctor laid a hand on my shoulder and said, ‘It’s a sad business to die so young.
I’ll let Mr Lark know and he’ll be here tomorrow morning.’ He shook my father by the hand and went.

‘Would you like me to get something hot for your tea?’

My father shook his head and muttered something about his glasshouses having to be shut down for the night. ‘I’ve left them too long as it is, and I don’t trust that
boy,’ he said, and taking his torch from the place where it hung on the wall, he too went. ‘You might put the boy to bed if you please, Mrs Greenwich,’ he said, over his
shoulder.

She did. She lifted me off the draining-board and herded me up the steep narrow stairs. I slept in the small room to the right at the top. The door to my parents’ bedroom was closed.

‘Do you want to go to the toilet?’

I shook my head. If I did, I would go by myself – not with her.

‘Into bed with you, then, like a good boy, and perhaps I’ll give you a kiss.’

To avoid this, I scrambled into bed and pulled the eiderdown right over my head. She clicked her teeth.

‘Have it your own way, then,’ she said. I heard her shut my door and the sound of her going downstairs. I listened while she made up the range and tramped about below. I wanted her
to
go
– off on her bicycle on to the dark road – and never come back.

At last I heard her having two goes at shutting the latch on the back door and jumped out of bed to watch from the window. In a minute, she was gone – no sign even of her bicycle light. I
could see from the chinks in the floor that she had left the light on in the kitchen, but it was pitch silent.

This – when I had the fever – was the time of the evening when my mother used to read to me. Now that she was dead there would be no one, since I knew that my father would not take
the trouble. My mother had been a schoolteacher, and she knew a lot of books. She had been teaching me to read, but I had liked it best when she did the reading. Now I would have to learn by myself
to read the rest of her books. Suddenly I found I was wondering what dead people looked like. They might just look as though they were asleep. Or not?

The window was open in her room and it was very cold. There was a candle burning on the chest of drawers by the bed. My mother lay on her back very straight with her long brown hair brushed out
on the pillow. There were two pennies placed over her eyes and they spoiled her face – it meant I couldn’t see it properly. I leaned over her and took the pennies off her eyelids and
– quite slowly – one eye opened. It seemed like pale blue glass and did not look at me at all. There was a faint smell of Mrs Greenwich in the room. I put out my hand again, and pushed
my mother’s face; she did not feel nice – too cold for her softness. She lay there looking far more peaceful than she usually did, especially since I’d been ill when she was
constantly with me, and she’d always looked worried – or perhaps she was afraid because my father shouted at her to leave me alone and see to him. Once he came into my room and hit her
on the side of her face and the mark went red and then darker. There was no mark now and her face looked more like a picture than a person. I knew she was taking no notice of me because she was
dead, but it still felt all wrong. She once said, ‘You mustn’t be selfish – like your father,’ but
she
was the selfish one, leaving me just like that before I could
even
read.
‘Reading is the most important thing for you to learn in your life,’ she had said, and she kept saying it at every lesson. I’ve never forgotten that. It was what
made me teach myself to read. I used the stories she had read so often I knew them by heart, and so I could look up words I couldn’t understand or pronounce. I could read before I was
six.