The Country Life (11 page)

The thought of a bath and an early night, with the remainder of the bread rolls to hand should I require them, was at least tolerable, and I went inside, closing the door behind me. As I crossed the sitting room, something caught my eye; a shadow of movement of some sort, which I had glimpsed but now thought I must have imagined. I continued on my way, but as I did so it came again; the faintest of shades, almost behind my field of vision. I stopped, my heart thudding. I sensed the pressure of another presence in the room, the slight bustle of air. It was clearly, however, nothing concrete, given that I couldn't see it. I wondered, ridiculously, if the cottage was haunted. It surprised me to think this, not being a superstitious person, nor indeed having ever been aware of this dimension in my personal landscape of fears.

As I stood there, I noticed a white streak, about the size of a finger, on the carpet at my feet. My experience with the tar
had left me with a more detailed recollection of the carpet than would be considered normal, and I felt sure that this streak had not been there earlier. I noticed another on the flowered back of the sofa, and then another splashed across the small side table. What on earth could it be? I was becoming quite disturbed by now, and felt a membrane of silent tension begin to gather thickly around me. I went to the door and switched on the lights to try and dispel it. The light was momentarily comforting and prophylactic; but then I caught the shadow again, over by the fireplace – as before, more of a feeling than a visual occurrence.

My mounting sense of unreality was becoming unbearable, and was frightening me more than the thing – for I still had no idea of what it was – itself. In an attempt to jolt the course of events back onto its proper rails, I gave a loud shout. This immediately made me feel better, and so I shouted several times, running about the room and thumping on the furniture to rout whatever spirit it was that oppressed me. I reached the fireplace, still shouting; and all at once there was a terrific squawking and beating, and a great bird rose up like a fury from behind the armchair, hurling itself through the air towards me. It reared above my head, its fat, feathered body suspended in a frenzied gyration of wings, its claws outstretched. I felt feathers fan against my cheek and screamed like a banshee, almost insensate with terror, pummelling the air with my fists and jumping up and down to try and repel the horror.

What happened next could only have been the work of a few seconds, although it possessed a startling clarity which, even though I was quite beside myself with fear, impressed itself for ever on my memory. Still suspended in the air, the bird shied away from my flailing fists, a look of affront in its tiny, stupid eyes. It took a great swoop across the room, a sort of leisurely dive; and then hit the far wall with a thud, sliding directly down onto the carpet.

For some time I was unable to move. At first I was braced
for the bird to revive from its knock; but when after a few minutes I heard no sound coming from it, I crept over to the other side of the room to look. It was lying in a heap on the floor, utterly still. I was surprised by its inertia, and by the limpness of its feathered neck lolling to one side. I was relieved, in any case, that it did not appear to be breathing; for I feared that any claim to ‘aptitude for the country life' would have to include the ability coolly to put a suffering animal out of its misery. In fact, I could not bring myself to go any nearer to it, let alone touch it, dead as it was. I recognized it as a pigeon, and realized that it must have flown through the open door while I was sleeping, depositing gobbets of its excrement about the room.

Given that I was unwilling to touch the creature and could therefore achieve nothing by just standing about, I presently found myself on my way once more to the bathroom, where I had been headed before the unfortunate incident waylaid me. I ran a bath in the narrow tub and glimpsed my reflection in the small mirror above the sink, being for some minutes gripped by compelling feelings of alienation and concern at the sight of myself. In a sort of dream, I got into the bath. The water was quite hot; and after some time I realized that a painful tingling sensation was coursing down the right side of my body, particularly around the leg and arm. I washed quickly, unable because of this tingling to endure the long, comforting immersion I had imagined, and by the time I had finished was in such pain that I literally sprang from the water, sending great waves of it sloshing over the sides of the bath and onto the floor. Examining myself, still dripping wet, I saw to my dismay that my right arm and leg – I had been wearing the cut-off trousers, as I am sure you will recall – as well as the skin on my right cheek and neck, had turned a violent purple.

I had had no idea, when I lay down on the grass that afternoon, that the sun could be so powerful at that hour. As well as the dreadful pain of this latest discovery, I was aware
that it had had a peculiar effect on my appearance. A brief survey turned up the following: right arm and right leg to the upper thigh, severely burnt; left arm burnt; left leg, marble white; left cheek and neck, burnt; right cheek and neck, severely burnt; torso and upper arms, marble white; central panel of face and neck – a strip no more than an inch wide – marble white.

It was by now dark outside, and I thought of going out into the garden so as to cool myself off; but my recollection of the pile of vomit, though vivid, was not so precise that I could be sure of not treading in it in the dark. The sitting room, where the bird still lay in ghoulish state, was no more inviting. In defeat I retreated upstairs to my bedroom. My skin was still wet, and within seconds of leaving the bathroom I became very cold and began to shiver uncontrollably. Upstairs I tried to dry myself, as before, with the edge of the eiderdown, but the crisp fabric felt like sandpaper as I rubbed it over my sore skin. The lotion skidded about on this raw, wet surface when I tried to apply it, and would not be absorbed. Presently I gave up entirely, and lay down whimpering on the bed.

It was difficult not to have the most desolate thoughts about my predicament as I lay there. Determined as I was not to regret my decision to come to the country, the effort of will required to prevent myself plunging into an abyss of despair was considerable. So occupied had I been with damming the pressing flood of my past life that I had been unprepared for assaults up ahead; and it was tempting, oppressed as I now was on all sides, to relinquish my control of the situation entirely. There are moments at which great blocks of life seem to hang on the slenderest of threads; at which whole limbs of future and past pivot on the tiniest of fulcra. I trembled in that moment in just so exiguous a place. Like someone crouching on a lofty window ledge, I sensed that the slightest movement could undo me. I dared not even shift about on the bed, lest it provide the wing-beat of doubt required to topple me.

In the event a twinge of cramp in my empty stomach drove me to flop over onto my side; and it was then that my eyes fell on the bookshelf propped against the wall opposite. I am not a particularly keen reader, but my thirst for distraction was such that I was prepared to labour over this primitive receptacle to wring from it even a few drops. I got up and went to the bookshelf, squatting down beside it. Idly running my eyes over its offerings I saw several tides that I recognized, and some that I had already read. I dithered, pulling out first one then another from the mêlée of battered spines; and was about to make off with quite an exciting-looking detective story when a most curious thing happened.

At the far end of the shelf, tucked in amidst a crowd of rather tawdry romances, was a book that had my name on it. I blinked, thinking that I must be mistaken, and indeed lost it for a second or two; but there it was again.
Stella Benson.
Quivering and somewhat afraid, I drew it from the shelf. It was quite an old book, with a hard, mildew-green cover. In gold script on the front was the tide:
The Runaway Bride.
Transfixed, my heart pounding, I sat crouched on the floor with the book in my hands. What could it mean? Was it a joke, or magic, or something more sinister; an inexplicable collision of worlds, a piece of jetsam tossed up by a mocking wave from an inscrutable sea? Opening the cover, I looked at the flyleaf. The mystery accrued substance, became concrete.
The Runaway Bride
by Stella Benson.

Trembling, I began to turn its dry, yellowed pages where I sat. I must have stayed like that for some time, for when I rose, still reading, to He down on the bed, my legs ached and tingled. In the end it wasn't about me at all, but about people far away; although it was a fine story, and quite sad. The hours passed, there in the dry, dark pit of the night. Eventually I forgot the abrasive shock of the coincidence; or at least settled into a warmer accommodation with it. My namesake had evidently been a woman of some substance, well travelled,
independent, compassionate; and kind, too; for she had thought, all those years ago, to set down this interesting tale, so that I would find it in my hour of loneliness and despair and be comforted.

It was already hot when I left the cottage at twenty-five minutes past eight the next morning and set off through the garden towards the big house. Above a fading veil of dawn mist the sky gave out its challenge in uncompromising blue; and in the vanguard at the brink of the trees the sun trumpeted a rallying cry and set off on its long, brutal march to dusk. I was in poetic mood. Even the heap of vomit, last seen lying pinkly in the fading light directly by the front door of the cottage, could not derail me; for perhaps an hour earlier, while the dew still trembled on the grass and the sun dozed on, I had gone about the business of clearing away that which I had deposited on the doorstep the night before. Afterwards I conducted a burial for the bird, scooping it queasily from the carpet with a dustpan I had found in the kitchen and bearing it out to a corner of the garden, where I dug a small grave with a spoon.

I had smothered the burnt areas of my skin in lotion and put on a long-sleeved shirt and trousers to cover the worst of it; but my face still bore the strange markings of my exposures – the white strip between two broader patches of differing red, a pattern which would not look amiss on a national flag – and all over I was very sore to the touch. As for my lack of
nourishment over the past twenty-four hours, I was oddly not at all hungry. I had made myself a cup of coffee before I left, and it was now sitting in my poor shrunken stomach like a balloon. In fact, I was generally aware of a certain thinness about me. I am, habitually, neither fat nor thin. This does not mean that I did not find this tautness pleasurable; nor that it did not give me a measure of confidence at the thought of meeting Pamela, who, as I think I have mentioned, was lean and febrile in form.

So, thin and particoloured, I reached the front gate; and in stopping to open it was quite overwhelmed by the delicious smell of the garden, a smell given off by the countryside, I now know, only in the early morning and evening as a kind of scented fanfare to the arrival and departure of the day. I mention this smell simply because it has occurred to me that my descriptions of rural scenery might have been found wanting. The smell was, I believe, mainly of grass; but there were also hedges nearby, and a variety of flowers which might have contributed to it.

As I approached the back door of the big house, I recalled the problems I had encountered on the last occasion I tried to use it. Having striven so hard to achieve promptitude and a neat appearance, I fervently desired not to be led astray before the day had even begun. As it happened, the door was standing wide open; an omen, I thought, of a resolution on the part of the Maddens to give a more welcoming impression to me. I entered the house and, once I had reached the end of the long, winding corridor, found myself in the dark antechamber I recalled passing through with Mr Madden. I could hear no sound at all, which surprised me; I had expected the house to be abuzz with activity. Not wishing to intrude much further without having informed someone of my presence, I called out, quite cheerfully. There was no response at all, although as my ears strained for one I heard the stentorian ticking of a clock somewhere nearby. I called out again, more loudly, and when
nothing happened called out several times one after the other, the volume of each shout growing correspondingly greater. My throat was becoming sore when a door to my right flew open and a woman I did not recognize stood before me.

‘What's all that noise?' she said. ‘Why are you making all that noise?'

She appeared to be angry. I had not the faintest notion of who she was; she looked old enough to be Pamela's mother, although there was no physical resemblance between them. Indeed, this harridan who had confronted me so rudely was decidedly ugly. She was very short and wide, like a barrel, with grey hair forged into a steely ridge upon the top of her head. Her face was peculiarly indented, as if she were drowning in her own fat, and only the tip of her nose and mouth were visible before she disappeared in a wave of chin. Her stance was quite aggressive, her small feet planted astride and her arms ready by her sides.

‘I wasn't sure if there was anybody home,' I said. ‘Mrs Madden is expecting me at half-past eight.'

‘Mrs Madden is busy upstairs,' said the woman unpleasantly. ‘If she is expecting you, she'll come down soon enough. It would have been better to go and wait quietly in the kitchen, rather than screaming like a banshee out here.'

‘I'm sorry,' I said. Despite my dislike of her, I could see that she was right. ‘I couldn't find my way to the kitchen. I didn't want to intrude.'

‘You'll find it through here,' she said, turning and pushing open the door through which she had come. I followed her through. From behind she looked like a bus.

‘Oh, here we are!' I said brightly, for we were now in the familiar kitchen. ‘Thank you very much.'

The harridan did not reply, but merely went about her buslike business, manoeuvring around the kitchen with swift, greedy movements and being careful to keep her broad, bossy back to me all the while. I lingered, wondering if she would
offer me coffee or food – I had deduced, from the fact that she was cleaning the kitchen, that her position in the house was menial – but my stance soon proved to be impractical. The woman turned, her lips pursed, and made her way grimly across the kitchen. I, unfortunately, had planted myself directly in her trajectory, and when she reached me she stopped and waited, without saying a word; like a bus, if I may repeat myself, fuming at a set of traffic lights. I stepped hastily aside, and she automatically continued on her way. Although she had not said a word, I felt her commanding me to sit; and I did so, on the same chair on which I had sat during dinner on my first evening at Franchise Farm.