Читать книгу Commencing Our Descent - Suzannah Dunn, Suzannah Dunn - Страница 8

Yesterday morning, I went upstairs to Philip’s study to look for the phone number of a particular builder who had done some work for us. Searching through his desk, the drawers, I delved into a slurry of stationery, bills, insurance policies, bank statements and passbooks. Inside the deep bottom drawer was a box, a shoe box, which contained postcards, cards, and letters. I looked at the postcard on the top of the pile. Poppies Against the Night Sky, a painting by William MacTaggart. I knew that the card must have been from me, although I had no recollection of writing it. I did not want to read it. Instead, rummaging, I confirmed my suspicion that all the cards and letters were from me. I read none of them. I had had no idea that they had been kept there; I had had no idea that they had been kept. I had forgotten that they had ever existed. They were sloughed skins. But there they were, boxed: raw, sweet sentiments, layered with pretty pictures and become rather dessicated. I returned the card unread to Philip’s makeshift treasure trove, replaced the lid, closed the drawer, covered my tracks. I wonder if the writer of that card is as dead to him as to me. Does he miss her?

He is home early today because for some reason – I forget why – he is going into work tomorrow, Saturday. When Hal and I set off to come here to the park, he was cooking. His unexpected return was not my only surprise, this afternoon. Earlier, as I opened the back door, returning from a stroll down the road with Hal to the bakery, I glimpsed a figure in my kitchen. My breath boomeranged into the reverse of a scream.

The silhouette enthused, ‘That’s the kind of response that I like.’

‘Drew!’

Drew, who lives in London: sitting in my kitchen, reading a newspaper. I closed the door behind me. His smile shone with crammed, angular teeth. Leaning back in the chair for a yawn and stretch, he lowered a hand for Hal, who went warily to investigate the fingertips. As he looked down to Hal, a halo of sunshine slid around on his black hair. The ends of the hair were closer to his shoulders than when I had last seen him.

I demanded, ‘Where did you come from?’

‘The front door.’ His other hand gloved one of mine and he pulled me down so that he could kiss me. His lips were cool and papery on mine. I suspect that he knows I am made uneasy by his aim for my mouth. And that is why he persists. These kisses do not come from the old days, our student days, when we were flatmates. In those days, if we had kissed whenever we met, we would have been forever kissing. I cannot remember when our lives became separate enough to require these bridging kisses.

‘The front door was open?’

‘No, I used the key.’

‘The key?’

‘The spare, under the brick by the drainpipe.’

Discovered. The best I could manage was, ‘It’s not by the drainpipe.’

He steadied my gaze with his own – those eyes of no particular colour, but dark – and revised, sarcastically, ‘Okay, let’s say six or seven inches away from the drainpipe.’

‘And, anyway, how did you know that I was going to be back?’

‘Oh,’ he smoothed a curtain of hair behind one ear, ‘you never go far.’

I slapped the loaf on to the table.

‘Don’t be cross with me,’ his tone was impeccably even.

‘This is like something from an Iris Murdoch novel.’

‘I wanted to see you.’

‘You could have rung.’

‘You haven’t been returning my calls.’

Suddenly I remembered the last one, last week: a simple, Call me, Cupcake. I slid on to a chair, lowered my elbows on to the table and my face into my hands. ‘Don’t take it personally.’

‘I won’t.’ His smile was slow, considered.

I closed my eyes. ‘I’ve been so – oh, I don’t know – unorganised.’ As if I had had a lot to organise.

‘I know.’ A momentary silence, before he was explaining, ‘I’m on my way to a site visit ten miles up the road.’

‘Oh,’ I opened my eyes, ‘work.’

‘Yes. I don’t spend every minute of my working life striking an artistic pose over a drawing board in a studio in Clerkenwell.’

‘No, you dirty your hands occasionally on the steering wheel of your company Audi.’

I rose to go to the kettle. ‘So, is this a one-off, or will you be over this way again?’

‘A couple of mornings over the next couple of months.’

‘Oh, well then,’ suddenly this was fun, ‘you can come here for coffee, we can have breakfast, I can buy some brioche.’

‘I work with men in hard hats: I don’t eat brioche.’

‘Would you be emasculated by the odd blob of apricot jam on a croissant leg?’

‘The coffee will do nicely.’ From his pocket he took a small, pharmaceutical-looking packet, printed with a name which suggested nicotine chewing gum.

I nodded towards it: ‘I thought that you gave up when Oonagh was born.’ Three years ago?

Delving into the packet, he glanced upwards from beneath one eyebrow. ‘I did.’

‘So why the gum?’

‘Why not?’

‘But you’re supposed to use them to help you to give up; you’re not supposed to use them all the time, for years and years.’

He mimicked, ‘Supposed to … not supposed to …’ and slotted two pieces into his mouth.

‘And how are those blissfully smoke-free babies of yours?’

‘They’re beautiful and they make me laugh: what more could I want from my girls? Oh, except for some sleep, for a few hours each night. And patience, twenty-four hours each day. Don’t believe a word if you receive one of those newsletters at Christmas telling you that Oonagh took her Duke of Edinburgh Gold Award before going off to do VSO in Belize, and that Caitlin has set The Songs of Innocence and Experience to her Grade Eight violin pieces. The truth is that Oonagh has an aversion to toilets, and Caitlin screams unless she’s attached to her mother.’

‘And how is Sarah?’

His head tipped backwards in a soundless laugh. ‘Put-upon.’

He never talks of Sarah without affection. The apparent success of their relationship is intriguing. Drew had been involved with so many consciousness-raised, sexually-confident, clever-clever women, and then suddenly there was Sarah. They met when she came to work behind the bar in one of his haunts, never having worked anywhere but pubs and shops. Within a couple of weeks, there was an unplanned pregnancy, which was surprising because Drew never makes mistakes; and then, more surprisingly, the decision to marry. But although their domestic lives are necessarily interdependent, their social lives seem to have remained resolutely separate. I rarely see her; but whenever I ring to speak to Drew and she picks up the phone, we perform the full range of pleasantries with enthusiasm. I love to listen to her Scottish voice, the slides as impressive as those of a trombone.

Philip came home half an hour or so after Drew had arrived. Drew and I had giddied each other with gossip: friends in common, other friends, in-laws, property prices. Drew greeted Philip with a kiss on both cheeks. Now, while I am here, in the park, he is watching Philip cook. He had wanted to know what Philip was making; Philip had explained that what appeared to be a pancake was going to be a roulade.

Drew laughed, ‘Rolling your own.’ But then, suddenly and defensively, ‘Listen, you two, I grow my own basil, these days.’

I made the mixture for ice-cream; the bowlful is chilling now, in the fridge. Some local friends – a couple of couples – are coming for dinner, this evening. I make puddings; puddings are all that I make. The icing on the cake, in this household. While I was stirring the syrup into the cream, and Drew was nosing over my shoulder, Philip said, ‘I love that recipe.’

I barely heard him over the whoomphs of the wooden spoon in the mixture, the muffled knocks on the bottom of the bowl.

‘I love the simplicity,’ he was saying, ‘just the strawberries and cream, a little sugar and balsamic vinegar.’

‘Vinegar?’ Drew sounded affronted, and close to my ear.

I said, ‘Nothing’s quite as sweet as you think it is.’

He laughed. ‘No one’s quite as philosophical as you are.’

Philip mused, ‘The sour with the sweet, and all that.’

I tapped the spoon a few times on to the rim of the bowl, then passed it to Drew. He dipped it into his mouth, and as the wooden lip slid back into view, I explained. ‘The vinegar brings out the flavour of the strawberries. And you know strawberries: some of them do need coaxing.’ I was speaking over his protracted groan of pleasure: the proof is in the pudding. He went to replace the spoon in the bowl, so I had to swoop, snatch the handle, tick him off: ‘Saliva digests, Drew; didn’t you know that? That’s what saliva’s for.’

‘Oh, and I thought –’

‘– Drew, don’t.’

He was amazed, amused. ‘You don’t know what I was going to say.’

‘Coming from you, and concerning a bodily function? Bad news, whatever.’

From across the kitchen, Philip enthused, ‘So strawberry-ish.’

I said, ‘So real that somehow it seems fake.’

Drew said, ‘Post-modern strawberry ice-cream.’

Putting the bowl in the fridge, I complained, ‘Ice-cream is underrated in this country.’

Drew despaired, ‘Oh, everything is underrated in this country.’

‘Except self-denial,’ I said.

Which made him laugh.

I did ask Drew if he wanted to come with us to the park, but he declined. I felt that I should ask, but knew that he would say no. So, here we are, Hal and I, alone together as usual, side by side, accompanying each other on our separate strolls, like an old couple. And we have just passed the impeccably dressed old couple who are here most days in their small parked car, asleep. As always, she was in the driver’s seat and he was sitting directly behind her on the back seat. They do not always sleep. Sometimes she holds in her kid-gloved hands a floppy book and a pencil: puzzles, crosswords, I presume. Sometimes he stares ahead through the windscreen. But the purpose of the daily trip seems to be to sleep, because on the rare occasions when they are awake, they look furious, cheated. Why do they come here to nap? I went to parks, in darkness, in cars, when I was a teenager. Odd, to think how I slid into those deserted parks under cover of darkness alongside someone else. Odd, to think of once having been so purposeful, so physical. So purposefully physical.

Whenever I see the old couple, I ponder their relationship: perhaps she works for him, drives him here, because why else the bizarre seating arrangement? They seem to be of a similar age, but of course there is no need for her to be younger than him in order to work for him, to care for him. I am a poor judge, though: to me, old is old; I could be looking at an age gap of ten or even twenty years and I would not know. I have doubts that their relationship is professional, I see no semblance of good form in those faces.

So the homeless man is not the only person to sleep here. And as well as the old couple, there is the courier. Every morning, Hal and I pass a parked van, the windscreen of which displays a sign, Courier on delivery. We had been passing that van every morning for weeks before I realised, one morning, that what I was seeing when I glanced through the windscreen was a person, asleep. What I was seeing was a figure, reclined and wrapped in blankets: formless, featureless, but the repose unmistakably that of sleep. Suddenly, I was uneasy: I felt caught out, as if I had been observed, as if it were me who had been seen. Self-conscious, I was anxious to be quieter, although that was scarcely possible. I wanted to mark my respect. And so, nowadays, I tiptoe by the van, marvelling at the ability of that person to sleep visible, to turn so thoroughly and apparently peacefully from the daytime world of dog-walkers, childminders, council workers.

Yesterday evening, I was driving along this side of the park on my way back from the station. The drive home from the centre of town is so familiar to me as to feel choreographed: a five-minute journey made from precision-timed turns of the wrist, and a balance of braking and acceleration. No steps up and down the gears: my car is, regrettably, an automatic. I love driving. I love the necessary, narrow, but unremitting focus on the minutiae of the windows and mirrors: the whole busy world reduced to blips on my screens. I love that I cannot go forwards without constantly, simultaneously looking backwards. Driving is made of judgements of distance and speed, the very two elements by which I am so floored in my earthbound life. But on wheels, on a road, I am faultless. When driving, I am nothing but eyes, hands, feet, all in perfect co-ordination, and all-powerful. I have never had a moment of panic or fear or even of doubt when driving; in no other circumstances do I ever feel so safe.

Driving, I am transformed into someone decisive and able. My father used to say, A moment of hesitation is a moment gone. Sometimes he said, A moment’s hesitation and you’re dead. And so’s the other bloke. I learned to drive to his constant refrain, Anticipation.

Driving is in my blood. My father drove even as a child; his family – his father, grandfather, uncles, older brothers – were mechanics; they cared for engines, composed them, cleaned and coaxed them. My blood hums with, and thrills to, this particular competence.

Sometimes I think that this is all that there is to my blood: this most unnatural of activities seems to come to me more naturally than anything else. More so than the activities that are supposed to come naturally, such as eating, walking, sleeping. I am never so alive as when I am driving. And never so happy: the world shrunken, scrolling, passing beyond me; my machine responding to every mere touch. Sometimes, arriving home, I turn and do another lap, or go to the motorway to speed and watch the speedometer, to relish that immediate, utterly uncomplicated relationship between the downward push of my toes and the smooth rise of the needle.

My father used to say, The faster your car, the faster you’re away from trouble.

This is a fast car.

Sometimes, driving, I sing:

You may not have a car at all,

But, brothers and sisters, remember,

You can still stand tall.

Just be thankful

For what you’ve got.

When I arrive home again, I stay for a while in the car, perhaps listening to the radio, and gazing through the windscreen: I love to be there, in the street but not in the street; home, but not home.

Yesterday evening, when I was driving home along this edge of the park, the radio was playing the Chopin nocturne that is the theme tune to my memories of childhood ballet classes. The classes’ pianist was our teacher’s elderly mother. That piece of music – strangely, only that piece – recalls for me the slippery, bouncy sensation of wooden floorboards beneath my soft shoes; the smell of the church hall, balmy with beeswax; the blaze of Victorian windows, numerous, high and viewless, and faintly mysterious with blinds, ropes, hooks, like sails. The pianist was so old; I wonder, now, how old she was. I remember her face and no others, not my teacher’s nor my peers’. That old face looked so resigned, was expressionless. And terrifying, for some reason: terrifying in retrospect, not at the time. Perhaps I am troubled now by her phenomenal agedness, or by the almost muscular expressionlessness. Or perhaps by the anomaly of such a bearing in a roomful of supple, self-conscious little girls. She was old in the way that perhaps women of my generation, later generations, will never look old: the white perm, the unsoothed wrinkles, the standard-issue specs. To her Chopin, we did our pliés and stretches, each of our movements deliberate, slow-motion, expansive; each of her notes roping us into a sequence.

My drive was interrupted when I had to stop at the zebra crossing; a crossing that, close to the park, is rarely used, particularly during the evenings. There was something unusual about the pedestrian, too: a girl, a young woman, in pale and therefore illuminated clothing. Then I realised that it was the way she was moving that was confounding me. Her move across those black and white keys was unbroken into steps, wiped of the numerous tiny groundings that would indicate motion on foot. And so she seemed to be moving above the crossing; the movements seemed fluid, drawing low luminous arcs in the deep dusk. She crossed quickly, taking perhaps two seconds to reach the far side, and as she did so, I realised what I was seeing: she was rollerblading. I stayed still for a moment, wishing that I could do that, watching her sweep away into her disappearance.