Of course my mother was afraid for me. She believed that my A-levels had been achieved by a sleight of hand that wouldn’t fool anybody for long. As soon as I got to university they’d find me out. She never said any of this to me. She’d tell me about girls I’d been at school with who’d left at sixteen and got good jobs with the Council, where they were getting on nicely. All these girls lived at home with their families and bought their mothers presents, and put money away for ‘the future’. ‘The future’ was getting married. Janice Mackerson, Angela Crimmond, Susie Winslaw, Allie Dinford. Their names stick in my mind like the litany of a religion no one believes in any more.
Once, pushing her wedding ring back and forth over the loose skin of her knuckle, my mother told me that I ought to be aware that the other law students would all come from very different backgrounds. Not that I should ever pretend to be anything I wasn’t. But I ought to take it into consideration.
She lived to see me half-way through my third year and deep in debt, though I kept that from her. Jenny, at least, had shown sense and trained as a nurse. I’d already met Donald, though my mother never did. I don’t think she’d have liked Donald, but she’d have been pleased that I’d fooled the world enough to get someone like him. As term followed term and I failed to be kicked off the law course, she must have begun to relax. I didn’t even try to tell her how easy it felt, how good I was, what degree result was predicted for me. It would have made her more anxious. Once I got 100 per cent in a maths test at school, and she worried all night because she feared I had failed a different kind of test, a crueller one, meant to teach me once and for all that such results weren’t possible.
Michael knew me before I knew myself. I can’t really remember what I was like then, and I don’t want to. You’d fight, he said. And on another occasion, looking at me as I totted up columns of figures for his accounts, he told me: ‘You’re tough, Simone, you know that? Look at you now’ And I looked up surprised, really surprised, because that wasn’t how I saw myself then. ‘When you’re concentrated, it comes out in your face.’
I went back to England with it all ringing in my ears. And the one thing I never forgot, the thing he said when we were far out in the Susie Ann, and the squall blew up. When he saw I was frightened and asked ‘What’s the worst thing that could happen to us?’ ‘We could drown.’ ‘We could drown. That’s all that could happen.’ It wasn’t fatalism, it was better than that. It was a way of keeping your mind clear when terror came clouding over it.
He says he wants to see me. He sends me photographs that show me naked, sprawled beside him, or clothed, embracing a man dressed as a woman. Maybe there are other photographs. Last night I lay still in bed, but my mind turned over and over. It’s not sin that keeps you awake, it’s shame, or fear of being shamed. My mother was right about that. She saw the law as a temple fronted by men in formal suits, mocking her daughter as she tried to mount the steps and go in past them. She saw my pretensions exposed like my skin to Calvin’s flash.
Calvin. The click of his camera, and his thumb winding on the film. You had to wind on the film by hand then, and set the exposure, in the days before cameras did everything for themselves. Calvin had a light meter. He would hold it close to our skin and talk about light and how it changed second by second. He developed his own photographs. Once he took me into the washroom he’d fixed up as a darkroom and I watched the images of myself and Michael swim up to meet me.
And now I see Calvin’s face, as he was when I was eighteen. He always knew how much I wanted to hold on to Michael. He teased me with it. How far will you go? How far can we make you go? But Calvin’s dead now. I won’t ever have to see Calvin again. When I left I told myself it was because of Calvin. If it hadn’t been for Calvin, it would have worked. He took the light, all of it. He wouldn’t let go of Michael. But as the plane got clearance for take-off, and speed took all our lives in its fist and peeled the land off us like a strip of tape, I thought of Michael alone, and not of Calvin. I saw him on a September morning, with the day’s work ahead of him. I watched his paintbrush moving. I saw the underside of light flickering up from the water onto his face. And the look of peace which I remember because it came so seldom.
However much water I poured over Michael it wasn’t going to ease him. He was hurt in some part my rooting fingers were never going to find or put back together.
I think Michael did go with the man who asked him. He took the money too, I’m sure of it. Fifteen dollars, or maybe twenty. Why he told me, I still don’t know. Looking back, it would be easy to believe that he hated me, but I don’t think that he did.
THIRTEEN
Dear Michael
Since I spoke to you on the phone last night I have been thinking about your motives for making contact with me after such a long time. I appreciate that things have not been easy for you, but you must realize that we have gone in very different directions, and if we were to meet now we would probably have very little to say to each other. As you have already found out, I am married with children. I have to put my children first, and I also have a career which takes up a lot of my time and energy. I think the best thing would be for you to accept that I wish you well, but I do not see any point in further contact between us after a gap of twenty years. I have shown my husband this letter, and your correspondence, as I do not wish to have any secrets from him.
Dear Michael
I am writing to inform you that any further communications from you will be returned unopened. The telephone answering system will be left on 24 hours a day, and any messages you leave will be recorded and kept on tape for future reference.
Dear Michael
Why are you doing this? What is the point of it? You don’t even know me any more. There isn’t a cell in my body which hasn’t changed since you knew me. I’m a woman of thirty-eight, not a girl of eighteen. The person you are writing to doesn’t exist. All I am asking is that you accept that and leave me alone. I have my life to live, work, children, my husband. I can’t be lying awake night after night waiting to see if there’ll be another letter from you, or another call.
Michael
It’s two in the morning. I have got to work in the morning. I have a child with a head injury who needs looking after. If you don’t stop calling me and writing these letters I’ll
Michael, what is all this about? You were the one who fucked things up, not me. You remember If it hadn’t been for
I’ve often wondered if that boat ever got built. The catamaran.
Dear Michael
You are persistent. I’m beginning to think that maybe I’ve been unfair to you. But if we meet, it’s got to be properly arranged. It can’t be here, but
I sent none of them. He is suddenly silent. No letters, no phone calls, no silences when I pick up a ringing phone. A week of Indian summer days goes by, cool and breezy, with large blue evenings when I walk miles along the sea-wall. Donald brings in his last radishes and lettuces, and turns over the compost heap. He loses his temper violently with a tractor on Saturday afternoon when we are driving to the supermarket. The tractor is stopped, chuntering in the middle of the lane while the driver leans out to converse in a yell across a hedge. Donald toots the horn once, lightly, registering our presence. The tractor-driver glances round but otherwise takes no notice. Donald holds down the horn. Slowly, measuredly, the driver gets off his seat and clambers down from the tractor, and strolls to Donald’s window. He is a big man, tight-packed into his clothes.
‘What’s your problem then?’ he inquires mildly, his fist balling on the open window. Donald leaps out of the car. His body is slight compared to the tractor-man’s, but the pressure of his rage drives the other man backward. He takes his hand off our car. He looks at Donald and realizes that Donald might do anything. Physical strength has got nothing to do with this.
‘This is a fucking road,’ says Donald, each syllable quiet, separate. ‘For fucking driving on. So you don’t park in the middle of it for a cha
t with your mate.’
The tractor-driver shrugs largely, appealing to his audience. It’s a token. His friend is silent behind the hedge, listening. He gets back into his cab, and drives forward, out of Donald’s way.
‘You can’t carry on like that here. He’s bound to be related to half the village,’ I say.
But Donald is happy. Rage has made him happy. Joe and Matt bounce in the back seat, jabbing one another with gleeful elbows.
My work goes well. Each morning I am in early, with plenty of time to do box-work and go through the files. A judgment of mine that has been appealed is upheld. I stop having nightmares where I am naked in front of a table of judges, and a long document that lists my errors is being read off, page by page. The machinery of the court moves smoothly round me. Little by little, I begin to let out my breath.
I keep a stone on my desk, which I picked up on the beach early one morning. It was wet from the outgoing tide, a flat white stone with chips of black in it. I’d been skipping stones far out on the fiat morning water. Everything around me was grey and white and dun, layer on layer of colourless colours. The seagulls shone as they flew, though there was no sun on their wings. The sea looked so beautiful that I wanted to put out on it at once, to hear the sound of the oars dipping then rising to break a skein of water into falling drops. All the time the boat would glide on.
There’s a rowing boat that’s lain above the tide-line all winter, under a tarpaulin. No one seems to use it. The oars are there too. One day I’ll row out in that boat. I’ll go as far as I can, keeping clear of the shipping channels. Those oil tankers are unstoppable. They slide on the water as if it were grease. I think of what it would be like to ride their wash in the grey sea. The waves would be huge and my boat would bounce and toss. Would I be afraid? I don’t believe I would. Not with the fear I feel now, as if someone has his hand inside my ribs and is squeezing my heart, slowly, intimately, not too hard in case it kills me, not too soft or I won’t feel it.
On Sunday we planted two apple trees. We brought them home from the nursery with their roots covered in sacking. I know that the autumn’s not the best time to plant them. The gales will catch them before they have spread their roots. New trees need a lot of care, and they cost more than we could afford. But Donald wanted them, and to plant a tree means something. It might not mean you’re going to stay, but it means that you intend to. We bought a Bramley, and a James Grieve. There’s a corner of the garden which gets sun and is sheltered from the worst of the sea-gales by the house. There’s room for five or six apple trees there. Land is cheap down here. It’s salty, wind-blown, poorly drained. And it’s too far from London for commuters to drive the prices up. There’s no motorway, and the railway’s not electrified. There is just sea, and sky, and flat grey-green land which crouches under the whip of the wind. I don’t know which is more beautiful, the huge pale sky of summer with tiny clouds that take half a day to cross it, or the hoary sky of winter, when the sun hugs the horizon and goes down brighter than it has been all day long. People come and they say there’s nothing here, and they go away without seeing it. Sometimes on a cold night the stars look as big as eggs, hanging over the marsh.
I’m not sure the trees will live. Donald dug the holes for them. I blended the soil with compost, and dug in fertilizer. The boys came out to watch us, but they didn’t ask to join in. They stood and stared as Donald unwrapped the root-ball, lowered the tree and held it straight. His back was bent, his knuckles tight on the smooth grey bark. The little leaves whipped around in the breeze. They’d want to set fruit next year, but we wouldn’t let them. Otherwise the trees don’t grow. All their strength goes into swelling the apples. I mixed the soil on a piece of polythene sheeting, turning it over with the spade. The damp earth had the same rich colour as the stones on the shore where the sea has touched them. I shovelled it in around the roots to feed the tree. You have to press the soil down, so there are no air pockets. If the new roots grow into air pockets, they’ll die. Donald had his heavy boots on and he tramped around the stem of the tree once it was planted, firming it in. I watched the marks his boots made, deep patterns on the fresh soil at first, then the patterns were trodden out, and all that was left was the bare, flat soil. We planted the second tree, and staked them both.
‘That’s where we’ll plant the other trees, when we get them,’ Donald said to the boys, pointing out the spaces where four or even five more trees could grow.
‘How big will they grow?’ asked Joe.
‘Way over your head. You’ll be able to walk under them.’
‘We’ll sit out here in the summer, and have picnics,’ I said.
I watched Joe. In his eyes it was happening already. He was still young enough to be able to see two things at once. He saw the near-naked saplings staked in bare soil, and he saw a green canopy, rustling with birds and ripe with apples. He saw himself lying on his back, his mouth full of apple. Matt came forward and touched the stem of the Bramley.
‘It doesn’t look as if it’s going to grow big,’ he said. ‘I could easily pull it up.’
He didn’t want to. It was only that the idea came to him and he had to say it.
‘Get indoors, if that’s your attitude,’ Donald said. Matt flushed and turned away, kicking at the soil as he went. Joe looked from face to face, wanting to be good enough for two.
Later the wind was blowing again and I kept thinking of the apple trees. Had we planted them firmly enough, and would their stakes hold? Salt was the worst thing. A bad salt-storm could scorch leaves miles inland.
The phone rang. Donald was upstairs, so I took it.
‘This is the blackmailer,’ said the voice. It was a voice I didn’t know, an English voice. My mind jumped everywhere. Michael had enlisted someone, feeling that he was getting nowhere himself. It was an English voice, a local voice. He was coming so close he was almost touching me.
‘The blackmailer,’ said the voice again, puzzled and on the edge of irritation. I heard him right this time. The bricklayer.
‘The bricklayer,’ I repeated.
‘That’s right. Your husband asked me to call. It’s about the base of your wall, where it’s rocking.’
‘Oh, I’ll get him for you.’
I sat down at the kitchen table. Words hissed in my ears, but I didn’t want to hear them. When Donald was finished, he’d come in and find me here. He’d know something was wrong.
‘He sounds all right,’ said Donald.
‘What?’
‘He’s going to sort out the base of the wall. He might have to take it down. It’s unsafe as it is.’
‘What’s it going to cost?’
‘He’s going to give me a quote.’
‘But how much?’
‘Oh I don’t know, Simone. Maybe a hundred. It depends how long it takes him.’
‘A hundred!’
And then anger burnt through me, a hot wind from which I had no shelter.
‘You’ve got to stop doing it,’ I said.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Acting as if we can do things we can’t. Leave the wall. What’s it matter if it falls down? There’s no one to see it except us.’
‘It’s dangerous.’
‘Then tell the boys to keep away from it.’
‘Jesus, Simone.’
‘Can’t you do it yourself?’
‘I’m an architect, not a fucking bricklayer.’
I smiled. ‘Which would you rather have,’ I asked, in a soft, new voice. ‘A wall, or dinner for the children?’
‘That’s not the choice.’
‘I think it is. I think it is. And they’re not getting any free school dinners, remember, because we’re so fucking fortunate, one of us a judge, the other an architect – God knows what we do with all the money. I think that is the choice, Donald, and I know what choice I’m making, if I have to knock that wall down myself.’
He looked at me. I saw the hot, hurt darkness in his eyes, and I knew how unbea
rable I was, and how unbearable it was for him to listen to me. I would have liked to take back those words, and I would have liked to scorch him with them until there were no flowers or foliage any more.
‘You’ve changed,’ he said, ‘I can’t believe –’ and he broke off.
‘What? What can’t you believe?’
‘How hard you’ve got,’ he said finally. ‘When you used to be so … I don’t know. Never thinking the worst of anybody.’
‘If I’ve got hard, it’s because I’ve had to. If I’d been soft we’d be in bed-and-breakfast by now.’
‘Don’t exaggerate.’
‘Do the sums, Donald. Do you think I like it? You don’t know how frightened I’ve been, sitting there, making judgments that could be wrong, having all those eyes on me waiting for me to be wrong. Making people bankrupt, telling them how often they can see their children. Changing their whole lives, I wasn’t experienced enough. I got the job because I’m good and they wanted more women. But you don’t know how it’s been. They all know, you see, they know if you make a mistake. It’s all written down. You can’t hide anything. And all the time you resent it. You know we’ve got to have the money, but you resent it. Me with my big job while everything’s fallen apart for you. Do you think that’s what I wanted?’
Donald looked back at me. The heat and pain had died from his face.
‘No,’ he said. ‘No. I don’t think that’s what you wanted.’
‘But it’s what I got. And I tell you, Donald, if I have to get harder, I’ll get harder. I won’t let anything kick us out of here. We’ll go when we want to. We’re going to pay back those loans. We’re going to tell that bank manager to fuck himself for breakfast before he forecloses on us. No one is going to tell me what happens to my children.’