3
Some while later, a movement distracted S’s gaze from the house, causing it to flick over to the left. There, only slightly obscured by the outermost twigs of an apple tree that blossomed late, and the branches of a sumac tree, a wooden bungalow attracted his attention; from the door of the wooden bungalow, a figure was emerging. The figure bore a mat that appeared to have dull-coloured stripes on it. The figure began to shake the mat.
Even from this distance, it could be seen that the head of this figure was turned to look over its left shoulder as if regarding a brown side gate that would be visible to its view while remaining concealed from the watcher behind the west corner of the house. A plump figure appeared from this direction and stopped a couple of metres away from the figure holding the mat. Round the body of the plump figure was wrapped a large coat of a liver colour; the person thus enveloped carried an umbrella, while stockinged legs appeared below the coat to disappear into ankle boots. From this distance it could be discerned that the person had a large head, the hair of which was grey and swept back into a bun behind the head, while on the crown of the head rested a small hat that carried some sort of coloured ornament.
When the two figures had stood within easy talking distance of each other for some while, the figure bearing the mat turned and walked off, heading for the wooden bungalow, which he entered, closing the door behind him. This event set the plump person into motion again. She made for the east corner of the house, gained the concrete path there, and continued on without pausing in her progress until she reached the back door; there she paused only long enough to knock on one of the long green panels before she pulled the door open and entered it, afterwards closing it behind her.
S remained where he was, waiting and watching. His gaze moved from the closed back door to the open kitchen window. The plump person became visible at this opening. She engaged in a complicated manœuvre or series of gestures which removed the liver-coloured coat from her body. Even from a distance, it could be seen that she wore some sort of a white apron below the coat.
She was now periodically visible about the kitchen. Twice she came out of the back door. On the first occasion, she carried a coal scuttle which she took to the bunker on the right of the long windows of the dining-room; setting the scuttle on the ground, she took a shovel from it and with this shovel scooped coal from the bottom of the bunker, throwing it into the scuttle until the scuttle was filled with coal. The sound of this operation could be heard inside the old brick building that was separated from the house by asparagus beds. On the second occasion, the plump figure emerged with a metal can that she carried by a handle on its side. With this article she passed along the back of the house and beyond the coal bunker, altered direction until she walked in a north-easterly direction, so that a pattern of four white ribbons meeting in the middle of her back could be certainly discerned, crossed a stretch of lawn, and reached a door set in the back wall of a garage constructed mainly of asbestos, reinforced by pillars of concrete. The plump person entered this door, closing it behind her when she was inside the garage, and remaining there for some while before re-emerging with her can. By comparing the way she walked back over the grass, past the coal bunker, and back to the back door, with her left arm stretching down towards the can it carried and her right arm stiff and extended at an angle of about thirty degrees from her body, it could be deduced that she had transported the can empty to the garage, had filled it inside the garage, and now bore it back full into the house.
S turned his head away from the window. By his feet lay a copy of a boys’ magazine printed some years ago when S himself had been a boy. The pages were yellow with age. They lay open at a picture of a big bearded man with glaring eyeballs wielding an oar above his head; he stood in the threshold of a doorway beyond which, lying in a corner of a bare room, was a schoolboy with his hands and feet tied together with rope. The boy still wore his school cap. Above this picture were the words The Secret of the Grey Mill.
Picking the magazine up, S started to read the story. When he had read several sentences, his eye wandered across the page to the next page. Finally it alighted upon a sentence which said, Thirsty though he was, he watched the brackish water drain away without regret. Continuing to read from there, S turned the page. He read to the bottom of the page. There, a passage in black type said, Who is trapped down the old well? Do not miss next week’s gripping episode. S closed the magazine and placed it on the log that lay near at hand. He looked out of the round window, saw no movement in the garden or through the windows of the house, and so brought his gaze back inside the old brick building, letting it rest on the floor.
The planks were uneven and tawny in colour. The raised parts of the planks, particularly where a knot lay exposed in the wood, were a lighter colour than the rest. In the bottom of the small indentations in the planks, the wood was often darkened by a collection of dirt.
S glanced up occasionally from the floor to look out of the window. If nothing attracted his attention, he looked down at the floor again. Sometimes he traced an imaginary pattern among the knots and grooves.
He glanced out of the round window and saw that someone was coming towards the old brick building in which he sat.
Rising to his knees, S concealed his body behind the brickwork before allowing his head to move forward so that he could again look through the round window that was divided into nine sections. The plump person in the white apron was carrying a bucket in which some sort of green substance could be glimpsed. She had crossed over the stretch of lawn before the back door, and was progressing down a narrow dirt path that ran parallel with the asparagus bed, fringing the bed to its south-east side just as the gravel walk did on its north-west side. This path led under screening fruit trees adjacent to the south-east wall of the old brick building before terminating at a rubbish tip lying almost against a privet hedge that bounded Mr. Mary’s property on the south-west side. To get to this rubbish tip, it was necessary for anyone walking along the dirt path to come near to the front of the old brick building, and to pass in fact within touching distance of its east corner.
When the plump person got to within three metres of this corner, she stopped and looked up at the round window set in the upper part of the front of the old coach house, above the two doors with their worn grey timber.
“Are you up there? Hoy, wake up, it’s only me. Are you up there?”
“Where is he?”
“Oh, there you are! Why don’t you come down? I bet you were asleep.”
“Is he in?”
“He’s in his study with the door shut and a pen in his hand and Lord knows what mighty thoughts in his head.”
“I wasn’t asleep, Vi. Are you sure?”
“You know as well as I do.… Why don’t you come down? I bet you were asleep.”
“She?”
“I’ve got work to do. She’s gone out shopping with her basket and umbrella and new coat.”
“Smart, eh?”
“Very smart this morning, we are. All dolled up this morning. Are you coming down or aren’t you?”
“I’m just coming.”
Going to the other end of the room, S bent down and lifted up a trapdoor that he rested back against the rear wall of the building in which was a small window set close to the floor. A solid wooden structure of steps was revealed. S went down them, turning the corner and descending over a further seven treads until his feet touched the cobbles that formed the floor of the old coach house. Here the light was dim; gleams of light filtered through vertical and horizontal cracks in the two timber doors at the front of the building, and through the windows set in the timber doors.
In one of these two doors, the left one as S faced them, a small door no higher than one and a half metres had been fitted. Cracks of light appeared round it also.
“Come on, then, let’s be having you. I haven’t got all day.”
“You’ll work yourself into an early grave.”
Into the ancient timbers of the left-hand door, a nail had been knocked close to the small inserted door. A loop of cord hung round this nail; the other end of this cord was tied round the end of a nut securing the handle of the little door, which was on the outside of the little door. S took the loop off the nail and pushed the door open.
He blinked and stuck his head out. He looked up at the house, and then at the plump woman.
“Are you coming then? I haven’t got all day. I wouldn’t mind betting you were asleep.”
S emerged from the small door, straightened, and took a pace nearer to the plump woman.
Her large figure consisted of a series of interdependent curves. S’s figure was composed mainly of straight lines. An uninformed viewer seeing these two figures would have been surprised to learn that both figures were supported internally by two skeletons not at all unlike.
The plump woman was dressed in a grey dress; over it was a large white apron that had two ribbons to secure it round the waist and two more ribbons that sprouted from the top of the apron, above the swell of the breast, to secure it over the shoulders. The plump woman’s hair was also secured by a piece of velvet ribbon. The hair was a yellowy grey, drawn back to the back of the head, where it was dressed into a bun. The woman’s face was pale, with only an irregular patch of colour in either cheek. Her eyes, of a washed blue, were bolstered on noticeably large underlids that swelled into folds of flesh with pasty shadows beneath them.
“Are you sure he’s working?”
“At this time of morning? It’s write, write, write, even when you take his coffee in.”
“Is he advertising for a new secretary?”
“What, after you? How are you? You don’t look too good. You’re a fool, you are, really, nice young chap like you. You’re wasting your time.”
“Don’t get on at me, Vi.”
“I’m not getting on at you, but really—I mean, suppose everyone in the world went round getting funny ideas, I mean, where’d we all be, eh?”
“They say there’s been a strike at the fish factory.”
“Do they, now? And who told you that? You really don’t look too good, you know. Look at your eyes!”
“Watt told me.”
“Which fish factory was this?”
“You’d better ask him. He told me.”
“You don’t want to trust all Watt tells you. He can’t tell you the time correctly.”
“The place where they can the fish, I suppose.”
“Don’t be so daft. There’s no such place. Not round here, anyway.”
S looked down at his shoes; they were covered with grey dust. Gravel was trodden into dark brown earth, lying under his shoes.
“Did you bring me anything?”
“I shouldn’t do it. Really I shouldn’t. I’m daft to do it.”
From the top of the pail she carried, the plump woman brushed aside some outer leaves of cabbage and produced a bundle of newspaper. She held it out to S. He stepped forward and took it, remaining there awkwardly looking at her.
“It’s half a pork pie. I shouldn’t do it, Lord knows, but they’ll never miss it.”
“You’re terribly kind.”
“Let’s not go into all that again. You know me by now. What I do I do. Why don’t you come in and have a bath?”
“What, in the house? With him just in his study? He’d shoot me.”
“Don’t talk so bloody daft. He won’t stir till lunch time. You need a bath. You know you need a bath.”
“I don’t need a bath. Imagine me creeping into that house! Besides, suppose she came back and caught me in the bath!”
The plump woman laughed.
“Go on with you, you men are all the same, you know you’d love it.”
“He’d shoot me if he saw me!”
“Well, I can’t stay here all day. Some of us have got work to do if others haven’t.”
“Could you bring me a drop of paraffin for my lamp, please, Vi?”
“I tell you, you men are all the same, nothing but a nuisance. Fetch us your lamp, then. Why you can’t go and fill it yourself.…”
“You know why.”
The plump woman stood where she was until S disappeared through the small door set in the large doors of the old brick building. Then she moved forward again along the dirt path, ducked her head as she went under the bare bough of an apple tree, and shot the contents of her white enamelled bucket out onto the top of the rubbish tip. When she returned to the spot where she had been standing before, she waited there until S returned to her. In his hand he carried a rusty storm lantern; he raised it and gave it to her.
“I’ll bring it back when I can. I’ve got a lot to do this morning. She wants me to do them scallops of veal for lunch. She’s gone out to get some anchovy now.”
“Goodbye. Thank you for the pork pie.”
“I’m a fool, that’s what I am.”
S stood and watched the four ribbons involved in a bow where they met in the centre of the back. The white pail, now empty, which the plump woman carried in her right hand, was brighter than the colour of the apron; the ends of the ribbons were creased, and somewhat yellowed. In a brief while, the woman reached the back door, which she had left ajar; she climbed the step and went through the door; as it closed behind her, S turned and climbed back through the small door into the old brick building.
4
When S regained the room above the coach house, he let down the trapdoor and advanced into the middle of the room. The newspaper parcel which he had been clutching he placed on one of the shelves that ran along the south-east side of the room, next to a small brass crocodile.
Hanging on a level with his chest was a hammock made of canvas, its two ends threaded with ropes that ran out to two of the low cross-beams, looping through two thick metal rings that hung over two nails knocked into the first and second of the three cross-beams. Drooping over the two sides of this hammock were the corners of two grey blankets, their edges bound up with red wool, and an arrangement of sacks strung or stitched together with garden twine. Placing his two arms inside the hammock, S bent his knees and sprang upwards, hauling himself into the hammock.
When he was in the hammock, and it had ceased to swing, he sat up and untied the laces of his shoes. Removing first the left shoe and then the right, he dropped them down onto the floor, where the indentations on the planking formed an arrangement of shades, some almost straw-coloured, some more of a dark sienna shade where dirt had rubbed into the wood; the effect to an unfocused eye was reminiscent of a woman’s hair. The two shoes rolled and lay together, their toecaps touching, at an angle of ninety degrees; the left shoe lay with its sole exposed. The sole was worn in the middle and frayed round the sides. The toecap of the right shoe was battered. The two shoes lay together. They formed a chance arrangement on the floor. Underneath them ran the tawny planks of the floor. They touched the floor at a number of points; they touched each other at the toes. The shoes lay directly below the downward-directed eye of the man, until he turned away and lay down.
Beneath his head, S arranged more comfortably a small body that served him as pillow. This body, which was beige in colour, had attached to it a head made to represent a species of bear. The representation was less exact than it had been when the animal was newly fashioned, since it lacked both ears and an eye. The body also had undergone a change with age; not only had its contours been flattened and softened; its arms and legs were lost, their former positions being indicated by four holes in the beige material through which woody and fibrous stuffing protruded. The man arranged this object to serve as a pillow, pressing his head back against the flaccid stomach of the bear, so that its head nodded above his own, and appeared to stare into the room with its one remaining brown glass eye.
The man’s gaze rested upon the roofing above him, where many parallel rough hewn beams ran down from the thick centre beam to the side walls, supporting curling orange tiles. Some of the tiles were chipped; some
had slipped from their original position. Light spread between the tiles, coming in the cracks and widening into bands of bright whiteness that tended to obscure the tiles.
The man’s gaze became more diffused. His eyelids descended over his eyes and he slept.
Once he moved in his sleep, turning his head towards his right shoulder. The movement caused the bear to move its head slightly too. His breathing became slower and more grating as it passed over his dry palate; its susurration was audible in the silent room.
When he woke, his gaze took in a stove that stood near the central cross-beam. It was black, although on its grills, vents, slides, spinwheels, patent pokers, and other protrusions rested a thin film of dust that was light grey in colour.
S swung two stockinged feet over the side of the hammock and slid to the floor, planting his feet on the planking a few centimetres from his shoes. He sat on the floor and put the shoes onto his feet. He laced the shoes. He stood up and went to the front of the room, where a round window, intersected by four strips of wood placed two one way and two another dividing the circle into nine segments, the middle one square, was let into the brickwork of the wall. Stooping, he peered out of this window.
Below and in front of this window was an asparagus bed, made up into three long mounds which were bare now except for a number of weeds growing on them, fringed on one side by a gravel walk and on the other by a dirt path. The gravel walk was fringed on its other side by a low privet hedge. Along the gravel walk was strutting a pigeon known as X which thrust its neck and head forward with each step it took. Beyond the asparagus bed lay a strip of lawn that led, in its north-westerly continuation, towards the vegetable and fruit garden and, in its south-easterly direction, towards the flower garden. Beyond this strip of lawn, built on ground slightly higher than the ground on which stood the old brick building that had once been called a coach house by property holders of an earlier epoch, was the plain square house with some of the panes of glass in its windows gleaming in the sunshine. On the first floor, the window on the right belonged to the bathroom. Through this window only a blankness could be seen; it was a light blankness since the bathroom had two windows, the one unseen being round the corner of the south-east side of the house. To the left of the bathroom window were two windows belonging to two spare rooms. There was no movement in them. S blinked his eyes, yawned, and surveyed the windows on the ground floor. Below the left of the two spare room windows was the kitchen window. Resting on the sill inside the middle portion of this window was a can that threw off a gleam in the sunshine; the two side portions of the window were open. No movement could be detected in the kitchen. The back door stood next to the kitchen window. A cat covered with black and white fur lay sunning itself on the step beneath the door; the door was closed. To the right of the back door was the dining-room window, a long window reaching to the ground which could be opened to admit people to the garden. Like the bathroom above it, this room also possessed a second window, concealed from view round the corner on the south-east wall of the house. In the light received through these two windows, it was possible to make out a figure garbed at least partially in white moving round a table only partly in view and doing something with or to the table.