My Other Life (38 page)

And who is a more unpromising companion than an unshaven middle-aged man bent under a battered knapsack? He is encircled by a damp odor of frugality and monomania. He will accept a drink from you, but he is unlikely to buy you one in return. Go about your business, don't make eye contact, he will leave soon. He will never come back. Anyway, he might well be a lunatic or a child
molester. Hiking in the dark alone so near Christmas? If he had a home, he would be there. All this and much more. No one acknowledged me, or spoke.

So I was the first to speak, but I had to wait some while for an opportunity. The bell over the door tinkled as a little old woman in a loudly crackling plastic mackintosh entered with a small wet dog.

"A tin of shandy and a packet of cheese-and-onion flavored crisps, there's a good lad," she said.

It was worth a day's hard slog through drizzle to be rewarded by an English sentence like that. I copied it into my notebook while she was served.

At the sound of the bell a man had appeared from a back room of the pub. He grunted and filled the woman's order, and I noticed that he handled her money clumsily, using all his fingers. He had the dirty fingers and enormous thumbs you associate with a strangler.

The woman fed the potato chips to the dog, talking the whole while—reminding the animal to watch its manners. And then she was gone. That was my opportunity.

"I don't think I've ever seen a dog do that."

When I spoke, the two men in the chairs stood up and left the pub, plucking at their wool sweaters and yanking their caps down.

"I wonder whether it's hard for him to swallow them," I said.

"I reckon it's right easy like."

That was the man behind the bar, probably the landlord of the pub, a balding round-eyed fellow in a sweater that was much too big for him. He looked at me briefly and said, "I'm stopping inside for my tea," and he left.

"They don't like to talk about Mrs. Pickering," the next voice said. It was the woman on the far side of the bar. "You've driven them away."

"I have that effect on some people," I said, and when she obliged me by laughing, I added, "Why don't you join me? It's much warmer here by the fire."

To my surprise she took the other chair by the hearth and said, "I never know whether it's all right to sit here. There are a couple of old boys who always use these chairs. The fog probably kept them at home."

She had beautiful teeth, and bright eyes, and soft hair cut short, and a pale indoor complexion. Lost in studying her, I gabbled without thinking, wanting only to keep her there by the fire. I had not spoken to anyone all day. Such long silences always made me feel invisible, so talking to this woman I became real again—and more, I became hopeful.

"And what is the mystery about Mrs. Pickering?"

"No mystery. It is well known." The woman stared solemnly at me and I was sorry I had been so chirpy. "She murdered her fiancé."

I tried to remember Mrs. Pickering's face. I strained, and recollected a sad shawled figure in small boots. I recalled the crackling raincoat, the fingerless woolen gloves, and I had her whole sentence
(A tin of shandy and a packet of...
) written into my notebook. But I could not see her face. My distinct memory was of a wet terrier smacking its jaws and half choking in the effort to eat the potato chips.

"Not everyone is what they seem."

"She seemed very sweet," I said.

"I was thinking of her fiancé. He was a busybody and a terrible bully. Like a lot of men with sexual problems, he was aggressive and violent. The local people knew what he was like, and what she had to put up with. It was only strangers who were fooled by him. She killed him one night with a billhook. He deserved it. She Was given a suspended sentence—an incredibly enlightened decision on the part of the judge. But no one likes to talk about her. They think everything you say about her is gossip. And it is, really. Where have you come from?"

Her explanation was also a warning. I accepted it and answered her question, saying I had come from Whitby.

She had been so straight with me and so friendly I wanted to avoid my usual fictions about being in publishing and telling her whatever name came into my head. I wanted to tell her that I had written the first draft of a book about traveling around the coast of Britain and I was here looking at places I had missed the first time around.

"By the way, my name is Edward Medford."

The false name slipped out in spite of my desire to tell her the truth. I almost laughed at the absurdity of it. Then I saw that it was my name; that whatever I said, because I had said it, had to be true; and that it was also the case with writing—that the act of writing made the word true.

"Can I get you a drink?"

"I'd love another drink. This is whiskey and lemon," she said. "I didn't have any in the house. I'm battling a cold." When I returned with the drink she was stoking the fire, tonging lumps of splintery coal from a scuttle. She thanked me for the drink and said, "I'm Lucy Haven." From the way she smiled I knew she wanted to say something more.

"Yes?" I said, to encourage her.

"Today's my birthday," she said, "Saint Lucy's Day. Thus my name."

"Happy birthday."

"I'm no saint, though," she said, and laughed softly.

She might have been forty, she could have been a bit more, and she was restrained in the most dignified way. She seemed wary when she smiled—she breathed in nicely when she did so. She struck me as independent and fearless, and solitary, if not lonely. I liked her sensible clothes and heavy boots, her knitted scarf and thick coat. She seemed self-reliant and frank. She was not afraid of me. I found her extremely attractive.

We talked about the fog, the crumbling cliffs, the Crossed Keys, and the distance to Saltburn, where there was a railway station. Then I said, "What's there to do around here?"

"I listen to the wireless or play my gramophone most evenings, and I have my knitting."

Those old-fashioned words were among the loneliest I had heard on the coast of Britain.

"And I do a great deal of reading."

I was too depressed to think of a proper response. I stroked my beard and saw that my silence was making her self-conscious.

"I suppose it's a very quiet life. But it suits me." She leaned forward and said, "What's that insignia on your tie?"

"Royal Geographical Society," I said. "I wear it when I'm hiking. Helps my morale."

I lifted the little gold emblem with my thumb, offering it, so that she could see it better.

"Ties are very phallic," she said.

I let the thing drop.
Ties?

"It's obvious, isn't it?" she went on, perhaps because I had not said anything. "I read somewhere that neckties didn't become popular until the sixteenth century. And that was when the padded codpiece went out of style."

It did not seem possible that anyone could say this without smiling, and yet her face remained expressionless, while I straightened up so that my tie wouldn't dangle. I smoothed it against my shirt.

"I suppose beards are, too," I said. "Phallic symbols."

"Yours is."

It was the first one I had ever grown. I thought it made me look beaverlike and fat-faced, but when I heard her make that extraordinary remark, I felt I had succeeded at something I had not been aware of having attempted. I had always resisted growing a beard, because I felt that a beard brought on a personality change—it happened to many men. She clearly approved.

"Some penises are phallic symbols," I said.

"You're an American, aren't you?"

"Yes, I came here to get lost."

"You came to the right village."

We had another drink, and another, and went on talking in this friendly way—she was full of unexpected remarks. The wind in the chimney disturbed the fire. It had become a bleak, murky night. No one else entered the pub.

"What time does this place close?"

"Half-ten," she said. "But if we left before then, he'd probably shut up shop. It's a filthy night."

"But if we left, where would we go?"

She gave me a lovely unexpected smile, and it was more than a facial expression: it was a beautiful thought in her eyes and her mouth.

"My cottage isn't far," she said. "We could have a drink there. You haven't let me buy my round!"

"It's your birthday, Lucy."

All the while I had been wondering how this might end. I still did not know, but at least I had a chance. And it was not as a traveler wanting to be welcomed and warmed and told a good yarn, but for something more. I liked her, and I was grateful to her for taking charge of me.

The landlord was not at the bar to see us leave. I was glad of that. I felt somewhat furtive and sheepish, as if I were sneaking away with Lucy Haven. I was also ashamed of this furtiveness.

"That's a parasite," she said as we passed under the mistletoe.

She led me out to the narrow road, where the fog was swirling and drizzling in the dimmed Christmas lights of the pub windows; and then she turned into one of those country lanes that is like a deep trench. Although it was dark, Lucy did not hesitate, and I followed the sound of her footsteps grinding the damp pebbles in the lane. We had left the hamlet of hidden cottages and were headed for the cliffs. I could hear the waves dumping and sliding in the deep hollows below.

"I always imagine there are people down there," she said of the sorrowing sound of the waves.

"Very cold people," I said.

"Very dead people," she answered, and then, "It's not much farther."

At once her footsteps went silent as she started down a muddy path.

I was baffled by her remark, trying to fathom her changes of mood, when she called out, "There it is."

Lights burned in three or four pretty windows, and although they were blurred by sea mist they helped me pick out the contour of this cottage, the low slanting roof and the bulging walls. I could hear the sea clearly now: it was just beneath us, thrashing softly, sounds of anguish and collapse.

It seemed a remote and solitary place, and I reflected that I would have been frightened to be alone here. But all its desolate characteristics made it an excitement and a pleasure to be here with Lucy Haven. I was about to enter this stranger's life. It is a traveler's thrill—to delve and then move on, like passing through a pool of light.

"I always leave the lights on," Lucy said as she opened the front door. "I hate to come back to a dark house."

On the way from the Crossed Keys I had entertained the fantasy that Lucy Haven might be a witch or a murderess. It had been a spooky encounter, the business with Mrs. Pickering and the chance meeting with Lucy.
She killed her husband,
and
Not everyone is what they seem,
and the sudden invitation to her cottage on the cliffs, and her remark
Very dead people.

Inside that sense of mystery vanished. It was a tidy place, penetrated with the odors of good bread and healthy cats and green
plants. Its warmth heightened these odors and made them fragrant, and the warmth itself was a reassurance. If it had been cold in the cottage I am sure I would have been apprehensive. It was rather shadowy—only the lamps near the windows were burning—but I could see the pots of ivy and the fruit basket on the scrubbed pine table, a cat asleep on the sofa near the fireplace, and I could hear a clock's hurrying tick. Along one wall were bookshelves, and there were some pictures on another wall. But these were obscured by shadows. I did not want to see them, I did not want more light than this; I liked the fire and the dim lamps and the plump sofa and the thick rug.

"I've been making a jumper," Lucy said. I suppose she thought I had been wondering about all that knitting paraphernalia that lay on the ladderback chair. "I had hoped to finish by Christmas, but there's not much chance of that. Christmas is Saturday."

"Is it for someone special—the jumper?"

"Yes," she said, and looked very serious and intense. "Someone in Africa. I'm a sort of godmother to a little girl in Lesotho. Actually she's quite a big girl now. I send a lot of knitted things to her. It can get very cold in Africa."

She handed me a glass of white wine and we toasted each other.

"Happy birthday," I said.

She frowned and said, "Happy Christmas."

I sat on the sofa, making room for her to sit next to me, but she chose to sit on the rug, before the fire. A cat went to her and she gathered it into her lap and stroked it.

"She calls me Mummy," Lucy said, and smiled, but not at me. "She's a fifth-former now."

We went on talking—about the work of the missions in Africa, about the Yorkshire weather, about the pleasures of radio programs and the tastes of herbal tea; but all I thought was how badly I wanted to make love to her. I could begin by getting down beside her on the rug in front of the fire. I did not want to make it obvious. As we talked, and as she refilled my glass, I grew steadily more dreamy with desire. Time passed; I was attentive, awaiting my chance.

She said, "I think this silly cat has been in a fight. He's got a torn ear."

"Let's see," I said, and scrambled next to her.

The torn ear occupied us for a while, and the fire warmed my face, and I was sleepy with wine. At last, sensing that I was falling, I put my arm around her, then squeezed her shoulder and leaned to kiss her.

She arched her back and stiffened as though I had driven a spike into her.

"What are you doing?" Her voice was cold with contempt.

I did not know what to say.

"Do you think I'm just going to tumble into bed with you?"

She said it with such a sneer that I was on my feet before she had finished speaking. She had made me ashamed of myself. I backed away, stumbling slightly—it was like being thrown out of bed. I said no, of course not, it was the furthest thing from my mind. And, my, look at the time!

"I have to go," I said. "Where's my pack?"

She switched on another light, and I was going to the door, eager to run. The overbright light made the cottage seem less friendly and rather poky and cluttered. Now I could see the books on the shelves. I was slinging on my knapsack and studying the shelves and, with nothing to lose—I had already touched bottom—I spoke the malicious thought that was in my mind.