Such Visitors (17 page)

Helen Judson guarded to herself only one secret: the route of her afternoon walks. Depending on the weather, and her mood, they were either up through the busy streets of the town to the remains of the battlements, or along the canal towpath. The pleasure of deciding each day which walk she should take was one she kept stubbornly to herself. No matter how much her mother questioned her, on her return, she would only reveal she had been ‘around', or ‘here and there'. Nothing more.

Only on fine Saturdays were the walks of quite a different kind, and no joy at all. Then, Helen was obliged to wheel her mother along the High Street. The irascible old lady would peer into each shop window and with a squawk of triumph find some new cause for indignation: the price of coffee or shoes, the vulgarity of summer hats. ‘But I suppose you've seen all this several times a week, it doesn't surprise you,' Mrs Judson would say, considering her manner of probing to be a subtle one. Helen's response was always of such vagueness as to infuriate Mrs Judson further: still she could not discover where, precisely, Helen had taken her weekday walks, and her daughter's closed face and impenetrable secrecy on this one subject filled Mrs Judson with inexhaustible rage. Determined to invade this only remaining area of her daughter's privacy, she planned one day to abandon her tactic of subtle probing and come right out with it. Ask Helen, straight, what she was up to in her hour of freedom five afternoons each week.

Helen was up to nothing more than seeking relief from the tedium of the house. All she desired was a measure of silence after the perpetual nag of her mother's voice: fresh air after the smell of years of stewed prunes and disinfectant and lily-of-the-valley talcum powder which had permeated every room. Her hour alone each day was a thing to be anticipated all
morning, to be recalled during the long, dreary evenings. Neither storms nor snow nor uncomfortable heat would be reason enough to forego its pleasures. In the last fifteen years Helen had only missed three walks, due to some major crisis in her mother's health, which were clearly distinguishable from the very frequent ones of a minor kind.

On a Wednesday in October Helen prepared herself, as usual, for her escape. She settled her mother in the armchair by the window which looked on to a small, perished garden. She plumped up cushions, refilled water glass, straightened shawl, placed the
Radio Times
and bag of knitting within reach. Then she lifted Spot the terrier on to Mrs Judson's chest so that the servile little dog could give its customary lick to the mush of purple cheek and neck. She replaced the dog with some distaste on the floor.

‘You going out, dear?' Mrs Judson's assumed surprise never dimmed.

‘Just for a while.'

‘Don't be long. I've this numbness in my leg. I might be heading for something.'

Helen was never long. A precise hour, neither more nor less. Always warned by some new ailment of her mother that to overstay her hour would be fatal.

She could see it was a sharp, gusty afternoon. Helen plucked from a peg in the dim hallway a mauve scarf into which her mother had crocheted many grumbles for last Christmas. She tucked it into the collar of her gaberdine mac and tightened the laces of her walking shoes. Spot panted eagerly at her feet. Afternoon walks were the highlight of his day, too: though no doubt he felt as little joy in Helen's surly company as she did in his irritating excitement at every familiar corner.

Opening the front door, Helen stood for a moment to feel the dry wind on her face. Spot immediately spurted out into the wizened front garden, yelped in idiot frenzy at the foot of the one remaining standard rose tree whose salmon-pink blooms Helen disliked every June.

‘Shut up, you scabby fawning little bitch,' she said out loud, releasing the venom of the morning on the dog, ‘or I'll kick your guts in.'

As if ashamed by the violence of the language it had spewed
forth, Helen's pale worm of a mouth concentrated into a single pencil line, lips indistinguishable from skin. She tossed her head – so many grey hairs, now, among the auburn – and made for the canal.

The water, today, lustreless as the sky, was made flaccid by the wind. It trembled like geriatric flesh. Autumnal reminders of death were a comfort to Helen: her mother could not survive many more years, then she would be free to die in peace herself. Such a thought released the warmth of contentment through Helen's meagre body. The minuscule speck of sand she represented in eternity was, at least, a polished one: dutiful life untroubled by ambition or surprise or adventure, to be ended by death that would not cause a single person in the world a moment of regret. Ah! she was fortunate, really. Those well-meaning neighbours who advised she should get out more, sacrifice less to her mother, were foolish in their ignorance. Perhaps they did not understand the pleasure of repaying debts – the childhood years when her mother had been constant in her affection, her puddings and her darning, could not be discounted merely because an accident had turned a well-meaning woman into a selfish, bitter old lady. Besides, there was much to be said for narrowness of life. Helen had no desire to widen her horizons. The rigid cage of her days, for all its petty irritations, was safe. Release, when it came, would be alarming.

Helen was alone, as usual, on the towpath. Few people chose to walk along the muddy banks of the canal, spurned by all wild flowers, though thick with willow herb in August and blackberries in September. Often, the water itself smelt dead. Swallows, dipping low for a glance at their reflections, hastily swooped up again into sweeter air. But the trees were handsome: chestnuts, poplar, ash – their leaves beginning to turn. Cold, suddenly, Helen quickened her step. Some way ahead of her Spot was barking at something beneath the bridge. He was always barking. Years ago Helen had grown immune to the urgency of the sound. She felt no responsibility for him on walks, gave him no instructions. If he cared to follow at heel, she made no comment. If he darted about in his irresponsible fashion she would not concern herself. By all rights he should
have been run over long ago. Helen was not going to lessen his chances by giving him advice.

So now she ignored his barking but hurried against the cold. As she approached the bridge, Spot turned to her with his stupid grin, yapping all the while. Then he scampered off to a place on the canal bank a hundred yards farther on.

It was there Helen saw an arm sticking out of the water, then a head. They disappeared. Sluggish ripples covered the place they had been. Helen ran.

When she reached the place on the bank where Spot stood barking, the head emerged again. It was a boy of nine or ten, screaming, muddy, apparently unable to move. Helen whipped off her scarf and threw it towards him. The boy's hand flailed towards it, but missed. He screamed more loudly. Helen flung off her mackintosh and jumped into the water.

Looking back on the events of the afternoon, Helen could never understand why, later, she was to be called a heroine. Certainly she had had no time for heroic thoughts of saving life: it had all happened too quickly for thought of any kind. Acting on instinct, Helen had jumped, and with comparative ease pulled the boy from the water. The hardest part had been climbing back up the steep and slippery bank, aggravated by the boy's wailing and Spot's triumphant barking. Once on land, it took some moments to persuade the boy to give Helen his name and address. He lived not far away. Hand in hand, they hurried to his house.

Sam's mother scolded him for going to forbidden territory – ‘I always told you one day you'd fall in, fooling about with sticks like that' – but there was relief in her scolding. She repeated her gratitude to Helen, gave her tea and offered to dry her clothes. But now that the boy was safe Helen's only worry was that she should get home within her allotted hour. To be late would mean abundant questioning, and Helen was determined her mother should know nothing of the small drama.

Mrs Judson, Helen found to her relief, had fallen asleep. This enabled her to change her clothes undetected. As she often did this, after a bath in the afternoon, Mrs Judson did
not think anything was amiss. That evening, sitting by the small fire of smokeless fuel while her mother grumbled at the television, Helen went over the events of the afternoon in her mind. She recalled the stab of fear that had made her heart race as it had not done for years: the icy grasp of the water, the vile smell of the mud, the piteous face of Sam and the struggle up the bank. The pictures seemed small and far away. She saw herself acting in them, a detached figure, as in a film. It was only the combined memories of cold, fear and smell that convinced her the rescue had actually happened. By the next morning, the matter was almost erased from her mind.

Two days later she found a small bunch of peonies left on the front doorstep. The attached note said:
With many thanks and love from Sam.
Unnerved, Helen put them in a jar in her room, a place Mrs Judson never entered. Later that day came a further shock. On return from her walk to the battlements Helen found her mother in animated conversation with a strange young man in the sitting-room.

‘We've a visitor, Helen,' she crowed. ‘How about that? This is Mr John Smith from the
Chronicle.
And he's told me all about what you did the other day
down by the canal.'

That part of the information was definitely the most interesting to Mrs Judson. Her triumph was total. The pains of the morning were forgotten, her smiles uncontainable.

Helen shook hands with the reporter and sat down, weakly. She saw that he and her mother were drinking tea from the best china cups, and the best tea cosy, slotted with ribbons, warmed the pot. They ate biscuits from a plate of Assorted Cream Centres, normally kept for Sundays or Christmas. Mrs Judson had not been up to such preparations for months, her daughter reflected. But she kept her silence.

‘Yes, well,' said Mr Smith. ‘Young Sam's mother put me on to you. And a very brave act it was, too, if I may say so.'

‘Down by the canal,' added Mrs Judson.

‘We on the
Chronicle
would like to do a little story about you, Miss Judson, if you wouldn't mind.' Mr Smith licked his pencil with a biscuit-covered tongue.

‘I would mind very much indeed,' said Helen. ‘There's no story. I only did what anyone would have done in my place. It was neither dangerous nor very dramatic.'

‘Kept it from her mother, all right,' said Mrs Judson.

‘Quite the silent heroine,' Mr Smith smiled, thinking of the byline under the headline.

‘Never tells me where she goes for her walks, do you, Helen?'

‘Furthest
I've
ever gone was rescuing a puppy from a duck pond,' admitted Mr Smith, thinking he would ease Helen's path by confessing his own experience of heroism. He told the story at some length, leaving Helen to observe the curious way his presence affected the room. It was four o'clock, but the normal peace of that time was shattered by the intrusion of this unwanted stranger. Spot lay unusually still on the mat, the dark wallpaper glowered with a strange menace.

‘So just a little human story for the
Chronicle,
I'd like,' Mr Smith was saying, having been congratulated by Mrs Judson on his courage in the matter of the puppy. ‘You wouldn't mind answering just a few questions, now, would you?'

‘My husband, Helen's father, and I made the pages of the
Chronicle
on our wedding day, and then again on our silver anniversary,' interjected Mrs Judson, who had not enjoyed an afternoon so much for years. ‘Of course, Helen will tell us whatever we want to know. People will like to read a story like that, won't they, Helen?'

Helen answered the reporter's unanimated questions as shortly and simply as she was able. Her theory that the story was of little interest did not convince Mr Smith: there was no doubt, he assured her, fame would be upon her now.

It was quite dark by the time he left. For this reason, as Helen accompanied him unhappily to the gate, she did not observe another of the
Chronicle's
lively employees hiding behind a hedge: a sudden flash exploded in her face. Momentarily blinded, she stumbled back to the house, slammed the door on Mr Smith's apologies. He had not thought the photographer would cause her such fright.

‘So it's
down by the canal
you go,' cooed Mrs Judson, ignoring Helen's distress and still eating biscuits. ‘Knew I'd find out one day. There's not much you can keep from your mother.'

* * *

The following week a large picture of Helen, startled and open-mouthed, was printed on the front page of the
Chronicle,
beside a smaller one of Sam. The story was headed ‘The Silent Heroine by John Smith', who delivered his readers the full range of his journalistic talents in his descriptions of the horror of jumping into a lethal canal to rescue a boy on the point of drowning. His colourful exaggeration caused Helen almost to cry out loud, but she knew any remonstrance would be fuel to her mother's opinions, which already had been wearingly repeated over the last two days. The part of the story that held the keenest delight for Mrs Judson were Mr Smith's closing lines. ‘And Miss Judson,' he wrote, ‘breathed not a word of her great heroism to anyone. She did not even tell her mother.'