The Pull of the Moon
Read The Pull of the Moon Online
Authors: Diane Janes
Constable & Robinson Ltd
3 The Lanchesters
162 Fulham Palace Road
London W6 9ER
www.constablerobinson.com
First published in the UK by Constable,
an imprint of Constable & Robinson, 2010
First US edition published by SohoConstable,
an imprint of Soho Press, 2010
Soho Press, Inc.
853 Broadway
New York, NY 10003
www.sohopress.com
Copyright
©
Diane Janes, 2010
The right of Diane Janes to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated in any
form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
A copy of the British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data is available from the British Library
UK ISBN: 978-1-84901-272-0
US ISBN: 978-1-56947-639-0
US Library of Congress number: 2009043666
Typeset by TW Typesetting, Plymouth, Devon
Printed and bound in the EU
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
Contents
For Bill
Gravity is the attraction of one body to another . . .
. . . As the moon orbits the earth it moves not only
the oceans but the ground beneath our feet . . .
ONE
Marjorie swims at the leisure pool every morning – a steady breast stroke which keeps her face clear of the water and her hair dry. We’ve both been going there for
quite some time, so Marjorie assumes we know all about each other. We chat, you see, while we get changed or pause for a breather between lengths: for I too have become the sort of woman who swims
without getting her hair wet.
Marjorie is a widow, who passes her non-WI evenings in front of a television set. She asks me if I’ve seen programmes, then discourses on them irrespective of my reply.
‘It was very ingenious,’ she says, ‘the way they hid the body inside the snowman. A very ingenious murder.’ She pauses for my reply.
There’s a lot of things I could say. Like murder isn’t ingenious. It’s sandpaper in the mouth – an ice cube down your spine. It’s fear you can taste and feel.
Thunder flashes going off in your head.
I don’t say any of this. Instead I say: ‘I never watch murder mysteries.’
Marjorie gives me a knowing smile. A series of wavelets plinks against us, the aftermath of a fellow swimmer’s tumble turn. Marjorie raises her eyes heavenward. What’s the hurry? her
expression asks. I wonder if Marjorie has ever splashed or raced, or skinny-dipped.
‘Sometimes I have to turn them off,’ she says. ‘It’s no use watching something, then lying awake half the night, hearing every little noise.’
I realize she is still talking about television programmes. She thinks I’m too windy to watch alone at night. I let her think it.
‘Another couple of lengths,’ I say. ‘Then I’m getting out.’
We set off together, but I soon outpace her, even doing the stately breast stroke which never threatens to engulf my coloured hair in chlorinated water. My hairdresser has warned me about this.
Chlorine strips out what he calls my ‘semi-permanent’, thus exposing the grey faster. Thirty-five years ago I never thought to be careful of my semi-permanent. Didn’t have to
watch my weight, or consider hiding my creased neck under a scarf. Everything changes.
Just as the size of my waist has expanded, so the gaps between the thunder flashes have lengthened. Their velocity has decreased, their deadly brightness grown dim. I thought the Cat Stevens
lyric would be prophetic –
Wherever I am, I’m always walking with you
. . . It is no longer so. Every day turned into every other day, every other day into occasionally.
Occasionally doesn’t come around so often any more.
I drove past the house a couple of years ago and it looked quite different. New windows, fancy wrought-iron gates; it had even sprouted a conservatory on one side. The wood at Bettis has become
a nature trail. It has a car park with picnic tables. How we would have scorned that. I didn’t stop, but I could imagine it. Waymarked walks and community arts projects. Little notices
forbidding the leaving of litter, ghost hunting, or fornication on the forest floor. Well, okay, I made that last bit up.
The house where Danny lived has gone completely. There’s a neat quartet of semis there now. Semidetached and entirely permanent. Everything changes. Even Cat Stevens isn’t Cat
Stevens any more.
Marjorie catches up with me in the changing room. We keep our eyes discreetly focused away from one another, our shared taste in Marks & Spencer’s knickers not remarked upon. Instead
Marjorie discourses about her youngest’s husband. He has just paid for a new car
and
a fitted kitchen. ‘He would do anything for our Lyn,’ she says.
Anything for love. That’s what the song lyrics tell us. Everyone from Meatloaf to Lionel Bart’s Oliver professing their intention to do anything – anything at all – for
the object of their affections. ‘Would you risk the drop?’ asks Nancy. ‘Anything,’ coos the besotted young orphan. Not the drop of course. Not quite that. They’d
stopped hanging people by 1972.
I half listen to Marjorie’s eulogizing with appropriate nods and smiles. Marjorie accepts this as a kind of victory. I have no children, so I cannot compete. She turns away to fold her
towel. She is fully dressed now: tartan slacks and a pastel polo shirt, courtesy of the Edinburgh Woollen Mill. The fact that I already choose the same underwear as this woman may be a frightening
portent of things to come. I’m already doing the sensible shoes. My God, I’ll be morphing into pleats and a shortie mac before I know it.
I am glad to escape from Marjorie. Normally she is at worst no more than mildly irritating, but today she has trampled into dangerous new territory, prising open the door on to an
‘occasionally’ – one of those increasingly rare moments of stark reality, which can be provoked by any unexpected reminder – some innocent unconnected prompt – a
phrase from a song, a headline in the paper. A few weeks ago it happened in a busy street. I saw a tall young man walking ahead of me, with wavy dark hair and a leather jacket which was well worn
and creased at the elbows. I opened my mouth to call out. Closed it again. Danny would not be a young man now.
I look but you’re not there
. . .
The walk from the leisure centre to my flat takes twelve and a half minutes. I find that the postman has already deposited his daily handful of litter through my door. The top item is a gaudy
flyer for a furniture store – the sort of thing you come across dropped on the pavement. This morning I have won a guaranteed cash prize, been selected to attend a special holiday promotion
and deemed worthy to apply for both a credit card
and
a loan. Machine Mart and the Hawkshead Clothing Company have both favoured me with their latest catalogue, while a charity I have never
heard of solicits my support via a depressing picture of underfed Africans.
At the very bottom of the pile is a plain white envelope, addressed by hand. When picking up everything else, I somehow leave this envelope lying on the hall carpet where it sits reproachfully,
for all the world as if I’ve neglected it on purpose. I have to bend specially to pick it up, transferring the other mail into the hand holding my swimming bag, so that this letter is carried
into the kitchen separately from the rest, already acquiring a status my other post does not possess.
Propped unopened against the silent radio it tries to catch my eye, this letter, with its second-class stamp and smudged postmark. The writing is old-fashioned, with elongated loops on the y and
f of Mayfield. All the letters slant to the right, uniform as sequence dancers, but there is an unsteadiness about them, as if some have spent too long in the bar.
Reluctant to concede to the self-important air this missive has assumed, I pour my juice, sort and discard my other post, put bread into the toaster, reach down the jam.
I know the writing. Recognized it immediately. We still exchange Christmas cards every year. A weird ritual – and my own fault it has continued. I could have stopped it years ago –
inadvertently failed to supply a new address. Why didn’t I? Guilt? Fear? The ultimate gesture toward non-existent normality? For several years now, I have written her card wondering whether I
will get one in return. She must be well over eighty. One year soon there will be no card. Then I can stop sending.
In my head Cat Stevens sings some more:
I’m always thinking of you, always thinking of you
. . .
Every year I expect the cards to cease, but they keep on coming. Season’s Greetings. Christmas Wishes. Every December. Never in springtime. Not in April. Nor is this a card – the
envelope is the sort supplied in stationery sets: plain white with matching paper. Very sensible, nothing fancy. Why would she write to me? We have never exchanged letters – only cards; just
a card at Christmas, the way you do with people. They get on to your list and you carry on sending cards to one another, year after year, knowing full well you’ll probably never set eyes on
each other again.
