Tessa Hadley - The London Train

She didn’t sleep well in the spare bed, although the mattress was expensive, better than the one in Cardiff. Her dreams were shallow, and she woke up several times to lights crawling across the ceiling as cars passed in the street. It was strange then to realise where she was, and why she was here. In the dark, Robert’s having gone missing seemed less explicable, more ominous; horrible possibilities unravelled in her thoughts until eventually they drifted into dreams again. She was relieved when it was morning and she could get up. After her shower, she poured the milk down the sink and tidied away any signs of her occupation of the flat, dropping rubbish in a bin outside. Then she bought breakfast in a steamy café in Paddington, ringing Annette to tell her she would be back at work on Monday morning.

She had no idea in her head except getting the next train back to Cardiff. Obediently she waited under the oracle of the departure boards, showed her ticket and found her seat when the time came. Rain blew against the train window, and Cora couldn’t concentrate on the Guardian she had bought. She had the book of Iranian stories with her too: she had put them in her bag at the last minute, thinking she didn’t want Damon to find them if he came back. But she couldn’t read those either, she couldn’t read anything. Travelling away from London on a Friday always had a gravitational inevitability, like machinery winding down into torpor for the weekend: every nerve in her seemed set against this. She imagined the book, with its significance beyond itself, smouldering in the dark, jumbled in among her pyjamas and sponge bag and yesterday’s underwear. Then she stood up abruptly when the train pulled into Bristol Parkway, pulling her bag and umbrella from the overhead rack, hurrying off, asking at Information when there was a train to Tiverton.

It matched her mood that Parkway was hardly a real place at all, hardly a building: bolted together out of steel at some point on a map, outside the city. Time wore away in the perfunctory waiting room, or stalking up and down the platform. For some reason she had fixated on the idea that Robert might be wherever Bar was; though it wasn’t any business of hers any longer, she told herself, whether he was or not. By the time she arrived in Tiverton it was afternoon and grey, though not actually raining. The station was outside the town. She thought about telephoning Bar to warn her she was coming, then changed her mind. A taxi driver looked at the address and explained that this wasn’t in Tiverton at all, but half an hour’s ride away; Cora said she didn’t care how much it cost, and took out more money from the cash point. En route she involved herself, with genuine sympathy, in the taxi driver’s feud with his son-in-law, the tussle over the grandchildren, their wronged mother, the son-in-law’s jealousy, indefensible after his own transgression. The taxi burrowed into a countryside thickly green, intricately settled, mostly wealthy. Big fields swept up to woods crowning round, wide hills. They had to stop on several occasions to consult a map, then to ask at a pub.

At the moment of paying and parting, pulled up on the gravel outside the house that was supposed to be Bar’s – a shabby early-Victorian box, dark under trees, distinctive in just how blank it was, with half its shutters closed, a muddy concrete forecourt piled with junk, an old bed frame, bikes, a rusting harrow – they were suddenly too intimate, and couldn’t look one another in the eye. Cora muddled her percentages, tipping what she thought was generously much, realising too late it was too little. In her flurry, she forgot to ask the driver to wait for her, in case there was no one at home. As the noise of the retreating car subsided, her mood sank and she felt herself absurd. The house was obviously empty. She had imagined finding a thriving stables, or a farm. Even if it wasn’t empty, she had no business here. She had penetrated to the heart of nothing. Robert and Bar had been out of touch for years, why had she ever thought he would have her up-to-date address?

Anyway, now that she had come, she might as well try the door: broad, black paint flaking, at the top of a couple of stone steps set with an iron boot scraper muddy with scrapings, flanked by damp pillars. A bell pull yanked on dead air, so she used the knocker. There was an old Vauxhall estate, she noticed then while she waited, parked beside an overgrown yew hedge, stained, spattered with needles and berries, but not derelict, though it was hardly the gleaming four-by-four she had prepared for. Just as she gave up – and prepared to face the idiotic consequences of her impulse, coming here – footsteps sounded beyond the door, and then it swung open. Behind the woman who peered out, hostile, a rectangle of daylight from the doorway was reflected in a gilt-framed mirror at the back of a dim hallway. A weakly lit energy-saving bulb dangled at the end of its flex, unshaded. An old dog plodded out of the dimness, dutifully roused from sleep.

– Barbara?

– Yes.

– It’s Cora. Robert’s wife. I’m so sorry. I know this is awful, turning up here without warning. Can I talk to you?

She couldn’t tell how Bar reacted to her announcing herself. Cora would not have recognised Bar if she hadn’t been braced to see her. She looked nothing like her old photographs: she had bulked out, which made her seem shorter, and her long hair, turning grey, had thickened and coarsened. Incongruously girlishly, it was pulled back from her face at the temples and tied on top of her head in a floppy ribbon, like Alice in Wonderland. Only the long nose and disdainful slight squint were traces of the old sporty urgency: around them her face had sagged into ambiguously expressive folds. Swags of flesh under her eyes were thunder-coloured – she looked older than fifty. She was wearing a filthy linen smock over jeans, and held up a piece of toast and marmalade out of the dog’s way. Cora had not calculated for her turning out eccentric: her hope wilted, and she wondered if she had energy for any struggle with Bar. She had imagined deflecting a will resilient and bright and impervious.

Bar persisted, planted stubbornly in the doorway. – I haven’t even started work yet. You know, I guard my work time very fiercely.

– I should have called from the station. I’m sorry, this was a stupid idea. It’s all my fault. And now I’ve let my taxi go. I’m a complete idiot. If you give me the number for a local firm, I’ll call another cab.

She thought that if she could get inside the house she’d know whether Robert was around. Bar sighed theatrically, frowning, taking a bite of toast. – Now you’re here, you might as well see the stuff, I suppose. D’you want coffee? I just made a pot. I like it strong, I warn you.

What stuff? Cora wondered.

Following through the house after Bar and the dog – several rooms, then a passage, then a cold kitchen – Cora could only take in that its neglect and chaos were gargantuan, and that it was furnished with wonders to match: a carved sideboard vast as a ship, a glass case of stuffed hummingbirds, a jukebox (‘my husband’s, it works’), baronial fireplace, stone angel, rotten Union Jack hanging in rags from a ceiling. There were bikes in better condition than the ones outside, a big telly, a PlayStation, child-drawings stuck up with Blu-tack. Walls and shelves were crammed with art, night-dark Victorian oils (cows in a river? horses?) alongside expressionism, collages, a ceramic torso in fetish gear. Cora’s own displays of art at home appeared to her at once as what they were, primly bourgeois. Everywhere smelled of dog. On the kitchen table there was an open bottle of brandy alongside a packet of sliced bread and a full cafetière.

– Not as bad as it looks, Barbara said. – Just a swig in my coffee, to get me started. Want some? I ought to work normal hours, but in the day I just stall miserably, I only get going when everybody else is in bed. Afternoons in the studio I tinker around, tidy up, decide whether to scrape off everything I’ve done the night before. Until my son gets home.