Крис Бекетт - Spring Tide

‘Okay, three years then, Aunt Angelica. That’s still a long time. And that was all he said. He didn’t come into the flat. He didn’t ask anything of you. And when you told him to go, he went. It’s just that he owns the house, and he thought it was a shame that you and he couldn’t be on friendly terms as you used to be. It’s not as if—’

‘It’s not as if what? It’s not as if he ever returned my feelings? Is that what you’re going to say? That it was all in my head? Ha! Some chance, David! Some chance! By all means believe that if it makes you happy, but he and I both know that’s a lie, even if he’s not man enough to admit it! That man was positively slavering over me, David, positively slavering! But he’s had his chance, and he’s not getting another.’

Angelica laughs grimly.

‘And then of course there was that time I heard him shouting. Do you remember? Shouting and crying down there, late at night, all by himself.’

‘He apologised for that too, if you remember. You asked me to speak to him and he apologised. He’s only human, Aunt Angelica. Life is hard for him as it is for most of us. He was upset with himself about something and he started shouting. It wasn’t aimed at you. It was about something else entirely.’

‘Or so he says, anyway. Or so he says. I’m not quite so trusting as you are, David, I’m afraid. Not so trusting at all. But who cares anyway? I don’t want him here, and there’s an end to it. If he’s really got business in this town, which I very much doubt, why can’t he just stay in a hotel?’

‘But like I keep saying, it’s his house. If you really don’t want anything to do with him, you could move somewhere else yourself, but you’ve always—’

‘You’re always nagging me to move, aren’t you? Somewhere cheaper, perhaps, is that the idea? So I won’t use up your inheritance?’

This is a preposterous charge. There’s absolutely no chance of her finding anything cheaper than her present flat, whose rent hasn’t increased for a decade, but there’s no point in my saying that, so I keep quiet.

‘This may be his house,’ Angelica adds, ‘but it’s my home.’ She must know that the thing about my inheritance is nonsense. She has very little money, and will have none before she’s through. ‘Why should I move out because of him?’

When I next visit, Angelica is fretful.

‘When will he arrive? You must tell me, David. I must know in advance, so I can be quite sure I won’t have anything whatever to do with him.’

She gives a characteristic sniff, contemptuous and haughty. My aunt seldom ventures beyond the door of her flat, but she acts like the queen of the world.

‘Not that I won’t know anyway,’ she adds. ‘You are your mother’s son, David, completely rhinocerosskinned, and you don’t have my sensitivity at all. But I can feel things, and I always sense his presence through the floor. The weight of him plodding around, and those big slow clunky thoughts going round and round in his head!’

‘Listen, Angelica. Listen. You mustn’t distress yourself, but he—’

‘He’s what? He’s what ? Oh dear God, David, you’re not telling me he’s here already ?’

‘Yes, he arrived when—’

‘He’s here and you didn’t tell me! How could you! How could—’

She breaks off. She is so transparent. It’s just occurred to her that, if she admits to not knowing he’s here already, she’ll be undermining her own claim to be able to detect his presence and sense his thoughts.

‘Yes, of course, of course,’ she says crossly. ‘I can feel him down there now. That heaviness. Those heavy thoughts going round and round and leading nowhere. I noticed them earlier. But you’d specifically promised me that you’d tell me in advance and so I’d persuaded myself I must be wrong.’

She’s very agitated now and gets up to fetch her cigarettes from the dresser, fumbling one out of the packet, lighting it, drawing deeply and then laying it down in the glass ashtray that always sits beside her on its slightly grubby doily. Almost straight away she begins to take another cigarette out of the packet, and then remembers the first one. Another person might be amused by her own absent-minded mistake, but Angelica never laughs at herself. She pushes the second cigarette back into the pack, and tosses it crossly down.

‘He arrived in the early hours,’ I tell her. ‘You were probably still asleep. He won’t disturb you, and very soon he’ll go out.’

‘What time will he go out? I must know what time. And the time he’s coming back as well. I often look out of the window, you know. Often. It’s my view, my peaceful view, and he’s no right to spoil it by making me worry that I might see him there.’

I look out of Angelica’s window myself sometimes, when I find myself alone in the living room – it is a lovely view, and I always admire those rows of blue slate roofs, climbing the hillside opposite – but I’ve never once seen my aunt look out for the pleasure of it. The only occasions I’ve ever observed her pull back the curtains is when she hears some noise in the street below, some potential threat. She has no resources spare for mere curiosity. She is in a permanent state of emergency. Everything is in the service of defence.

‘I’ve already got the times,’ I tell her.

Knowing how she’d fuss, I spoke to him earlier on the phone. It was extremely embarrassing, asking my aunt’s landlord to spell out the precise times when he would leave and return to his own house, but of course he was as gentle as ever.

‘I’m so sorry that Angelica and I have had this misunderstanding, David. It seems to cause her so much distress. I really do assure you that I only ever intended to offer her my friendship, but in my clumsy way, I somehow gave her the wrong impression. And then, when I tried to put her straight, I got that wrong as well. I really am so sorry. I’d ask you to pass on my apologies but, from what you tell me, that would only upset the situation even more.’

‘And he mustn’t look up,’ Angelica adds. ‘When he comes in and goes out he must not look up! Do you understand? David, answer me! Do – you – under stand ?’

Why do I put up with this? Why do I keep coming here to be bullied by my mother’s mad sister, who never asks me a single thing about myself, and never wonders, even for a moment, whether I might have worries or troubles of my own? Am I really doing this out of altruism and family feeling, or am I just submitting to her power?

For she is powerful, that’s the strange thing. Angelica is so utterly terrified of the world that she doesn’t leave her flat for months on end. And yet, somehow, she still wields enormous power. ‘I’ll tell him, Aunt Angelica. As to those times you asked for: he’ll be going out at—’

‘I don’t even like you speaking to him, you know. It really isn’t very nice for me having to talk to you when I know you’ve spoken to him earlier in the day. In fact, to be frank with you, David, I’m surprised that didn’t occur to you.’

I’m really cross now. ‘Well, what do you want me to do, Aunty? I need to speak to him, don’t I, if you want me to find out about his movements?’

She’s noticed the sharpness in my voice and, just for a moment, I can see her considering it. But then she hears some sound – she’s very sensitive to sound – and imperiously holds her hand up for silence.

‘What was that?’

‘Just a toilet flushing, Aunty.’

‘Just a toilet flushing, you say. Do toilets flush themselves, then, David? It was him flushing it, you mean. Him. Did you think you could leave out that obvious fact?’