Russell Hoban - Turtle Diary

‘Tools,’ I said. ‘With tools you can do anything.’

‘With tools and a man,’ said Mrs Inchcliff. ‘It takes both.’ She’d kept me company the whole time I was working, couldn’t stay away. Gave me supper too. Odd how young she looks. As far as I know she’s never done anything special to keep herself young except not smoke. Maybe it’s because she’s never been able to get through all the stages of her life. Her youth is still in her, not lived out.

Miss Neap, back from an evening out, came down to look in on us. ‘What goes in those?’ she said when she saw the crates.

‘Turtles,’ I said. ‘I’m going to put some sea turtles into the sea.’

She was standing outside the circle of the green-shaded light, her pince-nez glittered in the shadows. She had a theatre programme in her hand, fresh air and perfume had come in with her. Her blonde hair and leopardskin coat looked as if they’d go out even if she stayed at home. ‘The sea,’ she said. ‘It always seems so far away even though the Thames goes to it.’ She smiled and went upstairs.

I hadn’t expected to create a sensation but I was a little surprised that Mrs Inchcliff and Miss Neap were so incurious about the turtle project. Speaking of turtles and the sea seemed to make their thoughts turn inwards.

Mr Sandor came home while Mrs Inchcliff and I were still sitting in the lumber-room admiring the crates and drinking tea. He had several foreign newspapers under his arm, was carrying his briefcase as always and smelt of his regular restaurant. ‘Not strong joints,’ he said looking at the corners of the crates. ‘Dovetail joints better.’

‘They’re as strong as they need to be,’ I said. I didn’t say anything about turtles.

I must try to remember my first impression of Harriet, how she looked to me when I first started at the shop. Reproachful, that’s what I thought. I’d said to myself quite recently that her face was a constant reproach. I mustn’t forget that, however cuddly she seems now. The reproach is waiting to appear again I’m sure. I think it’s always like that. Dora looked angry when I first met her and the angry look was what her face came back to in the end. And I’m sure whatever look gave Harriet her first impression of me is waiting to return to my face.

I ought to give some thought to what I’m getting into. Casual affairs with people one works with are probably best avoided. And if this isn’t a casual affair what is it? I’m not in love with Harriet. I feel good being with her, like sleeping with her, don’t want to think beyond that.

It was cosy going to her place on Saturday night, walking under the street lamps looking up at lighted windows and knowing that I too had a lighted window waiting where I shouldn’t be alone.

In bed we lay looking up at the patterns of light, the shapes of the windows thrown on the ceiling by the street lamps.

‘What were you so busy with all afternoon and evening?’ Harriet said.

‘Odd jobs I’d been putting off,’ I said. I thought of the first time we’d made love in this room with the terror in it, wondered if the room would slide away, the light patterns on the ceiling and the clothes on the chair, and leave only the terror. It didn’t. The room stayed. Harriet was there, warm and smooth along the whole length of me. Tomorrow we’d wake up together but I couldn’t tell her about the turtles.

‘A penny for your thoughts,’ said Harriet.

I hate it when people ask me what I’m thinking.

I was reading about colliery horses in this morning’s paper. Pit ponies, they’re called. They live underground and work with the miners. They’ve saved lives, the article said, by stopping in their tracks and refusing to go ahead seconds before a roof-fall. They’ve led miners with broken lamps through black tunnels to safety, and it was said that a horse once pressed its body against a collapsing wall to give the men time to escape.

I like thinking about the horses and the men working together underground. A large strong animal and a man together add up to more than a man and an animal. They aren’t afraid of the same things, and where the senses of one leave off, those of the other go on. I wish I had a horse to work with. Either I think the roof’s going to fall in all the time or I think it’ll never fall. I’m sure a horse would give it no thought at all except when the actuality impended. One can’t have a horse to help with writing or drawing. Mice perhaps. Madame Beetle is not a help in any practical way but I feel that her attitude is exemplary. Swimming, diving, coming to the surface for air or sitting quietly in her shipwreck she is in harmony with her small world, has a good style.

How very patronizing of me, now that I consider it, to think that of Madame Beetle. If she’s in harmony with her ‘small world’ then she’s in harmony with as much of the world as she has contact with. If I enjoyed comparable harmony I’d speak of it as being with the world, not my ‘small world’. And if I find her exemplary how can I say she’s of no practical value? If I were paying a Zen master for instruction I’d consider him an exemplar whose example had practical value. Madame Beetle cost only 31p and her tiny daily fee is not even paid in money so I discount her value.

I wrote a letter to Harry Rush thanking him for his offer but saying that I simply did not have a book on The Tragic Heritage in Children’s Literature in me. I wasn’t sure I’d post the letter but I took it with me when I went out. I didn’t feel like cooking or eating in the flat. I took Tolstoy’s The Cossacks with me and went to an Italian restaurant in Knightsbridge near William G.’s bookshop.

It was early and the place was almost empty. I settled into a booth, ordered escalope milanese and a half-carafe of red and began The Cossacks, which I’d last read twenty-five years ago. At the end of the first short chapter I came to:

… the three shaggy post-horses dragged themselves out of one dark street into another, past houses he had never seen before. It seemed to Olenin that only travellers bound on a long journey ever went through such streets as these.

Perfectly true, I thought as I drank my wine. The same streets do not exist for everybody. Only travellers bound on a long journey go through such streets as those. Only solitary sojourners go through other streets, sit at tables such as this.

My seat shook a little as someone sat down in the booth behind me. I was facing away from the door and hadn’t seen them come in. I went on with my Tolstoy until I heard William G.’s voice say, ‘I’m having escalope milanese.’

‘Where’s that on the menu?’ said a female voice, one I’d heard before. The girl at the bookshop who’d given me his address and telephone number. Her voice came from beside him rather than opposite.

‘Here,’ said William. Odd how people do that with menus. One person reads aloud the name of a dish and the other person requires to see it in print as if the word were a picture.

‘I’ll have the scampi,’ she said. I didn’t want to overhear their conversation but my escalope hadn’t come yet.

‘Jannequin, Costely, Passereau, Bouzignac,’ said William. ‘Renaissance madrigals with soprano solo.’

‘Couperin, Lully, Rameau, Baroque songs for soprano,’ she said. ‘I know those three but I’ve never heard of the others.’ Probably they were on their way to the South Bank and looking at the programme.

The booth creaked as the voices became murmurous, there were silences. I concentrated on Tolstoy until my escalope arrived, ate as quickly as possible, finished my wine, didn’t bother with a sweet or coffee. I had to pass their booth to get to the door. If they noticed me I’d say hello, if not I’d just not see them.