Alison Moore - The Pre-War House and Other Stories

I stand at a distance, turned away, angry with both of them. John makes excuses and promises, all the while squinting into the distance, looking for the bus, which eventually comes. As it pulls away we stare back at Sangita who stands horribly alone, shrinking in the dust, becoming a puddle of orange in the distance as we travel away along the bumpy road.

Neither of us tells Linda, although she notices that he does not like to talk about India, and perhaps she notices how I have cooled towards my brother-in-law. She suggests to me that his illness was a particularly bad experience for him.

‘Poor John,’ I say.

She says she hopes that he wasn’t too difficult a patient.

‘Not at all,’ I say.

In the monsoon season, the river swells and stays fat for months, lurking at the edge of the village, watched and monitored and speculated about, and then it shrinks again, leaving behind puddles and the debris of the flood.

I pack long skirts, loose trousers, long-sleeved tops, a hat, sunscreen, mosquito repellent, malaria tablets. I have my ticket, visa, money, and an address.

I travel in December, when England’s winter is wet and grey, and India’s is orange. I make the journey Frances has described to me, flying at dawn into Bombay. The roads are already swollen with traffic — black and yellow taxis and auto-rickshaws weaving between lorries and bicycles and camels with carts. The air is thick with the honking of horns and the ringing of bells, and nonchalant cows potter across four rough lanes of traffic, playing lazy chicken.

I catch a train to Surat, breaking up my journey with tea and fruit, and in Surat I catch a bus, a boneshaker which deposits me on a dusty roadside at the end of the afternoon.

Approaching the village is like approaching Neverland or Oz, a place which only exists in stories. There is the river which will flood in the summer. And there is the guest house with grey monkeys loitering on the roof as if they were no more exotic than pigeons.

The girl at the desk is on the phone. I wait. She is about my age, I think. Behind her, a door opens into a back room, where a middle-aged woman sits in front of a glassless window, with the shutters wide open and the early evening sunlight dancing around her. Her eyes are closed. The girl behind the desk puts down the phone. She lifts her head, raising her heavy eyelids and looking at me with eyes which are dark brown with a sliver of amber.

‘What is your name?’ she asks, searching for my answer in her ledger.

In the back room, the melting sun drips warm orange puddles into the dozing woman’s lap, and the folds of her sari ripple as she stirs.

Eleanor, thinks Roger, is in love with the postman. Roger lunches regularly at Eleanor’s house and sees how she watches her driveway through the kitchen window, distracted from their conversation, alert to the approach of this striking young man who comes with the mail in the early afternoon, ensuring that when he does come, she is near the front door.

Or, there is somebody else in her life, from whom she anticipates love letters, gifts; someone she’s hiding from Roger. Except that nothing ever comes for her. She receives nothing but junk.

The postman is at least ten years younger than her. If Eleanor is in love with the postman, she is making a fool of herself, thinks Roger, who is older than her.

It has happened before. Roger’s own mother had a fling with the milkman. And Rosemary down the road was recently discovered, by her husband Victor, fucking the gardener on the kitchen floor. Victor walked out after that, late one night or early one morning — Rosemary woke up and found him gone. Victor took almost nothing, but he did take his wallet, so he is probably holed up in a hotel somewhere, punishing her.

Roger used to work a late shift in a factory out of town, getting home in the early hours and sleeping until noon. He is retired now but still sleeps late.

Rising much later today than he meant to, and full of bad dreams, somewhat shaken, he opens his curtains and peers across the road to see if Eleanor is in her kitchen having lunch. If she hasn’t already eaten, she might like to join him.

Eleanor, though, is not in her kitchen. She is standing on the pavement outside her house, crying in front of the postman, holding on to his sleeve, begging him; and he, the postman, touching Eleanor’s arm, nods.

Roger turns away from the window and goes downstairs. He puts his coat on over his pyjamas and swaps his slippers for shoes. Leaving the house, he finds Eleanor already gone, the postman too. At the end of his driveway, Roger stops, looking up and down the street, but no one is there.

He crosses the road to Eleanor’s house and knocks on her door but she doesn’t answer. He looks through her windows but doesn’t see her. Returning to his house, he telephones, letting it ring, but she doesn’t pick up. He watches her house for a while, an hour. He doesn’t think she’s there. He thinks about her crying and the postman touching her.

It occurs to Roger that he knows where the postman lives. He has driven past the postman’s house many times, heading out to the factory.

He misses working. He has plans, involving Eleanor or Europe, but he has so far just been sleeping his mornings away. He plays the lottery every week, hoping for a jackpot. It happens — why shouldn’t it happen to him?

He had planned, before sleeping so late, to make lunch for Eleanor today, for her birthday. He has bought flowers; they are waiting in water.

The postman’s house stands alone at the edge of town. It is just about the last thing you see as you leave. He has seen the postman sitting on his front doorstep wearing a string vest and shorts, or just shorts, drinking beer.

Roger puts on proper trousers, and a jumper under his coat — it is midwinter; it is frosty out there. Getting into his car, he drives to the outskirts.

What does he expect to find? Eleanor, in the postman’s bed? He found the milkman in his mother’s.

He would like to find letters and parcels, undelivered mail piled high, kids’ birthday cards ripped open for the cash. Then the postman would be sacked; he would be sent away.

Or knickers. A collection of knickers from the local women’s washing lines. Someone has been stealing ladies underwear as it hangs drying.

He has no idea what he might find.

Roger drives slowly past the postman’s house and parks down a track before walking back. There is no car in the postman’s driveway. There is a garage whose door is shut. Roger doesn’t know whether the postman has a car or just a bike. He crouches in the bushes at the side of the house. At least he doesn’t need to worry about being seen by neighbours. He waits, watching. He has a view of both the front door and the side door but no one goes in and no one leaves. He notes that the curtains in the upstairs windows are closed.

He takes out his cigarettes. He has tried to give up — Eleanor doesn’t like him smoking — but withdrawal gives him the shakes.

When he gets too cold and stiff, when the light starts to go, when he can no longer bear the smell of the shrubs, the jabbing of sharp branches, when he runs out of cigarettes, he stands. He is, he has decided, going in.

He is lucky, he thinks: the side door is not locked. Roger lets himself in, closing the door quietly behind him. He walks through the dim kitchen, through the buzzing of electricity, into the hallway. He looks at the shoe rack and the coat pegs, seeing nothing of Eleanor’s, only men’s things.