Alison Moore - The Pre-War House and Other Stories

And it is just as long since he last took the back off the radio. It has lasted remarkably well. It is simple to fix, as it happens: one deft turn and it is mended; a good clean and polish with a soft cloth and it is restored to its former glory. He puts the two halves of the case together again, snaps them shut, and tests it. It is as good as new. It looks the way it looked when Dorothy returned to the shop at the end of the week, stepping through the doorway and walking towards the counter, her heels loud on the bare floorboards. It looks the way it looked as she turned it over in her hands, admiring his work, as she turned the dial through the stations, found Gene Pitney and lingered there, asking what time he finished work.

He puts on the kettle and rinses out the Duchess teacup.

They went to a café and had a pot of tea. He had a scone and Dorothy had a tiramisu. Sinking the prongs of her fork into her dessert, she said, ‘Italian cakes…’ and as her lips closed over the first bite, her face said exquisite . Between mouthfuls, licking her lips, she said, ‘I’d love to go to Italy.’

He puts the radio under his arm and goes upstairs, climbing slowly to keep the tea steady in its cup, his socks deathly quiet on the stair carpet. He opens the bedroom door and puts the tea down on Dorothy’s bedside table.

‘When you write to my brother,’ she says, ‘tell him we’ll come and visit in the summer.’

‘I was thinking,’ he says, ‘about making your tiramisu.’

Dorothy smiles. ‘It’s a nice thought, Wilfred,’ she says, ‘but I’m not sure I have the appetite for it, and you’d just make a mess. And anyway, I don’t think I have the recipe any more.’

He watches her, trying to see in her unfocused eyes, in her unchanged expression, whether she has forgotten all these things she has kept in the big bottom drawer which sticks, but he can’t tell.

‘All as it should be?’ she asks him.

He reaches out with a dishpan hand and cups the side of her head, her skull and her warmth in the palm of his hand, his thumb stroking her temple. He takes the radio from under his arm, turns it on and tunes it to Dorothy’s favourite station. She smiles. ‘All as it should be,’ he says.

‘When I’m better,’ says Dorothy, ‘we should go on a proper holiday. I’ve always wanted to see Italy.’

Wilfred sits down on the edge of the bed, picks up the teacup and puts it in Dorothy’s waiting hands. ‘Yes,’ he says, but the romance countries don’t appeal to him.

‘This is the wonderful Gene Pitney,’ says the DJ, ‘with a song from 1967, for a very special lady.’ Dorothy turns her head towards the radio. The DJ says, ‘Fiona, this is for you.’ She looks away, her failing eyesight sliding over Wilfred’s face. She smiles again, and lifts the teacup towards her mouth. ‘You’re not one of the world’s great romantics,’ she says, finding the rim, touching her lips to what is left of the gilt.

He has never wanted anyone but Dorothy. But he has never asked for her favourite song to be played on the radio. He has never taken her to Italy. He is not the sort of man who brings home flowers. And he has never written a love letter in his life.

As soon as you wake up, you want to run. Your body craves the endorphins, the endogenous morphine. They experimented on mice, making them want to run and then taking their treadmill away. When they looked at what this did to the mice, to their brains, they found that the mice were suffering from the same symptoms as an addict withdrawing from drugs.

You leave your house at dawn. You run while the streetlamps are still lit, and the odd car which goes by has its headlights on. You run in the same top you slept in, with something fluorescent over it to keep you safe. Most of the houses past which you run are still in darkness. The occasional light goes on behind a still-drawn curtain or blind. The milkman might have begun his rounds but as soon as you can you turn off the road and get onto the dirt track. It is possible that no one at all will see you go by.

You run the same route every day, in all weathers. You know how it feels to run when the ground is hard — dry and dusty or frozen over. You know how it feels to run in the rain, when the dirt track is slippery and the potholes have become puddles and you return home mud-spattered and sodden. You must know every inch of it by now. You could probably run the course blindfolded.

On either side of the dirt track, there are fields. Sometimes there are cows which watch you go by, and sometimes they don’t bother looking up. Sometimes there are sheep, and sometimes there’s just fleece caught on the barbed wire fence.

While you run, you listen to music, always the same C60 tape, a compilation your boyfriend made for you, before he left you. The first side of the tape takes you as far as the woods.

You can see the woods from the back of your house, the dark shape of them in the distance. In the evening, you sometimes come to your bedroom window to watch the sun go down behind the trees.

As you enter the woods, you turn the tape over and listen to the B-side. By this time you are high on the endorphins, opioids preventing pain signals from reaching the brain. It is the endorphins which keep you running when you would think that you no longer could. You pass the warden’s lodge, and the rhododendron bushes in which children make dens. You skirt one end of the old quarry, nearing the bird hides and taking the path which leads you back onto the dirt track, where your tape runs out again.

At the end of the track, the point at which you turned off the road, you stop, exhausted, breathing hard. You must stretch your muscles so as to avoid pain later.

You have come to expect to see a man who walks his dog there before breakfast. At first the two of you were just on nodding terms, but then you began to remove your earphones and say hello to him. You found that both the man and his dog were friendly. Now the man asks after your mother while you pet his dog.

By the time you are back on the road, walking home, it is light and people are up and about. You see them coming out onto their doorsteps in their dressing gowns, fetching in milk, or already dressed for work, going to their cars. You don’t know their names and they don’t know yours. They are your neighbours but you have never spoken to any of them.

When you get inside your house, you go for a shower. You stand under the shower for a long time. You use products which you think are animal friendly. You don’t spend long in front of the mirror or getting dressed. You wear the same outfit for days, thinking no one notices.

You skip breakfast, even though you must be hungry. You must feel hungry most of the time. You don’t even have coffee.

You go to work on the bus because you can’t drive. You work in an office in town, in an ugly building. I forget what you do there. It is nothing important.

At lunchtime, you sit in the park and feed your sandwiches to the pigeons. You read a book. You always have a book in your bag. You read while you’re waiting at the bus stop and on the bus so that no one will talk to you. ‘You’re never alone with a book,’ you say, but you are.

In the evenings, you tend to stay in. You watch a lot of television — you like talent shows. You have an insatiable appetite for show tunes. You used to sing but your father discouraged you. Now your father is dead and you have toyed with the idea of entering one of these contests, but you never have.

You eat a bowl of cereal in front of the television. You like the sugary sort they make for children, with cartoon characters on the packet. You eat a lot of cereal, and cheese. You will try different sorts of cheese but you prefer cheddar. You ought to eat more fruit, and red meat.