Tessa Hadley - The Master Bedroom

Every day when it wasn’t raining she made huge efforts and went out to walk: she knew you were supposed to walk in the country. She hadn’t any shoes suitable for the muddy paths, but in a musty cloakroom by the back door generations of coats and sticks and boots were piled up, along with the leads of departed dogs, and trophies of driftwood and bird skulls from the beach. Kate sorted out a pair of icy and dank wellingtons (most were vast: perhaps these were David’s daughter’s, or Betty’s?) and borrowed walking socks she found discarded there. She discovered a little walk along the quay and up the path along the edge of the low cliff, exulting at the bleak sea with its resolving, emptying crash of waves, and the smashed beach, the pounded broken rocks; then back across stubble fields to the little town, where she bought food and cigarettes. She felt mildly ill all the time, but made herself eat. In the evenings she telephoned home to talk to Billie: there weren’t many evenings in her life she hadn’t done this. As a first-year student in London she had called every night from a red public telephone box in a sinister street, and had once seen a knife fight outside and been afraid to come out, pretending to go on talking into the receiver long after Billie had hung up.

Jamie called her. She hadn’t told him where she was going: he’d found out from Carol.

— What are you doing there? he said. — It’s strange to imagine you. I used to love that place when I was a kid. Which room are you sleeping in?

— I’m working hard all day. In the evenings I’m reading everything on the shelves here: I take it all to bed with me. Refutations of communism; denunciations of the death sentence. Books about the agricultural year, merrily advocating the use of the new pesticides. Novels by Howard Spring, Joyce Cary; the Reader’s Digest Book of Laughter . I can’t read the things in Welsh. Or the Dylan Thomas, on principle.

— Can’t I come down? I could hitch. Nobody would know. We could really be alone together.

— If you came down, I’d have to leave. We can’t be here together. In fact we can’t be anywhere together. That’s the whole problem. It’s time we faced it.

He was simply silent, whenever she named their impossibility: he made her weaker to resist him than if he’d tried for words. Putting down the receiver, Kate caught herself reflected: there weren’t many mirrors in the house, but a narrow one with distorting bevelled edges on the hallstand must have been meant once for checking respectability before leaving home. She switched on the hall light, contemplated the thin slice of herself unforgivingly, peering close up at her face pinched with cold, flesh drooping — yes, surely, it was beginning to droop? — under her jaw; she was a schoolteacher-witch in her glasses, sliding away at the mirror’s rim into fairground grotesque. What would Betty’s mother have thought of her coupled with beautiful youth?

On her third day, most extraordinarily, in the butcher’s shop (in her resolution to look after herself properly, she had decided after all to queue there for protein), someone touched her arm from behind.

— Kate? It must be you.

She turned to see Suzie Roberts.

— What are you doing here? she said: her first impulse was defensive, as if Suzie must have pursued her, found her out. There was an expression in Suzie’s face — tanned, exposed, her hair wind-blown and bleached — making a more intimate claim than the acquaintance they were supposed to have.

— I’m here for the weekend, camping at Mwnt with friends. We came to see the dolphins.

— Are there dolphins?

— Every day at teatime. They’re marvellous. Haven’t you seen them ever? I mean, it’s only the fins and backs, curving up out of the water.

— But why didn’t you bring your friends to stay at the Parrog? I hope my staying there hasn’t spoiled any plans of yours?

Suzie’s hand was still on Kate’s arm, arresting or claiming her; she coloured. — They’re not those kind of friends. I couldn’t have asked Bryn and Betty for the house. I don’t suppose they know I’m over here. I don’t think even David does.

At this point Kate reached the front of the queue, and had had no time to think what she wanted. — What should I buy? she asked, panicking.

— Oh: lamb chops? Sausages? I think it’s very good here. I only came in because I saw you: my friends are vegetarian.

Kate bought both; at the door of the shop the two women stood hesitating as if they were reluctant to part, although Kate knew she ought to get rid of Suzie. Next door to the butcher’s there was a café, closed out of season like so many of the shops: they peered into its windows.

— I’d ask you back for coffee, only it’s very cold in the house.

— Oh, are you having trouble with the Rayburn? I could sort it out for you. I’m good with it, although Betty never believes me.

— What about your friends?

— They’re not the sort who would worry. I could go off anywhere.

If she was plaintive, it was the merest hint. — I’ve got the car. Let’s drive. Have you finished shopping? It’s funny to see you in wellingtons.

Kate had thought of Suzie as one of those flatteners who clamp down complex feeling. Today though she jumped with nerves, driving with quick jerky changes of gear; she had surely lost weight, she was angular under her thick ragged jumper and skein of coloured scarves, the skin was pale around her eyes, behind her fading summer freckles. Leading the way into the house, she was proprietorial and intruder-like at once. Kate could imagine how solidly the place must seem to belong to her family-in-law: this was Suzie’s chance to surprise and dominate it. She laughed at the little nest of Kate’s books and blankets, holding her shape where she’d stepped out of them, in the front room.

— You’ve been frozen! Weren’t you awfully bored, here by yourself?

Kate, on her dignity, denied it.

Swiftly Suzie cleared out the Rayburn and lit it, then squatted on her heels to watch, her hands black with coke, a smear of coke dust on her cheek, altering the draught adjustor as the flames took hold. Kate made coffee with the electric kettle; Suzie, hunting for drink, found an old bottle of sherry among the cooking things.

— We’ll buy more and top it up, so Betty won’t know.

Kate sat pressed up against the metal of the stove as it heated. Warmth crept into the kitchen languorously: she realised how her muscles had knotted in resistance to the cold. The sherry went straight to their heads, and it was only two in the afternoon.

— I’ve always wanted to ask you, Suzie said, nursing her coffee mug at the table. — Did you really not see me that day?

— Which day?

— An accident on the motorway: we were both standing on the hard shoulder. I thought you recognised me but you didn’t say anything.

— Oh, you mean when that swan came down? You looked as if you didn’t want me to.

— So you did see. Suzie appeared gratified. — I’ve often thought about you since then. It was odd when we met in the supermarket: I felt as if, because you’d seen that happen, you knew something about me. You’ll think I’m stupid — David does — but it’s always seemed to me more than just an accident, that swan falling onto my car, not anybody else’s.

— It had to fall on someone’s.

— But it seemed to have a message for me.

— What kind of message?

— I don’t know. I wanted to ask you.

— Me? How absurd. I don’t believe in messages.

Suzie poured them both more sherry. — May I tell you what I thought I saw? You won’t be outraged at me desecrating sacred old memories or anything?

— I don’t have sacred old memories.