Tessa Hadley - The Past

— Well, they haven’t been queuing up lately, he said, searching through papers with a frown. — Here we are. See what you think of these two places. At least these have running water, though they’re not exactly all mod cons. I could take you round to have a look, if you were interested. One afternoon later in the week? Or next week?

Jill wondered about Rose in the outer office — she was middle-aged, with a stiff blonde perm, but anything could happen if a man and a woman spent every day together. Then she was afraid that Mikey might be affronted, by her having claimed so high-handedly to know him — or perhaps by her remark about the little boxes. She must sound like a ghastly snob, despising those: most people were grateful to have a roof over their heads, and indoor bathrooms. Beneath his show of being blunt and uncomplicated, she suspected that Mikey was all delicate perception and quick judgement.

Sophy told Jill, who was sorting out laundry, that she was going to drop in at Roddings. The children were playing in the garden — Hettie was in charge, making sure no one fell in the river. Eve Smith was doing the church flowers that week, Sophy said, and wanted lilac for her colour scheme. All this was the truth, and before she went she picked an armful of the plumy lilac that grew beside the rectory’s front gate. But when she’d handed the lilac over to Eve, and Eve was filling a sink for it in the Roddings back scullery, Sophy also asked if she could use the telephone. Eve had a pink, round, patient face and lank, greying dark hair, forever falling in her eyes; she looked washed out, with all the work of a farm and three grown bullying sons all living at home. She told Sophy to go ahead and help herself, pushing her hair back with a broad mottled arm because her hands were wet. Sophy had brought half a crown with her, to leave discreetly beside the phone as payment, always anxious that it might not be enough, or be too much. You could never forget you were the vicar’s wife, with all that brought in the way of wariness in the country women, and a submerged hostility.

The Smiths had their telephone in the farm office, which was off the passage to the yard, a watershed between indoor and outdoor worlds: farm machinery and veterinary equipment were jumbled with boots and socks and waterproofs, an old clock ticked on the mantel above the huge cold fireplace, packets of shotgun cartridges were spilled amongst the paperwork on the desk. Parts of Roddings went back to the fourteenth century, Grantham said; the beams in the low ceiling were twelve inches thick. If John Smith or any of the boys had been at work in the office, Sophy would have abandoned her call: she didn’t mind John, but could never have explained to him what she was up to. First she dialled the number for the flat in Marylebone, though she hardly expected anyone to answer, and no one did.

Then, fishing out a scrap of paper from her coat pocket, she tried another number, the one which Tom had left for Jill last week. Sophy had copied it before she gave the note to her daughter — partly out of her usual anxiety over losing things, partly because she was thinking that she might want to contact Tom herself, without letting Jill know. She didn’t have much hope of getting hold of him, but it was worth a try. Obviously the two young ones had quarrelled. Sophy dreaded being the kind of mother who insisted on explanations, but she had got it into her head that it was her duty to encourage Tom, and tell him not to be deterred by Jill’s intransigence. Her daughter was capable of putting up such a shining, off-putting show of certainty; Jill believed that each time she changed, it was for the last time. She insisted that she hadn’t spoken to Tom the other night, though she had taken the handful of coins which Sophy put out for her. Left to himself, Tom might not persevere. He made such a point of being fearless, shocking people with his hair and his jokes and opinions; but Sophy didn’t trust him not to give up at the first obstacle. She saw the strain in his eyes sometimes, as if his bravado was hard work.

A woman answered the phone: her voice was breathless as if she’d broken off in the middle of something funny. Sophy asked if she could speak to Mr Crane. There was a hesitation, then the woman proceeded more cautiously, though with something flaunting in her voice, as if her laughter might start up again at any moment. — Who is this speaking, please?

She couldn’t possibly say she was his mother-in-law. — It’s Sophy.

— Sophy, I’m afraid Mr Crane isn’t here.

The woman’s voice sounded as if she were putting on a parody of a secretary’s clipped professionalism for someone else’s benefit, to amuse them. — He’s in an important meeting. Terribly important. I don’t have any idea when he’ll be back. Do you know, Bernie?

Sophy heard a man’s voice — it didn’t sound like Tom — in the background.

— Bernie doesn’t have any idea either. Shall I ask Mr Crane to call you back?

Sophy said she would try again another time. It was strange to put down the phone and look around the unchanged walls of the Roddings office, coloured a deep yellow-brown by the men’s tobacco smoke over the years. Her conversation lingered in there, a frivolous rainbow vapour from another world, a younger one. Should she feel anxious, because a woman had answered the phone? Definitely it hadn’t been Tom’s voice in the background. Probably they were just a couple, friends of his. But disturbing possibilities swam in her imagination, uninvited: just because they were a couple, that didn’t preclude other arrangements with her son-in-law, experimental combinations. She found herself wondering, alarmed by her own inventiveness, whether the woman hadn’t answered the phone half-naked, propped on her elbows amid rumpled sheets, in the middle of the day. It was extraordinary how much you knew about people, even from such a short exchange. These friends of Tom’s weren’t straightforward, they weren’t serious, they had laughed at her. Sophy felt caught out, as if she belonged to ancient, earnest history.

In the middle of the night a noise intruded into Jill’s dream and dispersed it. She was sorry, because the dream had been intricate and delicious — tidal, like swimming in shallow warm water through fronds of weed. She assumed at first that she had been woken by one of the children calling. Then the noise came again, thudding against her window-pane, a slushy blow, insolent and insistent: some bird must be bruising itself against the glass, on a crazy mission to get inside. Her first thought was to get up and close the window, which was open six inches or so at the bottom. Jill had been brought up to sleep with her window open, even on the coldest nights.

The front garden was stark with moonlight. There was no wind, and yet the young silver birch seemed to be quivering in agitation; some big animal was rooting round its base. When the animal straightened up she saw that it was a man — it was Tom, in his bulky duffel coat with the hood up. He had been gouging up another handful of earth and stones from around the base of the tree to throw at her window: luckily her parents slept at the back of the house. Furious, she pushed up the window and leaned out, feeling the cold air on her bare shoulders. She was wearing the pink nylon nightdress he had bought for her last birthday — not out of any sentimental attachment, but because it was the only one she’d had clean to bring with her.

— What do you think you’re doing? she hissed.

He dropped his handful of earth and came to stand below her, brushing off his hands, turning the pale oval of his face up to her, framed monkishly in its hood. — Come down.

— I don’t want you here, go away.

— For god’s sake, Jilly, come down and talk to me.