(1990) Sweet Heart (7 page)

She stepped backwards, tugging the tarpaulin across the bodywork and over the canvas roof. Finally it came free and slithered into a crumpled heap on the floor. Her nostrils filled with a smell of metal, musty canvas, stale oil.

The car looked familiar.

Because of
Bergerac
on television. She had seen the detective series, knew the model. She circled it. A bulbous sports convertible with running boards and a stubby nose. There was a narrow window at the back of the roof, and two glass panels in the boot where the dickey seats were. The black paint was thick with dust
and the tyres were flat. A cobweb was spun across a corner of the windscreen, and a tax disc was visible behind it. She leaned closer and could just make out the faded lettering.
Nov 53
.

She pressed down the passenger door handle and pulled; the door opened with a cracking sound, as if some seal of time had been broken, and the smell of old leather and rotting canvas rose up from the interior, engulfing her.

The silence was complete. She had a feeling of being an intruder. She squeezed in through the passenger door and sat on the bench seat. It was hard and upright. Knurled black knobs protruded from the wooden dashboard on metal stalks. Two round, white dials were mounted in the middle, the speedometer on her side. The large spoked steering wheel was almost touching her right arm, the tiny column change gear lever sticking out from it like an antenna. She pulled the door shut with a dull clunk and felt very enclosed, the roof inches above her head, the screen just in front of her nose.

She pushed herself further down in the seat and sat for a moment, uncomfortably aware of the silence. She could see the outline of the bonnet through the dust on the windscreen and the radiator cap at the end. She touched a knob on the dashboard, then gripped it in her fingers and twisted it; it was stiff and for a moment would not move. She twisted it harder, and the windscreen wiper blade lifted an inch and broke several strands of the spider’s web. She let go of the knob, startled, and the blade dropped down. The spider ran up the screen and she could almost sense petulance in the motion. She put her hand on her lap guiltily.

She was trembling. The seat creaked, crackled, a spring twanged.

A spring released itself somewhere inside her too.

She knew this car. Not just from seeing one in the
television series. She had been in one like this before, travelled in it. She was certain it was the same make of car in which she had made love in her regression.

She could remember everything: the roughness of his tweed jacket, the gruff roar of the engine, the wind thrashing her hair, the harsh ride on the uneven surface, the engine straining, the biff of the exhaust as he changed gear, the minty taste of the gum in her mouth.

She remembered the erotic sensation of the finger inside her. The car slithering to a halt. The smell of burned rubber, fresh leather, the rumble of the exhaust, the knocking rattle of the engine, the bonnet shaking, vibrating, the tweed of his sleeve brushing her face, his mouth over hers, their lips pressed together, kissing hungrily. The rubbery ball of chewing gum she had plucked out of her mouth and pushed under the glove locker.

There was a crack like a pistol shot.

She sat up with a jerk, dripping with perspiration, a deep feeling of fear in the pit of her stomach. She shook her head but her hair, matted with sweat, barely moved. Rivulets ran down the back of her neck, her armpits; she was shaking. The car seemed to be shrinking around her, the air getting scarcer as if something was sucking it out.

She scrabbled for the door handle and as she did she realised she was holding something in her hand, something small and hard.

She stumbled out, grazing her leg on the top of the sill, but barely noticing. She stood and stared at the small hard object in her hand, took it over to the window, but it was too dark to see.

She hurried through the barn and outside, squinting against the dazzle of the brilliant light. She looked down. About half an inch across, dark grey and pitted like a miniature shrivelled brain. A tiny strip of wood veneer was stuck to one side.

It was an old dried piece of chewed gum.

Her hand shook, making the gum dance like spittle on a griddle. Then it fell. She looked down, tried to spot it, knelt, sifted through the gravel, rummaged her hands backwards and forwards. Over by the house she heard a shout, the sound of metal banging, the scrunch of feet; a laugh. She carried on rummaging, making a widening arc, but it had gone, swallowed by the pebbles the way the sea swallows a footprint in the sand.

A voice called, ‘Mrs Witney? Hallo? Need to know where you want these packing cases!’

‘Coming!’ she shouted.

Hundreds of people chew gum in cars. Thousands. Millions. There was nothing special about finding gum in a car.

Nothing special at all.

Tom and Charley dined outside on the sheltered patio at the rear of the house, on a Chinese takeaway and a bottle of champagne, and watched the red ball of sun sink down behind the paddock, leaving its heat behind it in the dusk.

The days were getting noticeably shorter; in a few weeks the clocks would be going back, but now, in the balmy evening, winter seemed a long way away.

The grazing chestnut mare turned into a silhouette and slowly faded to black. Stars appeared in the metallic sky, bats flitted and the lights of planes coming into Gatwick winked.

They picked at the last grains of rice and strands of noodles and wrote a list of things to be done.

Later, in bed, they made love. But in a strange way it was more like a rite than a spontaneous act of passion. It reminded her of when they had made love on her wedding night after two years of living together. Both of them had been tired, flaked out, but they knew it ought to be done. Consummation.

They had consummated the move tonight for their own secret needs, hers to be held and to hold; to hold something real, to feel Tom, to feel life after the weirdness of the discovery, first of the car in the barn then the chewing gum. Reality.

She wondered what his need was. Wondered what
went through his mind when he made love to her so mechanically, so distantly. Who did he think about? Who did he fantasise she was?

The noises came after, through the open window. The noises of the night. Real darkness out there.

She could taste the minty gum in her mouth.

Ben padded restlessly around the room, growling at squeals, at shrieks, at the mournful wail of vixens.

It was two o’clock. She slipped out of bed and walked across the sloping wooden floor to the curtainless window. The new moon powered a faint tinfoil shine from the lake. Somewhere in the dark a small creature emitted a single shriek of terror, several more in fast succession, then one final shriek, louder and longer than the rest; there was a rustle of undergrowth, then silence. Mother Nature, Gaia, the Earth Goddess was there dealing the cards, keeping the chain going. Life and death. Replenishment. Recycling the living and the dead equally methodically.

Serial murderers were out there too. In the inky silence.

Tom had taken two weeks’ holiday for the move, but he had to go to London in the morning. A wife had poured paint stripper over her husband’s new car and had blinded his racing pigeons. Tom brought home stories of cruelty every day. Sometimes Charley thought there were few acts committed in the world crueller than those under the sanctity of marriage.

The water slid relentlessly over the slimy brickwork of the weir, crashing down into the dark spume of the sluice. It seemed to echo through the stillness, unreal; it all seemed unreal. She was afraid. She wanted to go home.

She had to keep reminding herself that she was home.

‘Blimey, what you running here? A space station?’ The Electricity Board man’s eyes bulged from a thyroid complaint and there was sweat on his protruding forehead from the heat outside. He tapped his teeth with his biro.

‘What do you mean?’ Charley asked.

Footsteps from the hall above echoed around the cellar. Somewhere a drill whined. She looked at the man irritably. She was tired.

He held the printed pad so she could see the markings he had made. ‘The quarterly average for the past year here has been five hundred units. This quarter it’s gone up to seven
thousand
.’

‘That’s impossible. It’s been empty for a year and we only moved in yesterday.’ She watched the metal disc revolving. ‘Is the meter faulty?’

‘No, I’ve tested it. It’s working fine. See how slowly it’s going? You’re not using much juice at the moment.’

‘If there’s a short circuit, could that —?’

‘Must be. You’ve got a leak somewhere. You’d better get an electrician to sort it out. It’s going to cost you a fortune otherwise.’

‘We’re having the house rewired. They’re meant to be starting today.’

She was not sure he had heard her. He was checking the meter once more with a worried frown.

The Aga was smoking from every orifice, and Charley’s eyes were smarting. A new telephone was on the pine dresser next to the answering machine, its neat green ‘Telecom Approved’ roundel hanging from a thread. The phone was red to match the new Aga — when they could afford it. For the time being, her hope of replacing the existing solid-fuel one was item 43 (or was it 53?) on the list of priorities she and Tom had written out last night. ‘Central Heating’ was at the top and ‘Snooker
Room In Barn’ was at the bottom (item 147). During the next twelve months, if they found nothing disastrously wrong with the house, they could afford up to item 21, ‘Window Frames’. If Charley went back to full-time work, eventually, it would help. (Item 22, ‘Double Glazing’.) For the time being the sacrifices were worth it. It was a good investment. On that point, Mr Budley, the estate agent, was right.

The telephone engineer poked his head round the kitchen door. ‘Same place as the old one in the lounge?’

‘Yes, with a long lead,’ she said, scratching what felt like a mosquito bite on her shoulder.

‘The cordless one in the bedroom?’ He had an attachment clipped to his waist with a large dial on it.

She nodded and coughed.

The engineer looked at the Aga. ‘Needs plenty of air. Leave the door open until the flames have caught. Me mum had one.’

‘Open? Right, thank you, I’ll try that. I’m making some tea, or would you prefer coffee?’

‘Tea, white no sugar, ta.’

She opened the oven door as he suggested and backed away from the plume of smoke that billowed out. She picked up the kettle and turned the tap. It sicked a blob of rusty brown water into the stained sink, some of which splashed on to her T-shirt, hissed, made a brief sucking noise and was silent.

Bugger. The plumber, she realised, had just asked her where the stopcock was. She flapped away smoke. With that and the sun streaming in, it was baking hot. They needed blinds in here (item 148, she added, mentally).

There was an opened crate on the floor labelled in her handwriting ‘kitchen’. Crumpled newspaper lay around it and the pile of crockery on the table was growing. A flame crackled in the Aga. She peered into
the goldfish bowl. ‘Hi, Horace, what’s doing?’ she said, feeling flat.

Ben padded in and gazed at her forlornly.

‘Want a walk, boy?’ She stroked his soft cream coat and he licked her hand. ‘You’ve had a good morning’s barking, haven’t you? The builders, the electrician, the telephone man and the plumber.’

She filled the kettle from the mill race, which looked clear enough, and boiled the water twice.

The smoke from the Aga was dying down and the flames seemed to be gaining ground. While the tea was steeping she admired the flowers Laura had sent, the three cards from other friends and a telemessage from Michael Ohm, one of Tom’s partners, which had arrived this morning.

There was no greeting from Tom’s widower father, a London taxi driver who had desperately wanted his only son to be a success, to have a profession, not to be like him. When Tom had succeeded his father resented it in the way he resented everything he did not understand. He had lived in Hackney all his life, in a house two streets from where he was born. When Tom told him they were moving to the country, he had said they must be mad.

Ben bounded on ahead up the drive. The builders were unloading materials from a flatbed truck, and an aluminium ladder rested against the side of the house. A squirrel loped across the gravel into the shade between the house and the barn. Charley could hear cattle lowing, the drone of a tractor, the endless roar of the water and a fierce hammering from upstairs.

At the top of the drive she felt the cooling spray. The weir foamed water, but the lake was flat as a drumskin. Mallards were up-ended near the shore and somewhere close by a woodpecker drilled a tree.

She crossed the iron footbridge, looking down uncomfortably into the circular brick sluice pond. It reminded her of a mineshaft. On the other side of the bridge there were brambles and the remains of a fence which needed repairing. It was dangerous and someone could trip and tumble in. She walked quickly and turned to wait until Ben was safely past.

The path was dry and hard and curved upwards, left, climbing through the woods above the lake. The undergrowth grew denser and the trees were slender, mostly hornbeam, birch and elms. A large number were uprooted, probably from the winter storms or maybe the hurricane of eighty-seven. They lay where they had fallen, leaning against other trees or entombed in the creepers and brambles and nettles of the wild undergrowth.

Traces of a nightmare she had had during the night remained in her mind: a horse rearing up, opening its snarling mouth to reveal fangs chewing a piece of gum the size of a tennis ball, breathing hot minty breath at her then laughing a whinnying laugh. She had woken and tasted mint in her own mouth.

Chewing gum. In the car. It —

Her train of thought snapped as Ben stopped in front of her and she nearly tripped over him. He began barking, a more menacing bark than normal, and she felt a flash of unease. The bark deepened into a snarl and something moved ahead on the path.