A Distant Shore (3 page)

“He still cannot diagnose the problem?”

“So he says.”

“This is very troubling.” He pauses for a moment and continues to stare at me. “And your sister. Did you reply to her letter?”

I put down my fork, but before the words come out of my mouth I realise that I’m about to say too much to this man.

“I haven’t read the letter yet.”

“You have not read it?” He now puts down his own fork and he looks across the table at me. “But she is all that you have now that your parents have passed on. And you say that she lives only one hour away on the coast. I have told you, I am prepared to drive you there.”

This strange man. The caretaker at Stoneleigh. The estate handyman in his free bungalow. Solomon and his second-hand car. Not even a dog. Just him alone, hiding behind those blinds, waiting for a piece of guttering that needs fixing or a door handle that has to be replaced. At nights I see him out on patrol with his torch. The Irish nurse told me that if I didn’t want to take the bus into town there were two volunteer drivers. And then one afternoon, of all people, he came and knocked on my door. My knight in shining armour with his polished chariot. And now Solomon wants to drive me to the coast so that I can spend some time with Sheila, and all I’m thinking is why doesn’t he finish his lamb kebab? There’s people in the world who are starving to death and who would do anything for a bit of lamb kebab.

In the evening I stare again at the letter on the mantelpiece. Before I open it I feel as though I ought to go and visit my parents’ grave and ask their permission. At my age I shouldn’t feel compelled to ask for their approval, but Sheila didn’t treat them well and I don’t want them to think that by reading Sheila’s letter I’m betraying them. I pour a glass of white wine and look out of the window. After a few minutes it occurs to me that it’s not so much their permission that I’m seeking, it’s more that I’m simply informing them of what’s going on. I suppose that’s it. I just want to let them know what’s what and I hope that they’ll understand. The light is beginning to fade from the sky. One of the things I like most about this house are the evenings, for you can see the sun setting on the horizon from up here. To the west there is a clear uninterrupted view straight out to where the old railway viaduct marches across the valley on its strong stone legs. A train hasn’t passed across it for over fifty years or so, and it’s some kind of a monument now. Every evening the sun sets behind this viaduct, which means that I can sit at this window with a glass of wine and watch the day come to a peaceful conclusion.

I’ve not been up long before I hear the banging on the door. It’s all right because I’m already washed and presentable. I’ve even had time to brush out my hair, before tucking it back up into its familiar bun. I long ago forswore the vanity of trying to disguise the grey, and leaving it natural saves me stacks of time. Even though I no longer have to be at school at eight in the morning, I’ve kept the habit of being an early riser. I’ve generally had a bowl of cereal and some orange juice by the time the cars are pulling out of the driveways and the kids are running off to catch the school bus. Again I hear the intemperate banging on the door, as though whoever it is has decided that I’m asleep and is determined to wake me up. I’m not altogether happy about this, for it suggests bad manners. I go to the door and Mrs. Lawson is there, but without Carla. The two-piece navy linen suit, and the matching pale-blue scarf around her neck, tells me that she is on her way to work.

“I’m sorry for coming by so early, but I wanted to catch you before I went off.”

Well, I’d guessed that much, and from the way she was standing it was clear that she’d not come over to borrow a cup of sugar. Two days earlier, at her last piano lesson, Carla had refused to do her final lot of scales. Again I reminded her that sitting at the piano without any sense of propriety, her feet dangling uselessly above the pedals, was an insult to both teacher and instrument. I gently covered her hands with mine and asked her to feel it in her chest. To let it rise up from her body and out through the top of her head. I squeezed her hands, telling her that she must forget them, for they should be like lettuce, limp and useless. Then again, I reminded her that it all begins in the chest and that her performance must always be strong and passionate, but the girl was clearly unimpressed. In the end I snapped at her, and asked her if she thought that her mother was paying all this money out so that she could sit and stare into mid-air and give cheek. But this only made things worse. Carla began to snipe back, and then she banged the lid of the piano down, pushed back her chair and stood up. As she snatched her bag, she shouted, “I’m going to tell my mother about you,” and then she bolted from the house without closing the door behind her. I looked at the book of exercises that stood discarded on the piano, the corners carefully upended to make it easier to turn the page, and decided that enough was enough with this girl. I had half-expected to see Carla’s mother within the hour, but when she didn’t appear I wasn’t surprised. In fact, when the mother had first answered my handwritten advert in the newsagent’s window, which somewhat immodestly advertised my skills as a “firstclass” piano teacher, I was sure that Mrs. Lawson was simply looking for the most convenient way of keeping her daughter out of trouble. She told me that she was the clerical manager at the big supermarket in town and that she often worked late. Apparently, she and Carla’s father were separated, so most of the time the poor girl was left to her own devices. However, predictably enough, Carla soon became bored by both me and the piano, and it was inevitable that in the long run she would become obstreperous. And now the mother has shown up. I look blankly at the woman.

“It’s about Carla,” she says.

“I’m sorry.” I blink and try to refocus on the woman. “Please come in. Would you like some tea?”

“I can’t stay for very long. Only a minute or two.” The woman squeezes past me and makes her way towards the living room as though she is a regular visitor in my home.

“Would you prefer tea or coffee?” I ask.

“Either, thanks. Whatever is easiest. Honestly, I really can’t stay long.”

I follow her into the living room, sit her down and then go into the kitchen to pour her a cup of tea. In my house it’s easy to carry on a conversation with somebody from the kitchen. You don’t have to do any shouting or anything, so I wait for her to say what’s on her mind, but she doesn’t say anything, so I pour the milk into the tea and then stir.

After she has gone I begin to clear away the tea, and then the plate with the biscuits that she refused to eat. I pick up the plate and look through the window as she clip-clops her way, in her stupid high heels, down towards the end of the cul-de-sac where her new red hatchback is waiting for her. She does not look back, but rather than envying her confidence, I find myself despising it. She has, after all, just come into my home and very quickly stepped beyond the boundaries of decorum. As I set down the tea and biscuits before her, I asked her if she would like sugar. She shook her head vigorously as though I had offered her rat poison.

“Well,” I began, “I suppose you have to ask yourself, does Carla really want to learn the piano?”

“I thought she did,” said the mother, “but now I’m not so sure. She’s at a difficult age, and she has strong opinions about certain things.”

“I see.” I took a biscuit. “Such as playing the piano?”

“Well, not just this. There’s your own behaviour to consider.”

“My own behaviour?” I replaced the biscuit on the plate and looked at the woman.

“I think you need help, don’t you? Carla likes you all right, but she says you shout, and then at other times you’re nice, but most of the time you just stare out of the window and you don’t hear anything that she’s saying to you. Can I ask you frankly, Miss Jones, what’s the matter?”

“You’re taking your daughter’s word for all of this?” The woman stared at me with a piteous look that would have tried the patience of a saint. “I see, so I’m to understand that I’m the one with problems concentrating.”

“Carla’s a good kid, and she wouldn’t lie. In fact, she’s quite upset about you. I mean, she likes you, but she thinks you should get some help as you’re behaving strangely.”

For a few moments I stared at this woman, and then it dawned on me that she was serious.

“More tea?” I asked. The woman glanced at her watch and then reached for her bag.

“You know, at least I tried. I’ve really got to be going.”

“As you please.”

The woman leaned forward now and she tried to appear sympathetic.

“I think you should remember, it’s a small village, and like you I’ve been used to the town. But these people, they talk, you know.”

“About who?”

“About you, Miss Jones. There
are
good people in the village that you can spend time with. You don’t have to be by yourself.”

“Well, I can’t stop them talking.” It was difficult to remove the anger from my voice, and Mrs. Lawson seemed to accept the fact that there was little further to be said on this, or any other, subject.

“Well, I’m sorry, but I really just came to tell you that Carla won’t be coming back for any more piano lessons.” With this said, she got to her feet and bade me good morning. I look at her now as she leans forward and unlocks her car door. She climbs in and starts the hatchback’s engine, and soon she is indicating right and then turning into the traffic and making her way to work.

There is a young man weeding in the graveyard. He is there almost every time I visit. What makes his labour strange is the fact that he does this job by hand. Not with a scythe, a trowel, or even a pair of scissors; this young man pulls out the weeds by hand and stuffs them into a black plastic bag that is looped to his belt with a piece of frayed rope. As I walk up the short incline I can see that he has finished my parents’ grave. They lie side by side, Mum having died first and then Dad a year later. They planned this final resting-place together, and they arrived in almost perfect harmony. One day, while Dad was down at his allotment, Mum’s heart gave out. He said goodbye to her in the morning and left the house which they had shared for almost fifty years. When he arrived home at the end of the day she was gone. According to the neighbours, she collapsed in the back yard while taking out the rubbish, and one of them called the ambulance while the others tried to bring her round. There had been a few minor scares over the years, including a mild stroke when they went abroad, for the first and only time, to Majorca. She had to be flown back, on insurance, and she spent a fortnight in hospital. But this final blow was swift and sudden, like a hammer falling, and there was no time to do anything but react. Dad phoned me and I travelled up from Birmingham. I made him a cup of tea and we sat together in silence, a banked fire glowing red in the grate, until the weak sun came up the next morning. I knew that he’d not be able to last long without her.

In the morning he asked me to get hold of my sister, and so I said I would, although I had an address but no phone number. It turned out her number was unlisted, but it wasn’t that difficult to find Sheila’s number in London and so I called her and broke the news about Mum. She was silent, and then when I asked her if she was coming to the funeral she simply said “yes.” When, two days later, she turned up with her friend, it took all my self-control to stop myself from saying something to my younger sister. Now was not the time to be introducing Dad to such lifestyle choices, for he was fragile enough as it was. In fact, I couldn’t remember a time when I’d been more angry, but luckily Dad was too grief-stricken to notice what Sheila had done. My so-called husband Brian played the role of peacemaker, and somehow we all survived the funeral. And then Dad started to get worse. His ailments seemed to all flare up together. The chest from all the years on the pipe. Then his hips, which had long been riddled with arthritis, went from bad to worse, and then finally his eyes started to mist over with glaucoma. Six months after we buried Mum he had become so bad that he couldn’t go to the toilet, or take a bath, or do much of anything by himself. To start with, I was travelling up from Birmingham and spending every weekend with him, but his doctor finally told me that unless we got a nurse he’d have to go into a home. So I asked the doctor to be honest with me and say how long he’d got left. He knotted his fingers together and said maybe a year, but probably less, and so we arranged for a retired midwife to live in the spare room. Soon Dad couldn’t leave his bed, but he still made the poor woman’s life miserable, even going so far as to tell her that he didn’t believe in good women, only women who lived under the influence of good men.

Less than a year after Mum went, he passed away in his sleep, and the sour-faced midwife made a performance out of leaving the house before his body was even cold. Again, I telephoned my sister, and this time I got her answering machine and left a message, but I heard nothing. I wasn’t surprised, and if truth be told I was somewhat relieved that I would be spared a rerun of Sheila’s selfishness. It had been her own wilful decision to leave home at seventeen, and for nearly thirty years Mum and Dad had hardly had any contact with her. It was something they’d reluctantly learned how to deal with, and they’d become well schooled in the practice of deflecting questions, telling half-truths and hiding their grief. Mum, in particular, seemed to suffer. Sheila’s rejection of them both, and her determination to live her own life in the south, caused Mum to retreat even further from people and conversation. Mum began to eat by herself, and there was something deeply painful about seeing her sitting alone with her Bible and her face furrowed in lonely concentration. Dad had argued any real faith out from under me, but Mum still believed, although she didn’t bother with actually going to church. I used to wonder if things might have been better for her if I could have given her some little ones to be proud of, but I soon came to realise that nothing would help. Mum had lost her youngest daughter, and even the blessing of grandchildren wouldn’t have begun to compensate for this loss. Dad, on the other hand, continued to rail about every subject under the sun, but the one subject he refused to take on was that of our Sheila.