Sugar and Other Stories (23 page)

No, it was nothing to do with desire, she thought, skirting the
copse, coming on the ruffled pond. Here were an old man with a fat terrier bitch, two elegant track-suited young women with a dalmatian, and a group of little boys, cupping their faces over cigarettes, bunking off. He would never strike at the pondside, that she was sure. It was exposed, and heavily frequented. She could even, occasionally, ask a tweeded dog-walker to throw a stick into the water for Wolfgang. Her arthritis had finally put a stop to this game, this year. And Wolfgang was so young, he needed the resistance of the water, that tired him more thoroughly than running through air. She approached the little boys. “Would you throw my dog’s stick for him? I’m not able to, myself.” She caught the electric message between them: shall we be nice, shall we be nasty, is she to be classed as a silly old bag or a poor old thing in need of help, what will the group do? They were still quite little boys. Probably they already threatened other little boys. Perhaps they had their fears, too. One of them said, “Come on then,” rough-friendly, and hurled Wolfgang’s stick. Wolfgang sprang out onto the water, leaping and surging until he was out of his depth, then swimming purposefully and fast, his bushy white tail a luminous rudder in the translucent murk. Coming back, he shipped water and coughed at every stroke. The boys threw again and again. Wolfgang plunged. Beyond him were two Canada geese who’d never been seen there before. Lovely things, thought Mrs Sugden, with their stripy barrel bodies and their thin strong black necks. The male nudged the female and honked. Once Mrs Sugden would have remarked on their beauty to the boys, but now she held her peace. Some boys, not all, spoke jeering filth. One boy that size would hardly think of attacking anything as large as Mrs Sugden, let alone Wolfgang. But the whole bunch just might, if they egged each other on. Mrs Sugden knew boys. She knew that these boys knew things, they watched things on the screen she did not know or want to know. Men have fantasies, women don’t, only love, which is a sort of fantasy, she thought. She had taught boys who might have been these boys’ fathers. They had not known all that much. On icy dark days she had
buttoned their stiff little flies with fingers clumsy-cold, tucking them in, tapping their innocence, telling them to run along now and keep clean. The lavatories, which were huge earth closets, were frozen solid, on bad days. Their little extremities were blue and waxy. They were not knowing little things, not like these, the cold air was different, whatever there had then been to fear, she herself had not been knowing enough to take account of.

In those days there had been both war and hanging. She stood there stolidly, watching the boys play with Wolfgang, and said to the man in her mind that it was easier to understand that it had nothing to do with desire if you thought of hanging. It depended how old he was, whether he would know what she meant, or need to have it explained. Hanging had frightened her more thoroughly and sickly than Hitler ever had. Perhaps this was a failure in her imagination but it was so. We were always going to win the war, she believed Churchill, but the hood and trap and condemned cell waited for every man. You see, she told him, I dreamed over and over I had to be hanged by mistake, although I hadn’t done anything. I dreamed about being strapped up and blindfolded and dragged there. It was a sniff of pure evil, it was what men did to men, it was in the newspapers, in thrillers, in the air. You are him now, the hangman and the murderer. The one with power is foul, you see — the murderer became the victim in the dock. We stopped all that, we cleansed our minds of that horrible place. Now we think of women and little children in locked cars, in rubbish areas, in brambles on waste land. What I mean is, there can be simple fear, nothing to do with desire. You must not see my fear.

After Wolfgang’s swim, they struck off into the copse. Wolfgang licked up filth and scrabbled in old leaves. The ground underfoot was sodden, under spongy sphagnum, with a dark peaty water that welled up, round the bright green tufts, like old blood. The things to be found here were always surprising. Once Wolfgang had turned up a pink high-heeled shoe. Once, Mrs Sugden had almost stepped on large Y-fronts, navy-blue piped in
white, billowing slightly just under the liquid surface. They seemed to be almost new. Mrs Sugden did not disturb them. They gave her a little shock, not electric, but a sharp lapse in the supply of air to her lungs and brain.

She knew what it would feel like for everything to seize up with shock. She had precognitions of clamped arteries jerking her heart into boom and then flabby stillness. Inventing possible ways it might happen helped with the whelming of the fear. She invented someone stubble-bearded and smelly, veering away as Wolfgang bounded up, showing his teeth in his expectant grin. She imagined someone young and muscular and resourceful — moving the knife from beside her own jugular to catch Wolfgang’s leap on it, contemptuously, as he sprang. She didn’t know whether Wolfgang would spring or not, that was the truth. He was a cantankerous beast: he bit people for his own pleasure, not for her protection. In his youth he had frequently bitten other dogs. He liked dogs bigger and slower than himself, staid and portly dogs who presented a stable target. He had to be dragged off. His eyeballs at such times became suffused with blood, a clear poppy-scarlet. Last week Mrs Sugden had seen the same colour between the swollen eyelids of a mugged pensioner, televised in a powder blue shawl from her hospital bed. Every line of the grey and blooming-purple skin, of the spare yellow-white hair, of the dark threaded stitches across cheek and brow had stayed in Mrs Sugden’s mind. But above all the scarlet eye-whites.

On the other side of the copse was a straight path. It was made plain and level with bitumen and asphalt for a certain distance, and then the surfacing abruptly gave way to sandy furrows. By the side of the straight path trotted, decorously, a cream Labrador bitch. Wolfgang knew this dog: it was one he liked to bounce at. Mrs Sugden knew it. It was a guide dog, enjoying a brief run on the loose. Its owner and charge walked steady and upright, looking neither to left nor right, along the smoothed track. She was a tall woman, in a straight tweed two-piece, with an impeccable knot of iron-grey hair gleaming above her collar.
She carried the dog’s harness in one hand, and a handbag in the other. She advanced evenly, in sensible laced shoes. Mrs Sugden had spoken to her once, when Wolfgang had bounded up and tangled with the guide dog just as she was being re-harnessed. Mrs Sugden had apologized: the woman had said, in what Mrs Sugden labelled a cultivated voice, that it was nice for Elsie to have contact with other dogs. She had tried to pat Wolfgang and Mrs Sugden had counselled against it, saying his temper was uncertain. What was he like, the woman had asked, and Mrs Sugden had described him, enjoying it, his black, his white, his bright eyes, the sheen of good health. She had said how clever and well-trained Elsie must be. Elsie’s owner said Elsie was too serious, a worrier, couldn’t be persuaded to run off and play. It did her good to meet other dogs, she reiterated, unable to see Wolfgang’s band of hackles, or the sneer where his lip lifted from his teeth at the side.

Mrs Sugden decided not to cross to that path, but to stay on the side where she was, in the shade of the trees. Wolfgang might upset dog or owner. Better safe than sorry. So she walked parallel, at a good distance, a bit behind. Watching, and thinking.

The blind walker had a follower. Not for the first time, even in Mrs Sugden’s experience. She had seen him at least twice before, padding along the track behind the other woman and her dog. There was something indefinably wrong with him, even on these earlier occasions. He walked with exaggerated care, as though he were playing grandmother’s footsteps. He was large, and thin, and young, or fairly young, and gangling. He had long blonde curls and a very bright blue track suit, piped in white, above rather frivolous training-shoes, rainbow-striped in girlish pastel shades. With rose-pink shoelaces. His movements were jerky and excessive: he put a hand to his ear and
hearkened
to a jay laugh, he stood with folded arms and legs grandly straddling and appeared to study early pussy-willow. Mrs Sugden had noticed before that he never passed the blind woman, but came along
after, creeping and then jogging a little. Today he had changed his behaviour. He had always reminded Mrs Sugden of the television puppet Andy Pandy: today he had positively taken to capering, like a demented leprechaun, knees up and pointed toes down, in huge circles around the woman and dog. Mopping and mowing, said Mrs Sugden’s fairy-tale vocabulary to her, as he bent lithely and sprang up again, mopping and mowing. She could barely see his face, but he appeared to be smiling. His arms gestured — a welcoming embrace, a kind of hand-over-hand imaginary rope-climbing. The blind woman must surely have heard him, but she appeared impassive, strode on, like a metronome, unvarying. The dog trotted beside her, marking the edge of the safe track. Mrs Sugden might have continued to observe from across the tufts of grass and heather if she had not noticed that the circles were diminishing. And that the hand at the end of the mobile arm flashed in the sun.

What she actually thought was superstitious, akin to the promise of James’s unwritten letter, or the anticipated chocolate eclair. She thought, there’s safety in numbers. She thought, if I don’t go over there, there’ll be no one at hand when it’s my turn. She thought, Wolfgang’s something, even if I’m a fat old biddy. She thought, I’ve got my whistle, I’ve got that. She was surprised how much thinking she was doing. She could hear her heart all right, but its thud was purposeful and even, not choking all over the place. She said, come on, to Wolfgang, who streaked ahead, tangling with Elsie just as the young puppet was crouching almost at the blind woman’s side, peering up into her face.

“Good afternoon,” said Mrs Sugden. “We’ve met before, I don’t know if you remember, I described my dog to you, a black and white border collie, he seems to get on with yours.”

“Oh yes,” said the cool voice, from its distance in the dark. “Of course. Is he with you, your dog?”

He had his sharp nose buried between Elsie’s buttocks.

“He’s sniffing Elsie. You know.”

“She’s a bit timid of male dogs. She’s not allowed to talk to them, of course, if she’s working.”

“Perhaps I could walk with you a little,” said Mrs Sugden. “As we’re going the same way.”

He
was now a little behind, sauntering. They were two, side by side, and he was behind, going slowly. The dogs stood nose to tail and smelled each other’s natures.

“I go as far as the end of the asphalt. I’d be grateful if you’d tell me when we reach it. It is my limit.”

“Of course.”

They went out along the strip of asphalt at the blind woman’s brisk pace. Mrs Sugden described things. Herself, to start with.

“My name is Sugden. Marjorie Sugden. A retired schoolmistress.”

“And mine is Eleanor Tillotson. A retired social worker.”

He was still there. Did Miss or Mrs Tillotson have any idea of his presence, or its recurrence, or of his bizarre posturing? Mrs Sugden described things. The dogs. Now they’re running along ever so nicely, side by side. Your dog is such a lovely colour.

“Like the froth on cappucino,” Miss Tillotson said.

“A little bit creamier,” said Mrs Sugden, judiciously. “A bit more buttery, less thin in colour.”

If Miss Tillotson wanted a visual description, it had to be just.

“Not far to the end. I’ll turn back with you.”

“There’s no need.”

“I’m glad of the company. If you don’t mind.”

“On the contrary. Days in retirement are very long. One can go a whole day without speaking to anyone but Elsie. Of course, when I had my work, it was different. There was a lot of travelling, visiting homes and interviewing. I like to be occupied.”

“Oh, so do, so did I. Time now goes so fast in one way, but it goes nowhere, nothing is achieved.”

“You keep yourself healthy. And Wolfgang. I can tell.”

*   *   *

The end of the asphalt was in sight. It was like the abrupt end of a pier, at the end of a harbour. Mrs Sugden thought of the blind woman and was astonished at her courage. She saw her striding out steadfast, treading this fine line between gales and invisible gulfs of infinitely worse fears than her own mean ones. Perhaps he would go on when they turned back together. Perhaps he would. If he did not, she would know what to think. What he did, was speak.

“Excuse me, but have either of you two ladies got the correct time?”

He stood in front of them as they turned, barring their way back. Gold curls, slightly damp or greasy, clustered on his forehead. His features were all exaggerated, like his movements. His mouth was large, and full of clefts and curves, firm though, not sagging, a violoncello of a mouth. His nose was full and snuffing, with curling nostrils and huge dark holes. The ledges were all strong and rounded — wide cheekbones, outstanding brows, long carved chin. His eyes were big, thick-lashed, pale blue. Miss Tillotson could not see any of this, she could not even know if he was black or white, only how tall he was, up there. It was she who told him the time, in her precise voice. Three forty-seven, she said. Mrs Sugden saw that she was reading this information with exact fingertips from a large watch without a glass.

“Thanks,” he said. “I must be getting back. That’s a fine dog you have. I’ve been watching you.”

“I know,” said Miss Tillotson.

“She looks after you very well.”

“She does,” said Miss Tillotson. She smiled. “She’s over-conscientious. She won’t leave me to run away and play.”

“She’d attack anyone who tried to hurt you, though.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Miss Tillotson, with foolhardy scrupulousness, it seemed to Mrs Sugden. “She’s trained to guide me and stop me doing anything silly. She’s got a nice nature.”

“Wolfgang hasn’t,” said Mrs Sugden. “That’s my dog. He’s got an uncertain temper. Collies often have, I’m told.”

He smiled at her, with all his face, as though he read her thoughts. She took Miss Tillotson’s elbow, to reassure both of them. She felt Miss Tillotson stiffen with independence and then relax into acquiescence. He moved out of their way and fell into step beside Miss Tillotson, on the other side.