The Living and the Dead in Winsford

23

The seventeenth of November. Eight degrees. Rain and wind in the morning.

Several days have passed now. And more especially nights, as it’s getting darker. Light can’t manage more than eight hours per day in these parts at this time of year, while darkness holds sway for sixteen.

It’s the anniversary of Gun’s death. I sat for a while with a burning candle this morning, thinking about her. It all seemed very distant, almost an old illusion. I don’t know if I really remember her now, or if it’s no more than images of my remembering her in the past. Copies of copies.

Anyway, I have begun to settle down into a sort of rhythm. The good thing about habits is that as you follow them, you don’t have to make decisions. We go for a walk every morning, Castor and I, either southwards towards Dulverton or northwards, up towards the Punchbowl and the abandoned stone quarry. If it’s not too windy we sometimes go on up to Wambarrows, the highest point of this part of the moor — 426 metres above sea level, according to the map — where those scanty, overgrown Roman remains are to be found.

But we don’t normally go such a long way before breakfast; instead we save the longer walks until the early afternoons. Often two hours or more. The other day, for instance, we went as far as the remarkable church in Culbone: St Beuno’s, named after a Welsh saint from the seventh century. It is said to be the smallest parish church in the whole of England, and it is hidden away among dense greenery close to a waterfall in a place where you wouldn’t expect to find any buildings at all. It took us an hour to get there: we started from Porlock Weir on the coast, and followed the path tended by the National Trust, which runs alongside more or less the whole of the coast of Somerset, Devon and Cornwall. Incidentally, it was somewhere in Culbone parish that Samuel Coleridge wrote his poem Kubla Kahn — after an evening spent high on opium, according to legend — and if Martin had been with us we would no doubt have spent several hours looking for the farm where the great poet spent that remarkable night.

A bit further inland is Doone Valley, where we have also explored quite a lot and visited pubs in all three of the old villages Oare, Brendon and Malmesmead. A woman and her dog: we are welcome wherever we go. I have also succumbed to temptation and bought R. D. Blackmore’s Lorna Doone — a Romance of Exmoor and started reading it instead of Dickens, despite the fact that I’m only halfway through Bleak House. Lorna Doone is a must, I was told by the hundred-year-old lady in the antiquarian bookshop in Dulverton: you can’t possibly live on Exmoor for more than a week without starting to read John Ridd’s ‘A simple tale told simply’.

So when we get back home after the day’s excursion, irrespective of which muddy paths we have been plodding along, we spend a few hours in the late seventeenth century: it feels remarkably close, in contrast to my dear departed sister. I have no difficulty in imagining the lives and motives of John Ridd and Lorna Doone, no difficulty at all. But as I don’t have a television set and have very little idea of what is happening in the world out there, time takes on a different character. Dawn-daylight-dusk-night; minutes and hours become more important than days and years. There is an old radio in the cottage, but I’ve only tried once to switch it on — and found myself tuned into a station reproducing something strikingly scratchy by Elgar, that was all.

Cooking has been somewhat neglected, I must admit. This last week I have had dinner at The Royal Oak in the village three evenings out of seven. I’m already regarded as a regular there: Rosie or Tom always go out of their way to bid me welcome, Castor always gets a saucer of treats, and the few customers who are already there when we arrive — usually Henry, always Robert, and two evenings out of four an elderly gentleman whose name I don’t know who is disabled and has his Permobil parked outside the entrance — all smile at me and wish me good evening and comment that the weather has got worse.

I’ve got into the habit of taking with me Martin’s notes from Samos when I go to The Royal Oak. Doing so no doubt confirms my status as a woman writer. I sit at my usual table, eat away and concentrate hard on my reading while Castor snoozes at my feet. It’s not a difficult role to play, either for me or for him, and the others leave us in peace. I feel that I am respected and I always drink two glasses of red wine, not enough to prevent me from driving back up Halse Lane through the autumnal darkness. I think I have managed to create around me an appropriately protective layer of egocentricity. We get home between a quarter to ten and ten, and I always switch off the bedside lamp before eleven.

I read a bit of the Samos material in the mornings as well, and as I write this I’m within a few days of finishing the second book, describing the summer of 1978. I don’t like it.

It’s about the month after I met Martin in Stockholm’s Gamla Stan, and it’s possible that the increasing unease I feel as I read it has to do with this fact. It is before our life together began, but I recall thinking back to the garden party and that man Martin Holinek during the summer that followed. I’m sure I never imagined things would progress so far that we would get married and have children, but I had the feeling that there would be some kind of continued contact. However, I am never mentioned in Samos, June-July 1978: but there are references to lots of other women.

For the first time he admits in writing that he has had sex with somebody. With two women, in fact, about a week apart. One is called Heather and is a ‘red-haired Celtic nymph’; the other is American and is simply referred to as ‘Bell’. The intercourse is described in roughly the same tone as a Vespa ride to Ormos to buy groceries, or a discussion of receptivity aesthetics with a Danish philosopher by the name of Bjerre-Hansen.

But what makes me feel uneasy is neither the intercourse nor the receptivity aesthetics. It is something else, something that isn’t actually mentioned.

Or perhaps it is just imagination, I can’t be sure yet. I have two diaries left to read, plus the typewritten material and what is on the computer; but I have no idea what Martin had in mind when he told Bergman that he was sitting on material such that anybody would go down on their knees in order to get permission to publish it.

Well, perhaps I do have a suspicion: but I don’t dare to spell it out yet.

Anyway, his Norwegian friend Finn Halvorsen — the one who originally told Martin about the collective on Samos — has turned up this second summer, and they spend quite a lot of time together. In the middle of July Tadeusz Soblewski from Gdansk also puts in an appearance: he is a poet, a doctor of philosophy and the editor of a literary magazine, and he soon becomes a highly rated participant in conversations. These three — Martin, Finn and Soblewski — are also invited to private get-togethers at Tom Herold’s and Bessie Hyatt’s house, on more than one occasion, and I have the impression that they are forming a sort of inner circle. That would include those mentioned — including Hyatt and Herold of course — plus the two German women writers, Doris Guttmann and Gisela Fromm.

Holinek, Soblewski and Halvorsen. Guttmann and Fromm, Herold and Hyatt, yes, those are the ones. Plus Gusov: the annoying Russian muscles in on the get-togethers, and they evidently find it difficult to get rid of him. Martin writes that he can’t understand why Herold persists in tolerating him.

But he doesn’t have sex with Doris or Gisela — or at least, he writes nothing about any such activity. They like to sunbathe in the nude — but then all German do, is all he says.

On one occasion, and as far as I can ascertain it is the only time, he finds himself alone with Bessie Hyatt. It’s only for an hour, but he devotes four pages to that hour. One doesn’t need to be an exegete in order to understand why.

They go for a short walk together. Bessie Hyatt is going in search of a certain herb that grows quite some way up the mountainside, and Martin goes along to keep her company. He never mentions which herb they are looking for, but he describes Bessie’s movements as ‘her girlish enthusiasm’, and her mop of long hair fluttering in the evening breeze is described as ‘a sail that has finally caught sight again of its Ithaca’. On the way back home, with a bunch of herbs in each hand, Bessie treads awkwardly on a stone and twists her ankle: Martin has to support her during the rest of the walk. When they return to the terrace darkness is falling and lanterns have been lit; Herold and Gusov are involved in a game of chess which is apparently a fight to the death. Whoever loses must drink three glasses of ouzo without blinking.

And Doris and Gisela are singing a Cohen song, accompanied on the guitar by Finn Halvorsen.

‘Sisters of Mercy’.

It was not until this evening that Mark Britton turned up again at The Royal Oak. I have just left there, I can’t get to sleep, and that’s why I’m sitting here writing this. I had just been served my starter, grilled salmon with capers — it has become a favourite of mine — when he came into the room, and just as on the previous occasion I was reminded of my old religious studies teacher, Wallinder. I seem to recall that the similarity occurred to me later rather than at the time, but in any case the impression was even stronger this evening, due to the fact that he’d had his hair cut. Mark seemed more neat and tidy than I remember him looking, and Wallinder was always neat and tidy to his very fingertips. I remember his name now.

He caught sight of me immediately, gave me a friendly smile and hesitated for a moment. Then he came over to my table, and asked if I was busy working or whether he might join me. I felt grateful for the fact that he hadn’t gone to sit somewhere else. It was more than a week since I’d had something that could be called a conversation with another person: Alfred Biggs at the Winsford Community Computer Centre, and to be honest that hadn’t been much of a conversation either.

‘Of course you may. Please sit down.’

‘You’re sure I won’t be preventing you from enjoying your meal?’

‘Of course not. Are you going to eat as well?’ He said that he was; and then he added that he was pleased to see me here again. I explained that I was now in the habit of sitting here most evenings, but I hadn’t seen him since that last time.

He shrugged, and gestured towards my notebook, which I had closed when my starter was served. ‘So you work even when you’re eating, do you?’

‘Revising and checking,’ I said apologetically, and he nodded seriously as if he knew what I was talking about. As if he had seen into my mind again. He stroked Castor, then went over to Rosie at the bar and placed his order. I finished my salmon and realized that I was feeling a bit nervous. I assumed it was because of that face in the window, but wasn’t sure. Nevertheless, I took up the matter when he came and sat down again.

‘I think I walked past your house the other day.’

He looked at me in surprise. I noticed that he was wearing the same pullover as last time, but with a lighter coloured shirt underneath it. His eyes were the same shade as his jumper, and I thought I could detect a trace of unease in them.

‘You don’t say. And how do you know it was my house?’

I suddenly felt in a bit of a quandary. Ought I to explain that it was Alfred Biggs who had told me? Admit that I’d been talking to him about the face in the window?

‘It’s a bit further up the hill towards Halse Farm, isn’t it?’ I asked by way of diversion. ‘There’s a path going past it from the part of the moor where I’m living, and we walked along it one morning. Castor and I. I must say. .’

‘What must you say?’

‘I must say it’s very beautifully situated. And. . remote.’

He didn’t repeat his question about how I knew it was his house, and I was grateful for that.

‘That’s true,’ was all he said. ‘We live there, Jeremy and I.’

‘Jeremy?’

‘My son.’

I wondered if I ought to mention that I had seen him, but Mark had suddenly become subdued, as if he had no wish to talk about his personal circumstances. Or at least as if he were wondering whether he ought to. I had a clear memory of Alfred Biggs saying that it was ‘a sad story’, and began regretting the fact that I had said anything at all about the house. I felt that I had been tactless, and that it was because I was becoming increasingly unused to talking to other people.

But then he cleared his throat, leaned forward over the table and lowered his voice.

‘If I tell you a bit about my personal circumstances, can I reckon on something similar from you in return?’

‘If you start the ball rolling,’ I said without giving myself time to think it over. ‘So you live alone with your son, do you? How old is he?’

‘Yes, Jeremy and I live on our own,’ said Mark, taking a klunk of beer. ‘We have been doing for quite a few years now. That’s the solution I chose in the end, and not a day has passed since then without my regretting it.’

He smiled briefly to indicate that it was a truth with modification. ‘But I would have regretted it even more if I hadn’t taken care of him.’

‘Taken care of him?’

He nodded. ‘He’s twenty-four. And not exactly normal, to make a long story short.’

‘If you make long stories short I shan’t tell you anything about myself.’

He smiled again. ‘All right, if that’s the way you want it. It happened one winter evening nearly twelve years ago. On the way between Derby and Stoke — we were living just outside Stoke at that time.’

I nodded and waited.

‘Me and my wife Sylvia and Jeremy were on our way home late one evening. We crashed with a lorry. I was driving. Sylvia died in hospital a few hours later. Jeremy was badly injured and was in a coma for two months. I escaped with a broken wrist.’

‘I’m sorry. Please forgive me, I didn’t know. .’

He assumed a facial expression I couldn’t pin down. Somewhere between resignation and confidentiality perhaps, I don’t know. In any case, at that moment Barbara came in with our food — Mark had given the starter a miss, and so we were neck and neck in that respect at least.

And then, as we slowly worked our way through our boiled cod with potatoes, asparagus and horseradish sauce, he continued the tale. Jeremy eventually came out of his coma at the hospital after eight weeks — while he was lying there unconscious he had somehow managed to celebrate his thirteenth birthday. His bodily injuries eventually healed, but something had also happened to his brain. He could hardly talk, his motor functions were almost non-existent, he had frequent fits and seemed not to understand any but the simplest of instructions. He couldn’t read, couldn’t write, didn’t seem to know whether he was coming or going. Nevertheless Mark took him home and survived the first two years with the aid of an assistant who came to help several hours every day. Jeremy had improved, Mark explained, but only very slightly. He continued to have fits — it was apparently some kind of epilepsy — and on several occasions Mark was forced to take him to the hospital in Stoke. The doctors recommended that Jeremy should be placed in some kind of institution; Mark was very much against that, but by the time Jeremy reached the age of fifteen and started showing signs of aggressive resistance he felt obliged to give way. The boy was placed in a home not far from Plymouth, and was moved after a year to another home near Lyme Regis in Dorset, where he stayed until he was nineteen. Meanwhile Mark had bought and moved into that house on Exmoor: he didn’t explain why, merely said that he wanted to get away from the Midlands. He stressed that there was no question of Jeremy being ill-treated at the home, but ‘in the end I just couldn’t bear seeing him sitting there. And so I took him home once and for all.’

I found myself breathing a sigh of relief.

‘Anyway, that’s the way it is,’ he said. ‘He hardly ever goes out. He sleeps fourteen hours a day, and sits in front of his computer for ten. But it seems to work. Who says that people have to go to the cinema, go shopping for food and go on holiday? Eh? Read books? Mix with other people? Who says that?’

But there was more hope than resignation in his voice.

‘And I can leave him on his own. He doesn’t do silly things any more.’

‘You mean he used to?’

He shrugged. ‘It happened. He could be a danger to himself. But that’s not the case any more. I’m sitting here now, for instance, as you may have noticed. And I often go for walks over the moor, as I think I said last time. No, he needs help with practical things such as washing clothes and preparing food, that kind of thing, but he doesn’t mind being left on his own.’

‘Do you talk to him? I mean-’

‘He understands what I say. Not everything, but as much as is necessary. He never answers, of course, but he understands that it can be helpful if he does as he’s told. If he’s been a good boy when I get home this evening, for instance, he’ll get a reward. A Crunchie.’

‘A Crunchie?’

‘Yes, a chocolate bar. It’s his absolute favourite. I have a secret store in the car. If he ever found it he’d probably eat himself to death.’

I thought about all that while Barbara came to clear away our used plates.

‘But that means you can never go away, does it? Not for more than a short time.’

He shook his head.

‘Not without help. But luckily I have a sister. And if necessary I can arrange for him to spend a week at that place in Lyme Regis. But I try to avoid that. . Although I have to admit that I spent a week in northern Italy last year. I managed both Florence and Venice. Anyway, that was my life in thirty minutes. May I offer you a glass of wine while I listen to yours?’

I didn’t need the stipulated half an hour, but managed to occupy twenty minutes. While Mark had been talking I had managed to think up a story I thought sounded quite credible, and that I ought to be able to remember in future.

I had been married and I had two grown-up children. I had been divorced for seven years, had worked behind the scenes at Swedish Television for over twenty years, and had started writing books around the time I got divorced. Three novels so far: they had sold sufficiently well in Scandinavia for me to take a year off and devote myself exclusively to writing. Which I thought was an enormous boost. What were my books about? Life, death and love — what else?

He laughed good-humouredly at that, then asked if any of them had been translated into English. I told him they hadn’t — Danish, Norwegian, Icelandic, but that was all so far.

But what I talked about more than anything else was my childhood — and in some strange way, after only a short while, I almost felt as if I were sitting in Gudrun Ewerts’s old room in Norra Bantorget again. Mark was leaning forward over the table on his elbows, watching me speak all the time with his piercing blue eyes almost the same colour as his pullover. And I spoke. About Gunsan. About my home town. About my poor parents. About Rolf and Martin, although I used a different name for the latter, and I recall that for a moment — no longer than that, but even so — I was convinced that I would be able to tell him the truth. That I could tell him what had really happened.

I didn’t do so, of course, but I knew that beyond all doubt there was something about this man and his restrained sorrow that attracted me. When we said goodnight outside The Royal Oak shortly after ten o’clock, I found it difficult not to give him a hug.

But I didn’t do that either, and now, a few hours later as I lie in bed with Castor over my legs and am about to put a full stop after the evening, I think about how I talked so much about me and my life. I must have had a great need to do so. The story about his son and that tragic accident was still lingering on inside my mind, of course, but I also realized that we hadn’t discussed something we had talked about on the previous occasion. His ability to see what was hidden. The missing husband, the shadow, the sun-drenched house in the south and all the rest of it.

Once again it had become quite stormy during the evening. The wind was howling around the eaves, and there was a hint of snow in the air. I felt a little depressed, more depressed than I had been for several days, I don’t know why.