The Pre-War House and Other Stories

A Small Window

Valda has not yet had her breakfast. She has not even had a cup of tea. She always used to say to John on waking that she was dying for a cuppa. She had learnt all these wonderful phrases. ‘I could kill,’ she used to say, for this or that.

But her mother discouraged her from using these ‘extravagant expressions’. ‘You are not starving,’ she would say to Valda. ‘You are only hungry.’

Valda has readied her teacup. While the kettle boils, she goes to fetch the laundry to put into the machine. She comes out of the kitchen and goes to the stairs, at the foot of which there is a small, round window through which she can see the sea.

This view was one of her favourite things about the house when she first saw it. She remembers stepping in off the street, the estate agent closing the front door behind her, shutting away the busy road. The hallway was dark, but at the far end she could see a circle of light, and when she reached this window at the back of the house she saw through it the white sky and the grey sea and the stony beach, and the house seemed like the wardrobe through which one reached Narnia.

John had liked the house too, although he had been concerned about its proximity to the sea. He mentioned global warming and rising sea levels. And it had been necessary for Valda to explain to her mother over the phone that their house on the beach was really just at the edge of the beach and that they would not be marooned when the tide came in. ‘The sea will not come to our door,’ she told her mother, but her mother did not sound convinced.

John lives in a city now, in the Midlands.

Valda looks through this window many times each day. She never opens it though, to hear the pounding of the waves or the sound of the pebbles being drawn away. She doesn’t have the key anyway. She doesn’t know where all the keys have gone.

There is hardly anyone out there, on the beach. But she could not say, ‘It is deserted,’ because she can see a dark figure in the distance, someone walking beneath the cliff, coming this way, carrying something under one arm. And she can see a dog. There is a woman who regularly walks her dog along the beach, and who, if she sees Valda through the small window, always waves. Valda squints in the direction of this approaching figure.

It is too early for the holidaymakers, who will not arrive on the beach until midmorning. The lifeguards will appear then too, planting their red and yellow flags so that people will know where to swim; they will know where it is safe.

Valda turns away from the window and climbs the stairs. The laundry basket on the landing is only half full. Before taking it down to the kitchen, she goes into her bedroom to look for anything which might need washing. She can’t put in her nightie because she is still wearing it.

She goes into the bathroom and brings out a damp hand towel. On the other side of the bathroom, there is another bedroom, but it is empty. There is no bed in there with covers to straighten or change, no clothes on the floor to pick up, no drawers into which to tidy things away. They were going to paint the walls, but then John left. She has never been sure whether the cartoon people on the wallpaper are deep-sea divers or astronauts. Each one is wearing a helmet, a circular opening or window at the front framing a round face. They are floating on a dark-blue background which could be the sky where it becomes space, or which could be the sea, deep down. They seem stranded, she thinks, but they are smiling.

She carries the laundry basket downstairs and pauses again by the window. She can see now that it is a young boy approaching beneath the cliff, and that what he has with him is a surfboard.

The dog is running into and out of the water and trotting along in the wet sand revealed by the falling tide. Valda thinks about the sand and salt which will cling to its nut-brown coat.

She hears the kettle reaching boiling point. It is hours since she woke up wanting that first cup of tea of the day, but every morning a certain number of chores must be done before she will allow herself to have it.

Taking the laundry basket into the kitchen, she loads the washing machine and sets it going. She watches it for a while, the soapy water rising up behind the glass door, her things sloshing and tumbling. Her family pack of detergent is almost empty. She had a freezer full of food, a cupboard full of provisions, but it is nearly all gone. There is only her and she is careful, but of course it goes in the end.

Lifting the still-steaming kettle, she pours hot water into her cup and fishes out the teabag. She doesn’t like it too strong. She adds some long-life milk and is just putting in her sweetener when the telephone rings. Going back out into the hallway, to the phone she keeps on a table in front of the little window, she lifts the receiver to her ear but there is no one there. It is one of those cold calls which leave you standing there saying, ‘Hello? Hello?’ with no reply.

That young boy is near the water now. He is wearing one of those short wetsuits. He must be cold, thinks Valda. It looks cold out there. But maybe it isn’t. She doesn’t know. She has not been outside recently. His wetsuit looks, she thinks, like something he has grown out of, like something for which his prepubescent limbs are now too long. She wonders whether it can really keep him warm in the cold water.

He stands at the edge of the sea, with his back to her. Valda looks along the beach, hoping to see someone who will notice the boy and tell him that he shouldn’t go out there. But apart from the boy and the dog, she can’t see a soul.

The boy begins his walk into the water, holding on to his board. He does not inch out like John used to do, and like she imagines she would except that she does not swim at all. He strides, appearing to have no fear of this grey sea, not to feel its chill. He lies tummy-down on his surfboard and paddles further out to where the sea looks especially rough. Uncertainly, he stands, and is immediately knocked off his board by a wave and Valda loses sight of him. Someone, she thinks, needs to warn him, to stand on the shore and shout, ‘You shouldn’t be out there!’ or, ‘It isn’t safe!’ or, ‘Come back!’

She sees him again, his head and shoulders out of the water. He climbs back onto his surfboard, and again he is instantly bowled over. The sea is rough today, full of big waves. She watches until she finds him again, scrambling onto his board. He is trying so hard but he can’t seem to stay on his feet.

She puts her hand on the doorknob and then takes it off again. He wouldn’t hear her anyway; she would be shouting into the wind. And besides, the door is locked and she can’t think where the key might be. She goes back into the kitchen and fetches her tea, carrying it towards the living room. But she diverts once again to the window, peering out. At first, she doesn’t see him, and then she does and he is so far out, and still there is no one to tell him that he shouldn’t be there. Even the dog is nowhere in sight.

She begins opening drawers: the ones in the telephone table, hunting through scraps of paper and pens; and the ones in which she keeps woolly hats and gloves, searching underneath them, finding pebbles and shells and, right there after all with these other bits and pieces, where it must have been all along, the key for the back door. There is a slight tremble in her hand as she puts the key in the lock and turns it. When she pulls at the door, it sticks and she remembers that the sea air does this to the wood. She has to put all her strength into it and is taken by surprise when the door suddenly opens.

She hurries out over the shingle, down to the shore where the waves crash down before sliding back out, dragging the smaller stones with them.

Taking no care to keep her slippers dry, she stands in the shallows and yells to the boy in the sea, ‘You shouldn’t be out there!’ She wades out with only her nightclothes to protect her from the cold. She can feel the current tugging at her bare legs. She is astonished by the power of the waves which topple her and return her to the beach, the sea spitting her out like unwanted gristle.

Someone says, ‘Are you all right?’

Valda looks up. The woman who waves is standing above her, the nut-brown dog beside her. Valda, on her knees now in the surf, in her sodden nightie, tries to tell the woman about the boy. ‘He’s too far out,’ she says.

‘He’s OK,’ says the woman. ‘Let me help you.’ She takes one of Valda’s hands and gets her onto her feet. ‘You’re freezing,’ she says.

Valda remembers the tea which she has not yet had. It is still on the sill beneath the small window and will need heating through. Or she might need to make a fresh pot for this woman who is probably going to come inside her house, who is walking beside her now, over the stones to her back door. The three of them — Valda and the woman and the dog — are going to walk the beach right into the house. There will be paw prints in the hallway. The house will smell of wet dog and the sea long after the woman and her dog have gone home. Valda will keep finding sand.

When they reach the back door, Valda, turning, sees the lifeguards arriving. She watches them carrying their red and yellow flags onto the beach, planting them in the pebbles, putting one on either side of the stretch of sea in which the boy is surfing, marking out a zone which they will patrol. She turns back to the house and opens the door and the dog goes in first.