Turtle Diary

22 Neaera H

Oh, dear. What have I done now? Where are my bees? Suddenly I feel a stranger in my own flat. The clutter on the drawing table, the books and papers on the desk, the typewriter, Madame Beetle in her tank and the plants in the window have all gone blank and baffling.

Caister men never turn back. But I’m not a Caister man. My Caister two-stone confers no magic, it’s only a touchstone for the terrors that I try to cover up with books and papers and plants in the window. My mind feels as if it’s gone into hiding from me and is reflecting privately on matters of its own. Identity is a shaky thing. This is my place, my work, my water-beetle. Silly. Water-beetles can’t be owned any more than bees can. Nothing can be owned for that matter. A typewriter? Not really. You pay for the machine, keep it in your flat, use it. But I might go out one day and never come back and the typewriter would remain, belonging only to itself. When a ewe licks a new-born lamb all over I believe that’s called owning it but the ewe never really owns the lamb. That awful gathering-up feeling is in me again. My life can’t be drawing to a close yet. I’m not greedy but it can’t be ending so soon. Who will tell my bees and will they make honey for their next mistress? Same bees, different people, over and over.

If I could see an oyster-catcher … No, it isn’t just the bird, it’s the distance, the wideness. I am so unquiet. What have I done? Making a fool of myself is the least of it. What’s happening to my mind? The green water, the white glimmer and the open jaws: my ocean and shark, not his? Mine as well as his, that certainly. I wish I’d never seen those turtles, never seen Polperro. Could someone tell the turtles, give them a bit of crape to stream behind them in the water? If it hadn’t been the turtles I suppose it would have been something else.

I can’t get it out of my mind, how I must have looked sitting there with the cup clattering in the saucer. ‘Are you all right?’ he said. ‘Is anything the matter? You don’t look well.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘You must think I’m insane, I’ve never done anything like this before, I had such a dreadful feeling, I thought you might be … They gave me your address at the shop, I said it was urgent, possibly a matter of… There was all that green water and a shark coming up from below, terrible, terrible.’ I actually went on like that, blurted out all those things.

He lit a cigarette and kept shaking the match but it wouldn’t go out. He blew it out. ‘Why did you think I … Why did you think it had anything to do with me?’ he said, and certainly his voice was shaking.

‘Well, it wasn’t mine,’ I said lamely, hearing how idiotic I sounded.

‘How could it not be yours?’ he said. He looked cruel when he said it. ‘You had a dreadful feeling, a terrible dream or thought or something and you say it wasn’t yours but mine. That’s rather curious, isn’t it?’ His voice seemed to be coming from a dark and tiny place, he seemed clearer and smaller and sharper and farther away as he spoke. I felt as if I might faint.

‘Stop it,’ I said. ‘You’re not being honest.’

‘Perhaps you’re not either,’ he said. ‘Some people won’t look at what’s in them, they sweep everything under the carpet. Everything’s quite all right with them, they’re never depressed. When the shark comes up out of the dark and the chill that’s somebody else’s shark not theirs. They’re all right, Jack.’

I almost hated him for that. Any situation imposes rules of some kind and a gentleman abides by them. By coming to his door in a half-crazed state I’d created a situation in which a gentleman would have been equally open even if it made him look as crazy as I was. William G. was not wholly a gentleman and I was sorry for us both.

‘You’re being careful,’ I said.

‘I’m being careful!’ he said. ‘What about you? You’ve had green water and a shark and now you’re trying to put it on me so it won’t be you that’s falling apart.’

We were both frightened and angry, a long silence followed. Then we began to speak calmly and politely, avoiding the shark. We exchanged humdrums, presentable bits of ourselves: what I did, what he did, how this was and that. We became slightly acquainted in the dreariest conventional way. I wanted to be shot of the whole turtle affair and I knew he did too but there it was like a massive chain welded to leg irons on both of us and clanking maddeningly.

We couldn’t get to a better place in our conversation. It simply became a matter of sitting there until we could move away from our common discomfort and go back to our separate individual ones. We repeated things that needed no repetition: I said of course we must share the cost of the van, he said he’d let me know as soon as George Fairbairn got in touch with him. We both mumbled about the possible inconvenience of having to act on short notice, both agreed that that’s how it was with this sort of thing.

I went home by bus.