Turtle Diary

29 William G

I rang up a van-hire place. £2.75 per day, 2½p per mile, £10 deposit. God, how I hate the thought of driving the thing. In films people like Paul Newman and Burt Lancaster leap into vehicles they’ve never seen before, cars, lorries, buses, locomotives, anything at all, and away they go at speed. Sometimes they have to fight with someone first, knock him out before they can drive away. Well of course that’s how it is in films. How can reality be so different?

I still haven’t said anything about the turtles to Harriet and I still don’t want to. She’s begun saying ‘We’. So-and-so wondered if we could come to a party. There was a series of early music recitals and ought we to subscribe. We went to the party, we subscribed to the series.

I keep waiting for the phone to ring from that other world where the turtles are. It’s not another world really, it’s this one. Everything happens in the same world, that’s why life is so difficult. I’ll pick up the van right after work, deliver the crates, come back later, meet Neaera at the Zoo and drive to Polperro. Maybe I ought to pick her up earlier, maybe we ought to have dinner first.

Yesterday evening I looked out of my window and saw the greyhound lady go past alone. No husband. The Greyhound Widow, like a figure on a tarot card. A train went past on the far side of the common. One vertical row of three lights: Tower Hill. I knew the husband was dead, it was in the way she walked with the greyhound. I asked Mrs Inchcliff about it, she knows everything that goes on in the neighbourhood. Yes, she said, the husband had died a week ago. If he’d lived two weeks longer his widow would have got two years’ salary but as it was she wouldn’t.

There’s an owl in the Charing Cross tube station. Bubo tubo. Not really an owl. The sound comes from an escalator but it’s as real as the owl I hear on the common and never see. There’s only one world, and animal voices must cry out from machines sometimes.

There it was: the telephone call from George Fairbairn. Thursday would be the day. This was Monday. If I could drop the crates off about half past six he’d have the turtles ready for me in half an hour or so. He was talking to me in a matter-of-fact way as if I really existed and was a real grown-up person who could drive vans, be at a certain place at a certain time and do what I’d undertaken to do. Incredible. I said I mightn’t be able to get there till after seven. Right, he said, he’d see me then.

Maybe there wouldn’t be a van available, maybe all the arrangements would break down. I rang up the van-hire place. Yes, I could have a van on Thursday.

Maybe I’d not be able to get away from the shop. Late summer, still lots of tourists. I asked Mr Meager if I could have Friday off. Personal matter. He said yes of course.

I thought of ringing up the Zoo and warning them that a turtle snatch was planned for Thursday. I didn’t do it. All right, I thought. Let it happen.