Turtle Diary

49 William G

Sundays come round so quickly, sometimes there scarcely seems a day between them let alone a week. My mother had at least had the Methodist Church to go to and to stop going to, either way it was a positive action. I had nothing except a strong feeling of dread. Perhaps my mother had had that as well. I remembered it from earliest childhood, the awful Sunday daylight through the coloured glass of the front door, the quiet outside.

Sunday is the day when there you are with the people you live with and that’s it. Or there you are alone. There’d been Sundays when I’d methodically picked up girls at the Victoria & Albert or the British Museum, Sundays drove strangers into each other’s arms. But I simply hadn’t that much enterprise now. I thought of Port Liberty but didn’t fancy the trip to Greenwich. I decided to have a lazy day, maybe Sunday would just take care of itself and not bother me.

Sandor invariably went out on Sundays looking just like the rest of the week except no tie. He even carried his briefcase and I suppose he went somewhere where everybody spoke five languages and read many newspapers and argued about politics all day.

Miss Neap either solved or compounded the weekend problem at least once a month by visiting her mother in Leeds. At other times she maintained a full Sunday cultural schedule and working as she did at a ticket agency was never without something to do. She was an avid museum-goer in the afternoons and favoured music in the evenings, overdressing smartly and appropriately for each part of the day.

Mrs Inchcliff was out scavenging as usual. I believe Sunday was her building-site day, she tended to bring home new-looking timber and sometimes clean bricks, all to be hoarded in the lumber-room, perhaps against the advent of a new friend handy with tools.

So I had the place to myself, and from my window looked out across the common where the trains clattered by and the shining rails maintained their perspective vanishing towards Putney. On the common, people smiled and strolled on the paths and on the grass stepping round and over the dogshit while other people smiled and strolled as their dogs shitted on the paths and on the grass. The paddling pool was full of children. The sandbox, the roundabout, the swings, the rocking-horses and mums and dads were active on the playground. The washers of cars on our street were at it looking at the same time virtuous and given over to sensuality. The Greyhound Widow passed, her phantom husband dragging a silent foot. The trees had not so many leaves now, one day soon a heavy rain would leave them bare and winter would be here. ‘Ah,’ I said aloud standing at the window.

The Sunday papers were too many for me, they’d not get read today, I wasn’t up to any intellectual activity. The turtles would be swimming, swimming and it occurred to me for the first time that for me they’d always be swimming. I’d never know whether they’d got to where they were going. At first I’d been obsessed with setting them free. Then it had become a heavy task I was committed to. Then we did it and afterwards it seemed a blank and empty thing. Now it felt a good thing again. The turtles were swimming to where they wanted to be. But that was their swimming, they couldn’t do mine.

What was my swimming then? To go on working at the bookshop or somewhere else? To live alone or with someone? To stop smoking or not? To go on getting up in the morning or perhaps not? If I walked round the corner K257 would say ‘I believe’. Believe what? I picked up the stone from Antibes. Look, Dad, here’s a good one. Gone, gone, everything gone. Don’t cry, Willy. I didn’t. On the other hand, do cry, why not. I did.

I went downstairs. Miss Neap’s News of the World was still lying in the hall by the front door, perhaps she’d decided to sleep in and let Sunday look after itself for once. I went over to the paddling pool. The children and the noise suddenly moved into close-up focus. A little boy punched a smaller one and seemed satisfied. Two little girls pranced splashing by, all flashing legs and flying hair. I dropped the stone from Antibes into the shallow water. It lay on the bottom looking up at me until the water glazed with light and I couldn’t see the stone any more.

In the sunlight I went for a little walk down the New King’s Road towards the Putney Bridge. They’d been resurfacing the road. Here and there were little huddles of air-compressors, asphalt-spreaders and rollers, red wooden tripods, yellow blinker lamps drawn up and bivouacked until Monday. At a zebra-crossing all the Belisha beacons were bagged in black plastic. I felt that one was never really alone while there was someone to bag the Belisha beacons in black plastic.

I went back to my room. Evening was gathering in. The day hadn’t been at all bad and this was the easy part, the downhill run. I didn’t turn the lights on, let the room fill up with twilight and silence.

Mrs Inchcliff came back, unloaded her plunder and put it in the lumber-room, rattled about in the downstairs kitchen. I went out for fish and chips, brought it back to my room, ate by the light of the street lamps, had a beer.

There was a knock at the door. Mrs Inchcliff. ‘Have you seen Miss Neap today?’ she said.

‘No,’ I said, ‘I haven’t seen her since yesterday evening.’

‘Neither have I,’ she said. ‘And I always do see her sometime on Sunday, either when she picks up her paper or when she goes out.’

‘Perhaps she’s gone to Leeds,’ I said.

‘I don’t think so,’ said Mrs Inchcliff. ‘She was here last night when I went to bed, I saw her coming out of the bathroom. And if she’d left this morning she’d have taken the paper with her. I’ve just gone up to her room with it and knocked on the door but there was no answer. The door’s on the latch but I didn’t open it.’

We went down to Miss Neap’s room on the first floor at the end of the hall. Mr Sandor coming in just then saw us and paused at the foot of the stairs. I opened the door, turned on the light.

Miss Neap had hanged herself. The window in her room was a tall one and at the top of it behind the pelmet there was a stout old iron hook screwed into the window-frame. It had been put there a long time ago for a curtain rod and drapes much heavier than the present ones. She’d stood on a chair and used several bright-coloured silk scarves knotted together. The chair lay on the floor where she’d kicked it over. She was dressed for the street in her tightly belted leopardskin coat and her newest purple suede boots. Her pince-nez had fallen off her nose and dangled from its ribbon. She must have been hanging there for some time, her face had gone quite dark and her powder and rouge and shiny blue eye-makeup looked ghastly. When the police doctor came he said the time of death had been between three and four on Sunday morning.

The room was in good order. She’d been there ten years, had done the place over and bought new furniture just as I’d done. The wallpaper and the drapes had a floral pattern. The bed was made up smartly into a green couch, colourful pillows carefully arranged on it and a large cloth Snoopy dog. Some paperback thrillers, some P. G. Wodehouse. A paperback Four Quartets. A copy of The Book of Common Prayer open at At the Burial of the Dead at Sea.

On the dresser were her Postal Savings books, a funeral directors’ card and a receipt showing payment of £130. A note told us that arrangements had been made for cremation, that she wanted no funeral service of any kind whatsoever and that it was her wish that the cremation be completely unattended. Her mother in Leeds was not to be notified until after the cremation and her savings were then to be sent to her. The book showed a balance of £936.27. Next to it was a framed photograph of her mother and father and Miss Neap as a girl. No more than nine or ten years old but you could recognize the face as being the same one.