Small kindnesses, p.4
Small Kindnesses, page 4
He moves about the house in a familiar pattern - unpacking his bag, putting the washing on, changing into his blue, striped pyjamas, brushing his teeth. He thinks about Lily. She’ll get his letter soon – maybe Monday or Tuesday. He imagines her reacting to the word ‘was’ – ‘Rose was my wife.’ Something occurs to him – maybe when she reads that sentence she’ll just think he’s divorced her. Maybe it won’t sink in until she gets to the end of the next sentence, when he spells it out. He wonders how far her heart will sink. He wonders where she’ll read his letter – in her hallway? At work? What does she look like? Will she cry? All these questions. He takes a new novel from the mobile library to bed, and after losing patience with the idiotic protagonist, he saves his place with a tissue and clicks off his bedside lamp.
He drifts off by imagining the twins swinging back and forth, back and forth. It comforts him, like counting sheep. He can hear the braaaak, week! braaaak, week! as the chains squeak against the top-bar. He can smell the boy’s floral soap-powder smell when they swing towards him, their grinning faces move closer and then away, closer and then away. The train ticket appears again and flutters in the air between them. The twins spot it and reach out for it as they swing towards it, putting themselves off balance, just missing it each time. He wants to tell them to stop moving about on the swings, he tries to call to them, but there’s no sound. He moves his hand to his mouth and there’s nothing there, just smooth skin. He tries to open his eyes, a trick he’s used before to escape from a dream that’s turning into a nightmare, but they’re stuck. He can only watch helplessly as the twins lean further and further towards the train ticket as it dances in the air like a moth. It’s horribly inevitable. This time they both lean too far forwards and tip off into the air with their mouths shaped into huge ‘ohs’ and their eyes wide, and they fly through the air in an arc towards Leonard. His panic rises as he stands rooted to the spot with his arms out wide but not wide enough - he won’t be able to catch them both. He can’t even open his mouth to make a noise.
How may I be of service ?
The first thought that rises up to greet him the next morning is that Gloria is due to visit at eleven o’clock. He usually enjoys having visitors, but there’s something niggling him about Gloria. He can’t quite get at the feeling. It slips away from him like soap in the bath. He cranes his neck - the clock says six-thirty am. He feels comfortable and warm in his bed, as if his body had grown soft during the night, loosened, melted into the sheets. After some consideration he turns over to go back to sleep. He feels ridiculously guilty for a sixty-two-year-old man in his own bed on a Sunday morning, who doesn’t have to get up for anything anyway. Will these ‘oughts’ and ‘shoulds’ ever leave him? He can blame his father for this particular self-inflicted rule. He remembers being turfed out of bed as a young boy early morning after early morning, his father muttering something about ‘sin’ and ‘shame’. When he was old enough to resent the sneers of ‘lazy-bones’ at breakfast, he started getting up before the old man, even though he had to set his alarm ridiculously early. His father started setting his alarm clock earlier too, and eventually they both ended up in the cold living room, building the fire at five thirty in the morning, blinking hard, each trying to demonstrate how wide awake they were to the other. Silly testosterone games, he thinks, as he drifts back into delicious sleep. Silly buggers we were.
He’s rudely woken minutes later by a bell ringing. He jumps out of bed and trips over his slippers, catching himself with a sudden hand on the wall. He’s already at his wardrobe and pulling on his trousers when he realises that the bell is still ringing and that it belongs to the phone, not to the front door. He’s caught between annoyance and amusement and chooses the latter when he realises he’s pulling his trousers on over his pyjama bottoms. It must have rung at least six times now – how long will they wait? It better not be one of those window salesmen – he’s not sure how polite he’ll be. He pulls off his trousers and lurches into the hall, making clearing sounds in his throat and saying ‘testing testing 1 2 3’ before picking up the receiver.
‘Hello, Leonard Mutch speaking?’
His mother used to laugh at him when he answered the phone like this. She thought it ‘la-di-da’, whatever that is. She’d put on a posh voice and ask him if she could speak to the lady of the house, or tell him that the Ming vases he’d ordered were ready for delivery. He’d picked up the habit at his first job in a bank, he’d enjoyed being asked to give his whole name to customers. It had made him feel like a proper man, the kind of man who leans nonchalantly against walls smoking Marlboros and winking at the ladies. The truth is he was a pale and pimply sixteen year old without any balls. Maybe he’s still trying to inject some courage into himself, remind himself that he’s a grown-up.
‘Hello, is that Mr. Mutch?’
The voice is quivery, gentle. She’s speaking as if she expects him to put the phone down on her at any moment.
‘Yes, this is him.’
He sounds short to himself. They’re going to try and sell him something, he’s sure of it. He gets ready to be annoyed at his privacy being invaded. He imagines some poor girl cooped up in a windowless office all day with a stilted script in front of her and an impossible target to meet.
‘Oh, hello. I’m – I was wondering if… if it would be possible to, like you said...’
As he waits for her to spit it out, he feels himself softening towards her. She sounds older than he first thought. Maybe she’s got three children at home, maybe she relies on the extra money from commissions. He steps back and keeps quiet.
‘Like you said. It would be good to meet up...’ A pause. ‘If that would be alright? I don’t want to get in your way.’
She sounds pained, twisting in her embarrassment, pinned on his silence like a moth. He can’t understand what she’s saying. Why would they want to meet him?
‘I’m sorry, I’m not interested in whatever it is you’re trying to sell – thank you for calling anyway.’ He prepares to put the phone down, his head still muzzy with sleep, and pauses. He’s intrigued to hear what’s next on this woman’s script. Maybe it’s her first day.
‘Oh, I’m not – I didn’t want to sell you anything. Oh, goodness, I haven’t even told you who I am yet. You must be wondering… what a silly…’
She keeps starting new sentences and trailing unhurriedly off into silence. Her voice that reminds him of classical music.
‘It’s Lily, Lily Sorenson. You wrote back to me, it arrived here yesterday, when I was… the letter that is. I’ve just got in - I’ve been visiting my friend in Hampshire. It was here waiting for me, on the... I hope I haven’t called too early?’
The realisation reaches him like a splash of cold water on his face. She can’t have his letter already – he only posted it on Friday afternoon. He imagines a postman poised to snatch it from the red box and drive it straight to the sorting office, where it whizzes about on those conveyor belts and gets rushed into a little red van to drive it especially to Lily’s house. Is it too early? He looks at his watch. It’s nearly a quarter past ten. He’s slept in for hours! He hears what Rose would have said: you must have been tired, love – her cool fingers skimming his forehead to test his temperature. Rose would have told him to lie on in, and offered to bring him up a nice cup of tea. The voice on the phone continues.
‘I just thought I’d call you now, straight away, when I had… while I still had the nerve. I was… ‘ Her voice changes, becomes deeper and more deliberate. ‘I was so sorry to hear about Rose. So sorry.’
Leonard makes a small noise in his throat in reply.
‘And here I am rabbiting on like a loony… I haven’t even given you a chance to say anything.’
The flow of words stops here abruptly. He can almost hear her holding her breath, waiting for him to speak. He isn’t sure what to say, scrabbles around for somewhere to start.
‘Lily. I thought you were someone else.’
‘That’s OK, it’s my fault.’ He notices a faint accent to match her surname, somewhere Scandinavian, or maybe he’s imagining it. He’s still tying to guess her. There’s a long silence and he realises she’s waiting for an answer. He feels a little panicky; he wants more time to think it over. Does he want to meet her, talk about Rose with her? He has a suspicion that everyone else around him is getting tired of talking about Rose. The prospect of an interested audience is enough to decide it for him.
‘Yes, I’d like to – meet up with you. I’d like that.’
‘Oh, that’s… I’m so relieved, I was thinking… So – shall we arrange something now? I’m not too far from you; I didn’t get very far away from Cowley either, I should have tried harder...’
They arrange to meet later in the week. She offers to come to his house if it’s more convenient, but he’d rather somewhere neutral. He suggests a café he knows in a small town roughly half-way between them. Before she goes, she asks him how he’s coping, on his own, since Rose died. He’s surprised at how directly she approaches his grief, how unafraid she seems of hearing about it. She sounds as if she wants to know the truth and so that’s what he tells her - that he’s still wading through, that he’s through the worst of it. She says, ‘You shouldn’t let your sorrow come higher than your knees.’ After they say their goodbyes he stands for a few minutes at the telephone table, running his fingers through his hair. That phrase about sorrow, the tune she set it to, skitters through his head like a repeating peal of bells.
He doesn’t have time to take Pickles out for a walk and promises to take him out later on, talking in a loud, clear voice with plenty of hand gestures, as if speaking to a foreigner. He thinks of Rose as he does this - it had always irked her that animals weren’t able to understand her, apart from one-word commands like ‘walk’ or ‘no’. Most of all she hated taking any of their pets to the vet and not being able to explain why. After one especially difficult car journey when Rose wept more loudly than their cat caterwauled, Leonard started leaving her at home, fretting and pacing the kitchen. In later years she’d call him on their new mobile every five minutes to get updates. When he got home he’d call her a big softy and squeeze her squidgy bits. He’s staring blankly at the toaster when the doorbell goes. He’s jolted away from Rose’s squidgy bits and checks the time again. Half past ten - it can’t be Gloria yet. He isn’t even out of his pyjamas! He hides behind the sofa and waits while whoever it is rings the doorbell again and then he scuttles to his bedroom, staying low, to peer out of the window and see who it is. It’s only Peggy from next door, maybe coming with some more bribes for Pickles. That last cut of pork she brought was almost too good for a dog; Leonard was a whisker away from cooking it for himself with a nice dollop of apple sauce. Pickles only would have watched him eating and made him feel guilty.
As soon as Peggy is out of sight he gets on with the same morning rituals he’s been carrying out for almost half a century. An unhurried visit to the toilet so he can finish another chapter of the book about boats he keeps on the bathroom shelf. Teeth brushed, with triple-striped toothpaste – he likes the way the colours come out of the tube perfectly separated, like magic. A shave using the zesty lemon and lime gel Ed bought him for his birthday. He has a close look at his face, taking in his short salt-and-peppered spiky hair, his smile-lines, his sharp cheekbones. He doesn’t scrub up too badly; he reckons he could pass for fifty-five. He winks suggestively at himself in the mirror and slaps his own backside on Rose’s behalf.
He’s just finishing his tea when the door-bell rings again. Dead-on eleven - Gloria’s always punctual. She bustles in, bringing in her usual brisk air of clean clothes and baking bread, all efficiency and slightly fake cheerfulness. She started visiting him when Rose died – she came every single day that first fortnight. He can’t picture her being around the house during those first days. He can’t remember much at all – staring at the switched-off TV for hours on end, dripping snot and tears onto one of Rose’s skirts, walking in the woods with Pickles until his calves ached. He can remember the physical presence of his tears but it’s a mystery to him how he was feeling, what he was thinking. He was vaguely aware that there were things for him to eat, that he didn’t have to do any washing up, and that his clothes appeared clean and ironed in his cupboard. Glor didn’t say anything about Rose or what had happened - she seemed a bit embarrassed by all of that, brushing off the things he said about Rose as if they were lint on her sleeves. He is still deeply grateful to her for keeping the machinery of his life moving onwards three years ago, for keeping him alive.
‘Morning, Mr. Mutch. How may I be of service today?’
She always calls him Mr. Mutch; it’s a joke they have. She likes to pretend she’s his servant. Sometimes it feels uncomfortably close to the truth, but it does the trick. Leonard’s noticed that people often make a joke out of things that are too difficult to say, as another way of saying them.
‘Hello Gloria. How are you this beautiful morning?’
‘Oh, fine, fine,’ she says, dismissively, anxious that they move on to him and his wellbeing. ‘So, how are you finding those curtains we re-hemmed for you last fortnight? Looking neater?’
When Gloria had first started visiting, there was always plenty to be taken care of – hand-washing, fabric softener, the right kind of fluid to use when washing windows. It shamed him that Rose had been carrying out all of these jobs without him even realising. Maybe it would have been the same if he’d died first - she wouldn’t have known how to change a plug, or that she had to re-fill the window screen washer.
‘Yes thanks, all tickety-boo. There isn’t anything to be done today, Gloria. How about you just sit down and drink some tea with me instead?’
‘Oh, there’s always more to be done. What about that button I saw on your shirt last week that needed sewing? And the cushion covers?’
‘Done,and done. You’ve taught me all I know, Gloria – I think you may have talked yourself out of a job.’
‘I knew I shouldn’t have given away all of my secrets. Well, I’ll be off then!’ she jokes, picking up her bag and pulling on her coat again.
This is a scenario they’ve repeated before, and at this point he usually pretends he’s remembered something and says ‘WAIT!’ and tells her about an emergency with a dirty rug in the spare room, or a stubborn stain on the kitchen tiles. Today he feels tired of it, and besides, he can’t think of anything that needs to be done anyway. She has taught him well, although it’s often been a bit of a job to get it out of her. Blood out of a stone. Leonard can’t think of this phrase without the accompanying visual image, of him squeezing a stone between his cupped hands so tightly that it starts to get sticky and red. So instead of joining in the usual charade he takes her bag from her and plonks it onto the sofa.
‘Oh Gloria, just sit down and be quiet, and I’ll bring you a cup of tea,’ he says.
As Rose would have said, this takes the wind out of her sails. She drops herself onto the sofa like a bag of shopping, and he can feel her searching for some clever, sharp words to come back at him with. She settles on ‘Oh, you big bully,’ before sitting back with a sour face. He smiles to himself and goes to the kitchen to put more water into the kettle.
They sit awkwardly and drink their tea. Leonard makes conversation about what has been in the papers recently, the weather. She isn’t responsive - it’s hard work. The stone image comes to his mind again, he’s squeezing and squeezing. He even does his ‘Pickles chasing rabbits’ impression which usually raises a smile – nothing. He wonders if she’s sulking. She leaves half an hour later, muttering ‘…one of these days…’ under her breath and giving him a perfunctory peck on the cheek. She leaves an uncomfortable atmosphere behind in the flat. His stomach comes to the rescue with a loud gurgle, like someone clearing their throat and waiting for you to notice them. He brushes the awkward feeling away by starting to think about a belated breakfast. He’s got some cheese muffins in the freezer, and some real butter in the fridge...
The rest of the day passes in a pleasant blur of crosswords and pottering about with a Johnny Cash soundtrack. He puts his modest CD collection into alphabetical order, and cleans the gap between the fridge and the door, screwing up his face at miscellaneous lumps of old food. After lunch he goes on a long walk with Pickles, who disgraces himself by finding a flat, dead rat in the hedgerow. He drags it along behind him by the tail for a few minutes before Leonard spots it and makes him leave it behind.
He remembers Rose’s irrational fear of mice and other little harmless mammals - he doesn’t know where it came from. She used to lie awake in bed some nights and nudge him awake, asking him to listen to some tiny noise she imagined as tiny mice feet scrabbling along under the bed or in the attic. Raine looked after the school hamster Hammie one Easter, and Rose couldn’t even venture in to put clean clothes on Raine’s bed knowing that the hamster cage was in the same room. She got herself into quite a state once, when a rat had skittered across the path and into a bush in front of them when they were walking by a river. She flatly refused to walk any further and Leonard had to take her back along the path and walk to the car on his own to pick her up. ‘Highly strung’ was the phrase his mother had used to describe her. She’s certainly passed on her fair share of those genes to Raine.
It feels blissful to be without people again after such a full weekend, before such a full week ahead. But there are also tinges of loneliness as he washes up his single plate and reads through the TV guide. He scolds himself out loud, calling himself a ‘silly old bugger’. He looks forward all week to being alone, and when he finally gets there he doesn’t want to stay for as long as he thought he did. So difficult to feel satisfied, at rest, even after sixty-two years of practise. Sometimes he imagines life as walking a tightrope – just when you think you’re balanced, your body shifts over to the right and you have to make an effort to pull it back over to the left, then you need to compensate… It’s like when the sun shines at full strength and you run out into the garden with your crossword book and a sun hat and before long you get too hot and have to sit in the shade where you get too cool and have to move back into the sun. Maybe that’s what living is all about - the moving-towards-shade or the moving-towards-heat. If the temperature were always perfect, wouldn’t we just get bored? It’s getting dark. He gets up to draw his curtains and instead stands at his window and looks into a house across the street. There’s a light on upstairs, and Leonard can see into the living room where a couple are sitting next to each other on the sofa. He wonders what they’re saying to each other. He watches them for too long before pulling the curtains shut.
