Distant Voices Read online

  I put on the kettle.

  The next morning he rowed across to us dressed, unbelievably, in a smart suit. Just before church he whisked Aunt Andrea away into the dining room. Moments later they reappeared together, smiling.

  ‘This delightfully old-fashioned boy has asked me if he may propose to you, Chris,’ said Aunt Andrea, her whole face alight with laughter. ‘I said I thought probably that would be all right.’ Picking up her prayer book with a little chuckle she went out into the hall, pointedly closing the door behind her.

  I looked at Edward. He was grinning. ‘As I told you, Christine, I don’t hold with mutiny. You do as you’re told.’ He held out a little box. ‘Try it for size, if you please.’

  This engagement ring fitted me perfectly.

  ‘Happy Christmas, darling,’ he whispered, and he took me into his arms.

  Choices

  He was tall for an old man, perhaps over six foot in spite of his stoop, with a large ungainly frame to match his size, his skin dried up, leather-like, desiccated by eighty years of wind and weather and pain. Up and down he plodded, his feet leaving damp circles in the sand, rhythmically sweeping back and forth with the heavy disk on its long handle, slowly, methodically beating the tide back towards the setting sun.

  Louise narrowed her eyes. She should have left for home by now. Hers was the last car in the car park on the cliff but still she lingered, watching. There was something so dogged, so determined, in his persistence. She had first seen him earlier in the café at the top of the cliff and had been struck then by his self-contained poise as he sat and drank his cup of tea and slowly reached into his pocket for the coins to pay. The tip he left the waitress was, she noticed, as much again as the price of the drink. He had reached down for the metal detector lying under the table, stooping painfully, and then straightened with a groan.

  ‘Not found your treasure yet, Granddad?’ The waitress grinned at him, pocketing her fifty pence.

  He smiled. ‘Not yet, sweetheart. You’ll be the first to know.’

  He walked slowly past Louise and out of the café and turned along the path out of sight.

  ‘What’s he hoping to find?’ Louise had pulled out her purse and was counting the money for her own bill.

  ‘Gawd knows!’ The girl tossed her head. ‘Silly old goat.’

  Louise frowned. The tone seemed so cruel. The girl was young, her flesh plump and pink and moist. She had her life before her. Surely she could spare a kind word about an old man. What, Louise wondered, would she say about her? A middle-aged woman, still slim, still, she liked to think, attractive, but probably, well, past it! Gathering up her things Louise made her way out and looked after him. Already he had plodded down the wooden steps against the cliff and was walking out across the sand.

  She had come out to the beach to think. After all, it was a fair bet at this time of year that it would be empty. All the children were back at school and the guest houses and hotels were emptying fast now that the sun had grown hazy, allowing healing mists to drift up the beach and across the dried gold of the countryside. The shops on the small seafront further along the cliff were one by one being boarded up now, before the autumnal gales hurled the sand across the esplanade and piled rank weed, dredged by the storms from the depths of the sea, onto their doorsteps.

  All day she had worried at her problem, tearing it to shreds, tossing the pieces back and forth, hand to hand, like a juggler, watching the alternate possibilities glitter in the sun and spin in and out of reach. Man or career; love or money; adventure or security. Only one. Not both. Not possibly both. If either one had come six months ago without the other there would have been no contest, no problem, but now …

  The man had come first. Tall, tanned, his hair a short wild tangle of exuberance, his eyes a piercing blue. He was no Lothario. For a long time she had thought he had not even noticed her as he sat at his library desk, surrounded by heavy tomes, scribbling away at his notes. Twice she had found him books from the book stacks in the cellars and carried them to his desk, but the face he turned to hers for a second had been distracted, preoccupied, with – she had glanced at the titles again – the history of South America, the ancient peoples of Peru, the Nasca lines.

  When he saw her in the restaurant behind the library however he had come over without hesitation, charming, diffident, apologetic. Magnetic. Within five minutes she was terrifyingly, totally in love.

  Love – wild, abandoned, passionate love – always seemed to have bypassed Louise and she had thought she was probably temperamentally unsuited to the state. It was not that men did not find her attractive. They had always pursued her – if sometimes a little more respectfully than she might have wished. Even now she was tiptoeing around the idea of accepting that she was perhaps on the verge of middle age, they still came, still admired, still with the old-fashioned courtesy she seemed to inspire in them, taking her to concerts and theatres and art galleries. They were in fact so respectful that they did not even seem to resent each other. When, as must happen from time to time, one found out about another, there was no bristling of hackles, no flare of testosterone, no drawing of swords. Just a polite, perhaps reproachful, hurt.

  Fraser was different. It did not occur to him that to love her would be disrespectful. He did not seem to see her grey hair as a warning or treat her intellect as a barrier or notice her sensible mien. What he had seen was the hidden passion, the longing, the warmth, the desire for romance even she had not known were there.

  Galleries and museums, yes. Concerts and plays, no. No time. He took her instead to Avebury, to Stonehenge and to the Rollright Stones, to sites of geomantic significance and electro-magnetic force. He lectured her on ley lines and geophysics and geopathic stress and particles and he was completely honest: he had a wife; a wife he still quite liked. They were not divorced, but they no longer lived together. ‘She wanted a home, I’m a wanderer.’ He shrugged and smiled. ‘I tried. I really tried. I’m still fond of her, but she’s found herself another chap. He’ll give her everything I can’t. So I wish her well.’ The way he shrugged had alerted her suspicions though. She would not be going into anything blind.

  His other, greater love and one he admitted to freely, was for the planet, for Gaia, for his studies.

  She was exhilarated, excited, horrified, dumbfounded by this other passion, by his eclectic intellectual curiosity and what she saw as his blinkered dismissal of recognised science. He was brilliant, shocking, everything she had ever wanted in a man – and he was going to South America in October.

  He had told her about that too on the first day they had met; it wasn’t until almost the last that he asked her to go with him. She was delirious with excitement, but something in her said, Stop. Consider. Two days later she was offered the post of senior archivist at the City Museum.

  The sun was dropping towards the horizon fast; the shadow of the old man grew longer, an ectomorph etched in the sand by the last dying rays. Unconsciously she was following his path, her shadow parallel with his, turning when he turned, walking when he walked as she worried at her problem, tearing at it like some tangle of woven thread.

  When he headed up towards her, his back to the sea, she did not at first notice. Her eyes were fixed on the scatter of shells lying in the rippled tide wrack. It was several seconds before she noticed that their shadows had merged and now were one. She looked up, startled. The metal detector was switched off now, at rest, hanging from its strap on his shoulder. The old man’s eyes were on the heaped crimson clouds far to the west. ‘Be dark soon.’ His voice was rich and rumbling, projected from his chest. When she didn’t respond he went on. ‘I saw you up there in the café drinking Trish’s best.’ He gave a rueful chuckle. ‘Little miss! Bad mouth me, did she, when I left?’

  Louise smiled. ‘Nothing too awful.’

  The chuckle turned into a full blown belly laugh. ‘Tactful lady, aren’t you! Trish and I understand each other. I’ve got to know her quite well. She makes a wo
nderful cheese sandwich with home-made pickle.’

  ‘Do you come here every day then?’ Of one accord, companionably, they had begun walking again, slowly, heading away from the darkening sea towards the cliff.

  He nodded. ‘Most.’

  ‘Have you ever found anything exciting?’

  He nodded. ‘One or two things. Jewellery mostly, that people have lost.’

  ‘Was it worth much?’

  He shook his head. ‘I take it to the police. Sometimes I don’t hear any more. People take it and that’s it. No word of thanks. One or two things I was given when no one claimed them. I got a reward once.’

  From the sigh in his voice she received the distinct impression that rewards were not the purpose of his search. She glanced at him sideways and found she was reluctant to probe further. A veil of sadness and of prohibition fluttered between them in the dusk.

  ‘Would a sympathetic old ear help at all?’ He glanced at her.

  It was her turn to give a rueful smile. ‘Is it that obvious?’

  ‘’Fraid so.’

  ‘I have to make a decision.’

  ‘Does it involve a man?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Heart versus head?’

  She nodded again.

  ‘If you say “no” will you regret it for the rest of your life?’

  ‘Probably.’

  ‘And all your friends are standing back and falling over themselves not to give advice?’

  ‘I haven’t discussed it with my friends.’ It was true. In fact she had barely seen any of her friends for weeks.

  The old man had glanced at her face and she had the feeling he could read her thoughts. ‘Because your friends will back up your head and common sense and you, the you who is at the core of your being, want your heart to triumph.’

  She laughed. ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘Am I allowed to know the choices?’

  ‘The job of my dreams – one that won’t come up again – versus –’ she hesitated.

  ‘The man of your dreams? There will be other jobs; you are clearly a talented and intelligent woman. Not the same job perhaps, but others. Will there be another …’ he paused. ‘What is his name?’

  ‘Fraser.’

  ‘Fraser, like you, is a unique human being. There will be other human beings; there will never be another Fraser.’

  ‘You think I should go with him.’ Her mouth had gone dry and she realised with surprise that it was with fear at the thought of reaching a decision.

  They had reached the steps that led up the cliff and they stopped and faced each other. ‘I asked a woman to marry me sixty years ago. She said yes, but then, for reasons unlike yours, but as troubling, she changed her mind. In my unhappiness I went abroad. To India.’ He paused. ‘I had no way of knowing that she would regret changing her mind and spend forty years looking for me.’ Abruptly he turned and began climbing the steep stair, pulling himself up on the wooden handrail. She followed him and at the top he turned and swung round. ‘It’s her ring I’m looking for down there. The ring she gave back to me down on the beach. I was so upset I threw it into the sea. It was too late when I found out. She was dead.’

  ‘I’m so sorry.’ Louise put her warm hands over his cold ones. ‘I’m so sorry.’

  ‘Don’t be. I’m a silly old goat. That’s what Trish calls me. Sentimental. I tell her it helps to pass the time.’ He was panting from the climb. ‘Shall we go and plague Trish? She’s usually open for another half-hour or so, till the market packs up. I’ll get her to make us a sandwich.’

  Louise stood still as he walked away. The letter she had written to the museum accepting the job was in the pocket of her coat. She touched it with cautious fingers. Louise: the Louise who had run her life since she was a small child, sensibly, calmly, rationally – successfully – would post the letter now, in the box in the wall beside the café. That Louise always won in the end and she had never regretted it. But the other Louise, the passionate, impetuous, excited Louise; the Louise whose heart had finally rebelled; the Louise who longed to walk on desert sand and sail the turbid waters of the Amazon. What of her?

  The old man had stopped. He looked back and saw her draw the envelope out of her pocket. Slowly she walked after him towards the café. In front of the red rectangular box in the old flint wall she raised her hand and held the letter for a moment before its gaping mouth.

  He held his breath.

  Her hand had begun to shake. She stepped back, staring down at the envelope, then abruptly she tore it in two.

  Looking up she smiled at the old man and shrugged. ‘Come on,’ she said, ‘let’s have that cheese and pickle sandwich.’

  Two’s Company

  Matthew gazed into her eyes, made sapphire in the candlelight, and smiled as he reached for the bottle of wine. The evening had gone well. They had eaten gloriously and drunk elegantly and Petra had confided in him details of family and friends, of hopes and dreams, of fantasies and fears.

  The fears intrigued him. There were so many. The huge eyes with their infinite depths of blue set off by the glossy chestnut curls and skin of creamiest porcelain grew larger and more eloquent with every terror she listed. Acrophobia, which meant abnormal fear of heights, she told him with a certain modest pride, spiders and lifts and thunder and wasps, and above all, ghosts.

  ‘Ghosts?’ He wondered, not for the first time, if she were winding him up. Increasingly he thought she was. ‘To be afraid of ghosts, you have to see them.’

  She smiled. ‘I do.’

  He risked a long, melting gaze into the fathomless blue and decided that, wound up or not, if he were not to risk drowning he must have her, and soon. The glimmer of a plan was emerging. ‘Do you like ghost stories?’

  She nodded. Her eyes held his. She did not appear to need ever to blink those sweeping lashes.

  First a joke story. She was too serious. He needed to see her relax, to see for sure if she had a sense of humour. There could be no long-term relationship without a sense of humour.

  ‘I could tell you the shortest ghost story in the world,’ he said. He paused for a reaction – encouragement perhaps, or even a scowl. She continued to gaze, so, a little laboriously, he went on, ‘“Do you believe in ghosts?” asks a man of his companion, on a train. “No,” says the companion. “Oh, don’t you,” says the first man. And disappeared.’

  He paused expectantly. It was usually good for a groan, at least.

  She greeted the story with silence. Her eyes grew, if anything, larger. He suppressed a sigh.

  ‘Do you have a ghost in your flat, then?’

  He topped up her glass again, though she hadn’t touched it since the waiter had brought their coffee and now the wine was held from spilling by only the meniscus.

  When he had first met this girl at the office party he had assumed himself well in when she agreed to dinner. Now he was uneasy. She had talked too much, lightly, filling silences, but telling nothing. Nothing of her inner soul.

  Perhaps she was a ghost herself. Amused at the thought he sat back and surveyed her through half closed eyes. Haloed by candlelight, shimmering in her blue shirt and dark silk jacket, she certainly looked ethereal. He reached out a cautious finger and touched her hand as it lay on the table. It was suspiciously cold and he withdrew with a shiver, almost convinced by his own fantasy.

  ‘I’ll introduce you to him, if you like.’

  He realised suddenly that she was speaking again in that curiously husky drawl which he had found at first so attractive and now was in danger of finding monotonous.

  ‘To him?’ he echoed, puzzled. Some lover? Some husband? Some father then, heaven forbid, who would condemn utterly his politically incorrect motives for taking this beautiful creature to dinner and thence, hopefully, to bed.

  ‘My ghost.’ She smiled.

  He sighed with relief. ‘I’d like that.’ He looked sincere. He was sincere. After all, was that not the point of the ploy? His ghost story – his n
ext, real, more frightening and possibly true, ghost story about the fiend that lurked in the attics of the house in which he had been brought up as a child – was supposed to scare her, lead to his putting his arm around her shoulders, apologising for terrifying her, comforting her, reassuring her. Instead she had anticipated his next move for him and was, presumably, not afraid of this her own, private ghost.

  ‘Is he your flatmate?’ He asked with a smile. It sounded cool. Not witty perhaps, but at least humorous. And tolerant. No one could accuse him of being – not racist exactly. Corporealist perhaps?

  She did not reply for a moment, then he saw the laughter, there at last behind the blue. ‘You could say so. There’s no one else.’

  Now, that was bonus information. A double bonus. An empty flat waiting for them and, at last, signs of a sense of humour. He reached automatically for the bottle to top up her glass again but still she hadn’t touched it. He refilled his own instead and glanced round for the waiter. The bill, a taxi back to her place and then with a bit of luck – heaven.

  They had to wait for the taxi in the cold, but on the plus side she did not demur when he put his arm around her shoulders to counteract her shivering when at last they settled into its seat.

  She lived in Notting Hill. A top-floor flat in a substantial house with pillared porch and white blistered paintwork. There was no lift and he was panting when they reached her door. The landing was dimly lit. He watched her pull her key out of her jacket pocket. ‘Why aren’t you afraid, living all alone with a ghost?’

  He saw her smile, quickly hidden, as she turned to the door and inserted the key. ‘We’ve grown used to each other.’

  The flat was in darkness. She groped for a switch and a shaded lamp came on at the far end of a pale-carpeted corridor.

  ‘Throw your coat here.’ She indicated a chair as she led the way into the living room and turned on more lights.