In the end they had to gather up their things and run across the rose garden and out through the gates on to the road. They stood under a streetlamp, soaked to the skin and out of breath and shivering.
Then, looking at each other, they began to laugh.
The Colour of Real Life
Eight o’clock in the evening, a church bell tolling somewhere far away, across the valley, a shimmer at the limit of her hearing. Tired after the long journey north, Glade leaned on the five-bar gate and yawned. The sun had already fallen behind the hill, but its rays were fanning out against the sky, and the vault of glowing violet above her made her arms look tanned. On the way home from work that week, she had paused outside a house in Notting Hill, its garden lush and secretive, its front room empty but flooded with a warm gold light. As always, a feeling she didn’t understand passed through her. It wasn’t envy. She didn’t want to live in a house like that. No, it was closer to nostalgia. As if there had been a time when that had been her lot. As if she was being allowed a rare glimpse into some distant corner of her memory. Standing on the pavement outside the house it had occurred to her that her father hadn’t called for at least a month. She decided to pay him a visit. She would take food with her and cook for him. He would have no idea she was coming. He would be happy.
She lifted the stiff iron catch. The gate groaned open. Then, as she set out across the field, she noticed that no lights were showing in the caravan. Her heart quickened. Perhaps he had already gone to bed. Perhaps he was out. She felt a disappointment seep into her. The sky seemed to widen suddenly, expand. She couldn’t imagine where he might be. She knew so little about the life he lived when she wasn’t there. How he passed the time. Who he saw, if anyone. She stood still, the caravan a pale rectangle against the darkness of the hedge. Her eyes drifted upwards to the last lit shreds of cloud, thin red shapes on a mauve ground. They reminded her of the Easter she had spent with him the year before. He had hidden chocolate eggs in the field for her — but he had hidden them too well. By the time she found them, they had been attacked by animals. Some had been devoured completely, so that nothing but a twist of wizened, glittery paper had been left behind.
She crossed the field, making for the caravan. She could hear her own breathing, fast and shallow, and she knew then that she was hurrying. In that moment she sensed that something had altered. When she turned the door-handle, she was not surprised to find it locked. She peered through the window: it looked the same as always — tidy but cluttered, the contents veiled with a subtle fuzz of dust. At least he hadn’t moved. Was it possible he was trying to call her from the phone-box? Would that be too much of a coincidence? Even now, she thought, he could be trudging back along the road, cursing the fact that he had walked three miles for nothing. Then his eyes would alight on her, sitting on the steps. As if, simply by dialling her number, he had somehow cast a line and reeled her in. She reached into her bag and, taking out a can of Kwench! opened it and drank. She shivered at the taste, but finished it. Then opened another.
The sky had faded, the trees had blackened. An hour must have passed. The darkness was beginning to play tricks on her. She saw the gate swing open more than once. She saw figures appear — not just her father, but Charlie, Betty from the restaurant, even Sally James. At last she stood up, walked slowly back across the field. But instead of following the track that led to the road, she turned into the farmyard. Sprigs of Queen Anne’s lace glowed dimly in the hedgerows. She passed silent sheds, the air rich with manure and hay. When she reached the house she hesitated. There was a window next to the back door. Shadows shifted behind the curtains. She had never spoken to Mr Babb, the farmer. She didn’t even know what he looked like. At least someone was in, though.
An old woman answered the door. She had poor eyesight and thinning hair.
‘I’m looking for my father,’ Glade said. ‘He lives in the caravan. Up there.’ She pointed towards the field.
The woman turned and called over her shoulder. ‘Harry?’
Glade heard the scrape of chair-legs on a tile floor. The door opened a foot wider and a man in his middle-fifties stood beside the woman, wiping his mouth on the back of his wrist. He had the swollen eyelids of someone who had just been woken out of a deep sleep.
‘You Spencer’s daughter?’ he said.
Glade nodded. ‘Yes.’
‘He’s at the hospital.’
Her throat hurt suddenly, as if she had been shouting. She felt somebody take her by the arm.
‘You’d better come in,’ the woman said.
She sat Glade at the kitchen table, poured tea into a yellow cup. While Mr Babb finished his supper of cold roast meat and boiled potatoes, she told Glade what she knew. It had happened late on Sunday night. She was walking over to the sheds when she noticed what looked like a piece of washing lying in the field. She thought it must have blown off the line. There had been strong winds out of the north that day. Only when she got up close did she realise that it was Mr Spencer from the caravan.
‘If he hadn’t been wearing that white shirt,’ she said, ‘I’d never have seen him.’
She fetched Mr Babb, who carried Mr Spencer into the house. From there, they called an ambulance. A heart attack, it was. Nothing too serious. Still, they were keeping him in hospital for a few days, just to be on the safe side.
‘No one told me,’ Glade said quietly.
‘They tried to ring you from the hospital,’ the woman said. ‘They couldn’t get an answer.’
Glade felt her face flush. She stared at her tea-cup, which was chipped around the rim. Perhaps it, too, had been gnawed by animals.
‘There was music playing,’ Mr Babb said suddenly.
The woman looked up. ‘Music?’
‘Don’t you remember? In the field.’
‘Flamenco,’ Glade said.
The farmer and the woman peered in her direction, as if a sudden mist had filled the room and hidden her.
‘Flamenco,’ Glade said. ‘It’s Spanish.’
That night she slept in the caravan. It was too dark to make out any of her father’s possessions, but the pillow smelled of him, a smell that was both dry and sweet, like custard powder. After finishing her tea, she had asked Mr Babb where the hospital was, imagining that she could visit that same evening. The old woman answered first, saying that the hospital was twenty-five miles away. Then Mr Babb shook his head. He thought it was more like thirty. And anyway, he said, visiting hours would already be over. Glade gazed into her empty cup. That sudden heat passed over her again and she felt as if the table was easing out from under her. She scanned the room, looking for something familiar or reliable. The old stone sink, the gun leaning in the corner, the mud-streaked fridge. Her eyes struggled briefly with the curtains and their repeating twists of grey and brown and yellow. Through the half-open door she could see into a dingy corridor, sacks of grain slumped on the floor, the walls and ceiling painted green.
Mr Babb opened the drawer at the end of the table, sliding it all the way out until the delicate brass handle buried itself in his belly. His fingers moved clumsily among the jumbled contents. At last he produced a ring of grey metal that held keys of every shape and size. He could unlock the caravan for her, he announced. Or if she was worried about sleeping out there all by herself, she was welcome to the spare room. Glade thanked him, saying she would be happy in the caravan. She would feel closer to her father. She hesitated, then asked if she could call the hospital. A meaningful look passed between the farmer and the woman, the air seemed tangled for a moment, then the farmer nodded slowly and rose to his feet. He opened the cupboard behind the kitchen door and took out a plastic bag with Tesco written on one side. Reaching into the bag, he brought out a shiny, pale-pink telephone, an old model with a dial on the front instead of buttons.