Kensington Heights Read online

  He walked the remainder of the short paved path. Under the trees at the side he caught sight of the bicycle. He had forgotten that too. The fact annoyed him, offended his sense of care for equipment. Turning away from the front door he went slowly to it, shaking some of the wet from its frame and brushing the saddle with the newspaper. They had thought that it was going to be useful. Now the chain was rusty. He should have put it under cover.

  Regretfully he laid it back back against the tree and turned again to the front door. From his back pocket he took the key, studied it as though he thought it might no longer fit, then tried it in the Yale lock. It turned obediently and he pushed at the door. He had expected there to be a drift of letters and junk mail behind it but there was none. Instead, as he opened it, he came face to face with his wife. When she saw him she began to cry.

  They stood a pace apart. ‘Hello,’ Irene said wiping her face with her hand. ‘We’ve come back at the same time. Funny isn’t it. I’ve only been here a few minutes.’

  ‘Do you mind if I come in?’

  ‘Come in? Of course. Sorry.’ She stood back and he stepped into the hall lowering his head to get below the lintel. ‘It’s your house as well,’ she said. She paused. ‘I almost didn’t recognise you with your hair longer.’

  ‘I should have got it cut,’ he said a little guiltily.

  They were standing as close as they had been for a long time. It was Irene who offered her arms and put them around him. He responded, hesitant and anxious. She kissed him on the cheek and he kissed her head. ‘What a business,’ he mumbled inadequately. ‘I’m sorry I decided to come here today.’

  ‘I shouldn’t have just walked out like that,’ she said dropping her head to his chest. ‘It wasn’t right. Not just before Christmas.’

  ‘I didn’t blame you,’ he said releasing her. Her face came up. They moved into the silent sitting room with its icy fireplace and lattice windows. ‘I would have walked out on myself.’

  ‘What did you do?’ she asked.

  Savage shrugged. ‘I just stayed here. I sat in that chair. Sometimes I watched the television and sometimes I didn’t. The fire went out and I didn’t light it again. The radiator was on.’

  ‘What about food? I was worried. I tried to ring you.’

  ‘I was all right. There was enough to eat in the kitchen. I unplugged the phone.’

  ‘I went to my mother’s. What a Christmas.’

  ‘I guessed you would.’ They were standing close in the room. ‘It’s no good, is it,’ she remarked sadly. ‘It never has been, has it? Not since you came back. I’m not strong enough for it, Frank.’ Her face was desolate.

  ‘Nobody could expect you to be,’ he said. ‘Really I should have stayed in the hospital until everything was right. Until they’d sorted me out.’

  ‘Then you might have never come out,’ she said.

  ‘That’s what I was scared of.’

  They were standing, almost loitering. ‘Do you want a cup of coffee?’ she suggested. ‘I could do with one.’ She turned and went towards the kitchen. They were playing at house in their own house. After a while her call came more firmly through the open door. ‘Frank, what did you do after Christmas? Where did you go?’

  ‘To London,’ he called back. ‘I’m living in London now.’

  Irene came back into the room looking astonished. ‘London?’ But surely . . . surely that’s the last place you ought to be. Frank, you need somewhere quiet and . . .’

  ‘Isolated,’ he completed with a semblance of a smile. ‘Well, I’ve managed to find that all right. I’ve got a flat at the top of a block in Kensington. I can look out over everything.’

  ‘And it’s quiet?’ she asked. She could hear the kettle boiling. She went back into the kitchen.

  ‘It’s meant to be,’ he answered raising his voice. ‘At the start it was less than that. People in and out. But now it’s quieter. I’m going to begin work on my encyclopaedia. Remember my encyclopaedia? That’s why I came today, to get my typewriter.’

  ‘Your islands,’ she said reappearing with the cups. Her eyes rose to him. ‘You’ve always wanted to get on with that.’ She put the cups on the coffee table, wiping some dust away. ‘Only powdered milk,’ she said. She sat and they drank the coffee, already short of conversation. Irene surveyed the unwarmed room. ‘This was going to be where we lived.’

  He reached forward and patted her softly but awkwardly. ‘All I can say is I’m sorry,’ he said.

  ‘The man who put a bullet through your head isn’t, I bet,’ she said with quick bitterness.

  ‘Maybe by now he’s had a bullet through his.’

  She glanced at him. ‘Are you due to have any more treatment?’ she asked.

  ‘Nothing definite. No set appointment or anything. Dr Fenwick said to contact him, if anything went wrong. I’m taking the right course I think, waiting to see if it will all eventually go away. I’ve been pretty good recently.’

  ‘You came down by train?’ she said realising. ‘You didn’t drive.’

  ‘No, I haven’t got back to driving.’

  ‘Well, I’ve known the time you couldn’t have done that, get on a train.’

  ‘And I managed to make all the arrangements with the flat in Kensington,’ he said with a touch of pride. ‘All in one day too. January the second.’ He glanced at her. ‘I took my half from the bank, from the deposit account,’ he said.

  ‘Exactly that,’ she said quietly. ‘I know. Down to splitting the odd seventy-four pence. I had to go in there this morning.’ Her eyes went around the room. ‘We’ll be selling this now. Do you want me to make a start on it?’

  ‘I’d be grateful.’

  ‘It’s all right. I can do it. I’ll get another job when things get settled down. And you’ll be up there in your flat putting your islands together.’ They became wordless again but, before the silence could settle, she rose. ‘I must be going,’ she said with a sort of primness. She suddenly realised that the mantleshelf clock had long stopped. ‘It’s one thirty,’ she said looking at her watch.

  She went to the clock, put the hands right, and gave the key a single token turn. It began to tick boldly. ‘Not such a deathly hush,’ she said. Then she made towards the door and he stood up. The void between them was sagging. ‘I’ll manage,’ she told him. ‘I just packed a couple of cases.’

  ‘You’ll want a taxi,’ he said.

  ‘No need. I’ve got someone picking me up. A friend.’ She turned quickly and sadly held him. ‘Don’t come to the door,’ she said. ‘It’s just a friend.’ They kissed. ‘I miss you,’ she mumbled putting her cheek against his.

  ‘I miss me as well,’ he said. ‘One day perhaps I’ll turn up from somewhere.’

  There was a car noise outside and then in a moment she had gone, opening the front door and hurrying out with her cases. They had, at the final, difficult moment, exchanged telephone numbers. He returned to the room, its cheerlessness now only emphasised by the dogged ticking of the clock, and stood listening while the car moved off. He sat in the chair, in front of the black, yawning fireplace, and finished the lukewarm coffee.

  He remembered how far it had been necessary for her to travel to the psychiatric hospital but she had driven it three times a week, sharing, or trying to share, his isolation, trying to fathom his deep inner void. She had sat and held his hand when they had watched a comedy film, sitting in the dimness with other docile patients; then she drove two hours back through the night to this, their forlorn cottage, leaving him in his fortress bed besieged by shadows. Once, while he was waiting for her, he saw her in the garden below talking to Dr Fenwick. They had talked a long time half-hidden at first by the huge spread of a cedar, but then had walked into the open and towards the hospital. With a shock Savage had seen the tears she was shedding and saw that Dr Fenwick was trying to console her. Ten minutes later she had greeted him with her firm smile and lied cheerfully that she had been delayed by the traffic.

  When the
hospital authorities had finally decided, with patent reluctance, that he could leave, she had held his hand and told him not to look back. From then, from that moment, it was going to be all right, different, the only way was forward. And she would be with him all along the journey. But it was not. Living together again they had become strangers.

  Now he sat with the dregs of the coffee, surveying the purposeless room, the dull chairs, the blank television, the closed bureau they had bought at a sale. Moodily he took the cup to the kitchen and washed it under the tap. The water felt hard and cold. A spider had spun a web across the corner of one of the cabinets. Someone was at home anyway. He put the cup on the draining board and then looked around for a cloth. He pulled one of the kitchen drawers open and there was his sub-machine gun.

  He stared at it. He tried to remember putting it there. He must have done so just before going to London. Had Irene seen it?

  It was in three pieces, a Russian weapon; he picked it up, familiarly, like an old acquaintance. He clipped the pieces together hesitantly at first but then with a sudden resolve, professional facility, and finally, satisfaction. It was something he could do. He balanced the gun in one hand, then the other, and then both. It felt good to him, even now. He regarded it as a man would a secret, shameful vice. He was ashamed that he had stolen it and was not sure why he had done so. But he was glad he had it. After what had happened to him he could not help the feeling that it might come in useful, even if the trigger mechanism was missing and there was no ammunition.

  He took the weapon and without noise laid it out on the kitchen table. He put one eye to the barrel, like a telescope, and then putting it to his mouth blew through it so that it made a muted bugle sound. It could go under his bed.

  He left it on the table and walked upstairs. There were two hunched bedrooms in the roof of the cottage, warm and cambered below the thatch. He felt their closeness overhang him as he pushed open the black wooden door; their former bed was there, lying neatly abandoned. There was another door leading from the low room into the next. That was a single room where he had stumbled on the nights when he could not sleep. In the three months they had occupied the house together he had spent many open-eyed hours lying in its darkness. Fixed at the highest part of the wall in the main room was a long, scarred mirror and he caught sight of himself in the stained reflection. He had to stoop to look. His face was set as a skull, his eyes hollow, his mouth oblong.

  Against the low wall under the thatch was an area where Irene had intended to collect oddments, the sort of lumber that people gathered after occupying a house for years. But there had been no years. It contained only his army suitcase. He tugged it out patterned with dust. His name was stencilled on it in large letters: ‘Staff Sergeant F. I. Savage’ and his army number. As he pulled it towards the low door between the two rooms, a panicky bird cried out in the thatch and startled him.

  The suitcase felt as though it were not entirely empty. He banged it with the side of his hand and blew away some of the dust. The concealed bird was still clamouring. He replaced the small door, restoring its privacy, and it became stilled. Then he lifted the suitcase on to the bed, blowing away more dust. It was locked but the key was in the right-hand hole; he turned it and the hasp flew up at the first press of his thumb. Then he waited, backed away from it, as though with the abrupt thought that he might be uncovering, tampering with, a secret he would rather not know. His own perhaps. Frowning he bent again, transferred the key, turned it and clicked the second hasp. He lifted the lid of the suitcase. In it, crumpled and rolled, was his army uniform.

  He tightened his lips and picked it out, lifting the tunic gently with both hands and by the shoulders, stretching them out to their fullest extent, as though the wearer were standing to attention. His crown and stripes were dulled, the khaki fabric creased and giving off a damp odour. Once it had been the stuff of his life; his daily work clothes, his best suit. He relaxed his hold on the tunic. Now it was bent and dishevelled. Disused, like him.

  With a grunt almost of disgust he dropped it back into the case. At once he lifted it out again, with the trousers and the belt, and threw them with a faint snarl into a corner. Let them stay there. Briefly he allowed himself to think about the camouflage fatigues he was wearing when the ambush occurred. He remembered them being cut away from him. There had been a lot of blood. Then, resolutely, he went to the wardrobe where his civilian new suit and his sports jacket and grey flannels were hanging, took them and, folding them but not carefully, put them into the case. From the chest of drawers he took out his unworn shirts and underwear, and the things Irene had bought. He threw his regimental tie into the corner after the uniform. Quickly he packed underwear and socks and everything else, even an old scarf, and pushed the lid of the case down with a movement that produced a puff of air and more dust. For the last time his eyes went around the room and then he clambered out of the door and bent almost double down the twisted stairs.

  At the foot Savage paused briefly like a soldier screening a suspected sniper’s lair, considering the next cautious advance. But when he moved it was quickly. In the kitchen he took the sub-machine gun apart and placed the components separately in the case, among his shirts. Then, returning to the bleak sitting room, he opened the oak bureau in the far corner and lifted out his old, portable typewriter in its wooden case. He put some books in the suitcase and some tapes and a pocket tape recorder. On a sudden thought he took the ticking clock from the mantleshelf and pushed it in also. One of them might as well have the clock. That was everything he needed. He closed the lid and pushed home the hasps. As he did so there was a sharp knock on the kitchen window and he quickly looked up. All he could see was the dark day held within the window frame like some blank abstract painting. But there had been a sound. He stepped swiftly to the window and stood to one side looking out at an angle and then jumped as the bare end of a rose bramble, agitated by the wet breeze, appeared briefly and tapped against the glass. He grimaced.

  Now he was ready to leave. Before going from the room he stopped and, as though it deserved some courtesy, let his glance roam for the final time around the sullen walls. When they had first come there Irene had forced herself into hope and enthusiasm. Everything in their lives would be changed, new, all right. This was to be their home once he had finished with the army or, as it occurred, the army had finished with him. But even then, in the days before he was wounded, even as he went for the first time into the confined hallway, paced the rooms and sniffed out into the damp garden, even then he knew he held a doubt, a hollowness, a self-pretence, a suspicion that he was never to live there, that none of it would ever work.

  Now he went determinedly from the room and strode with one step through the hallway. There was a small hallstand with a vase containing a few early daffodils. They were fresh, still wet from wherever Irene had bought them that morning. It was a simple gesture, typical of her. He tapped one of the petals with the tip of his finger and a drop of water fell on to the polished wood. He opened the front door sharply and lifted the suitcase and typewriter. At once he was confronted with the startled expressions of two young, clean, bespectacled, meek-looking men in suits. Their mouths opened like birds but they said nothing. They appeared chilled but earnest. One had short fair hair, the other was going bald. ‘Yes?’ asked Savage.

  ‘We just happened to be passing,’ blurted the balding one bravely. ‘And we thought you would like to discuss the state of the world.’

  ‘It’s in a poor state,’ confirmed his companion supportively. He blinked with a touch of hope. ‘Don’t you think?’

  ‘Terrible,’ agreed Savage feelingly. ‘Somebody must do something about it. But here’s my taxi. I have to catch a train.’ The taxi had drawn up outside the gate, its door filling the gap between the wet yews. As though highly familiar with the emergency drill both arrivals now scrabbled into briefcases and thrust pamphlets into his hand.

  ‘We’ll drop by again,’ said the fair youth with some
thing like triumph. ‘We’d like to talk.’

  ‘We would,’ confirmed the other. His voice dropped. ‘Together we could change things.’ Lamely they watched him go out of the gate.

  He climbed into the back of the taxi. ‘What did they want?’ asked the driver, the same man who had brought him to the cottage. ‘Jehovah’s Witnesses?’

  ‘Something like that,’ answered Savage. ‘They were passing and thought I might like to change the world.’

  ‘He’s got a lot to answer for, that Jehovah,’ muttered the driver. ‘A lot.’

  They reached the station in such fast time that Savage got on the wrong train, the local stopping service to London, not the through train. It had halted at two insignificant stations before he realised his mistake. At the second station three noisy youths climbed on. They had been drinking and one kept toppling and laughing against the others. They moved to seats at the far end of the carriage, sitting down and rolling and joking. He moved out of their view.

  At the next stop a puffy, pale girl with a baby in her arms attempted to get into the train. While she was still struggling on the platform one of the noisy youths got up and called: ‘Come on, hand the kid up, love. It’s just going.’

  ‘You’re holding the bloody train up,’ the most drunken of the group called. He stood and stumbled towards the open door. The girl regarded them stupidly and, unsurely, passed the baby into the arms of the youth who had offered to take it. He began rocking it extravagantly. The baby began to cry. Its mother attempted a panicky clamber up on to the train but she was bulky and hung with bags. She shouted unintelligibly. Her plastic rain hood fell over her eyes.

  ‘Give it ’ere to me, Ernie,’ demanded the second youth holding out his arms.

  ‘You’ll drop the bloody thing,’ warned the third who had remained rocking in his seat.

  But Ernie handed the swaddled child back to his companion. The young woman screamed: ‘Don’t! You’ll drop my Deirdre!’ Desperately she heaved herself into the carriage. Ernie pulled the door and the train began to jolt from the station. ‘Give ’er the kid, Rodney,’ demanded the seated youth.