else, instead?’
‘Fine,’ Jack said, very clearly. ‘We won’t bother, next year.’
‘Stop it, you two,’ Miranda shouted. ‘We’ve frozen chips, beef burgers, Coke and a bottle of whisky. We could have some fun, if we tried, you know?’
Outside, a spectacular sunset was unfolding and I felt the satisfied tiredness of having done a good day’s work. Miranda’s voice came over faintly.
‘We’ve got the boat for an extra week, if we want it.’
I heard Jack say something in the background. Something in me snapped. I was fed up with his rudeness. He talked to me in the same way my mother used to.
They rang off, with Miranda still trying to smooth things over, and I went back to preparing my supper. In the years since my mother’s death I had become a different kind of person. There had been a time when my mother’s constant stream of boyfriends invading my privacy, and Jack’s pushiness, would have reduced me to a state of desperation. I had wanted a life of my own, then, away from them both. I had wanted someone to share things with, as only my father had done. Now that was all over. I no longer had anything to share and I was relieved to discover that the desire for belonging had finally gone.
The last rays of the sun caught the windowpanes as I cooked my pasta and dressed it lightly with olive oil. A sentence was threading through my head. It ran like music, rising and falling. Suddenly I needed to write it down. Covering the pasta, I quickly went upstairs and sat at my desk. In the last-nights-of-summer darkness that arrived more swiftly each evening, hardly daring to breathe lest I lose it, I sat absorbed for another two hours. The effortless ease with which I worked told me that this poem was going to be perfect, and as I wrote I smelt the drift of roses coming in through the window. A blackbird sang and sang again, the sun set and night descended while I remained absorbed.
When I had finished the rough draft I put on a CD. Then, sitting by the window, listening to Verdi, I fell asleep for the second time that day. I had completely forgotten about my swimmer of course and my plan to catch him in the act of stealing. Once again it was after midnight when I woke. The Verdi had long finished. The garden was completely silent, there was no moon tonight as I opened the window and breathed in the scent of newly opened jasmine flowers. The river glinted now and then. The starless sky made it impossible to distinguish water from garden. Nothing moved, there was no sound. I felt a small nudge of disappointment as the church clock struck one. The house next door was closed. Either the renters were asleep or they were out again. Well, that was that, I thought ruefully, aware of some disappointment. It was a simple enough explanation. A passing youth had decided to cool off by swimming upstream and then had discovered the house. Perhaps he had been on his way back from the pub, perhaps someone had even dared him, so that, in a moment of bravado, he had wandered in and stolen a loaf of bread. As I was the subject of some curiosity in Orford, what could I expect? Lucky he didn’t take anything valuable, I thought, pulling a face. Better lock the back door. The bare skeleton of the poem still glowed inside me. At least the swimmer’s appearance had given me the kick-start I needed. Reaching for the catch, I was about to close the window when I froze in my tracks. Someone was playing the piano downstairs with the soft pedal down.
The back of my neck went cold. I stood confused, staring into the darkness. Jack, the only person I knew who could play the piano, was miles away, moored up on the Broads. And Jack didn’t play jazz. The music went on and on, faint and familiar, jauntily inviting me to move in time to it. There was a small delicious run of notes and then it came to an abrupt end. I heard the lid come down, followed by footsteps going out into the hall. The kitchen door opened and shut gently. Moments later the outside light came on. Instantly I was galvanised and rushed downstairs. But when I reached the back door the garden was in darkness once more. I switched on the light. The kitchen was exactly as I left it, the pasta was still covered, the bread was in the bin and the forgotten bag of scones stood untouched on the work surface. Exasperated I went into the sitting room but the piano remained as it always had and it was then, at that moment, staring at the music on the stand, that I remembered there had been a piece of sheet music on the floor two days before. Without another thought I rushed to the front door and opened it, going swiftly around to the back of the garden. All was silent. No footprints on the grass, no rose petals fallen off the bushes, nothing had been disturbed. I felt sure the swimmer had not used the river path tonight. I waited, uncertain. Suddenly, realising how vulnerable I was, and with my fearlessness now tinged with a vague dissatisfaction, I went indoors. The rest of the night stretched ahead of me. I knew I would not sleep so, making a pot of tea, I sat down to make a plan.
My plans were all in vain. The following evening there was a thunder-storm of spectacular proportions. I suppose it had been building up to this with all the heat. Lightning flashed and rain fell heavily. It went on for hours. Miranda rang during the worst of it.
‘Can you hear it?’ I asked.
‘Sort of. It’s lovely here. We’ve had a busy day. Zach has got the hang of steering and won’t let anyone take a turn! So he and Jack argue all the time.’
She sounded a little drunk.
‘Did you manage to buy food?’
‘Oh yes,’ she said vaguely.
I could hear her sipping her wine.
She rang off and I wandered restlessly around the house, unable to settle to any work. I found myself going towards the piano and staring at the closed lid.
‘What’s wrong with me?’ I muttered.
Maybe I had overworked myself last night. The draft of the poem I had written in an alcoholic haze wasn’t quite right yet. What had seemed luminous and neat in the darkness was a little clumsy. I would have to work on it much more. Perfection did not come without pain, but I wasn’t in the mood tonight.
After about an hour the rain began to ease off and the air cooled slightly. I shivered and threw on a cardigan. It was not the weather for swimming. Pouring myself a generous glass of wine I went back up to my study where force of habit made me drift towards the window. I was still struggling with an idea. This long overdue collection of poems was turning out to be about the absence of parental love. I stared towards the dark point where the water flowed. Bitterness had stopped me from writing objectively, I thought. Then, perhaps because of the peculiar mood I was in, for the first time in many years I began to go over what had happened in that single most significant moment of my life.
I was ten years old and the school summer holidays had arrived. My father was due to have a small operation. Six-year-old Jack and I were sent to Eel House. This very room had been my bedroom, then. In those days, when the farm was at the height of its productivity, an extra pair of hands at harvest was always welcome. We kissed our parents goodbye. My father was going to the hospital the following morning and with us away my mother would be free to nurse him back to health. I remember them standing on the step waving.
‘Look after Jack,’ my mother called, anxious as always about her darling son.
‘Don’t forget to write, Ria,’ my father said, his smile going all the way up to his eyes.
He had the bluest of eyes, like a shimmer of cornflowers. The sunlight on them seemed to sharpen their colour. I have inherited their brightness. Jack has brown eyes like my mother. At Saxmundham station, Uncle Clifford was there to meet us. He was older than Dad, more serious, quieter. Both Jack and I were very fond of him.
All through that long holiday my brother and I played by the river and helped out in the fields. I wrote home twice but was told there was a postal strike so no letter came back. My
