MONDAY (April 3rd, more or less)
It started here.
I came back, as I said I would when I left, close to 40 years ago. The trains still clank and snuffle through the night like they did then; the rain still rattles the windows. Rain doesn’t change. The music coming through the thin walls is different. It was Vera Lynn, when I was here before, singing about bluebirds; now it’s someone called Bruce Something asking, “Hey little girl, did your daddy leave you alone?”
I didn’t leave you alone, my “little girl”, you left me. No, you didn’t “leave me.” You died. You were supposed to come back with me, but you died.
I laugh sometimes when memory grabs me and takes me back. My ambition – our ambition – was to buy this stupid crumbling house, in which we rented two dingy top rooms. When I came back I stood in front of the house and stared, not believing that it stood unchanged. The agent asked an absurd price and I wrote him a cheque on the spot. No offer-and-counteroffer. We stood in the cold London drizzle and I wrote him a cheque for the stupid house. He stood there with the cheque in his hand, not knowing what to say. An absurdly high price, he was asking. It didn’t even put a dent in my local account, and I only keep a local account for pocket money convenience.
I have money now.Back then, just after the war, it took all of my paycheque and half of yours to pay the rent and buy the groceries. What little was left went towards the frills of our life, such as clothes, a bottle of wine now and then, or the occasional day trip to the sea. And £2 per week without fail went into the fund to buy our tickets over the Atlantic. The tickets to our future.
The day we left, our entire worldly possessions in four small suitcases at our feet, we stood in the street waiting for the taxi and promised each other that one day we would come back here and buy the house out of the spare change in our pockets.
I forgot that promise. I only remembered it a week after you died. So I came back and bought the house. It’s mine now. It’s ours. Can you hear me, my love? It’s ours now.
A young couple lives in the top two rooms. Indian, I think, or maybe Pakistani. They are four months behind in their rent. I don’t care, of course, but I don’t know how to tell them. Would they be embarrassed, I wonder, if I told them they can pay their rent or not; it’s all the same to me. Would they ask each other, alone in their dingy rooms at night, “What is he after? What does he want from us, that foolish old man?”
I worry that they worry about the rent, that one night they’ll sneak off to avoid paying their stupid £18 a week, or whatever it is they’re supposed to pay me. Poor young things, alone in the night. I must tell them that I don’t care about the rent and take the chance that they think me a dirty old man with ulterior motives.
I lie awake at night and listen to the trains in the shunting yards behind the house. How I used to curse them when they pried into my dreams and brought me back out into dark reality a dozen times a night. Eventually I learned to tune them out, like the ticking of the bedside clock or the soft breathing on the pillow beside me. I even came to find the sounds soothing, reassuring. When we finally crossed “the pond” and slept in the air-conditioned comfort of a luxurious (to us) apartment in downtown Toronto, I couldn’t sleep for missing the train sounds.
I’ve found myself a hard, lumpy mattress, just like we had back then, and I lie awake on it at night, listening to the sound of the trains.I can’t remember what colour the wallpaper in the hall used to be. Blue, I think. It’s brown now. The house has a new roof and a few other “improvements” of no note. Other houses along the terrace have been fixed up to a greater or lesser extent, but this one is almost exactly as we left it. It’s as though it were waiting here all those years. Waiting for us to come home like we promised we would.
I read your diaries, after you died. You always kept a diary. Years on years of them. The later ones were smart, leather-jacketed affairs with your name embossed in gold on the cover. The early ones were paper-backed, cheap newsprint things with wire springs for binding and your name written in ballpoint on the flyleaf.
The diary for 1947 contained a yellowed cutting, attached to the back cover with dried-out Scotch tape. It was the list we made of why we should leave England versus why we should stay. Under the “Why we should stay” column, there are three entries:
1. Mom & Dad: (his/mine)
2. Assorted Friends and Relatives (ours)
3. The Pub
Under the “Why we should go” column is a long list of entries, most of which are too faded to read any more. Among the ones I can make out are:
Weather (stinks)
Pay (stinks) (his & mine)
Prospects (none)
Politics
Children (can’t afford them here) (see ‘pay’)
I remember making that list. We made it head-to-head over the small table in the cubby-hole we called the kitchen, very late one Friday night after I had been passed over for promotion yet again. I had no idea you’d kept the list until I found it stuck in the back of your diary.
The weather still stinks.Thursday (the 6th, I think)
I went past the factory. I went up in the morning rush hour. I took the Bakerloo line from Euston, but instead of riding right up to Watford Junction, like I used to every morning, I got off at High Street and walked the last two miles.
The faces are the same. Closed. Sleepy. The southbound platforms full of businessmen and bureaucrats heading downtown, with their pinstripe suits and their rolled brollies; the northbound platforms full of young technicians and factory workers, heading for the industrial suburbs around Watford and Saint Albans. They still wear sport shirts, open at the neck, but now they have those tiny headphones held against their ears by steel springs. “Hey little girl, are you all alone?” in tinny tones from the head of the young man sitting next to me.
The factory looks the same, too. I’m beginning to think that my memory must be playing tricks; so much seems the same when it can’t possibly be, not after almost 40 years. Yet I even remember the crumbling stone wall between the factory yard and the “White Swan” next door. We used to sit on the wall and drink our Guinness at noon. The “Dirty Duck,” we called it then, or sometimes just “the Duck.” I suppose that the headphone generation have their own name for it now.
The town is still crowded and noisy, and the stink of car exhaust fills your nose. I stopped for an early lunch at a small restaurant, which could have been the same…
The meal was bad. Tough meat, cold potatoes.Walking back past the factory at noon, I saw the technicians, sitting on the wall at “the Duck,” washing down their sandwiches with pints of black beer
I did come home again.Everything is as it was. All of the “reasons to go” are still here, more so than ever. The memories are vivid – not just what we did, where we went, but the emotions of that time. The desperate hopelessness. We were so relieved when the job offer came from Canada and we had our ticket money together. So very pleased to get out of this place, finally into a new, fresh land where the sun warmed your soul and opportunity shone down on a young couple and said, “Grow here.” So pleased, we were.
So why, then, do I yearn so for this damp, crowded, stinking place, for those awful, hopeless days?Because we were young and full of life then, of course, and because the Journey was all before us, full of promise.
Tuesday (11th)
I saw him on the stairs this morning – the “him” of the couple upstairs, that is. When I made eye contact and it was obvious that I wanted to talk, he tried to push past me, embarrassed, thinking, I suppose, that I was about to ask him for the rent he owed. I caught him by his thin shoulders and said, “Listen: You can forget the rent you owe me. I don’t want it. You don’t have to pay rent to me. I’m very rich and I don’t need your rent money.”
He stared at me and gave no indication that he understood. It was my turn to be embarrassed and I let him go, sheepishly, and went into my room: I don’t know if he understood or not. I think I handled it badly.
When I cam home this evening, after supper, I went upstairs to see if I could make things a little clearer and I found their rooms empty. They’d packed (must have taken all of five minutes) and moved out sometime this afternoon, I suppose. Done a bunk. A midnight flit, we used to call it, even if it were done in the middle of the afternoon.
I can imagine how he recounted this morning’s stairwell conversation to his skinny wife, how they discussed whether I was dangerously insane, or simply plotting unmentionable deals in place of the rent money.
Anyway, the poor little birds have flown and, in a way, I’m quite relieved. I hope they don’t spend too much time worrying about the few hundred pounds they owe me in back rent, nor looking over their shoulders to see if I’ve sent the bobbies after them.
Wednesday (12th)I called on my London lawyer this morning, and then spent the afternoon with the real estate agent who sold me the house. The agent was very wary at first – probably thought I wanted my money back.. After we’d talked for a while and I told him what I wanted to do, he became even more wary and his eyes went wide. He must think I’m crazy, but crazy rich. When I gave him a retainer of £10,000 he was suddenly all teeth and enthusiasm. He told me that it would probably cost more to carry out my plan than I had paid for the house in the first place. I told him that I don’t care. There is no upper limit. Do it. I will pay for it. I don’t think anyone had ever said those words to him before: No upper limit. It amuses me to think of what he’ll tell his friends in the pub tonight.
Friday (Near the end of the month. Probably 28th or 29th)I stood in the rain this morning, my suitcases at my feet, and watched the wrecking ball swing. The roof went first, the slate tiles cracking like pistol shots in the grey morning. The taxi came, but I asked him to wait. He switched on his meter and started to read the Daily Mirror.
The roof took about 20 minutes and the walls less than an hour. I watched it all come down. There are great steel girders against the houses on either side to ensure that they don’t tumble down, too.
It cost me £3,000 to grease the wheels of the local council and obtain planning permission in a hurry, and another £6,000 in “inconvenience money” to persuade the owners of the properties on each side not to lodge a formal objection to my plan. What really swung the deal with the neighbours was the offer to let them divide the vacant lot between them, after the house is gone. It gives them each a little garden, quite narrow but deep enough to put in some vegetables and a few feet of lawn. If I’d thought to offer that in the first place, I could probably have saved 6,000 quid.
The rain kept down the dust.Do you understand, my dear one? Do you know why I had to do this? I’m not certain I understand it myself, but I could not rest, back home, knowing that the house still waited here. You understand, I know you do.
When it was over, I got into the taxi and asked him to take me to the airport, then I changed my mind and went to the station.I’m on a train now. It’s going to the sea. I’ll stay a couple of days, I think and then make my way home. I’ll call the kids and let them know I’m okay. They must have been worried, not knowing what I was up to these last few weeks. We’re passing a shunting yard. I can hear the engines clanking, the big diesels purring. Strange how I took the sound for the snuffling of steam in recent nights. The mind plays tricks when you get up to my age, I guess.
I find the sounds and the rhythm of the train very relaxing.I think I’ll sleep for a while.
* * * WITH FRIENDS LIKE THESE
Ephraim Bedloe and me go way back, you know. Lived all our lives in this valley; went to school together, and farmed next door to each other for nigh on half a century. So it's natural that folks should come to me for the truth of it: "Was it all truly a misunderstanding," they ask me "Or did the old coot plan the whole thing right from the beginning?"
Well it pains me to have to say this - but I don't know. I've lost count of the times I've asked him, was it all just a misunderstanding or did you know what you were doing all along? He looks me straight in the eye and he says, “George, t'was all no more than a mix up which by the grace of God turned out all right in the end.” Then, when I think I've the truth of it at last, he'll give me one of those great broad winks of his that crinkles up the whole side of his face, and a great silly grin like a lad caught with his finger in the cherry pie.
Maybe the only way to get at the truth is to reason it out, like Sherlock Holmes would, or that scruffy detective on TV. "Let's just stick with the facts Ma'am," he'll say, and then he'll reason out the whole mystery and you just want to kick yourself for not having seen it all along.
The shot was a fact. Booming out of the still spring morning and rolling like thunder along the blue hills to the end of the valley and echoing back down the river. Tommy Faulkner was up by then, and he heard it plain as day. Set the crows to squawkin', it did, and brought old Millie Faulkner out of her kitchen at a run.
Old Millie, she's not much on brains, and I reckon she was at the back of the line when they handed out good looks too, but she got her big mouth right at the front of the line, and a nose she's always sticking into other people's business. Still the good Lord gave Millie a heart to match the size of her mouth and on account of the one folks tend to overlook the other, if you catch my drift. She means well, Millie does. I guess that could be the epitaph of many a busybody.
Anyways, when Millie hears the shot she waits only long enough for Tom to point her in the right direction and she's a-throwin' off her apron and jumpin' into that old Chevy pickup of theirs to go see what's up.
Now the last thing that Ephraim needed that morning was a visit from Millie Faulkner, and you can put that down for another fact, but Millie came a-rattlin' down the drive, kickin' up the dust with that old pickup, and pulled in by the porch just as Eph came up over the fields. He was carrying his shotgun in one hand, a long-handled spade in the other, and his hands were covered in blood to the wrists. It takes a lot to stop up Millie's yappin', but Eph managed it that morning; for a while.
Millie was half scared out of her wits, and I'll tell you that don't leave a lot of wits left. Well, like it does with many folk, scared came out angry, and she laid into Ephraim, demanding to know where Mary was - Eph's missus, that is. Eph mumbled something about Mary takin' off to visit her sister, and told Millie to mind her own damned business anyway. Now telling Millie to mind her own business is a red rag to a bull, and she really started on into Eph at that point, which is just about exactly the last thing you should do to a man carrying a shotgun and covered in blood. Eph put down the spade, but hung onto the gun, and turned to Millie all calm and quiet (which scared her more that if he'd been a-rantin' and a-ravin' at her) and he said, almost in a whisper: "Now go easy on me, Millie, or dammit I'll be diggin' two graves out there this mornin' instead of just the one."
And then she looked him square in the eye and noticed the tears, streamin' down both his cheeks, and that scared old Millie more than anything else in that strange morning. She jumped right back in her old pickup and left Eph in a cloud of dust and exhaust smoke, with the tears still coming.
Eph's no fool, of course, so he knew what had to come next. He put away his shotgun, fetched a beer from the icebox, sat himself out on the porch looking over his front fifteen acres, and settled in to wait for a visit from Jake Mundt. Sheriff Mundt that is; our local version of that TV cop. Eph knew that was where Millie was roaring off to, and he was dead right.
Now here's another of those Sherlock-Holmes-type "facts of the case"; It concerns that fifteen acre parcel out front of Eph's farmhouse; the one he was a-gazin' at while he waited for Mundt. Fact is, I've seen a lot of land go under the plough in my day, and I'm telling you that parcel of land has got to be the hardest, stoniest, meanest, piece of God's earth that ever broke a steel blade. Eph had been trying for years to put it under the plough, but all he'd got to show for it was another busted transmission on his tractor. It needed major surgery this time - costly surgery by the look of it - so the tractor was up on blocks waiting for Eph to somehow find the funds to bring in a professional mechanic.
Eph sat, sipped, stared and waited. Mundt arrived about forty minutes later. He got down from his car, fetched himself a cold beer and sat down on the porch step. Eph gave the sheriff "Good Mornin'" and the two sat a while watchin' the sun glint off the rocks, and old Jake never mentioned the gun nor the blood on Eph's hands. Two old friends sharing some time together. Then Mundt says:
"Where is she, Eph?""Millie Faulkner's an old fool" says Ephraim.
"No denying that,” says Jake Mundt. "Now where's your Mary? And don't start that tale about visiting her sister, 'cause I called already and there ain't no visit nor no plans to visit. Want to take it from there, Ephraim?"
Eph said nothing; sipped, rocked back and forth, stared out over his land. Mundt got up and squinted out under the sun.“There’s fresh turned earth out there, Eph. Thinking on putting in some potatoes, were you?”
Not a word from Eph. He stood, shrugged, turned slowly and went into the house. Mundt opened the leather restraining strap on his gun and moved to the porch. Eph came out of the house holding his shotgun, but it was open and he held it by the barrel. He gave Jake the gun and held out his wrists for the cuffs.
“Want to tell me where to dig?” Mundt asked.Jake put Eph in a cell on Monday morning and there he stayed ‘til Thursday noon when he was bundled into the police car and driven back to his property to meet with this policeman, this Morrison, a detective he was, out from the city. Not at all like the fellow on TV. A little fellow, Morrison was, all points and sharp edges. Talked fast and moved in quick dashes, like he was always anxious to be somewhere other than where he was. I had a dog like that once.
Morrison starts in on Eph asking whereabouts Mary might be, but nasty like, not with any concern at all. We all thought that the suspect was innocent until proved guilty, but this Morrison had it backwards. “Where d’you bury the body?” he kept asking.
Eph wasn’t paying much attention to the detective anyway. He was much more interested in the twenty or thirty men they’d set to digging holes all about his rocky acres. They had these big orange-coloured earth movers in, and men with picks breaking up rocks and hauling them away in wheelbarrows.
Jake had no love for this Morrison, I can tell you. He’d gotten himself bawled out by Morrison in front of his deputies ‘cause somebody had let Eph wash himself up in the cell afore anybody thought to take blood samples from his fingers. Anyway, as Jake tells it, Morrison was talking to Eph at thirteen to the dozen while Eph was just a-starin’ over the field with a strange look in his eye.
“Where d’you bury her, Bedloe?” Morrison asked for about the fifth time. “It’ll go easier on you if you help us. Where d’you bury your wife? We’ve got Millie Faulkner’s testimony, we’ve two neighbours heard the shotgun, and we’ve marked the spots where the ground’s been turned. We’ll dig them all if we have to, but why don’t you make it easy on us, and on yourself as well? Where’s the body, Bedloe?”
Eph stared at the men in the field for long seconds before replying, and when he did it was real slow-like, as though he was choosing each word very carefully. “Well, inspector, I’ll tell you this,” Eph said. “I may look like a dumb sod-farmer, but I’m not so stupid that I’d plant a flag where I’d buried a body. Speaking – how d’you say it? – ‘hype-a-thetical’, if I’d done what you’re saying I done, I reckon I’d have dug those little holes all over just to throw some jackass like you off the scent. Hype-a-thetical, of course.”
And that was it. Not another word could they get out of Eph, and in the end the little inspector got tired first and told Jake to take Eph back to his cell. Some say that Jake was a-grinnin’ all the way home.
Come Saturday morning, sunlight through the small barred window woke Eph early, and he got up to stretch some feeling back into his arms and legs, which had gotten cramped from the small cot. He washed his face with cold water and shaved as best he could, trying to keep the nicks and scratches to a minimum. At nine a.m. he rattled his bars and called for Mundt.
“What you want, Eph?”“Got to get out of here, Jake.”
“You going to confess? Is that what you mean? You want me to call Morrison?”
“That little Jackass?” Eph laughed. “The Hell with him! I got to get down to the bus station by ten o’clock. Now open this cage before I got to pull that damn door off!”
Why you got to get to the bus station, Eph? You planning on taking a trip or something?”“Come on, Jake, open up. I got to get there to meet the ten o’clock bus from the city. My Mary’s on that bus and she’ll have a blue fit if I’m not there to meet her. Move now, Jake. You know my Mary’s temper. Do you want to be the one to explain why I couldn’t get down there to meet her?”
Eph says it’s a toss-up who was the more surprised; Mary, to see old Mundt waitin’ to meet her or Mundt, to see Mary skippin’ down from the bus, glowin’ with good health and jumpin’ up to give Eph a big kiss, like a young girl on her honeymoon.
Jake no doubt thought he’d get the mystery out of Eph later, but he never did. Eph didn’t like the way he’d been treated by some of his so called ‘friends’ and he decided to let them stew for a while. But he told me, and, if you promise not to spread it around too far, I’ll tell you.
First off, there’s a part of the secret that’ll be out in a few months anyway, when Mary’s middle starts to show. Now, Mary is a fine, healthy woman, and bearin’ another child shouldn’t by rights be a problem. But she is getting on in years – No! I’m damned if I’ll tell you how many - so she’d been away to the city hospital for a week of tests and observations. Well, she brought back two pieces of information. The baby is healthy – and it’s a boy! The news just took ten years off Ephraim Bedloe, let me tell you.
Nat’rally, Mary didn’t want the news up and down the valley afore she was ready – you know how women are about these things – so the very last person Eph would have told was Millie Faulkner, even if she’d come at a good time. Which she didn’t. Millie showed up at the worst possible time.
Eph’s old dog, Jenny, had been ailin’ bad for some months back, you see. She was nearly fifteen, Jenny was, and that’s a fine span for a dog. Well, the vet had told Eph what had to be done, but he’d put it off as long as he could – which was right up to that Monday morning, after a long and sleepless night. She never felt a thing, Jenny didn’t. One shot.
The best part of the story, of course, is how Ephraim had finally got his rocky fifteen ploughed. Eph says that when his old truck turned off the highway and Mary saw that east fifteen she squealed and jumped about so, Eph was worried for his unborn son. Give them their due, the police had put the land back to rights. The last of the big equipment had moved out just a few minutes earlier.
“Oh, Eph! How’d you do it?” Mary asked. “Did you get the tractor fixed?”“No, honey” Eph told her. “I got a little help from some friends.”
So now you’ve all the facts. There’s a fine crop of corn starting to show out of the rocky fifteen, and with luck the land will finally start to repay Eph for all the hard work he’s put into it over the years. Did he plan the whole thing? Or did fate and circumstance just throw it into his lap? I’m damned if I know; and I’ll probably never find out. But I bet that TV cop would have reasoned the whole thing out by now.
* * * THERE'S NO USE RUSHING ME; I'LL REMEMBER IN A MINUTEI've always loved the rain, you know. All my life. I've never thought much of those bright, hot sunny days people rave so much about. I always figured they were fine if you happened to be a sunflower, or a peony, or suchlike; but nobody ever accused me of being a sunflower or anything remotely similar. No, I've always got much more from Mother Nature when she's in a bad mood, and wants to throw her weight around a little.
But just a minute now. You must think me a foolish old man, coming up to you out of nowhere and babbling on about the weather. No, I didn't come all this way just to find a stranger to bore with my ramblings! There was something urgent I had to tell you. It was right on the tip of my tongue just a moment ago. Well, there's no use trying to rush me; I'm sure it will come back to me in a minute. Always does. You must understand, it's difficult for me to hold onto a thought these days. I am nearly eighty, after all. Maybe more. I haven't been keeping close track these last few years; not since Annie died. My wife, she was. Died three years back. Or was it four?
Now there's nothing wrong with my mind, you hear! It's just that I can't carry a thought the way I used to, so you'll just have to bear with me.What were we talking about? Oh, yes, the weather. Well, as far back as I can remember I've enjoyed a good storm. Back in my skiing days, I'd be off out on the trails in a howling blizzard, when sane folks were at home sitting around the fire thinking: "Pity the poor wild beasts on a night like this." Well, I'd be out there with the wild beasts - except the beasts had sense to stay in their dens while I was out trudging the trails though I couldn't see five feet in front of the icicle on my nose. I felt really close to nature, those days. Still do. We understand each other, Nature and I. You might sit by your fire and curse the snow, and the wet and the cold and the wind and all; but not me. I'm out there close to it; right in it, you might say, and enjoying the show; every minute of it.
Since Annie went, I seem to spend most of my life on the road. Bad weather never stops me. In fact in many ways I prefer to go walking in the bad weather; I've the roads to myself then. At first it was only short walks of a few miles, along the coast road and back home for supper, but then I started going further afield. I'd still follow the coast road when I could, getting the salt spray off the sea, and growing heady from breathing all that fine fresh air. And if the weather were not too bad I'd just find myself a cozy little hollow in the cliffside somewhere and curl up for the night. William, my eldest boy, he asked me once "What's the farthest you've ever walked Dad?" and I told him "Six days". Bill says "How far, I mean? How many miles?" D'you know, I'm damned if I could tell him!
That time I hurt my leg, and the police had to call Bill to come and get me, well, I'd walked clear to Innis Harbour, and they say that's over eighty miles. I must tell you about that time. It was so funny, you know. I'd slipped down the cliff face, you see. Damned silly thing to do, but it was raining hard, and there was a lot of mud, and - no, never mind the excuses, it was a damned silly thing to do. So there I was, covered in mud, and soaked to the skin, limping into Innis Harbour. That's a jumped-up little fishing village which thinks it's the capital of the tourist industry down our way. Anyway, the police picked me up and threw me into a cell. I admit they were very civil about it, and they fed me, and cleaned me up, and brought a doctor to see to my leg, but they still threw me into a cell. Next morning I said to the sergeant: "Thanks for your help, but I'll be on my way now," and he smiled and told me: "'Fraid you're not about to be going anywhere, old timer." They were setting up to put me on a vagrancy charge. Me! Do you believe it?
But wait up, here! Talking of the police puts me in mind of what I came up to you about. Here I am rabbitting on about God-knows-what, and there's something pressing at the back of my mind..... just give me a few seconds.... No, I can't seem to bring it back. But I know it was important. I clearly remember thinking: "I must get to the police. I must get to a phone, and let the police know......" No, there's no point in me using your phone until I recollect what it was. It's useless trying to rush me. T'will come back to me in its own sweet time.
They know me now, after that Innis Harbour business. The police, that is. Once they realised I was the MacElroy of MacElroy Industries, well, they couldn't have been nicer. Of course it's William MacElroy that runs things now. Bill came himself to pick me up, driving a company limo. The police were very civil and there