Love in a Mist Read online

  Or would have done, but the curtains were closed. There was not so much as a chink or a wrinkle in the thick, grey lining; they were as flat and opaque as an extension of the wall. Why? I found myself running my hand over the window, as if I could move the fabric aside from out here. I felt like a fly, creeping over the skin of the house.

  A moment ago, I’d been prompted by no more than idle curiosity. Now, there was nothing I wanted more than to see inside.

  I climbed back into my own room and replaced the window on the latch. I went on to the landing and along to the spare room. The brass door knob, like everything in the house, was polished.

  But I could only turn it half an inch: the door was locked.

  I frowned down at the knob and tried it again, giving it a rattle as if I might have been mistaken. For the first time I noticed the brass finger plate and keyhole beneath the handle. I glanced back at the other doors on the landing – my own had no keyhole, and the bathroom had the usual latch on the inside.

  There are things you can only do when you are completely alone and unobserved, some of them trivial, some unmentionable, some downright shifty. What I did next came under the third heading. My curiosity induced an extraordinary clear-headedness. Perhaps this was how burglars felt when they had to be in and out of somewhere quickly. Some sort of mental filing system came into play. I could see the cards riffling at speed, almost quicker than the mind’s eye could grasp. Wait … wait … Yes! There was a drawer downstairs somewhere – one of those drawers with a jumble of miscellaneous items, including keys.

  I ran downstairs and paused in the hall. In my head I could see the open drawer and its contents, but where was it? I went into the living room: no drawers in here, nor in the hall. The kitchen … I pulled open all the drawers beneath the work surface, but found only the usual array of cutlery, kitchen implements, tea towels and food wrap. I sat down at the kitchen table, eyes closed and fingers thrust into my hair, for a think.

  When I opened my eyes I saw at once the long, shallow drawer that sat just below the rim of the table. I pulled the wooden handle. The drawer was old and warped, it stuck before jerking out. There were the lengths of string, the tubes of super glue, the plug adapters and the curtain hooks – and a plastic wallet full of keys.

  I took the wallet upstairs and kneeled down by the door. There must have been at least twenty keys. I intended systematically to try all the non-Yale ones, but key number six slid in and turned with buttery ease. Childishly pleased with myself, I replaced the other keys in the wallet and ran my hand along the seal, before propping it against the wall and pushing open the door.

  I didn’t draw the curtains, but I did turn on the light. I’d forgotten how big the room was – it must at one time have been the master bedroom, the largest in the house, but it was signally lacking in Zinny’s stylish touch. The double bed was covered in a mushroom-coloured candlewick bedspread below which hung a valance; the side tables were cream-painted repro; the lamps bulbous china things with pleated nylon shades. There was a safe, greetings-card landscape over the quilted headboard, and a narrow white wardrobe in the corner by the window. The only other items of furniture were a bow-legged stool in front of a kidney-shaped dressing table – a ‘vanity unit’ it would have been called in its day – with a glass top, a triptych mirror and a flouncy pink fabric skirt. The beige fitted carpet was threadbare by the door and next to the bed. Not exactly Bluebeard’s chamber, then.

  I moved into the centre of the room. I still didn’t draw the curtains, because I felt like an intruder – why else would the door have been locked?

  I thought I’d never been in such a dead place. An unhealthy, faded fragrance hung in the stuffy air; old clothes and talcum powder. There was a small drawer in the centre of the dressing table, and in each of the bedside tables. All of them were empty, except for flower-patterned lining paper – the only bright thing in the room.

  I drew back the corner of the bedspread. The bed was neatly made, with pale pink sheets and cream, satin-edged cellular blankets. Again that faint crackle of synthetic fibres, when Zinny was so keen on her cotton and linen and pure wool …

  The whole place was vaguely unpleasant, and not solely due to its being dated and unused. The atmosphere was both sterile and, curiously, toxic. This wasn’t a room kept clean and orderly to welcome a friend; it was abandoned and sealed up.

  I went to the wardrobe and tried the door. For a moment it stuck and I thought that, too, was locked. But then it gave with a jerk. More flowered lining paper on the floor; half a dozen metal hangers rattling like bones, and a couple of those shiny padded ones with bows – what, ever, was the point of them? There was another smell in here, from the mothballs that hung from the necks of some of the hangers.

  Above the rail was a shelf. I reached up and felt around the near edge of it with my hand. Just the now-familiar paper again. I don’t know what I expected to find, but now I’d begun to explore I needed to finish. I pulled over the bow-legged dressing-table stool and put one foot on it, pulling myself up via the wardrobe rail to test its strength. I planted a foot carefully either side of the seat: it held my weight without wobbling. But I’m not tall and the stool, though stable, was not very high. Even standing on it I could only see the front half of the shelf. I stretched an arm and swept my hand from side to side. Nothing at first, but then my fingers brushed something soft and unpleasantly yielding, with a texture I couldn’t identify.

  A mouse? A spider’s nest? The chrysalis of some weird giant moth …?

  I gave an involuntary shriek of disgust and fright, and my own voice made me jump. I just managed to prevent myself from falling by grabbing the edge of the shelf. The wardrobe, a jerry-built thing like the rest of the furniture, tottered dangerously. I let go and sprang down backwards, taking the stool with me.

  The musty silence closed round me again. Heart galloping, I righted the stool and stood there feeling stupid. When I’d collected myself I took out one of the wire hangers, unwound the neck and stretched it out to form an ad-hoc probe. My knees were shaking so I didn’t get back on the stool, but reached up with the hanger into the corner of the shelf. The end bumped the nasty, fluffy thing. I prodded to get a purchase and drew the wire back towards me, standing well back.

  The object appeared, quivering slightly on the end of the wire, and then fell soundlessly to the floor. Fluffy, trembling, weightless … What it most reminded me of was one of those moths I had so hated. I poked it again, tasting bile in my mouth.

  It was a hairnet, one of those very fine ones that women used to wear to keep rigidly maintained styles in place. And it was clogged with hair, iron grey with some black strands. Someone had cleared an alarmingly large amount of loose hair out of a brush, rolled it up in the old net and … what? What exactly had they done? Thrown it in the top of the wardrobe rather than in the wastepaper basket? Put it there to hide it?

  Squeamishly I picked up the tangled mess, nipping it fastidiously between the nails of my thumb and middle finger. There was something about the hair, as if these dead fibres – dead, like all hair, long before they were discarded – might come to life and cling to me parasitically. Holding the horrible thing at arm’s length, I felt through the closed curtains, opened the window and dropped it outside. I closed the window again and went straight to the bathroom to wash my hands, pressing my nails into the soap and lathering vigorously before rinsing. Back in the spare bedroom I had the queasy sensation, in spite of its eerie passivity, of being watched.

  I closed the wardrobe and came out, shutting the door behind me. I was halfway down the stairs before I remembered something. I ran back up, turned the key in the lock, and went down to return the key to the kitchen table drawer.

  I didn’t spend the night. I went back into Salting that evening, had a glass of white wine and fish and chips in the Hat and Feathers, then drove back to Lyme. I had the following day off anyway, and I planned to have a lie-in, and read, and walk along the Cob in the afterno
on.

  My parents may or may not have been surprised to find me gone on their return. I don’t know, because they didn’t get in touch.

  SIX

  1981

  When I was a young teenager – thirteen or fourteen – I sometimes went with my father on his sales trips in the school holidays. These were always characterized as ‘fun’ and ‘a bit of an adventure’ by my parents, though I suspect they were a way of getting me out from under Zinny’s feet, and away from home. We did go on an annual holiday, to a hotel in Crete where my parents were greeted like the second coming, but though I liked the swimming pool, the motherly owner and the historic chips, it was, as with everything, much more their holiday than mine. I had usually finished all my books by the end of the first week, and soon grew tired of the Greek sitcoms and soap operas on television. Like most only children I was well behaved; I didn’t whine. My father’s indulgence was to hire a sports car and we always had a few days out, whizzing round mountain passes and along the coast road, with me feeling rather sick in the rear tip seat. The beach was quite nice, but Zinny wasn’t good in the ferocious sunshine, so that was limited to short stints in the early evening. Anyway, we had a beach at home, and ours was better.

  So the summer-holiday jaunts with my father were intended to be a little extra, just for me. And actually, whatever the ulterior motive, I have to admit I did quite enjoy them. I sat in the front seat so there was no danger of car-sickness, and we always had a stash of sweets in the glove compartment. Because this was his job, my father drove smoothly and steadily: there were no death-defying stunts or hairy over-takings. We chatted a little and played Radio 2 a lot. There was a pleasant security in the car, a sense of doing-something-while-doing-nothing, for me in particular a kind of purposeful idleness. My father may not have been an especially proactive parent, but he was easy company, especially on what was effectively his home turf.

  His beat was the south-west, as far east as Bridport and as far north as Bristol – a huge area. We always went to the furthest point first, and I had grown to recognize some of the outlets and their managers. On the occasion in question we were actually going to drive all the way to Birmingham before working our way back down. My father showed me where this was on the map.

  ‘That’s miles away!’

  ‘Not so very far, and it’s nearly all motorway.’

  ‘Why are we going there?’

  ‘I’ve got to drop in on head office. They like to run the rule over me from time to time.’

  At that age I still thought of my father’s job as glamorous. I perceived him as a kind of commercial cowboy, out there riding the range, a free spirit and a law unto himself. The idea of anyone, let alone the denizens of some distant faceless grey office, ‘running the rule over him’ (it sounded like a head lice inspection) didn’t accord with this image at all. This was some years before I realized just how starkly my father was underachieving, though perhaps one can’t use that phrase of someone with no drive or ambition. Can a person be said to be underachieving if achievement doesn’t interest them? It was simply that I sensed, in a childish, intuitive way, that my father was a clever as well as a charming person. He was handsome and good at jokes, he could do quick, cartoonish drawings, and imitate other people with hilarious accuracy. For a long time I thought his free-wheeling work required these qualities and made use of them; that he was some sort of star. Only much later did the scales fall from my eyes. My father was a lowly sales rep, covering hundreds of miles in his modest workhorse of a car, with his jacket and ready-tied tie on a hanger in the back, his samples in the boot, his fags and complimentary bon-bons in the glove compartment. This job provided a modest income, something to do and lots of freedom.

  We set off early, at seven a.m. on the Monday morning. Zinny had packed for my three nights away, as she always did – she was good at packing, and we were both happy that I was going away for a while. I didn’t mind that she was happy. I understood that she was not an especially maternal character, and that her abstractedness wasn’t personal.

  Before leaving we sat on the verandah and had tea, mine accompanied by a digestive biscuit, my father’s by a cigarette. Zinny, with black coffee, kept us company in her elegant kimono. Then we loaded our bags on to the back seat of the Sierra, and she waved us off, holding aloft the rolled newspaper, with her sleeve falling back like the Statue of Liberty.

  Tradition dictated that at nine o’clock we would stop at the Gordano Services on the M5 near Bristol and have a full English, which in my experience was about as close to heaven as food got: sausage, bacon, beans, and little triangular hash browns, accompanied by buttered toast and hot chocolate. The only thing I wasn’t keen on was the fried eggs with their dried-up yokes. My father did like the eggs and usually had two, with bacon, beans, and black pudding, which I’d never tried but didn’t like the sound of. He also had an enormous cappuccino in a cup with handles on either side and a cinnamon heart done with a plastic stencil on top of the swirly foam. You could have a flower or a heart, but the girl always gave him a heart without asking and he’d give her one of his specially smiley thank-yous. I was beginning to see that women did flirt with him, and though it embarrassed me it made me quite proud too.

  People sometimes said I looked like my father, but it didn’t work to my advantage. I never went through that budding, blossoming stage of girlish loveliness. I was stocky and homely with awkward straight hair, the kind with a tendency to stick out rather than hang sleekly. Zinny was firm about the necessity of a good cut, but what was meant to be a neat bob came out perilously close to a pudding basin. My father’s was sticky-out straight as well, but on him it looked boyish and rumpled. Probably the ages between twelve and sixteen aren’t much fun for anyone, but I was particularly ill at ease with myself.

  After breakfast we topped up the tank and sped on up the M5. We began to see Birmingham on the signs, and there was that sense of the badlands, the sprawl that surrounded the approaching city. I was a little disappointed that we didn’t have to go right into the centre – head office turned out to be on an industrial estate on the edge of town. We followed the road grid between rows of buildings that were like large metal boxes, or cubes of brick with square windows and doors with lists of bells: HO turned out to be one of these. It was in almost the furthest corner of the estate, and there was actually a patch of grass next to the parking area, and a couple of cautious trees.

  My father pressed the bell: a buzzer sounded and the door opened. You went through another door almost immediately, and then you were into the reception area, which was surprisingly nice – much nicer than you’d have guessed from the outside. There were fitted carpets, framed posters for Hopgood’s confectionery over the years, and a table with a hot drinks machine, polystyrene cups, a basket of sugars and tubs of milk, and another of fun-size Hopgood products. Facing us was a reception desk with a glass sphere containing shiny coloured stones. The glamorous girl behind the desk beamed when she saw my father.

  ‘Mr Mayfield, good to see you!’

  ‘Hi Sandy. I know we’re a bit early.’ He glanced down at me. ‘We made good time, didn’t we?’

  I nodded. ‘Yes, even with a stop.’ I’d heard him say this.

  ‘Breakfast en route, did you?’

  ‘We did.’

  ‘I’ll just let them know you’re here.’ Still smiling, but at me now, Sandy picked up the phone. ‘Mr Mayfield is here.’ She replaced it. ‘You can go on up.’

  ‘By the way, Sandy, this is my daughter, Flora.’

  Sandy got up and came round from behind the desk. She wore a white shirt with the collar slightly turned up, and a fitted black skirt; her hair was dark with a swoopy fringe and flicked up at the back (it was the age of the flick and the fringe). Everything about her was sleek and crisp and her waist looked tiny where the shirt tucked into the skirt. When she held out her hand I was caught in a haze of some light, fresh scent.

  ‘Pleased to meet you, Flora.’

>   ‘Hello.’ I felt both dazzled and frumpy. But as if beauty weren’t enough – and I was learning that it very often was – Sandy was lovely.

  ‘Would you like to keep me company while your Dad’s in his meeting?’

  ‘Thank you.’ I didn’t have much option, but it was still a good offer.

  ‘Have fun, girls,’ said my father. ‘Perhaps you can make yourself useful, Floss.’

  I must have looked doubtful, because Sandy laughed. ‘There’s no need for that. Come and sit round here, why don’t you?’

  I spent the next couple of hours very happily in Sandy’s neat little compound. From her (now my) perspective, we sat at a table with a shelf unit in front of it, the top of which formed the reception ‘desk’ which held the sweets, the sphere with the stones and the signing-in book. Sandy had a swivel chair, and there was another ordinary chair which she must have moved in for me. Her wide-shouldered raspberry-pink jacket hung over the back of the swivel chair, and her black bag sat on the floor with a packet of sandwiches sticking out of it. A paperback book was tucked into one of the cubbyholes. The small space felt cosy, feminine and pleasant. I thought what a perfect job it must be to sit here and greet people and be nice to them all day long, but perhaps it required one to look like Sandy, and that was a tall order.

  I was a polite child. ‘Is there something I can do?’

  ‘Well if there is, I’ll tell you. But for now, you know what? My job for the moment is talking to you.’

  I think I may have blushed. She took a handful of fun-size bars out of the bowl and put them on the work table between us.

  ‘Help yourself. I’ll need to spit mine out if someone comes.’

  Only a handful of people did: a couple of men in suits who passed straight through to the office with a ‘hi’ to Sandy; a girl with a brisk, bossy walk who did the same but without the ‘hi’; and a motorbike courier delivering a plastic jiffy bag requiring Sandy’s signature. She explained to me that there was more to it than just greeting people and sending them through, that she had to take and transfer calls, look after collections and deliveries and make sure the reception space looked good at all times. I wondered if she ever got bored, and fortunately she answered the question I was too embarrassed to ask.