Imaginative Experience
Read Imaginative Experience Online
Authors: Mary Wesley
A Novel
Mary Wesley
for Tessa Sayle
ONE
T
HE SHEEP LAY ON
its back in the centre of the field with its legs in the air. As the InterCity train ground to a halt an acrid smell from the brakes percolated through the First Class carriages; one of the passengers sneezed.
From his corner seat Sylvester Wykes could see the long line of carriages curve round the perimeter of a green field in the centre of which was posed the up-ended animal, and sense as the train settled to its stop the creaks and groans of protesting metal. Around him voices queried, ‘Why are they stopping?’; hoped not to miss connections; voiced distrust of British Rail and made odious comparison with the incomparable train services of France, Germany, Switzerland and Italy. Then there came the abrupt slam of a train door and into his line of vision a figure came racing.
Sylvester pulled his reading glasses down his nose and reached for his bifocals. The figure, though trousered, was female. She reached the sheep, leaned down, gripped it by its fleece, heaved it to its feet and, still gripping, held it upright on tentative hooves.
‘What’s going on?’ A passing passenger leaned familiarly across Sylvester from the aisle to squinny out of the window. He smelled of tobacco and alcohol. Sylvester drew back in his seat.
‘Half a mo’,’ said the man, as though Sylvester had spoken. ‘Let’s focus the old binoculars. I’ve been bird-watching in the Scilly Isles,’ he informed Sylvester. ‘I’m what’s known as a twitcher. Ah!’ He adjusted the binoculars. ‘Here we are, got it. A sheep was on its back. Want a look?’
‘No thanks.’ Sylvester pressed back in his seat.
‘Saw it as we stopped,’ said the man, leaning his elbows on the table and thrusting his rump into the aisle. ‘Pretty girl!’ he said appreciatively. ‘Want a look?’ He again offered his binoculars.
Sylvester said, ‘No.’
‘What was it doing on its back, I wonder?’
‘They get stuck,’ Sylvester said tersely.
‘Oh?’
‘And die.’
‘Rush of blood to the head? That it?’
‘This is a non-smoker,’ said Sylvester.
‘I know,’ said the twitcher. ‘I’m in the next carriage, passing by from the buffet. Ah!’ he exclaimed. ‘Here comes the guard! Fireworks, d’you think? Naughty, naughty? An Asian, you must have noticed when he took our tickets. Sticklers for the rules, that lot. Revel in a spot of authority. Oh! He’s shouting and she’s shouting back. It must be she who stopped the train. Looks a bit crazy. D’you think she’s mad?’
Sylvester did not reply.
‘There will be trouble,’ said the man. ‘She’ll get a summons. Costs a bomb to stop a train. Oho! She’s let the sheep go. It’s lolloping away and now the guard is bringing her back to the train. Sure you don’t want a look?’
‘Go away,’ said Sylvester.
‘All right, all right,’ said the man. ‘Keep your cool.’ He drew himself upright, letting the binoculars thump against his upper stomach. The communicating doors swished at his passing.
Sylvester straightened legs which had winced away from the man and looked ruefully at his bifocals, which had snapped in his hand.
But his tormentor was back. ‘Think I’ll see if I can have a word with her,’ he said. ‘Want to come? There might be a story there. She’s in the Second Class. What do you think?’
‘Oh, leave her alone,’ said Sylvester, regretting the words as he spoke.
‘She a friend of yours or something? Didn’t leave the sheep alone, did she? Didn’t consider her fellow passengers much. Some of us have business to attend to. Leave her alone. That’s rich!’
The man, Sylvester realized, was partially drunk. He closed his eyes and listened for the swish of the communicating door.
‘You’ve cut your hand,’ said the man, still hovering close. ‘Broken your glasses. However did you do that?’ When Sylvester did not answer he moved away and the communicating doors closed at last.
The train began to move. As it gathered speed Sylvester put the broken bifocals in his pocket and wiped blood from his cut palm. Rage had made him prickle with sweat. He wanted a drink but feared meeting his tormentor in the buffet. He had not seen the girl clearly, but was left with the impression of a white face, black eyes, squared mouth shouting at the guard, and brown hair ruffled by the wind. She had seemed a creature more vulnerable than the sheep she was rescuing. She looked bogged down in despair.
Would the guard be rude to her? He had seemed a quiet and courteous man when he asked for the passengers’ tickets; his turban was beautiful, furled round the contours of his head like an exotic shell. No, the guard would be polite, stick to the rules; he would not bully. But that foul-smelling bird-watcher was another matter. Was he perhaps a journalist? ‘There might be a story there’ were ominous words. If he was a journalist, he would be employed by the gutter press. Would the guard protect the girl? Would she perhaps take shelter in the lavatory? Lock herself in? Sylvester visualized the girl crouched miserably in confined and possibly malodorous space for the rest of the journey. Should he follow the twitcher and prevent him imposing himself, demanding a story, not listening to a word she might say while he fabricated his own? ‘Communication cord drama on InterCity train’. ‘Shepherdess leaps to rescue lamb’, or, worse, ‘Little Bo-peep in Lamb Chop drama’. Furious, Sylvester rose to his feet, but instantly sat down again; rushing to the rescue would make things worse.
When the train stopped at Reading he scanned the crowds. Would she get off? If she had not got off the train, Sylvester thought as the train moved on, and he was almost sure she had not, the intelligent thing for her to do would be to pick up her bag and make her way forward so that at Paddington she would have a head start for the taxi-rank or the Underground. If she comes through here and that fellow follows her I shall bar his way while she escapes, he decided.
The girl did not materialize.
In any case, Sylvester thought as the train jostled into Paddington, how do I imagine I would recognize her? I bust my glasses, I did not see her clearly; it was the impression that was clear. He got to his feet and, heaving his bag off the rack, joined the queue by the carriage door.
When he saw the girl threading her way through the hurrying crowd he was reminded of Greta Garbo in the film
Ninotchka
, seen long ago in black and white. She was wearing a long black coat which reached her ankles and a big black hat pulled low over her nose. He could not be sure it was the right girl until he glimpsed the twitcher hunting through the crowd, dodging like a rugby player to get ahead and confront her. As the black coat brushed past him Sylvester stepped in her wake and the twitcher, recoiling, cannoned backwards into a trolley piled high with mailbags to fall on his back while the girl disappeared.
Affecting not to notice the twitcher’s plight, Sylvester sauntered on to join the queue waiting for taxis.
It had not been necessary to trip the man, Sylvester thought, but if it had been necessary he would not have hesitated to do so.
A
T ABOUT THE TIME
Julia Piper was stopping the InterCity train to succour a sheep, her mother, Mrs Clodagh May, was bracing herself to clear up the mess left in her house by a variety of people who had come to sympathize and mourn with her after her son-in-law Giles and grandson Christy’s joint funeral. Their kindness was such a solace, she told her friend and gossip Madge Brownlow, who had volunteered to help. ‘I did what he would have liked, what he would have chosen if he had been here,’ she said.
Madge said, ‘Yes, of course.’ I am used to sherry and perhaps whisky at funerals, she thought, not smoked-salmon sandwiches and champagne. Out loud she said, ‘Shall I stack the dishwasher?’ And, removing the coat of the black suit she jokingly referred to as her
tailleur,
she pushed up the sleeves of her white silk shirt.
‘The dishwasher is out of order,’ said Clodagh.
‘So the plumber did not come?’ Madge, who had opened the dishwasher, closed it. ‘Useless!’
‘The plumber,’ said Clodagh, enunciating carefully, ‘is on holiday.’
‘But he has a partner,’ suggested Madge.
‘Gone to a football match.’
‘Shall we leave it then?’ ventured Madge, unrolling a sleeve, feeling pusillanimous. Her friend eyed the disorder with distaste. ‘Oh, if only Giles—’ she said. ‘He was such a—’ She choked.
Madge, searching for the right appellation, supplied: ‘Handyman?’ Then, seeing her friend’s eyes begin to swim, she added, ‘And so much more.’
‘Oh, so much, so much.’ Clodagh wiped her eyes. ‘He was—oh—he—oh—’
Madge said quickly, ‘Yes,’ and, ‘Of course he was. Well then, let’s get cracking.’ She rolled up her sleeves for the second time. No use waiting for handyman Giles, she told herself ironically; he had kept people waiting even when he was alive. Wrapping an apron round her waist, she said, ‘I’ll wash, you dry,’ turned on the hot tap and squirted washing-up liquid into the sink. ‘You’ll feel a lot better,’ she said bracingly, ‘when the house is tidy. Shall we clear the living-room first?’
Clodagh May did not answer but picked up a tray and went to collect plates and glasses. I wish Madge would not call my drawing-room a living-room, she thought. Giles never called it a living-room, though sometimes he called it ‘your parlour’. Joking, of course. His dear jokes. ‘Shall we go into your parlour?’ She could hear his voice.
‘Phew! What a stink! I wish people would not smoke, it’s a disgusting habit.’ Madge threw open the windows. ‘Let’s get a through draught,’ she said, opening the door into the garden to let in the chill blast of autumn.
She forgets he smoked, thought Clodagh. Then she smiled, remembering his voice. ‘Dear old Madge, not strong on tact.’ She followed her friend and quietly closed the garden door.
But Madge opened it again and stepped onto the terrace. ‘Gosh,’ she said, ‘empty bottles. Glasses, too. Whoever was out here punished these bottles.’ Then she remembered that the vicar who had officiated and the doctor had been out here, talking to Julia while she waited for the taxi to take her to the station; both men chatted kindly as they gulped their drinks and tactfully chewed their sandwiches. Julia had stayed mute, neither drinking nor eating, just standing.
The two men had remained out here after the taxi had driven away. Had they come in to say goodbye and thank you to Clodagh? People, even doctors and priests, had such casual manners these days. She eyed the empty bottles. One heard doctors took to the bottle, their life was such a strain, but priests? ‘You would think,’ she said to Clodagh as she clattered glasses into the foaming sink, ‘that Julia would have stayed to help. It would have been considerate.’
‘Julia only considers herself,’ said Clodagh. ‘Mind those glasses don’t break. Oh!’ she wailed. ‘Why must this happen to me? I was relying on Giles. I didn’t ring the plumber until yesterday. Giles had said—so of course—’
Madge said, ‘Oh,’ rinsing a glass under the tap.
‘She didn’t even wear black,’ said Clodagh bitterly.
‘Be fair, she did. A black hat and black coat.’
‘Not
underneath,’
said Julia’s mother. ‘She was wearing jeans and a sweater. Imagine wearing jeans and a sweater at Giles and little Christy’s funeral.’ I wish, she thought, that Madge would not be so particular; it grates.