Jan Mark

They Do Things Differently Here

There were no tubular bells by Elaine's front door. 
  'Can I use your phone - let Mum know I'll be late?'
   'Go ahead. Then come up to the attic,' Elaine said. She called out to someone unseen, 'Charlotte's going to ring home,' and then bounded up the uncarpeted stairs that twanged and squeaked as her feet hit each tread.
  I picked up the handset hesitantly, but no answering voice demanded, 'Who's Charlotte? Has she got a rotary clothesline? Can she get into a size 8?' The only sounds were a distant hammering and the music, old Beatles records today. No one came out to see what kind of a visitor was being allowed to walk on the fitted carpet. There was no carpet, only a runner with frayed edges, rolled up at one end where people had been tripping over it for years.
  I made my call, explained that I was with a friend but not explaining which friend, and followed Elaine upstairs. On the landing a man was sawing the banisters in half, but he looked up, nodded pleasantly and indicated the next flight, to the attic. I passed an open door and looked in to see an empty bedroom with a tent pitched in it.  A pair of naked male feet - they are a different shape from ours - was sticking out at one end.
  Elaine's attic was almost as bare as the campsite; again, no carpet, a single bed, an old cane chair and a dozen tea chests stacked against the wall. Two other tea chests, with a rug across the top, forming a divan, stood under the window which looked out over the back garden and the conifer hedge, the boundary of Stalemate.
  'We could never have lived in stalemate,' Elaine said. 'They'd have run us out of town on a rail. What did you tell your mother - not the truth, I hope.' 
  'I said I was having tea with a friend. I expect she thought I meant Rowena.' 
  'She won't mind you coming here, will she?'
  'She doesn't know Old Compton exists.  I don't think anyone does.'
  'Rowena does,' Elaine said. 'She knows now. She asked me where I lived, so I told her. 'Oh,' she said, 'those derelict houses down by the ring road. They're condemned.' After that she didn't mind a bit when I said I had to go home. She kept saying, 'but you aren't going to stay there, are you?' Well, we aren't actually, but not for the reason she thinks.
  'Not staying?' Now I came to think of it the house looked as if it was occupied by people who had been there five days rather than five months. I remembered the tent in the room below. 'When are you going?' 
  'I don't know, we're only renting. John - my father - that guy on the landing sawing the house down, he's a civil engineer.' She lowered her voice. 'We don't talk about this, but he's working on a motorway interchange. Usually if anyone asks we say he's an embezzler. One has to hold up one's head.'
  I had always thought that a civil engineer was a respectable thing to be, well, civil at any rate. 
  'Oh , it is,' Elaine said, 'but things are different since the flyover entered our lives. This interchange is going to make Spaghetti Junction look like mere noodles. We're hoping for something morally defensible next time, like a suspension bridge. The trouble is, every time he changes jobs we all have to move; well, we don't; we could all stay put, but we like to be with him. We like Old Compton too, but we like him better, and we'd like Old Compton even more if it didn't have Stalemate attached to it.'
  'But why did you come here?'
  'We got a map and a pair of compasses,' Elaine said, 'and put the point on the flyover and drew a circle round it to discover how far away from it we could afford to live.'
  'You'll go mad with boredom,' I predicted. 'I don't know why you aren't mad with boredom already.' 
  'Why should I be bored?' Elaine said. 'I'm never bored by myself.'
  'Nor am I,' I said, but it wasn't true. I needed other people, almost as if the fact that they noticed me proved that I existed. Could it really be the case that Elaine needed only herself?
  'The compass factor is very important in the annals of Stalemate,' I said, savouring the name. 'God, you know . . . the basic design.' I explained my Creation theory.
  'I thought he did it with a pastry cutter,' Elaine said.
  Elaine's mother called up that the kettle had boiled if we wanted tea, so we went down, past Mr Crossley who was carrying away a whole section of the banister rail. The feet were still poking out of the tent.
  'Who . . .?'
  'My brother Paul,' Elaine said. 'Down from Newcastle for the vac. He's here so little that it's not  worth getting any furniture out of storage for him. With that tent and a sleeping bag he doesn't even need a heater. And spring is coming. Up in Stalemate the bog asset-stripper is bursting into flower and the song of the sheep can be heard in the land. You knew, I suppose, that the sheep of Stalemate are renowned for their melody. Infatuated naturalists hide all night in the bushes with recording equipment, making tapes. Poets write odes; you know; 'Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, but to be a sheep was very heaven!'
  I was beginning to see why Elaine had spent two terms at Lord John's without speaking to anyone. Who could she have spoken to?
  By the time we reached the kitchen, which was big and warm and fully furnished, Elaine's mother was out in the garden. Elaine made tea and assembled sandwiches by enclosing a cream cracker between two slices of cheese.
  'It cuts down on crumbs,' Elaine said. She opened the window to put a mug of tea on the sill outside, waving to her mother who came to collect it with earthy hands and trowel tucked into a pocket of her smock. It was the first time I had seen her, a big, slow-moving woman, fit occupant for the washing that yesterday had billowed over the garden. 'What are you planting, Marge?' Elaine said.
  'Carrots,' Mrs Crossley said, wandering away again with the mug.
  'That's the saddest thing,' Elaine said, watching her go. 'Whenever we move she starts gardening. If it's autumn she puts bulbs in, in spring she sows vegetables.  It's an act of faith - that one day we'll be in the same place long enough to pick the flowers or harvest the crop. Well, we got the daffodils - if we go before the carrots come up, promise that you'll come down and harvest them. Remember us when you eat them.'
  I was becoming depressed by all this talk of moving on. Already I wanted Elaine to stay for ever so that we could explore Stalemate together. After this, how could I go back to discussing cellulite with Rowena?
  'I ought to be going soon,' I said reluctantly, at half past six. At the back of my mind I was developing the feeling that as soon as I left Elaine's house the light would go out and the place return to dereliction, so that when I looked back there would be no curtains at the windows, no music drifting over the garden, no washing, no carrots; and that when I mentioned Elaine at school next day Rowena would look vague and say, honestly mystified, 'Who? Who are you talking about?'
  'I'll walk round with you,' Elaine said, 'unless you're catching a bus. Legs in Compton Rosehay are mutating into vestigial fins, which accounts for the prevalence of mermaids in Stalemate, but that's another story.'

They Do Things Differently Here ©Jan Mark, 2005. Published by Random House.