train.
The platform was crowded. In the friendly reliable way we all have, nobody came forward to say who was even standing near her. To hear the witnesses at the inquest, the three thousand people must have clustered awkwardly along the platform leaving an open space for several yards all around Sheila as she waited for the train to come and kill her. Don't go trying to say people may not have noticed somebody pushing a woman off a platform because of the crowd. There's no excuse. Women notice a pretty woman because they're practically compelled to, and men notice because they're compelled to in a different way. People simply look away when they want to, and
Later, a couple of days on, I remembered what George Field had said: If you take away people, there's nothing left. One can't be answerable for all mankind, no. But you can sure as hell stick up for the little chunks of mankind that are linked with you, no matter how that link came about—birth, relations, by adoption, love. It all counts. Podgy old George and his dumpy little wife knew the game of living, while I was just a beginner.
I learned about Sheila from Geoffrey the day after the burglary. I just said thank you and shut the door.
No jokes from now on, folks.
Chapter 10
Somebody once said you get no choice in life, and none in memory either. Judging by what the Victorians left in the way of knickknacks, they made a valiant attempt to control memory by means of lockets for engravings, 'likenesses' in all manner of materials ranging from hairs from the head of the beloved to diamonds, and a strange celebration of death through the oddest mixture of jubilation and grief. Their memory, they seemed to think, should be neatly ordered to provide the maximum nostalgia centered on the loved one. If it needed extra emotional work to achieve that reassuring state, then the labor would just have to be endured. You can't say the Victorians were scared of hard slogging.
I would have liked to have been as firm as they. You know what I mean, pick out especially fond moments from my friendship with Sheila and build up a satisfying mosaic of memories which would comfort me in my loss by giving assurance that all was really not wasted. Nice, but all really was wasted as far as Sheila was concerned. Finished. Done for. And for me Sheila was gone. Anyway, I'm not resolute enough to look inward for the purpose of emotional construction. Gone's gone.
So that terrible day I sat and sat and did nothing to my records, left letters unanswered, didn't pick up the phone. For some reason I made a coal fire, a dirty habit I thought I'd given up. I shifted my electric fire, put newspaper in a heap in the grate, chopped wood, and got it going first time. There was a residue of coal in the old coalbin by the back door so I set to burning that. The cottage became warm, snug, and the day wore on. I had no control over my memories of Sheila as I watched the flames gleam and flash in the fire.
She had this habit of watching me, not just glancing now and again to check I was still around and not up to no good, but actively and purposely inspecting me. I might be doing nothing; still she'd watch, smiling as if engaged in a private humorous conversation at my foibles. It made me mad with her at first, but you get used to a particular woman, don't you?
Another trick she had was reaching out and absently rubbing my neck for nothing while she was reading or watching TV in the cottage. I'd probably be searching through price data of antiques and she'd just put her hand on my neck. It distracted me at first and I'd shrug her off, but moments later back she would come caressing me. There was nothing to it, not her way of starting sex play or anything. It was just her preference. She used to do it for hours.
Then there was the business with the cheese. While I was studying she would suddenly put down her book, go across to the little kitchen, and bring back a piece of cheese so small it didn't matter, and push it in my mouth. Never said anything, never had any herself. It would happen maybe twice or three times in an evening. Often she'd not even stop reading; simply carried her book with her, reading as she went. As well she was tidy and neat, unlike most birds. They have this reputation, don't they, but most of them get fed up with the tidiness legend and chuck it in during their late teens. Sheila was really tidy by nature, almost to the point of being a bit too careful. Nothing of hers ever got in my way. I never fell over her shoes, for instance, because they were tidied out of sight, not like some I could mention.
And the fights. We scrapped a lot, sometimes because of sex, other times because stress is part of life and you let off steam. She was irritable sometimes. She'd announce it from the doorway on arrival, standing there. 'I'm angry, Lovejoy,' she'd say, blazing. 'With me or without?' I'd say, and every time she'd fling back 'With you, Lovejoy, who else?' and we'd argue for hours. I'd chucked her out before now because of her temper. Once women get their dander up, all you can do is send them packing, because there's no point in everybody getting in a rage to suit their need of a barney, is there? I've sloshed her too, sometimes when she'd got me mad and other times making love, but that's only the love sort of coming out, isn't it? Once I bruised her and got worried afterward, which made her laugh and call me silly. I don't follow their arguments, really, mostly because they make allowances for all sorts of wrong things yet go berserk over little matters you'd hardly notice.
The fire was hot on my face from staring at it. I needed one of Dandy Jack's embroidered fire screens but wanted to see the fire. Of course, a hundred years ago people had fire screens to protect their complexions from the heat, and to shield their eyes from the firelight while reading or sewing in a poorly lit room. A bright fire was a source of light. The complexion bit was the important thing, though. Only peasants and country women had ruddy complexions. Elegant ladies wanted lovely pale faces on the unmistakably correct assumption that though ruddy's only healthy, pale's interesting.
Natural light—fires, candles, oil lanterns—confers a special feeling in a room. One day a month when I feel like it I switch all electricity off and live by natural light. You'd be surprised at the effect it induces. Try it. Natural lights have sounds, small poppings and hissings betokening the fact that they have a life of their own. And that's another thing. Notice that word I just used, betokening? By natural light words you'd never even think of come back as it were from times before. Who uses words like that? See what even thinking of natural light can do for you. It teaches you a lot about times gone by too. Your eyes begin to sting sometimes if you use too many oil lamps in a room, so three is a maximum or you become uncomfortable.
One odd thing is that rooms which you'd think unduly cluttered become much more acceptable by natural light. You've seen mock-ups of Victorian drawing rooms in museums beautifully lit by bright inert-gas strip lights, and probably been dismayed by seeing practically every inch of wall space covered by pictures, every surface littered by ornaments and clocks, and the furniture draped with hangings so you wonder how they could stand it. The reason you're put off by all that congestion is that the museum's got the lighting wrong. Tell them to switch everything off and put a single oil lamp on the bureau and draw the curtains.
Sheila wouldn't rub my neck any more. No cheese would suddenly be pushed absent-mindedly into my mouth. No more fights. No more sex with her. No more being watched by her smile.
