The Blind Light Read online

  ‘Yes, we were lucky,’ he says.

  ‘Yes, lucky,’ she says.

  She leans over and kisses Drum on his stubble-brushed cheek, leans her head on his shoulder the way she used to when they took the Underground. He smiles, but she can feel his discomfort. An irritation. She keeps her head there, leaves it on the bone of his clavicle, closes her eyes.

  ‘Did I tell you about the supermarket this morning?’ Gwen says.

  ‘No,’ he says.

  ‘It was bedlam,’ Gwen says. ‘I went in to get some bits and it was full of old biddies fighting over tins of peas and tins of peaches. You wouldn’t have wanted to get in their way. Some of them looked like they were going to lamp each other for a can of oxtail soup.’

  He doesn’t laugh, doesn’t look towards her, eyes forward almost not blinking.

  ‘Apparently it’d been like that all morning. The woman at the checkout said she was hiding some beans for her tea in case anyone got to them. They think it’s the end of the world, she said to me, the mad old ducks.’

  ‘Maybe they’ve got the right idea. Maybe they know more than we do?’

  ‘Ah yes, the rumours of impending international nuclear conflict coming from the Women’s Institute?’

  ‘It would explain it.’

  He laughs then. Annie laughs too.

  ‘I think Annie agrees.’

  He turns left, the road deeply dark and then light as they drive through a town. Orange sulphur light and bungalows, streetlamps and closed-up shops.

  ‘You’re not worried?’ he says as they take a roundabout.

  ‘About Cuba?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I haven’t really thought about it.’

  Annie laughs again. They laugh at her and she smiles and she keeps her eyes on the dark outside the windows.

  Old Nick once wrote a long, blank-verse play about the aftermath of an atomic war. The Stars Shine Down from Heaven. There was murder and incest; a vague suggestion of magical powers, of the divine amongst the rubble and madness. A curio, he claimed: a play born out of nightmares. It had been staged at the local theatre. He had extended Gwen an invitation and she had attended. It was melodramatic, verbose, poorly acted and badly staged. He took it all in good humour.

  ‘At least,’ he said, once the run was over, ‘when the apocalypse does come, we’ll have something to compare it to.’

  Nick said he thought about the end of the world every day. Not one day without it crossing his mind. On good days it was a fresh wind blowing through the earth, a Godly broom sweeping away the trash; on bad, a man-made inferno, venal and pointless.

  Gwen lets Annie hold her finger, let it go, grip it again, the way she did when she was younger.

  ‘Are you worried?’ Gwen says.

  ‘No point in worrying,’ Drum says.

  ‘That’s not what I asked,’ she says.

  She looks down at Annie.

  ‘A friend of mine died,’ Gwen says. ‘From back home. Da said in his letter.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ he says. ‘How awful.’

  ‘She was old, but it was sudden. Wasn’t expecting it. The funeral was last week. John had the wake at the pub. She was a bit crazy, but I liked her. Used to come in every day with her brother. Pint and half of mild, a packet of scratchings.’

  She laughs. Nick’s demented side-whiskers, pint of black and tan, now a woman with half a mild. A final transformation. From death to resurrection. Ecclesiastical almost, that.

  ‘You should call Carter,’ she says at last. ‘Let him know we’ll be late.’

  ‘Yes,’ he says. ‘If I see a phone box, I will.’

  9

  Either Carter is at home or he is not at home.

  If the house lights are on, Carter is at home. If the house lights are on, you tell Gwen to stay in the car and you go to the door. If Carter answers, he will understand. Carter will play the game. Carter will make nice with Daphne. If Daphne answers, you explain things. Carter will be not far behind. They will understand and wave you in.

  If the house lights are on, Carter is at home. If the house lights are on, but there are cars parked outside the house, you tell Gwen to stay in the car and you go to the door. Either Carter or Daphne will answer the door. If Carter opens the door, he will know what to do. Carter will make nice with Daphne. He will introduce you as late-arriving weekend guests. Gwen will put the baby to bed and you will have a drink. If Daphne answers, you explain things. Carter will be not far behind. They will understand and wave you in.

  If the house lights are off, Carter is not at home. If the house lights are off, you tell Gwen to stay in the car, and ring the doorbell, shrug, then look down and pick up the note you’ve written. You know the spare key to the back door is in the plant pot under the window. What things you remember.

  If the spare key is not there, you will force the door. If you cannot force the door, you will smash a French door or small window. You will make sure Gwen does not go into that room. Sometimes these things are simpler than you think.

  Plans. Contingencies.

  He takes a right at the end of a road. Not much further now. Either Carter is in or he is out. A binary. Just the two options. Are you in or out?

  Annie cries. In her mother’s arms, she screams. Annie cries and either Carter is home or not at home.

  ‘She’s awake,’ Gwen says, flatly, as Annie howls. ‘How far now?’

  ‘Not far. A couple of miles.’

  Annie screams. Annie has filled her nappy and Drum can smell the settling.

  Shhh, Annie. Shhh, Annie-moo. Home or not home. Shhh, Annie-moo.

  ‘She stinks,’ Gwen says. ‘We should stop and change her.’

  Annie screams. Hot tears on pink face. Annie wriggles out of her mother’s arms.

  Shhh, Annie. Shhh, Annie-moo.

  ‘We’re almost there,’ he says.

  Home or not home. Shhh, Annie. Home or not home.

  10

  The track up to the house is waterlogged, full of crags and puddles. It is almost eleven and the car makes bogged progress, the headlights revealing a rabbit, turning over mud and clod, and the house on the hill looks regal, each room lit as though with fire.

  ‘It’s beautiful,’ Gwen says. ‘Look, Annie, look at the house.’

  Drum smiles and it does not look like his smile, not like his smile at all, the muscle movements and display of teeth nothing like she has seen before. He looks more like Montgomery Clift than he ever has. She has not thought of Montgomery Clift in a long time. Stars they come and go.

  They pull up just outside the house, alongside Carter’s cars.

  ‘You change Annie,’ Drum says, ‘and I’ll go ring the bell.’

  Drum smiles that strange smile again and is gone, his boot-prints in the dirt, trouser cuffs already muddied, hair wild from the wind.

  11

  Carter’s cars are parked out front. The lights are on inside. He is home. Drum rings the doorbell, the sound echoing behind the door, deep and rich. The door is glossy, black as the Jaguar’s paintwork.

  The door begins to open. Either it is Carter or it is Daphne. It is Carter. Carter is wearing a white linen shirt and blue linen trousers. There is the shrug of a smile beneath a new and tweedy moustache; not quite welcoming, not quite not. Carter looks at his watch. All in the timing.

  ‘So you made it,’ Carter says. ‘I didn’t think you would in this filthy weather.’

  Drum tries not to look surprised. Carter is holding a glass of red wine, it swings in his fingertips.

  ‘I was worried you hadn’t got my messages,’ Drum says. ‘I’ve been calling the telephone.’

  ‘We tend to unplug it,’ Carter says. ‘I don’t like its tone.’

  Drum laughs, but Carter does not. There is no welcome embrace. Carter swirls the wine in the glass.

  ‘I would have called you,’ Carter says, ‘but as you don’t have a bloody phone it was impossible.’

  He stands in the doorway, the do
or not completely open, like dealing with a tinker or door-to-door salesman. His eyes are whisky and wine; his teeth tannin and tar.

  ‘But I keep my promises, Drum. No matter what. It’s a point of principle. Now, bring your stuff in and I’ll get you settled. Daph’s in bed with Tommy, so keep it quiet, okay?’

  He turns away, down the hall, leaving the door wide open.

  Drum looks to the car, sees the crest of his wife’s hair. The air is clear and clean and tastes new in his mouth. There are stars and all of them are looking down on him. They shine down and say to him that he is safe. That he has arrived and they all will be safe.

  THE MOOD FROM THE PICKETS

  As the world holds its breath over Cuba, the massed strikers of Ford’s of Dagenham are focused solely on negotiations closer to home. For those I spoke to in the packed canteens, on the pickets, in the pubs, the threat of nuclear war seems to be little more than a sideshow to the events going on in the factory. ‘We’re not distracted,’ said Richard Allanson, a forty-six-year-old veteran of several strike actions. ‘We’re determined to see this through, to get the right result for all the workers at Ford’s.’

  It is a sentiment heard time and time again, the roar of militancy drowning out the fear of atomic destruction. In the Eastcote pub, however, I was told by a group of younger men that one of their number had been seen leaving town, a car fully packed, sensing an opportunity to escape. It is a rumour that provokes both laughter and ire; one that ultimately has the quality of a Chinese whisper – they all admit it could just be someone visiting family. Stories and rumours are rife during an out. They keep the men enlivened during the cold business of striking.

  Whatever happens in the wider world, I get the impression, one derived from observation and a childhood spent in orbit of the Ford plant, that the launch of nuclear weapons would be met with shrugs and a few moments’ reflection before holding a meeting to ratify another series of demands. To the men and women who toil here, Ford’s is the world, the centre of the earth, and no amount of geopolitical turmoil will stop them in their quest for social and industrial justice.

  Raymond Porter, ‘The Mood from the Pickets’, Herald, 19 October 1962

  13

  Entering the house is to retire from the century; to step into an era removed and out of time; curated, piece by piece, from what has gone before. That’s how it feels to Gwen. The hall is its gangway and portal; a precarious balance of the inherited and the acquired, the modern and classical: a grandfather clock beside the telephone table; riding boots racked next to kitten heels; a bag of golf clubs leaning against a shyly enclosed radiator.

  And how lit. How lightened by the chandelier’s crystal drop; the soft, slow burn of an oil lamp; the glow of a green-visored desk lamp; the solemn flames from red tapers burning in a silver candelabra. And how scented. Pollen and leather; log-smoke and wax; dusk notes of tobacco and rum, dark as the parquet stretching beyond the mahogany sweep of staircase, its newels unhung with jackets or scarves. And how staged. The doors off the hallway, tantalizingly ajar: a swatch of wallpaper, flocked and scarlet, its silver motif dappling from an unseen fire; a light switch in gold, a dial instead of a rocker; the dark spines of leather-bound books behind smoked glass; the ankles of a Queen Anne chair tipping a wink. And how empty, but full. Unpeopled, but sentries and hosts mounted to the walls. Oil portraits of military men, women in mourning clothes, young boys dressed in sailor suits. The three of them standing there, laden and heavy-breathed, unable, or unwilling, to leave the large dun-coloured doormat.

  How they must look. Like emigrants or evacuees. Their belongings on the doormat, a child in her arms, the hum of just-changed baby, mud and muck on their shoes. How they must look.

  Carter emerges from a doorway, hair flopping into his eyes, arm aloft in greeting, smile constricted by a moustache.

  ‘Thank God you’re here, Gwen,’ he whispers. ‘I had the awful feeling old Drum had come here solo.’

  Carter is aftershave and alcohol, a damp kiss on her cheek. He makes a face at Annie who neither cries nor simpers, but looks curiously at Carter. She touches his moustache, brushes it with the tips of her fingers, recoils at the sensation.

  ‘She’s a little bobby-dazzler, isn’t she?’ he says. ‘Cute as a button. Anyway, let me show you to your room. But quiet, see? Old Tommy’s liable to wake if we make too much noise. Would you like a hand, Drum?’

  Drum looks down at the suitcase, the boot still laden with bags and boxes.

  ‘No, I’ll be fine,’ he says.

  Carter nods and sets off at a clip, the three of them in his antic wake. Soft stairs, then the softer landing. It feels like walking on the beach at low tide, as though she could leave footprints in the twill. The landing is long, so many doors off, one of which Carter opens and allows them to enter before him.

  There is a four-poster bed and a dresser with a pitcher of water already poured, two glasses beside; peach sherbet carpeting; the bedspread patterned with roses and briar. Towels are laid on the eiderdown and two doors lead off from the room, both open and lit: one a bathroom with a claw-footed tub; the other with a cot in its middle, alongside it an armchair.

  ‘I’m afraid I’m absolutely done in. Was just off to bed when you arrived. Sorry to be such a baby, but we’ll catch up in the morning,’ Carter says. ‘No rush. Get up when you like.’

  A smile and then gone. Poof. As though never there. The three of them say nothing, just look at each other, until Annie breaks free from her arms and begins to explore her new territory. Gwen does not stop her, does not blame her.

  ‘Did we die?’ Drum says. ‘Maybe we died on the road.’

  ‘You think this is heaven?’ she says.

  ‘Not heaven. But maybe a rooming house on the way.’

  ‘So purgatory is needlepoint samplers and duck-down pillows?’ she says.

  ‘Purgatory sounds less . . . luxurious,’ he says. He runs and swallow-dives onto the eiderdown.

  ‘Me,’ Annie says to her mother and pointing at Drum. ‘Throw me!’

  Gwen picks Annie up and throws her onto the mattress, the girl landing wide-eyed next to Drum, too excited even to say again. Gwen flops onto the bed and lies beside Annie and Drum. The three of them lie there looking up at the floral canopy, stilled like they have been dropped there from a passing aeroplane, quiet and open-eyed.

  14

  He has become accustomed to waking alone, to reaching out for Gwen and touching only eiderdown or pillow. Six nights from seven these days; the fold-down bed permanently set up in the spare room, Gwen too tired to make it back to their room once Annie’s finally back down. They have tried having Annie in with them, but the possibility of smothering her with his bulk is unnerving. So before sleep, he kisses Gwen goodnight and in the dark she disappears, like a magician’s trick, and he is left to face the morning alone.

  In Carter’s spare room, it is the light that wakes him, not the scream of a child or the buzzer of an alarm. He has forgotten how that feels; how natural to be woken by subtle ambient shifts. He feels the warmth of the winter sun, its bright eyes through the thin curtains. Silence in the room. No sign of anyone around. He is again the last man alive. The slow terror of that. To have somehow survived while all others have perished. To stand and open the window onto the blistered earth, the bodies in the fields, the burned bones where once there stood cattle. He can smell it. The cook of it. What he can smell is bacon. What he can hear now is the chatter of voices, the whoop of a child, the cry of a child. He turns over in the bed, feels stupid for letting the idea get too far; is ashamed he is the last to make it downstairs.

  Drum checks Annie’s room and sees evidence of morning routine, the fine dust of talcum on the dresser, the unpacked bag of nappies and creams. All this without him; all this without his even realizing. How deep the sleep to not stir; how deep the sleep to just snore through it all. The peace of it.

  He can hear voices as he descends the staircase. There is a radio playing,
the sound of cooking, a family getting on with their usual Saturday breakfast. He does not quite dare go into the kitchen. He watches from the doorjamb as his wife feeds porridge to his daughter, as Daphne feeds porridge to her son, as Carter fiddles with a coffee percolator. As though this everyday, normal. But no place for Drum. Drum just watching. Not serving food to the infants, not making the coffee, but waiting by a door, useless and mute.

  ‘Oh, it wakes,’ Carter says, spotting Drum, waving a finger. ‘I was beginning to wonder if you’d ever surface.’

  ‘You’ve only been up a half-hour yourself,’ Daphne says. ‘And Drum at least has an excuse. He drove most of England yesterday.’

  Thank you, Daphne.

  ‘Hello, love,’ Gwen says. ‘I thought I’d let you sleep, after all that driving yesterday.’

  He kisses her on the top of her head, Annie looks up at him but says nothing, just accepts another spoonful of porridge.

  ‘Thanks,’ he says. ‘I must have needed it. Hello, Annie-moo.’

  Annie smiles and he would love to know what the smile means, if it means anything at all, whether there is so much packed within it he could never hope to parse the individual notes. Gwen pours him tea and the light bounces from marble surfaces and copper pans to the tea pouring from the pot.

  ‘Help yourself to bacon and eggs,’ Daphne says, pointing to the two lidded silver trays on the table. ‘I’ll make us some toast once Tommy’s finished his porridge.’

  His grandmother, when she was alive, would tell Drum stories of her years in service. What it was like to work a big house, how being neat, effective and silent was the key. Something she said coming back as he forked bacon and eggs onto the plate: gentlemen and ladies always serve themselves at breakfast. You’re never on duty then.