Spring Tide

¹¹ Dear

A man called James lives in one of the two groundfloor bedsits. He’s the same sort of age as me, in his early thirties. He is tolerably good looking, always wears a jacket and tie and is, as my aunt Angelica puts it, ‘very well spoken’, all of which would also be a fair description of myself. I first met him when Angelica became convinced that some intruder was ‘prowling round’ inside the building. At her request, I called on every resident to ask if they’d seen strangers on the stairs.

When James met me at his door, I could see him noticing my surprise that a man like him should be living in a place like this. The two of us really were quite alike, and he acknowledged this with an odd little smile: sly, complicit, and strangely self-satisfied.

‘By the way,’ he told me, when we’d finished discussing Angelica’s imaginary prowlers, ‘I should warn you that I may not remember you if I see you again. Did a stupid thing, you see, a few years back. Got a bit depressed and tried to kill myself with the exhaust of my car. I wouldn’t recommend it. Memory’s all shot to pieces. Can’t hold onto anything for more than ten minutes or so.’

It seemed odd to me that he should reveal something so personal when we’d only just met, but the strangest part was the way he smiled as he told me about his calamity. It was the same smile he’d greeted me with, the smile of a schoolboy with a sick note that will get him off for the rest of term.

On the opposite side of the hall to James lives a Brummie woman called Sheila, who James refers to as ‘the bag lady’. I gather she’s in her fifties, though it would be hard to tell, because she has no front teeth, a ravished, bloodshot face, and is sort of shapeless, as if all the various parts of her body have been broken up so many times that, in the end, any attempt to properly reassemble them has been abandoned, and they’ve just been tossed anyhow into a roughly body-shaped sack. According to James, who seems to know a surprising amount for a man with a ten-minute memory, she really did used to live on the streets until Dr Hodgson took her in. ‘She still drinks a bottle of sherry a day,’ he told me, smiling as he watched my eyes for a reaction.

Sheila dotes on James, cleans his room and brings him cups of tea. I’ve had to call in on him a number of times since that first occasion, all in connection with various worries of my aunt’s, and I’ve several times witnessed him receiving these offerings of Sheila’s in a way that reminds me of some colonial district officer accepting a gift from a benighted native: amused, puzzled, slightly contemptuous, but nevertheless pleased. ‘I know it’s absurd, but what can I do about it?’ his half-apologetic expression seems to say as he glances towards me and sees me watching. But it is only half-apologetic. There’s always that trace of self-satisfaction and complicity. He and I are too well brought up to mention it, that look seems to say, but we both know I secretly envy him for living in a bedsit with a worn lino floor, and having a bag lady to care for him.

Once, on some errand of my aunt’s, I intruded on the two of them watching a TV game show. James was in his armchair, Sheila kneeling at his feet with her hand inside his fly.

‘Oops,’ he said, pushing her away.

‘Bad moment.’ But even then, he smiled.

On the next floor lives a man named Doug. He’s now in his fifties, like Sheila, but I gather he spent most of his early life in some kind of institution, a hospital for the mentally retarded or some such thing, from which he was discharged in his twenties into what is called The Community. Even after thirty years, he still misses that place. He’s told me many times that he used to work in the laundry there, and the highlight of his day was riding round on the back of an electric vehicle from ward to ward, picking up sacks of dirty clothes, and dropping off clean ones. Everyone knew him, he says. Staff and patients, high grades and low grades: everyone in the whole hospital knew Doug the laundryman.

Perhaps surprisingly, in view of his laundry experience, Doug doesn’t go in for washing things. Every time I see him, he’s wearing the same black suit which has become shiny with the particles of grease that now fill in each gap between one fibre and the next. The flat stinks of cigarette smoke, old chip fat, urine and sour stale sweat.

Doug’s not much good with money either. From what he tells me, he pawns his wristwatch for a few quid at the end of most weeks and then buys it back again for twice as much when his benefits come through. Sometimes, when I call on him, he asks me for a loan: ‘just a couple of quid, mate, to tide me over till Friday’. I never get the money back, but that doesn’t stop him, a week or two later, making the same request without so much as a mention of the existing debt.

Next to Doug is a bedsit which Dr Hodgson – the Doctor, as his tenants call him – keeps for his own use on his visits to Bristol. He was born in the city and used to live and work here, but these days he’s a reader in mathematics at the University of Edinburgh. At first glance, he’s quite imposing to look at – well over six feet tall, strong, broad-shouldered and boyishly handsome for a man in his early sixties – but at second glance you see that the man himself barely inhabits this body. It’s like a suit of clothes that’s several sizes too big for him, and way too flashy. Someone much smaller and more diffident peeps out of its eyes, someone more like his own tenants, and more like me.

He’s a considerate landlord. He doesn’t keep the house in brilliant repair, but this is down to his unworldliness, rather than meanness or indifference to the well-being of the residents. He always gets problems fixed as soon as they’re raised with him without a quibble, and his rents are extremely low.

My aunt Angelica has the whole top floor to herself, so that her place isn’t a bedsit like the others but a proper flat, with a bedroom, living room, small kitchen and even a tiny spare room. She became quite friendly with the Doctor for a while, about a decade ago, at a time when he was based in Oxford for a year and came over to Bristol pretty much every weekend. The two of them had tea together a few times, apparently, and on one occasion – one fateful occasion – she even cooked him a meal.

Now Angelica stares at me with her enormous eyes. Her cup of tea has come to a standstill halfway to her mouth.

‘He’s visiting again?’

‘That’s right, Aunty. He phoned me to let me know.’

I replace my own slightly grubby teacup on its chipped saucer.

‘This is his house, after all,’ I point out. ‘He is entitled to come.’

I live about two miles away and visit every couple of days. It’s a duty I perform at the request of my mother, Angelica’s younger sister. (‘I’m so sorry to put this onto you, David, but I really need you to do it for me. Angelica needs a lot of support, but for all kinds of reasons to do with our childhood relationship – don’t worry, darling, I won’t bore you with it now! – I’m just not up to taking it on.’)

‘He might be entitled to come here in a legal sense,’ Aunt Angelica says. ‘But that’s entirely beside the point. Why does he need to come, that’s what I want to know?’

As in the rest of the building, there’s a faint whiff of decay in Angelica’s flat. She adds considerably to the general dinginess by keeping the curtains drawn and the windows firmly closed, but it’s all very genteel. There’s a three-piece suite in a slightly threadbare floral print, a dresser with a dinner set on display, and a china shepherdess on the mantelpiece above the small gas fire.

‘He must know how much it upsets me,’ she says. ‘And it unsettles the others too, particularly that poor old Doug who of course he should never have taken on in the first place.’

Angelica sees herself, among other things, as Doug’s protector. He comes up to her flat quite often, and she meets him at her door to dispense handfuls of coins as grandly as if she was the lady of the manor and he was some kind of grateful peasant. But as far as I’ve been able to gather, neither Doug nor the other two tenants are troubled in any way by their landlord’s visits. Quite the contrary, in fact: James enjoys the contact with another educated man, Sheila thinks he’s ‘lovely’ and ‘a perfect gent’, and, perhaps because of his institutional background, Doug is quite obsessed with him, to the point where much of his conversation seems to revolve around what the Doctor said last time, what he said in reply, and what he’s going to say to the Doctor when he visits next. None of this, however, is of any interest to Angelica.

‘There’s no real reason for him to come,’ she insists. ‘It’s not as if he works in this town any more.’

Like her eyes, her mouth is very large in comparison to her tiny face and frame and is tremendously expressive in an almost cartoon-like way.

‘And in any case,’ she adds quickly, before I can point out that in fact he does still have academic commitments down here, even if he is based in Scotland, ‘there are such things as hotels, and the man is absolutely made of money. I really don’t see why I should endure this, year after year after year!’

Anxiety eats at her constantly, and almost literally so, for it’s anxiety that burns up the calories and makes her so painfully thin. But Aunt Angelica is much too proud to ever speak of fear, and so she talks instead about irritation and displeasure, about feelings trampled, and rights infringed.

‘You don’t have to see him, though, Aunty,’ I point out. ‘He’ll stay downstairs. He won’t call on you. Remember we agreed that with him? He won’t disturb you in any way.’

My aunt lowers her cup, her large eyes bright, her large lips curling in patrician scorn.

‘He won’t call on me, you say? Oh really, is that so? Honestly, David, how can I be expected to believe that, in view of the history? Have you forgotten that he once came right up here – right up! – expecting to be invited in?’

‘Yes he did, but that was five years ago. And I spoke to him afterwards, if you remember. I explained to him that you didn’t like it, and that you wanted to be left alone. If you recall, he was very apologetic. He told me that he was just trying to be friendly, as he is with his other three tenants, and he hadn’t understood how you felt. And, as you know, he promised faithfully he’d never do it again.’

‘“Oh Angelica! Angelica!”’ Angelica distorts her whole face as she mocks Dr Hodgson’s soft voice, making it sound not just mild and tentative, as it certainly is in reality, but weak and wheedling too. ‘“I wondered if I might pop in for a chat?” And it was three years ago, anyway. Get your facts right, David. Three years, nine months and twenty days, to be exact.’

‘Okay, three years then, Aunt Angelica. That’s still a long time. And that was all he said. He didn’t come into the flat. He didn’t ask anything of you. And when you told him to go, he went. It’s just that he owns the house, and he thought it was a shame that you and he couldn’t be on friendly terms as you used to be. It’s not as if—’

‘It’s not as if what? It’s not as if he ever returned my feelings? Is that what you’re going to say? That it was all in my head? Ha! Some chance, David! Some chance! By all means believe that if it makes you happy, but he and I both know that’s a lie, even if he’s not man enough to admit it! That man was positively slavering over me, David, positively slavering! But he’s had his chance, and he’s not getting another.’

Angelica laughs grimly.

‘And then of course there was that time I heard him shouting. Do you remember? Shouting and crying down there, late at night, all by himself.’

‘He apologised for that too, if you remember. You asked me to speak to him and he apologised. He’s only human, Aunt Angelica. Life is hard for him as it is for most of us. He was upset with himself about something and he started shouting. It wasn’t aimed at you. It was about something else entirely.’

‘Or so he says, anyway. Or so he says. I’m not quite so trusting as you are, David, I’m afraid. Not so trusting at all. But who cares anyway? I don’t want him here, and there’s an end to it. If he’s really got business in this town, which I very much doubt, why can’t he just stay in a hotel?’

‘But like I keep saying, it’s his house. If you really don’t want anything to do with him, you could move somewhere else yourself, but you’ve always—’

‘You’re always nagging me to move, aren’t you? Somewhere cheaper, perhaps, is that the idea? So I won’t use up your inheritance?’

This is a preposterous charge. There’s absolutely no chance of her finding anything cheaper than her present flat, whose rent hasn’t increased for a decade, but there’s no point in my saying that, so I keep quiet.

‘This may be his house,’ Angelica adds, ‘but it’s my home.’ She must know that the thing about my inheritance is nonsense. She has very little money, and will have none before she’s through. ‘Why should I move out because of him?’

When I next visit, Angelica is fretful.

‘When will he arrive? You must tell me, David. I must know in advance, so I can be quite sure I won’t have anything whatever to do with him.’

She gives a characteristic sniff, contemptuous and haughty. My aunt seldom ventures beyond the door of her flat, but she acts like the queen of the world.

‘Not that I won’t know anyway,’ she adds. ‘You are your mother’s son, David, completely rhinocerosskinned, and you don’t have my sensitivity at all. But I can feel things, and I always sense his presence through the floor. The weight of him plodding around, and those big slow clunky thoughts going round and round in his head!’

‘Listen, Angelica. Listen. You mustn’t distress yourself, but he—’

‘He’s what? He’s what? Oh dear God, David, you’re not telling me he’s here already?’

‘Yes, he arrived when—’

‘He’s here and you didn’t tell me! How could you! How could—’

She breaks off. She is so transparent. It’s just occurred to her that, if she admits to not knowing he’s here already, she’ll be undermining her own claim to be able to detect his presence and sense his thoughts.

‘Yes, of course, of course,’ she says crossly. ‘I can feel him down there now. That heaviness. Those heavy thoughts going round and round and leading nowhere. I noticed them earlier. But you’d specifically promised me that you’d tell me in advance and so I’d persuaded myself I must be wrong.’

She’s very agitated now and gets up to fetch her cigarettes from the dresser, fumbling one out of the packet, lighting it, drawing deeply and then laying it down in the glass ashtray that always sits beside her on its slightly grubby doily. Almost straight away she begins to take another cigarette out of the packet, and then remembers the first one. Another person might be amused by her own absent-minded mistake, but Angelica never laughs at herself. She pushes the second cigarette back into the pack, and tosses it crossly down.

‘He arrived in the early hours,’ I tell her. ‘You were probably still asleep. He won’t disturb you, and very soon he’ll go out.’

‘What time will he go out? I must know what time. And the time he’s coming back as well. I often look out of the window, you know. Often. It’s my view, my peaceful view, and he’s no right to spoil it by making me worry that I might see him there.’

I look out of Angelica’s window myself sometimes, when I find myself alone in the living room – it is a lovely view, and I always admire those rows of blue slate roofs, climbing the hillside opposite – but I’ve never once seen my aunt look out for the pleasure of it. The only occasions I’ve ever observed her pull back the curtains is when she hears some noise in the street below, some potential threat. She has no resources spare for mere curiosity. She is in a permanent state of emergency. Everything is in the service of defence.

‘I’ve already got the times,’ I tell her.

Knowing how she’d fuss, I spoke to him earlier on the phone. It was extremely embarrassing, asking my aunt’s landlord to spell out the precise times when he would leave and return to his own house, but of course he was as gentle as ever.

‘I’m so sorry that Angelica and I have had this misunderstanding, David. It seems to cause her so much distress. I really do assure you that I only ever intended to offer her my friendship, but in my clumsy way, I somehow gave her the wrong impression. And then, when I tried to put her straight, I got that wrong as well. I really am so sorry. I’d ask you to pass on my apologies but, from what you tell me, that would only upset the situation even more.’

‘And he mustn’t look up,’ Angelica adds. ‘When he comes in and goes out he must not look up! Do you understand? David, answer me! Do – you – understand?’

Why do I put up with this? Why do I keep coming here to be bullied by my mother’s mad sister, who never asks me a single thing about myself, and never wonders, even for a moment, whether I might have worries or troubles of my own? Am I really doing this out of altruism and family feeling, or am I just submitting to her power?

For she is powerful, that’s the strange thing. Angelica is so utterly terrified of the world that she doesn’t leave her flat for months on end. And yet, somehow, she still wields enormous power. ‘I’ll tell him, Aunt Angelica. As to those times you asked for: he’ll be going out at—’

‘I don’t even like you speaking to him, you know. It really isn’t very nice for me having to talk to you when I know you’ve spoken to him earlier in the day. In fact, to be frank with you, David, I’m surprised that didn’t occur to you.’

I’m really cross now. ‘Well, what do you want me to do, Aunty? I need to speak to him, don’t I, if you want me to find out about his movements?’

She’s noticed the sharpness in my voice and, just for a moment, I can see her considering it. But then she hears some sound – she’s very sensitive to sound – and imperiously holds her hand up for silence.

‘What was that?’

‘Just a toilet flushing, Aunty.’

‘Just a toilet flushing, you say. Do toilets flush themselves, then, David? It was him flushing it, you mean. Him. Did you think you could leave out that obvious fact?’

‘Him flushing it, then.’ Once again I can’t quite keep the irritation from my voice. ‘But now it’s quiet.’

My aunt glances at my face. She has certainly registered my annoyance, but she’s not planning to flatter it with her attention, for if there’s one single thing in the world she’s not afraid of, it’s me. She sniffs.

‘I notice you still haven’t told me when he’s going out and coming back.’

‘He’ll go out at nine thirty and return just after five.’

‘He mustn’t come back any earlier then. He’s told you his plans, and now he must stick to them. If he finishes his business sooner than expected, he’ll just have to sit and wait in the park. His so-called business, I should really say, because I’m not fooled, David, even if you are. I know perfectly well that he just comes here because of me. It’s utterly pathetic, but it seems that’s how he gets his little kicks.’

‘I really don’t think it is, Aunt Angelica. You’re not quite such a big figure in his mind as he is in—’

‘Not back before five. You must make him promise that.’

Angelica is waiting. She’s beside the window, hiding behind the curtain but peeking out. It’s 4.30 in the afternoon.

‘What are you doing here at this hour?’ she demands, dropping the curtain immediately and stepping back with a flounce. ‘I sometimes wonder what they pay you for, David, in that job of yours. Don’t you have work to do?’

‘I thought I’d check if you were alright.’

‘Well, obviously I’m not. How could I be alright, when he’s on his way back here? He’ll probably be early. I know his timekeeping of old. So I was just having one last look at my lovely peaceful view before he spoiled it.’

‘Those blue roofs, eh? Those blue roofs climbing up the hill?’

‘Yes. But why do you say it in that sarcastic way? I must say you’ve been very unpleasant and sarcastic lately, David. I don’t know why you’re out of sorts, but I don’t think it’s very grown-up or fair of you to take it out on me.’ She snorts. ‘I suppose you were trying to hint that I was looking out for him, were you? Some chance! He should be so lucky. He – should – be – so – lucky.’

She crosses the room, picks up her cigarettes, fumbles the lighter open with her shaky hands.

‘Well, alright,’ she says. ‘I was looking out for him. But only to check that he kept his promise. Only for that.’

My tiny aunt pulls deeply at her cigarette, exhales, then glares defiantly out at me with her enormous eyes from the middle of a poisonous white cloud.

Angelica is listening.

She is really listening. She’s standing quite motionless in the middle of the room, her head tipped over to the right, her right ear positively straining towards the floor. She even holds back a wisp of her featherlight hair so as not to obstruct her hearing in any way.

‘He talks to himself, you know. I can hear him talking all the time. “Mumble, mumble, mumble,” he goes. “Angelica this, Angelica that, Angelica three bags full.”’

She stands up straight. She lets that little wisp of hair fall back over her ear. She looks for her cigarettes.

‘You think I make it all up, don’t you? You really are so like your mother.’ She shrugs, lights a cigarette, draws deeply on it. ‘Well, you can believe what you like, David. It’s entirely up to you. But he does talk about me. Of course he does. How could he avoid it, when he thinks about me all the time?’

‘I’m sure he does think about you. I’m sure he really does care about you, as he cares for all the people in this building. And in your case, he remembers how it was, before… well, before you developed these feelings for him, when the two of you could just be friends. He wishes things could be like that again.’

‘He puts it all onto me, does he? How very convenient.’

‘He’d like to see you. He told me so himself. In fact he said he’d love to see you if—’

‘That’s enough! That’s more than enough. You promised me – you promised me, David – that you wouldn’t pass on a single word he said.’

She cocks her head, pulls back her wisp of hair, listening once more with all her might. Then, apparently hearing nothing new, she stands up straight.

‘He had a visitor yesterday evening. I couldn’t tell who it was.’

She takes another long draw on her cigarette, looking over at me all the while in a sideways, sneaky sort of way.

‘And you are certainly not going to tell me, are you, David? That would be quite against all those high principles of yours.’

Getting no reply from me, she cocks her head again, and listens to the floor for a few seconds more before giving an irritated shrug and stubbing out the cigarette. I don’t know anyone who can consume a cigarette as fast as my aunt Angelica.

‘Typical of him, really. “I know what I’ll do,” he says to himself, “I’ll invite a mystery guest. That will arouse Angelica’s interest! That will get her going!” Well, let me tell you this, David, I’m not the slightest bit interested. Not the slightest. Some floozy no doubt, some little tart. What concern is that of mine? In fact, even if you did try to tell me who the visitor was, I wouldn’t listen. Certainly not. I’d block my ears and make a sound like this.’

She sticks her fingers in her ears, and chants ‘Na na na na na!’

Angelica is angry.

‘Why didn’t you say he was about to go?’

She is pacing around her room, smoking furiously. Her face is pale and taut.

‘When was it anyway? Last night? Oh I knew it! I just knew it! I heard the door as he crept out. He tried to do it quietly of course, the coward, but he’s always been a clumsy oaf. And then I heard a car starting up, down towards the end of the street. I suppose he thought I wouldn’t know it was him if he parked right down there at the bottom, but I knew alright. I knew it was his car. I heard it pause at the turning and then move off again. And then afterwards I heard the silence. No thoughts down there any more from beneath my floor. No mumbling and muttering and thumping about. Just silence once again.’

She glares at me.

‘Don’t smirk at me in that knowing way, David. You look just like your mother. I heard all of that, all of it, whether you believe me or not. But you hadn’t told me, had you? You’d let me down yet again. You’d absolutely promised you’d tell me, and yet you said nothing. And so naturally I doubted myself.’

She turns and hurries through to the little kitchen at the back of the flat, running, almost, in her eagerness. Pulling back the curtain, she presses her face against the window to peer down at the tiny back yard, with its empty washing line and its concrete slabs and its five metal dustbins in a row, with the flat numbers marked in yellow paint: 27 A, 27 B, 27 C, 27 D, 27 E.

She turns back into the room.

‘All night I listened to the car. I heard it going through the streets, and then up the motorway. Birmingham, the North, Scotland, up and up and up. All those lonely places in the night. All those cold orange lights shining down… I knew he’d gone but you hadn’t told me so I thought perhaps I was going mad. You – should–-have – told – me!’

‘He had to leave earlier than he thought. He’ll probably be back again next year, but—’

‘It’s entirely up to him, David. Why should I care? What difference does it make to me?’

She turns once again to the kitchen window, looks down at the bins. Those blue roofs wind unnoticed over the hill.

‘I expect he’s left all kinds of rubbish down there.’

‘I shouldn’t have thought so. He’s only been here a day. What sort of rubbish did you have in mind?’

Angelica snorts.

‘All kinds of rubbish,’ she repeats firmly. ‘He always does, the great lout. He leaves a trail of the stuff wherever he goes.’

When I go back later in the day, I find Angelica outside.

She almost never ventures down the stairs – a van delivers her shopping and the man carries the bags up to her – but now she’s come down, and out through the front door, and into the great terrifying space under the sky. As I arrive, she’s making her way round the back of the house, using her left hand to maintain contact with the building’s reassuring wall, and keeping up a constant muttered monologue to hold the world at bay. She hasn’t noticed that I’m here.

‘All kinds of rubbish,’ she says to herself, with that haughty little snort of a laugh and, though she herself lives in Flat E, she heads straight for the bin marked 27D.

‘Aha!’ she mutters as she lifts the lid. ‘I knew it.’

At the bottom of the bin she’s seen a small plastic bag, such as might line a wastepaper basket. She still hasn’t noticed me as she reaches in, with a grunt of effort and pulls out the bag, emptying its contents onto the ground. There’s an apple core, a free newspaper, a box that once contained a ready-cooked beef lasagne, and the soiled metal tray in which the lasagne was cooked. But what interests her is a little scrumpled ball of blue paper. It looks like a discarded letter, or a draft found wanting and thrown away. One corner is stained brown by the lasagne.

Angelica kneels on the ground to smooth it out against the concrete. Yesterday’s date is scrawled at the top and after that…

But I can’t watch this in silence any more.

‘Aunty Angelica?’ I murmur.

Still on her knees, she wheels round like some small cornered animal.

‘What are you doing here?’ she hisses, clutching the crumpled paper against herself as she clambers hastily to her feet. ‘I really can’t stand the way you keep creeping and snooping round me. So like your mother. I’m a grown-up woman, for goodness sake, David. Do you really think I can’t look after myself?’

‘Well, sometimes you do need a bit of help, Aunty, and you did seem very upset earlier. I was just calling by to make sure you were alright, and then I noticed you down here by the bins.’

‘So you thought you’d have a bit of a laugh at old Angelica, did you? Have a bit of a laugh, eh, and then get in your mother’s good books by telling her the whole story? Go away, David. I don’t want you. Just go, go, go!’

But a few hours later, she calls me in tears, begging me to come back over.

I let myself into the flat with my own key and find her sobbing on the floor beside her dresser. She’s still clinging to that little piece of paper, though she’s scrumpled it back up into a sodden ball. Gently I remove it from her hand and set it down.

Some time later, when I’ve poured her a brandy and tucked her up for the night, I have a look at it, but there’s almost nothing to see. All that’s written there, apart from the date, is the single word which most letters begin with.

I meet James on my way out. He’s coming back from the shops with a few purchases in a carrier bag.

‘Good evening,’ he says blandly – whatever the truth about his memory, he recognises me perfectly well every time he sees me – and then he gives me that smile.

There is poor David, that smile seems to say. There is David with all his responsibilities and pressures and painful attachments. There is David the ever-anxious juggler, still trying desperately to keep those clubs in the air. And here, on the other hand, is lucky James, with his life-long sick note, giving him permission to let them fall.