Under My Skin (36 page)

‘You staying long?’ Jake asks and he pulls up a chair to mine and I tell him I’m staying in a house near Long Nook beach, near Truro.

‘My oh my,’ he replies, ‘and you know the story of Herman
Dill?’ and I look back and for some reason I say ‘Nope’ instead of ‘No’.

‘He drowned in a cottage near that beach.’

‘He drowned in Wellfleet, in a lighthouse,’ Arthur says and he frowns at the other man.

When Jake goes, Arthur sits down again and he looks at me for a minute over his small silver glasses which he has pushed down on his nose. I don’t know what he is thinking or if he is taking me in, but when he speaks again his voice is lyrical and warm and what he says is simple and in a voice full of kindness.

‘Sweetheart, you’re gonna freeze.’

At that moment the winter sun blinks out and the sky – through the vast skylight – is a brilliant cold blue and when the single shaft of sunlight comes in and floats down over me it makes a warm spot on my head. And here we both smile at each other and he holds my gaze and then I look away. Jack’s house is made for summer. There is no way to block out draughts. One solid fuel stove. An immersion heater that hisses and threatens to explode. A sofa covered in damp striped ticking. A single lamp. A whistling kettle. A stool covered in chipped white paint. A pirate chest used as a coffee table. A wooden duck inside the door. A picture of a ship about to go under and it is called ‘Brig on a Stormy Sea’. A telescope. Why? One blue enamel mug. There is no furniture or TV but I can sit on the floor beside the stove and watch the moon and the stars. The floor is made from wide chestnut boards and the wind blows up under them and this morning there was a small sand dune inside the front door.

The man is right – I will freeze but I am not going back to sympathy and tea and home.

What would Larry do?

And this morning I stood in the middle of the room and
asked this question of the sea and the mug and the single white chair and like me they were silent and sad and did not seem to know.

Arthur gets up then and walks without a word on to the porch and I take my groceries and stand outside with him. There are three identical white painted rocking chairs parked in a row and he is sitting on the edge of one rolling some loose tobacco for a smoke. He turns one shoulder a little to fend away the sea breeze.

‘Smoke?’ he asks and I find myself saying ‘Yes’. He is a stranger to me and yet since I met him I can feel a warm feeling beginning in my chest. He is older than Pappy was but there is something magnetic about him. And he is older than anyone I know and yet with those strange eyes, that seem to keep a big secret, and his lined and weathered face, he is somehow beautiful too.

He wants me to sit beside him now and I recognize the basic primal need from him to me and back. People who find themselves alone and need to hear the sound of another voice. Two people who stand and stare into the rough dashing waves of New England and listen and listen as if the sea could actually keep them company and talk.

He only wants a chat.

That is all and I can give him that.

When he gets up he goes into the shop to buy some matches and I start rocking over and back. I am thinking of old men with raggy beards who spit tobacco and have names like Isaiah and Jethroe. Old-timers and now a young-timer like me. The chair starts to rock faster and then faster again and the next thing I crack my head on the stone wall behind and when he stands over me again there are little silver stars and blue birds circling around my head.

‘Wow,’ he says and at first he looks shocked and then I can see he is actually trying not to laugh.

‘What was that?’ he asks.

‘That was my head. On the wall.’

And when he comes towards me laughing he puts both hands around my head to nurse it and inside I am thinking, ‘All my life. All my damn life. Why does this sort of thing always happen to me?’

And he is still laughing and saying, ‘Trust me, I’m a doctor.’

‘Here,’ he says then and he hands me a neatly rolled cigarette and then he strikes a match. We sit side by side, quietly smoking and looking out towards the beach.

‘I’m not able to sleep,’ I tell him suddenly and my own voice surprises itself so that there is a tiny upswing at the end.

His voice is cool and easy and he does not look up straight away and when he does it is over his small silver glasses again.

‘What’s wrong?’ he asks simply.

He sits back and waits and then, because it is a difficult question, he says, ‘I go for a long walk every evening, right down Newcomb Hollow Beach, if you would like to come with me tomorrow.’

‘Great,’ I answer – and then I come out with something really dumb.

‘Walking is a good idea. It’s good for your body… and your brain.’

‘My brain,’ he says with some mild wonder. ‘I gave up on that years ago.’

Arthur is waiting for me in Wellfleet. He is leaning on his car with both hands deep in his pockets. The sun is gone and we are surrounded by a misty grey afternoon. When he sees me
he pulls on a woollen ski cap and then he opens the car door without any words. He drives towards Newcomb Hollow and then we take the sloping path down through the sea grass meadow and on to the sand – when I pause he points the way.

‘I do it in one hour every day,’ he says.

His eyes rest on my green army jacket for a second and he asks, ‘Will you be warm enough?’

‘Yes.’

‘Would you like some gum?’ and he offers me a Wrigley’s Spearmint.

‘Thanks.’

And the only sound is the crunch of our boots on the long stretch of shingle and how it slopes down at first and then stretches upwards into more damp mist and wet sea grass.

New York is mentioned early and he says that 9/11 has passed and people need to start rebuilding the city and to try to move on.

‘Did you lose anyone?’ I ask him.

‘Only myself,’ he says and when he catches my eye he is smiling and there is no hint of sadness in his voice.

We pass an old beach shack with boarded-up windows and there is mildew covering the outside walls. He tells me that this is what the disease inside him is like and as we fall into step again he talks.

He starts with a nurse holding the first syringe up (‘A very attractive woman,’ he adds, ‘in a low-cut blouse.’) and how he looked at her and said, ‘Hello, I’m James Bond,’ and he ends with the day he looked at himself in his own mirror in Manhattan last January and thought that he was already dead.

When he describes his disease it is like poetry, or some Shakespearean tragedy he has to perform. He plays out each
part beautifully. The awfulness of it. The weakness. The fear and the pure comedy that suddenly surrounded him when he thought he might die. And there is nothing even close to sadness or embarrassment in his voice. His spirit seems to crackle inside him. And he is thin. Wan. I hardly know him and
I
am suddenly worried that he might die.

‘And are you feeling better?’ I ask.

‘Yes,’ he says and he stops for a moment and smiles at me. ‘I am feeling better today.’

He loves New York. He loves everything about his city – and suddenly here on a cold beach in New England his city is so different to mine. There are sticky green buds in springtime, long walks in Central Park, the first fall of snow in November and a date with a woman he later wanted to marry on top of the Empire State.

‘What happened?’ I ask.

‘She had a weak heart, she died.’

And then he says it – bringing us back to real time and bringing us together again.

‘Mortality has always been a big part of my life.’

When we pass a house two terriers come tumbling out and they run to him as if they are all old friends. These are his buddies whom he meets every day on his walk – and then we turn and I ask him questions about the Cape and he describes the seasons and the cool blue sky over the ponds at night. And I continue to question him because he seems to be able for it and because it helps me to avoid having to talk about myself.

Wellfleet is his real home and he knows and loves every inch of it.

‘Before the pilgrims, there were Punanokanit Indians,’ he says and with these words his voice warms with pride and
then he says, ‘We have sandy soil here… sometimes the old bones rise up,’ and his eyes are twinkling at me, teasing, and making me laugh.

I notice that he does not mention his family and I do not mention mine. He says he left New York because one day he looked into his bathroom mirror and ‘The face looking back was green’ and he shakes his head and blows smoke into the wind and laughs again at his own poor health. He was being followed by a woman whose heart he had broken and here his voice is level and without emotion and then he meets my eyes and says, ‘She was beginning to frighten me.’ We do not talk about my life because he senses that I can’t. Then he tosses the cigarette into the wind and we begin to walk again.

We take the road past Gull Pond and then over the long narrow boardwalk and he points out his house to me. It is not made of wood like the others. It is tall and made of cut stone and there is a bright red barn behind it and tall waving trees. He offers to drive me back to Truro and we talk again in the car.

‘Did you know anyone when you came to New York?’ Arthur asks.

‘Only Jack – the guy who owns the beach house – and a woman I met through the Internet and she was nice… but a little weird.’

And here Arthur pulls a tired face.

‘You were in New York,’ he replies and he salutes a woman who stands at a street corner and she smiles back and gives a little wave.

He parks near the post office and we cross a narrow sandy path and then we are walking over the dunes and over soft sliding sand towards the beach. There are three cottages in a row. Two are empty and Jack’s cottage is at one end. He walks
in and looks around. He knows I have no hope here but he tries to help. He tells me he will bring me fuel from his shed. He points out window shutters that I didn’t know I had. He looks at the broken-down couch and tells me I would be better sleeping on that and not to even try going upstairs.

And then his face breaks into a smile and he suddenly looks like a little boy and he is really excited now and pointing to the high shelf and I am looking blankly at the old green box beside the wooden duck.

‘You have Scrabble,’ he says and it seems really important to him.

‘On Friday,’ he goes on, ‘come to my house for dinner, play Scrabble,’ and he shivers in my sitting room. ‘Get warm.’

He opens the door and looks up at the sky for a moment, and then without saying goodbye he leaves.

Email to Hope Swann 4.48 p.m.
From Jack Mitchell
Hey, Going to try to get down there at the weekend. Saturday
afternoon.
Did you work out how to light the stove OK?
Jack.

Email to Matilda Vaughan 5.02 p.m.
From Hope Swann
Hi Matilda
How are things? Sorry I left in a hurry and without saying goodbye. I just needed to get away and think. I’m in Cape Cod. Truro. In Jack’s beach house. Do you know it? It’s nice but very cold. I am so mixed up about everything. I just need some time.
There’s one interesting person here. An old guy who invited
me to his house for a game of Scrabble!?! Is that a date do you think?
Anyway, hope things are good with you, and sorry again I didn’t get a chance to say goodbye.
Hope.

The bedroom window faces away from the beach. From here I think I can see the lights of Wellfleet and in the distance a single light like a yellow star and that could be from his barn. When he left I stood in the doorway and watched as his feet sank a little when he jumped the step on the front porch and landed in wet sand. He turned the corner without waving and then he was gone – and somehow he has been with me ever since. I do not understand this. He seems to have turned into a hundred different shadows so that he is imagined to be seated on the white chair, or adding a log to my stove or stretched out on my bed on a warm June afternoon. And when his face is gone I stand still for a moment and try to remember his eyes and his smile and I think I have the memory now and then it’s gone again.

There is a bottle of wine in the bag of groceries and I see that Mr Huckstable has chosen a Californian Shiraz. I will take the next bus carrying the bottle and with the box of Scrabble under my arm. I can remember Frankie’s voice as I step out on to the porch: ‘That’s like asking someone with dyslexia to play Scrabble.’ Today on the beach Arthur told me about all sorts of things and there were words shooting in every direction and it was impossible for me to catch them in my net and pin them down.