Going Away and Other Stories Read online

  ‘Good God, I need a bit of comfort,’ he thought.

  He went and sat down beside Maggie and lay his head on her chest.

  ‘That’s better!’ she said, putting her arms around him.

  He felt so inebriated he didn’t really care what they were doing, either on the floor by the fire or later in Maggie’s bed. But when he woke up at about five thirty the next morning it all seemed somewhat different.

  ‘I’ve a wee hangover. Have ye no one too?’ asked Maggie.

  He agreed that he didn’t feel too great, but wondered to himself whether it was in fact a hangover or feelings of guilt.

  And Maggie said at breakfast, ‘Instead of calling me Mrs Mullins, ye’d better go on calling me “Maggie” or “darling” like ye did last night.’

  And as he went out of the door she shouted after him: ‘And no more seeing Fiona!’

  It was very cold outside and snow had settled to about two inches deep. But as he walked across the road, who did he see immediately driving into the farmyard before anyone else had arrived but Fiona! She skidded to a halt in her small Fiat, jumped out and ran up to him.

  ‘Ah good, I hoped I’d find someone around. Please come with me. Mother’s fallen over outside and I simply can’t lift her up the steps to the back door. I’ve called the doctor, but he’s out seeing someone and the Colonel didn’t answer when I phoned. Mother will freeze to death if she’s not got inside.’

  Of course he immediately got into the Fiat beside Fiona, who drove off rather wildly with the car skidding all over the road.

  Mrs Walker was lying, as Fiona had said, where she’d tripped and fallen at the bottom of the steps to her back door, face down in the snow. Fiona had put a blanket round her mother and a cushion under her face.

  ‘She must have been trying to feed the birds or something absolutely daft. As you can see, she’s only got her nightdress on! I’ve examined her and I’m sure she’s not broken anything.’

  Slowly they got Mrs Walker into the kitchen and made her comfortable in a chair, where she sat groaning while Fiona told her mother how silly she’d been.

  ‘I ought to get back, I think. I should have started work by now,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, please stay with me until the doctor comes. I’ll get some more blankets and some hot water bottles for Mother and make some tea. And then I’ll phone the Colonel or his wife and tell them what’s happened.’

  So he sat and had tea with Fiona and waited for the doctor to come. It was ten o’clock before he arrived back at the farm for work.

  ‘Difficult to know what to do today, Fraser, with all this snow. But I’ve got a few jobs lined up for you. However, I gather you’ve already done a good job on Mrs Walker!’ said the Colonel.

  So he spent the day carrying out various tedious little jobs the Colonel had given to him, thinking all the time how wonderful it had been to see Fiona again and what on earth was he going to do about Maggie?

  When he arrived home for his tea, she was waiting for him in the kitchen and it looked suspiciously as though she’d been at the whisky bottle again. Her little face was red and she glowered at him and picked up the bread knife and waved it about.

  ‘I told ye no to speak to Fiona again, didn’t I? And what do ye do straight away? Get off with her in her car!’

  ‘But it was an emergency. Her mother had fallen over in the garden in all the snow and she wanted help lifting her indoors.’

  ‘Well ye could have got someone else to go with her. I told ye no to speak to her again.’

  ‘Don’t be so silly, Maggie!’ he shouted as Maggie came towards him brandishing the bread knife. He grabbed her hand and easily twisted the knife out of her grip, from where it dropped onto the floor. Deprived of the knife, Maggie still came on and tried to scratch his face. And when he grabbed both her hands she just lay against him sobbing.

  ‘I canna bear it if ye speak to her ever again. Promise ye never will!’

  She was hysterical. He tried to calm her down by stroking her hair. The evening was spent with Maggie saying, ‘Why don’t ye promise?’ and him saying, ‘It’s unreasonable and impossible,’ until eventually he got her into her bed and sat beside her on it holding her hand. Part of him would have liked to have got in beside her as it was so cold, but he knew he mustn’t. So he sat and shivered.

  ‘Are you going to be able to sleep, Maggie, do you think?’

  ‘No. There’s some sleeping tablets in the cupboard in the bathroom that I got from the doctor after Doug died. Ye’ll see them there. Bring them and I’ll take two.’

  Eventually, having taken the sleeping pills, Maggie went off to sleep. When he was sure she was unlikely to wake, he tiptoed out of the room and into his own bedroom. But he didn’t get into bed. He quietly gathered his things together and, packing everything into his small backpack, let himself out of the front door.

  It had been snowing again during the evening, but the snow had now stopped and the stars were shining. It all looked very pretty indeed. But he was running away again, and he’d no idea where to. He’d never given his wife another thought since the day he’d walked out, but he did now think about Maggie lying asleep and hoped when she woke up and found him gone she wouldn’t take the rest of the sleeping pills which were still in the bottle on her bedside table. He should have taken it away!

  The Wrath of God

  The man who sold him the dinghy said:

  ‘You’re new around here, aren’t you, sir? Be careful of the tide when you take her out. It’s not too bad up river, but from here downstream the current’s very strong when the tide’s running.’

  ‘Ah, yes, I’ll be careful. Don’t worry,’ replied Alec.

  The boat seller watched him hobble away with the dinghy oars over his shoulder and the rowlocks in his jacket pocket and hoped he would be all right. Tall, very thin, with sandy hair turning grey, he didn’t look very robust or well.

  Alec had now taken the dinghy out several times up river. Apart from the difficulty of getting in and out of the boat because of his bad legs he’d managed pretty well. He’d been born and brought up in Scotland and he was used to rowing boats on the lochs. Up river was quite pretty, but now he’d like to try down the estuary to the mouth. He chose a day when the tide was high at three o’clock and he reckoned he should manage the whole round trip in just under an hour. The June sun shone brightly overhead, but it was not too hot rowing as there was a breeze off the sea. At first, the tide was still coming in and he had to pull hard just using his arms as his legs had no strength in them. Soon the water was almost still and his oars left pleasing expanding rings astern. He supposed he should now feel more content, as having the boat encouraged him to get out of the house. But he didn’t.

  Once again, he started thinking about what had happened over the past year. Morag kept telling him, ‘Don’t dwell on the past. Look to the future. Our luck will change!’ But it wasn’t easy. He’d always imagined his retirement to a villa in the south of France with a smart yacht in a marina nearby. But here he was, retired at 58, rowing a small second-hand dinghy down a muddy east-coast estuary in England and living in a two-bedroom cottage. None of the things that had gone wrong were his fault. For years after moving south he’d worked hard and made a good living as an insurance broker in and around London. People thought they were dealing with an honest man with his pleasant face and Scottish accent. But then more and more people started to use the Internet for comparative quotes. Then came the credit crunch and his business had suddenly dwindled. So he decided to retire early. As he’d always paid the maximum contribution into his self employed pension fund he thought he’d be reasonably well off, but he’d patriotically invested it all in shares in the Scottish banks and everyone knew what had happened to them. They’d lost about 90% of their value quite suddenly, almost overnight. What a disaster!

  ‘Never mind!’ Morag had said when she knew how small their pension would be. ‘This house in Weybridge should be worth quite a bit. We’
ll sell it and move to something small in the country, and invest the balance. We can live on that.’

  But of course property prices also fell and the best rate of interest he was able to get for the surplus money was three per cent. No wonder he’d been ill. He thought at one stage he was going to die. Now his legs wouldn’t work properly. He couldn’t walk far and thus wasn’t able to play golf, which is why he’d resorted to buying the boat. He felt so low that most of the time he really wasn’t interested in anything. His GP had put him on antidepressants.

  We are much affected by our early life and he’d often wondered if God was punishing him, although he could hardly believe it. He’d had a very puritanical upbringing. The minister at the kirk had always taught that God smiled on those who helped themselves and worked hard. That was probably why he’d been so successful in insurance. But he couldn’t get away from the fact that just before his business had started to fall away he had committed adultery. Adrienne was so attractive that at the time he felt he couldn’t have helped himself. But the minister would have undoubtedly have said that Adrienne was a ‘painted Jezebel’, and his warning that ‘the wrath of God shall fall upon fornicators’ kept coming back to Alec. And of course adultery was worse than fornication – it was a breach of one of the Commandments.

  His musings were interrupted by a shout from behind him.

  ‘Ahoy there!’

  He turned round and rested on his oars. The shout came from a large seagoing yacht which was anchored near the bank. Just the sort of boat he’d imagined himself owning in the south of France! There was a man in the stern dressed in smart white trousers and an open-necked blue shirt, with a red cravat tucked in at the neck.

  ‘Ahoy!’ the man shouted again. ‘Are you local by any chance?’

  ‘Well, yes,’ Alec shouted back.

  ‘We’ve just put in here for the night and would like to go ashore this evening for some drinks and something to eat. Could you advise us on the best place to go?’

  ‘Well, the pub I go to, the Anchor, is quite good. But people say the food at the George Hotel is better.’

  ‘Look, old chap, why don’t you paddle over and come aboard for a few minutes so we can chat about it rather than shouting at one another?’

  ‘Fine!’ Alec shouted back.

  He was rather pleased to find someone who wanted to chat. He was finding it difficult to make friends in the little town, and it would be nice to have a closer look at the yacht.

  Two minutes later he’d managed to tie up his dinghy to the yacht.

  ‘Welcome aboard,’ said the man, giving Alec a helping hand. ‘I’m Desmond Hanniford. Let’s have a drink while we talk, eh?’

  ‘Well, a cold drink would be very welcome, thank you. Lovely boat!’

  ‘Yes, not bad is she? But wait till you see my current crew. They’re sunbathing on the top deck . . . Come down, girls. Make yourself decent and look lively, we’ve a visitor who needs a drink. He’s been rowing.’

  Alec felt his jaw dropping with amazement as two absolutely stunning girls came down the steps onto the aft deck. They’d obviously been sunbathing nude and were fastening the tops of their bikinis.

  ‘The girls don’t speak much English. The blonde one on the left is my First Mate and the dark one on the right is my Second Mate. Quick, girls, grog for the gentleman!’

  Desmond, on closer inspection, appeared very bronzed and fit, with a wide smile and a mouthful of very white teeth. Definitely Errol Flynn on his yacht, Alec thought. He felt himself very scruffy, dressed in his old jeans and tatty shirt with a threadbare collar. He’d stopped bothering about what he looked like since he’d been ill.

  Alec explained that he was a newish resident, but did his best to give Desmond a description of the three pubs and the grandish hotel, though he could hardly keep his eyes off the two girls, who returned with a tray with glasses and a tall jug full of a greenish-coloured drink, with a large number of ice cubes floating in it. The First Mate gave Alec a glass to hold, and as she leant over, Alec had a wonderful view of a suntanned cleavage. The Second Mate followed behind to pour the drink from the jug, and as she did so she put her hand over his hand that was holding the glass, as though to steady it, and she smiled the most beautiful smile.

  ‘The girls are coming ashore as well. That’s why they’re putting on their war paint!’ Desmond said a bit later, nodding his head to where the girls were now sitting on the side of the yacht, painting their finger- and toenails.

  Alec wondered how on earth Desmond, who was probably about seventy, had got these girls. They must be some specialised sort of prostitutes, advertised as ‘crew girls’ or something similar, he surmised.

  But Desmond was saying something.

  ‘So, Alec, you say you go to the Anchor every night at about six for half a pint? Why don’t we meet you there? We could make up a nice foursome. How about it?’

  The sudden thought of an evening with the Second Mate entered Alec’s mind. He looked across at her, and particularly her thighs, as she sat carefully painting her toenails a bright scarlet. The colour went very well with her dark blue bikini, her tanned skin and her brown hair. She must have felt him looking at her because she looked up and smiled at him again.

  ‘Splendid idea!’ replied Alec. But suddenly he noticed that the yacht was turning at anchor and facing upstream. ‘But look, I must be paddling back. I see the tide’s turning,’ he said with a nonchalance born of the alcohol he had just consumed.

  He attempted to get up from the folding chair he was sitting in, but found it strangely difficult. That grog must have been practically neat gin!

  The Second Mate quickly came over and helped him up. She held his arm and took him to where his dinghy was tethered, then squeezed his hand as she helped him down into it, saying, ‘I look forward to ze evening.’

  He felt elated and inebriated as he rowed away strongly. He wondered what lie he was going to tell Morag that would enable him to spend the whole evening away. The alcohol and his elation helped him make good progress, and soon he could see the landing stage over his shoulder about 250 yards away. But suddenly he realised that the dinghy was no longer moving! He checked his position against the post on the bank and then rowed with all his strength while he silently counted to two hundred. Then he looked up. He was in exactly the same place! He was never going to make it back to the landing stage. Give it another supreme effort, he said to himself, and rowed until his head was aching and his heart pounding. But it was no good. He suddenly felt in a state of collapse and knew he was going to be swept out to sea by the tide. The dinghy would undoubtedly capsize when it got to the sea and he would be drowned as he couldn’t swim properly because of his bad legs. He stopped rowing and got up to turn himself so that he would be facing the bow and the direction in which the dinghy was now travelling. But his legs gave way and he went sprawling into the bottom of the boat, hitting his head on the thwart. As he fell, he heard the minister’s voice coming across the water:

  ‘Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time Thou shalt not commit adultery. But I say unto you That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.’

  When he opened his eyes his first thought was ‘the wages of sin is death’, but he must still be alive as he could smell the paint, heated by the sun, on the thwart. Painfully he turned his head to left and right. There, to the right, was the estuary in the distance. He must be nearly 500 yards out to sea.

  What had happened was a further warning! He hoped he would be rescued soon as the sea was calm and Morag would tell the coastguard that he was missing. He must be patient and wait. There was no point in trying to start rowing to the shore; he felt too ill. He shifted his body so that he lay in the bottom of the boat on his back looking up at the sky.

  He thought, ‘I must try to be better in future.’ But try as he might, he could not stop having visions of the second mate’s thighs as he looked into the beautiful
blue sky above him.

  Salvation

  Today was his 50th birthday and it was very hot, as it usually was on 24th June in London.

  As he walked down the six fights of stairs from his flat, he could feel his shirt beginning to stick to his back under his lightweight jacket and regretted putting on a cravat. Outside, although it was only nine o’clock, the heat rose from the pavement as he made his way round the corner to the café where he always had his breakfast. For once, he didn’t start to read The Times that he’d bought from the shop next door immediately on sitting down. Today was a day to think about things, to take stock.

  Well, it wasn’t really his birthday at all. His actual birthday was tomorrow but he’d adopted the 24th of June as his ‘official’ birthday. It seemed a better and more memorable day. The 24th of June – Midsummer Day. It had a romantic feel to it. He’d first been taken with the idea during his very brief and abortive legal studies. Some old leases, he had learned, had a rent of ‘a rose at Midsummer’, which was a variation on that oddity a rent of ‘a peppercorn’. He couldn’t imagine anyone actually giving his landlord a peppercorn, but a rose at Midsummer to a gracious and smiling landlady was a pleasing notion. A red rose, undoubtedly.

  The quarter days were very odd. There was 25th March, Lady Day – the jolly old Annunciation – and 29th September, Michaelmas, and of course Christmas Day. But why weren’t they all on the 25th? And the summer quarter day was on 24th June – the birthday of John the Baptist. He remembered once on his official birthday going into Siena Cathedral to light a candle – because it was his birthday, and there was this notice in Italian and English, saying, ‘This way to the relic of St John the Baptist.’ So he went and looked at it. It was a skeleton of an arm in a glass case. ‘Bloody hell!’ he’d exclaimed under his breath and made quickly for the exit. It was ghoulish and incredible and made him feel slightly sick. Once outside in the cathedral square, though, he’d remembered what his very religious father had always said to him when as a teenager he’d got so cross about what he called ‘the nonsense of religion’.