Comfort Zone

He heard Maude enter the house, but did not go to greet her. She went quietly to her part of the ground floor they shared. He had recently redecorated the downstairs lavatory with a soothing green emulsion paint. A pretty green summer dress of Janet’s hung on the back of the door. He had yet to make up his mind to part with it. Like the rest of the house, this lavatory was fairly shipshape. It was only the outside drains and gutters that still required the attention of the elusive builders.

He was comfortable enough in his house, even sharing it with Maude. No one had ever broken into it. Nevertheless he was uneasy, not understanding what trouble Maude seemed to be involved in. He had spoken to Guy Fitzgerald, with whom he was on fairly formal terms. Guy owned Righteous House; he was an anaesthetist at the JR, the local hospital, the John Radcliffe. He had shed no light on the matter of Maude’s conversion, or of who was living in his summerhouse, beyond the fact that he thought their lodger held no immigration papers.

Justin’s living room was unremarkable, somewhat dated. Janet had furnished it; he had never changed it, except to add a large TV screen to one corner. The windows looked out on the garden and his courtyard. Morning sun flooded into this room. The sun tried to tempt a big unkempt succulent standing on the window sill to flower. This tousled plant had not flowered for three years. He forgave it, liking its grand disorder. When and if it ever flowered again, it would give forth the most brilliant blossoms, opening mouths of unimaginable colour.

At the front of the house was a smaller and smarter room. He had taken some trouble with its furnishings. The basic colour was a sober deep blue, markedly enlivened by a large rug fashioned from many multi-coloured squares and rectangles of a durable wool. He had installed a small settee of a plump nature, on which he often sprawled to read the TLS. There had been a time when the afternoon sun had filtered into this room, making it glow with an amiable beauty. Over the years, trees such as leylandii and a magnificent horse chestnut had grown up on the perimeters of the school on the opposite side of the road, absorbing the sun’s rays; so that only little trembling points of gold now broke through into this evening room. Justin’s kitchen was old-fashioned, his pantry sparse. He rarely went into the dining room. Only when Kate came to spend the night with him did they have breakfast there. Eggs and bacon always featured on those happy occasions. In these various rooms he maintained himself and Maude. He had even learnt to tolerate the incantations Maude was learning from Om Haldar.

2

A Note from the Summerhouse

Marie Milsome called on Justin, to see that he was not starving himself while Kate was away. ‘How goes WUFA?’ he asked.

‘Don’t ask,’ Marie said. She brought him a package of home-made tongue sandwiches. Justin was immensely fond of Marie. He brewed some coffee and they went into the garden with it, to sit ensconced on wicker chairs under the sun umbrella. Marie was a handsome, well-set-up woman in her sixties. Her generous head of hair was dyed somewhere between ginger and gold; she flew once a month to her hairdresser in Paris to have her hair attended to. Not only was she adroit at swearing: the world, or many of its aspects, troubled her. There she and her husband were much in agreement. ‘Was the world always in its present muddle or were we just too young to notice?’

‘At least the world was not so over-populated,’ Justin said.

‘Shagging took one’s mind off worse things,’ she said with a smile. ‘Probably better things too …’

‘Such as?’

Justin had advertised for a gardener. A man called at the side door, dragging a dog with him. He announced himself as Hughes. Justin did not immediately take to the fellow, but he showed him into the courtyard, where Marie was sitting, in order that he might gain some idea of the garden. The new arrival was a big hollow-chested man in his fifties, wearing a mustard-coloured jacket at least two sizes too large for him: evidently bought from the Oxfam shop. His well-worn face might have come from the same source. The jacket stood away from him at the neck, hunching back at the shoulders, as if, of all the people who had worn the garment previously, this customer was its least favourite. Justin introduced himself and Marie and asked the man’s name.

‘Jack Hughes,’ he said.

‘Oh, how delightful,’ said Marie, piping up. ‘We are reading Zola’s J’accuse in our French class. Was your mother reading J’accuse when she was pregnant?’

Hughes was completely baffled. In a short while he said he did not want the job and left, scowling and muttering to himself, dragging the dog after him.

‘I could have killed you!’ Justin exclaimed, and both he and Marie burst into laughter. Little did they anticipate the note, written in pencil, pushed through Justin’s door, saying You was rude. I did not have no mother, see.

Marie left. Justin was alone again, thinking as he always thought, worrying about Maude. He could not understand how she had been moved to espouse a religion where women were so subject to male domination. In the house, a sickly smell assailed him. His cleaner, Scalli, had been over-liberal with the disinfectant again. He wandered about the house, feeling vaguely uncomfortable. In one of his rooms, facing south, stood a glass-fronted cabinet. Although Justin was far from being a rich man, he had made a small collection of bodhisattvas, each about twelve inches high. He had four of them. These strikingly elaborate figures wore crowns and in general looked forbidding. Justin had no great interest in Tibetan Buddhism; he simply admired the alien nature of the figures. He had become so accustomed to them that he hardly glanced at them from one month to the next. But now he realized that one of the figures was missing. It was the bodhisattva which clutched a fish in its left hand. He began to look round the house to see if anything else was missing. That seemed not to be the case. He went to sleep in his armchair. He woke with the lost figure still in mind. He was philosophical. He had bought the bodhisattva fairly cheaply in Chengdu, China. He suspected that a Chinese merchant had stolen it from a Tibetan monastery. There was something like justice in the fact that it had now been stolen again – from him. He liked not thieves, but justice. If Maude had needed money to pay whoever she was paying for instruction into the Muslim faith, she would have asked him directly. He must tackle Scalli about it. ‘Tackle tactfully,’ he thought.

He was suffering from a headache, doing nothing. A woman called Hester phoned Justin. She said they had gone out together forty or more years ago. Did he remember? He pretended that he did. It was absurd of her to ask such a question. Hester? Hester who? She was having an exhibition of her abstract paintings at the Greystoke Gallery in Oxford. She hoped he would come along. ‘Are you all right, Justin?’ she asked. ‘You sound a bit down.’

‘I’m okay. Are you all right?’ He had already forgotten what she had said her name was.

‘I’ve been having a terrible time. I caught a bad dose of flu at the beginning of last year. Of course, I’m middle-aged now. Well, a bit more than that, really. I mean to say, my Maggie is coming up for thirty-one. It’s sad to see your children grow old, and I know she doesn’t get on too well with that daft husband of hers. Anyhow, it took me ages to recover from the flu – and then I went blind in one eye.’

‘That was bad luck, Hester.’ Her name had come back to him. He thought he had better pronounce it before it was gone again.

‘Well, for an artist, you know … I thought it was the flu but the doctor said it was the acrylics. I’ve just gone through the laser treatment and, thank God, my sight’s restored.’

‘Was it painful, the treatment?’

‘So here we are, talking about our illnesses …’

‘It’s an occupational hazard when you are eighty.’

‘Really! I’m only sixty-nine, you know. My friend Terry – I tell friends it’s short for Terylene – she says the reason why no one likes old people is because all they can talk about is their illnesses.’

Justin chuckled. ‘She could be right. Add a smell of wee …’

‘I hope you will make it to the Greystoke Gallery. It would be nice to see you again. Or at least interesting. Oh, and I forgot to tell you, my father has died.’

Hester? He tried to conjure up a face. No luck.

Justin Haddock (or, as he prefers, Haydock) is eighty years old, and there are many faces he can no longer conjure up. For him, life is rich in small events, even phone calls. He values its everydayness, knowing he will not live for ever. To survive for a goodly number of years is all very well, thinks Justin. The vital thing is to maintain something of a social life; it is there that enjoyment lives. This is not so easy when one’s wife – as in Justin’s case – has died. Or did Janet go to Carlisle? Surely Carlisle had just been a silly joke. It had become stuck in his throat like one of his warfarin pills. And again, he wondered about the world in which he lived: and about the lives of those about him. There might be someone hiding in his house of whom he was unaware. Supposing Maude unwittingly brought in a villain, a thief … He stood gazing out of the window. He was fine. Must not fall over … He seeks for an understanding of why we live our lives as we do – an ample enough theme for any novel. One thing in particular he likes about his mother-in-law Maude is her rejection of what he termed ‘the Christian rigmarole’ – the idea that bodies locked into a coffin would be resurrected and face judgement somewhere, perhaps in a celestial version of the Old Bailey. How could anyone believe that in the twenty-first century? Yet because of his religious upbringing, his rejection of the ‘rigmarole’ produced in him a certain feeling of unease: an unease justified by events, and by an alien religion.

A long while ago, back in the 1960s, Justin made a name for himself with a televised two-parter play entitled, The Worm Forgives the Plough. Justin wrote the screenplay from a book of that title, and took over as its producer at the last moment when the original producer fell ill. It was a lucky opportunity which lifted his career. The Worm Forgives was the story of a man who had served in World War Two and afterwards deliberately chooses the harsh life of a small farmer, to be close to the natural things he thinks most important. Carthorses and all that. And a beautiful woman who had been a Land Army Girl. This production marked the beginning of Justin’s comparative fame. That fame is long behind him. Now he is adjusting to obscurity as well as decrepitude. Old Headington is a real place. It is a stony suburb of some antiquity within the embrace of the city of Oxford, where forgotten things belong. Most of the characters in this story are fictitious. They are not real. Nor am I Justin Haydock; but Justin’s pains and uncertainties are real enough – all a part of experience. If you are fortunate enough to live that long. Only in your eighties do you realize how beautiful the world is. Or parts of it.

Justin was proceeding slowly along the Croft, an ancient walkway situated beside a high and venerable wall which runs from one side of Old Headington to the other. He encountered a thin man with a lined tanned face. It was Jack Hughes, unmistakable in that yellow jacket, the fellow who had applied for the job of gardener and then decided against it. He was leading his small black dog on a length of string. He put out an arm and stopped Justin. The sleeves of the jacket shot up almost to the elbow, revealing a tattooed arm and a red fist. He asked how old Justin was. Justin told him. ‘Nice dog you have there.’

‘You and that woman with you made fun of me,’ Hughes said. ‘Don’t you have no sense of feeling?’

‘I’m sorry, it was just a joke. We were not making fun of you.’

Hughes lowered his arm. ‘Talkin’ French at me …’

‘Speaking a word or two of French is not in itself an indication of a lack of feeling.’

Hughes still looked threatening. Nor did the dog look particularly friendly. ‘Yes, you was makin’ fun. I don’t like being made fun of. I would beat you up if you wasn’t so old. You made fun of me just because I’m poor and down on me luck. I’ve had a rotten life. It’s all I can do to keep myself together. I got no friends I can trust, apart from this here dog.’

In an attempt to mollify, Justin said, ‘I like your dog.’

‘It don’t like you.’

‘I’m sorry to hear that.’

Hughes shot Justin a glare of hatred, hunching up his shoulders to deliver the glare. ‘I don’t s’pose you are. Why should you be? My mother died the day I was born. Cold and waxen. Cold and waxen she was. I can never get it out of my mind. I go to church. I pray. But always there’s that death of my ma in my mind. It was so unfair. An aunt looked after me. Kind enough, religious. It’s like something lodged in my mind.’

Justin bit his bottom lip. ‘Look, I’m sorry, Mr Hughes. Please accept my apologies if we offended you, but I must get on.’

‘Do you read your Bible, may I enquire?’

‘Of course not. I have no religion.’

‘That’s Oxford for yuh! You could learn som’ing. Take Ezekiel.’ Hughes reined in his dog and struck a pose to declaim, ‘“Also out of the mist thereof came the likeness of four living creatures. And this was their appearance; they had the likeness of a man—”’

‘Fine, thanks, great stuff, but I must be off. I have to go to the bank.’

Hughes seemed not to have heard. He continued his quotation, with gestures. ‘“And every one had four faces, and every one had four wings.” It’s going to be like that and I’ll be glad of it!’

‘It’s nonsense, man. Ezekiel must have been raving mad, face up to the fact.’

Hughes stuck his face close to Justin’s. The dog sniffed his trouser leg. ‘I served my country. I was in the Falklands War. What does this rotten country care about me? It’s like I got a plum stone stuck in the back of my throat.’

‘Sorry, I must get on.’ He saw to his relief that a man and a woman had entered the Croft and were approaching. He knew them.

‘I’m uneducated.’ Hughes was shouting now. ‘I know that. Dirt poor. I can twig you despise me. P’raps you’re right. But you can’t help being what you are, can you, now?’

‘Well, that’s debatable.’

‘How do you mean, debatable? I’m telling you—’

Maurice and his wife Judith were close now. ‘You’ll have to excuse me, Mr Hughes. I need to speak to—’ Justin turned swiftly and, calling to Maurice, said, ‘Oh, the very man, I need to have a word with you …’ Thus he escaped from a fellow he was beginning to think was probably mad and dangerous. But Hughes still had something else he wanted to say. ‘Oi, Reg!’ he called. ‘I hear as you wrote a book once.’

Justin looked back, exasperated. ‘No, never, you are thinking of my friend, Tony Kenny. He has written many books.’

Hughes lapsed from an aggressive stance into something more abject. ‘I thought about writing a book once. My life would make a good novel.’

‘Come on,’ said Maurice to Justin. He ventured to take Justin’s arm. They hurried on.

‘You look a bit shaken,’ said Judith, ‘I don’t wonder. What a horrid man. How on earth did you get to know him?’

‘I’ve just had to listen to a quotation from Ezekiel.’

‘Yes, come and have a sit down, Justin. A cup of coffee,’ said Maurice. ‘Ezekiel is a real visionary, isn’t he?’

Rowlandson, that was their name. Pillars of the church, he remembered. And, like Hughes, dotty about Ezekiel! He took a quick look back down the Croft before they turned the corner. Hughes was still standing there in his ill-fitting jacket, looking at the backs of Justin and his friends. One hand remained raised, as if he had forgotten it. The Rowlandsons lived nearby, in The Court, a grand house towards the end of the Croft. Justin was glad to sink on to their sofa. Maurice assumed his friend had been about to be attacked. Justin said that Hughes was unbalanced. But he had told Justin that he was too old to be hit, or words to that effect; Justin laughed as he admitted it, though indeed he did not find it particularly amusing. ‘I can’t help feeling sorry for the fellow. Well, not exactly sorry … He said he was a regular churchgoer.’

Judith entered with a coffee tray in time to catch this last remark. ‘You’re not religious, are you, Justin? At least, we never see you in church.’

He said that as a boy he had prayed silently and constantly throughout the day. He then regarded himself as almost a saint, and certainly praying afforded some comfort. Only when he was older and looked back on an unhappy boyhood, did he see he had not been religious but neurotic. He smiled at Judith apologetically. ‘Nowadays, I’m neither religious nor neurotic.’

‘You would find a great deal of strength in Jesus,’ said Maurice, kindly.

‘He died for our sins, I understand,’ said Justin. ‘Rather presumptuous, I always thought.’ Silence fell as they drank their coffee.

As Justin was leaving, Judith thrust a small book into his hand. ‘It’s the Book of Ezekiel, with charming pictures done by a Mr Heath Robertson. I think it may be a comfort for you, dear Mr Justin.’

One of Justin’s lady friends, Mrs Wendy Townsend, drove him to the Manor Hospital for an appointment with his cardiologist. ‘It’s not so warm today, Justin, sweetie. You should have worn your scarf.’ He had a feeling Wendy was slightly moving in on him since Kate was away so much.

‘No, I’m fine, thanks.’

‘And you are still taking your furosemide like a good boy?’

‘Of course. I love it. And the other stuff Dr Reid put me on.’

‘The spironolactone.’

‘Yes. Exactly. Spironolactone. Pretty name, isn’t it?’ Professor Kenneth Fellows, the cardiologist, did not keep them waiting for long. He ushered them into his consulting room and made sure they were comfortable.

‘You’re looking better than when we last met, Mr Haydock. I want you to have an ultrasound scan, just so that we can check your kidneys. Nothing to worry about. We want to see that all’s well below, and that the prostate is not too enlarged. Are you sleeping any better now?’

‘Fine, thanks.’

‘Good. And do I see you are losing a bit of weight?’

‘I’m losing bodhisattvas.’

Wendy Townsend said, ‘We have suppers with plenty of vegetables. No pork pies these days! We’re doing very well. I tell Justin that he should be eating sensibly but he mustn’t starve.’

‘That’s excellent. And asparagus is just coming in.’

‘I love asparagus.’ She told the consultant how she had been up early the previous Sunday and driven to Gray’s Farm. She got there just after nine, when there were no more than five people picking the asparagus; but by the time she left before ten the field was crowded with people. So she invited Justin to supper, she said, and they enjoyed fresh asparagus served with a fried egg on top. Justin liked it that way. When she was a little girl, the family had grown asparagus in their back garden. Her father had been a well-known accountant. Cocking her ear on one side, she enquired, ‘Mr John Townsend? No? … Well, never mind.’

Justin knew Wendy was talking too much. Part of the moving-in-on-him business. He showed his embarrassment by staring fixedly at the floor, hands clasped. The professor nodded. ‘Well, good to see you both, and keep taking the warfarin regularly, Mr Haydock. The secretary will give you a date for your next blood test.’ He filled in the requisite form and handed it to Justin.

In the car on the way home, Justin said, ‘I can’t believe how much blood they have extracted from me over the last month.’

‘They only take a tiny amount, love,’ Wendy said, patting his knee. He reflected that his knee was among his most valuable possessions.

Wendy stopped the car by Justin’s front door. He turned his face to hers and they kissed before he climbed out. He would have been embarrassed not to do so, knowing she expected it. Leaving and entering cars were major difficulties. He had little control over his legs, particularly with regard to lifting them. The birds sang under the street lamps. He found the front door unlocked. Either his mind must be going or Maude had returned. He was glad to be back in No. 29. The builders were not there. The house was quiet but oddly unwelcoming.

‘Anyone there?’ he asked. He thought there was someone in the front room. He went to look. No one was present, but he remained disturbed.

‘You’re there, are you?’ came Maude’s voice.

‘Maude? Hello? Like a cup of tea or a coffee?’ A prolonged silence. Then came her voice. ‘Tea, please.’

In the kitchen, Justin brewed two cups of tea. The tea bag was one of Marks & Spencer’s extra-strong teas. He carried the tea into the living room, placing his Carlisle mug on a mat before sitting down in his favourite armchair and calling Maude. But had someone just looked through the doorway and then swiftly withdrawn his head? He got up and went to look in the hall. No one was there. He could hear nothing. ‘Old age,’ he told himself. ‘Going bloody daft.’ He scanned the printout Professor Fellows had given him in the consulting room. His INR was 1.4. He was to take 3 mg of warfarin every evening at six. He immediately fell into sleep; it was indeed a steep fall. He became asleep without warning. When he roused, his tea was barely lukewarm. He had the impression that someone or something had been standing over him. He dismissed the idea. Justin sat where he was, leaning back, relishing his lethargy, missing Kate.

‘You’re awake at last!’ He was startled. Maude was sitting by the door.

‘How long was I asleep?’ he asked.

‘Justin, I must tell you something.’ She spoke in a low grave voice. ‘I resolved to tell no one, but someone ought to know, in case a crime has been committed.’

He stared at her. She was certainly pale and worried. When he asked her what the matter was, again she paused. ‘Let me get you another cup of tea – that one’s stone cold.’

‘No thanks, Maude. What’s up?’

Then she spoke. She had gone round to the summerhouse for her lesson in Muslim ethics as usual. She admitted for the first time that these sessions were held in the Fitzgeralds’ summerhouse, where the Fitzgeralds had given shelter to a refugee. ‘She was not there. Of course I was surprised. There was a note on her side table.’ Maude fiddled in her jacket pocket, to produce a sheet of lined paper, possibly torn from a notebook. Without speaking, she handed it over to Justin. The note simply read:

I must leave here. Thank you. Blessings.

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