Falling Read Free Page B

to make much of bed with Hazel (it does
take two to tango, and Hazel was no dancer of anything) there was nothing wrong with my equipment in that department either. But anyone meeting me for the first time would dub me old. They might
say
I was elderly – a kind of genteel pastel version of ageing – but what they would mean was that I seemed to them old.
    I knew from experience that I could talk myself past this damning view. Wells was right when he said it did not matter to a woman what a man looked like as long as he could talk. And, I would
add to that, listen. Yet whichever way I looked at it, I had not all that much time in which to design a new and delightful life for myself. Give me the woman and I would fall in love with her, but
even I could not do this without an object for my affection.
    These thoughts came back to me on that dank evening. I remember it in so much detail because it was the last evening I was to spend in that way. When I had drunk my coffee and smoked a cigarette
– the last in my pack – wishing I had the cash for some vodka, I boiled a kettle and washed up for as long as the water lasted. This only made everything else look worse, so I boiled
another kettleful and set to work upon the rest of the galley. It was four in the morning before I had finished and I fell on to my bunk without a thought for Helen, or indeed anyone else.
    I slept late; the heavy white mist that makes the canal look as though it is smoking had almost dispersed. Condensation had dampened the outside of my sleeping-bag, and I lay for a few minutes
contemplating the familiar, boring and uncomfortable interval there must be between getting out of a warm bunk and sitting in the saloon with a scalding cup of tea. The thought of another winter in
the boat was not cheering. While I was pulling on my jeans and oiled-wool jersey the evil thought occurred to me that I
could,
actually, smarten up the boat and make a real effort to sell
her as mine. Then I could scarper with the money and start somewhere else. Naturally I did not pursue this idea: I am by nature rather more honest than most, but it is sometimes amusing to consider
notions that are so out of one’s behavioural orbit as to be fantastic.
    I have nothing against fantasy
per se.
Indeed, it seems to me one of the most harmless ways of enriching one’s life. I can always remember as a child the shock of teachers or
parents accusing me of ‘day-dreaming’, as though this was some kind of offence. However, this particular morning – an ordinary, humdrum, end-of-Indian-summer Saturday morning
– required me to be dully practical. I had to water the boat. This involved hauling it about a hundred yards the other side of the first bridge, to the lock cottage whose owner had a hose
that reached to my water tank. I had also to do some shopping for food, and to fetch my laundry from the woman in the village. I made a shopping list of the usual things: eggs, bacon, sausages,
corned beef, potatoes, onions and carrots, a large loaf, tomatoes, milk and a jar of Nescafe. I also needed more cleaning materials; it looked like more than one trip.
    I noticed as I passed the cottage that the curtains were drawn in the upstairs windows and that there was no sign of life. I also observed that the garden, what I could see of it, was a total
wilderness filled with sodden hay, nettles blackened by the frost, old man’s beard, thistles and even ragwort. Then at the far side of the cottage, past the hedge that surrounded its garden,
I noticed the most beautiful car I had ever seen. It was a two-seater, drop-head Mercedes, probably over twenty years old, its black canvas roof set off by the metallic green-grey bodywork. It was
a car that could only belong, I felt, to a rich romantic, a Gatsbyish car made for the privileged few. I could not help giving it a closer look. It was in excellent condition; its long sleek lines
polished, its chrome trim gleaming. Inside it had a