Towards Another Summer Read Free

to tell it to stop by and help, and how did you know which air to address?
     
     
     
     
    The man from the magazine came to the flat. From the second armchair of the suite with floral covers he asked Grace questions to which she replied from the first armchair. All was in order. She muttered,
    —I’ve nothing much to say, I can’t talk of anything. Influences? Oh let me see, let me see.
    Silence.
    Philip Thirkettle had the newly-bathed, immersed look of English intellectuals. He gestured readily, he was eager, lively. Grace had put on her blue checked skirt and her blue nylon cardigan with the dipped front and plucked one or two hairs from between her breasts in case they showed when she leaned down, but she needn’t have worried. She had been liberal with
deodorant too, gritty white neutral-smelling substance in a small pink jar, but again she needn’t have worried. It was her mind he wanted to reach, and nobody, by conversation, could ever reach Grace’s mind. Like the grave, it was a ‘private place’, and could not be shared.
    Influences?
    Oh the usual I suppose.
    —How do you go about your work?
    —Oh, I, wait a minute, I can’t think, I’ve never been interviewed in my life before, I can’t think, I’m senile - do you think I’m going senile?
    She made tea. They stood drinking it in the kitchen. She waved towards the refrigerator which throbbed like an incubator surrounded by nursery-coloured walls and ‘working surfaces’.
    —I’m not used to this. I’ve just moved in. I’ve never had a flat of my own before.
    He told her about his wife, his father-in-law, the time he had spent in New Zealand.
    —New Zealand? Well, I wouldn’t know, she said, dismissing the country.—I’ve been so long away. This is my home now. There’s gentleness here.
    He insisted. Remember this, remember that.
    —I don’t remember. I wouldn’t know. It wasn’t in my time. That was after I left . . .
    —Don’t you ever want to go back?
    Grace smiled thoughtfully, choosing her answer from an uncomplicated store of samples put aside for the purpose.
    —I was a certified lunatic in New Zealand. Go back? I was advised to sell hats for my salvation.
    A spasm of sympathy crossed Philip’s face. Good God, she thought, I’ve said the wrong thing, the tender mind etc.
    —But don’t you miss it all, I mean . . . don’t you miss it? Don’t you prefer it to - this?
    —I don’t know, I don’t know. I miss the rivers of course. Oh yes, I miss the rivers, and the mountain chains. I’ve never been interviewed before.
    —Forget about being interviewed. We’re drinking tea.
    —I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’ve never been interviewed before. Philip Thirkettle looked embarrassed.
    —Don’t apologise. Listen, why not come up and stay with us, anytime. You’ll like Anne, you’ll like Anne’s father, he was a sheep-farmer once, you can talk to him about sheep, diseases of sheep, liver fluke, footrot-
    —Pulpy kidney, pulpy kidney-
    —Do come. Anytime. Why not Christmas?
    —Christmas?
    —Think about it. Goodbye now.
    —Goodbye, Grace said, adding desperately as he went out
    —I’ve never been interviewed in my life before!

3
    A month before Christmas Grace went into hospital, into the wrong zone for her ‘residential area’, and during her four weeks in hospital she was terrified of being spirited away to a different ‘zone’ where there would not be as much kindness or understanding. Intermittently, she felt safe. She learned two songs - ’I want to be Bobby’s girl’ and ‘Let’s twist again as we did last summer’.
    There was much activity - dancing, painting, games. Once Grace played a game of chess with the doctor in one of the side rooms. He had a bald patch as round as a penny on the back of his head. Leaning forward, carefully, deliberately moving his black pawn, he snatched her bishop en passant.
    —I’ll mate you yet, he said.—I’ll mate you.
    The room was small and hot. Grace