36 Neaera H
I woke up in the van. Ah yes, I thought, this is where I went to sleep. There was wood near my face smelling salty, oceany. Empty turtle crate. I put my ear to it, listened: silent-roaring ocean. There was rope, I touched it, licked my fingers: salt. I touched the trolley, salty as well. I rolled over, there was William still asleep. It seemed like spying to look at his sleeping face so I got out of the van.
It was afternoon. Vans with curtains in the windows were parked on either side of us and people inside them were being domestic. Refreshment and souvenir stands were open at the car-park entrance. A man with a horse and a bedizened yellow wagon half full of passengers beckoned to me like the coachman who took Pinocchio to the Land of Boobies.
Stupid really, to feel as I did just then: low-spirited and dissatisfied. There was no reason for it. We had come to Polperro to put turtles into the sea and we’d done it.
The sunlight was hot, the sky was blue. I felt all astray. At home the day and I always approached each other by slow degrees: brushing my teeth, washing my face, the first cup of coffee, the first cigarette, opening the post. Here I had nothing, just suddenly some rough beast of a day with vans and curtains and people feeding children.
Scale is a funny thing. Sometimes on hot days everything seems too big and spread out. Not to be grasped by the mind, not to be held in the eye. I thought of winter. Winter grey skies, winter early evenings make London small like a model town. Lighted windows in shops are like model shop windows, tobacconist, launderette, bakery. I saw the little model streets in my mind, the shops. In the model bakery, a three-tiered wedding-cake, great in its tinyness. Pictures of other wedding-cakes: the ‘Windsor’, the ‘Paradise’, the ‘Wedgwood’. Small, small, astonishing detail in the model memory, all there to be found. The model Polperro here at Polperro was still in my mind, I compared it to the model London. The Polperro one was much bigger, huge and thick, not to be held in the mind or in the eye.
37 William G
When I woke up and saw the bright sunlight the night before seemed far away and small. I was stiff and sore all over. Neaera wasn’t there. I opened the doors and saw her leaning against the concrete wall of the car-park. I thought about the turtles and I couldn’t believe they’d got out to sea against that heavy tide. Surely they’d been beaten back against the breakwater or swept into the harbour through a gap where the boats go in and out. They were probably in the harbour now, they’d probably been picked up by fishermen.
We slowly made our way through tourists and their children to the public lavatory. I hadn’t brought a toothbrush or shaving things or anything. I brushed my teeth with my finger, washed and let it go at that. Slowly and blinking in the sunlight we went to a teashop where we had sausages and eggs. It was while we were eating that I most felt the awkwardness of this morning after. Afternoon actually, worse than a morning. Sometimes I’ve felt that way after sleeping with the wrong person, and the intimacy of sex is nothing compared with the intimacy of driving two hundred and fifty miles at night and putting turtles into the sea. But it wasn’t that, it wasn’t that she was the wrong person for the turtles. I didn’t know what it was. There seemed to be little for us to say to each other. Nothing in fact.
We walked to the harbour. The tide was out when we got there, the boats were standing on their legs or sitting on the mud. The little beach beyond the breakwater displayed broken glass and contraceptives. There were some fishermen sitting on the quay and I asked them when high water had been. Seven in the morning, they said. No one said anything about turtles and there were none in sight. They must have got out to sea all right. We walked back to the car-park, got into the van and drove back to London.
38 Neaera H
Well, then. This was the back of the turtle thing. Not quite despair as I had thought before. Just a kind of blankness, as blank and foolish as a pelmet lying face-down on the floor with all the staples showing. That’s all right, a pelmet can have a front and a back, it’s only a thing. A dress can have an inside and an outside. A drawing is only on one side of the paper, even a drawing by Rembrandt.
But an action, no. An action with a front and back is no good.
We drove back to London. We scarcely spoke a word. We had lunch and supper at road-side places full of motion and absence where there was ketchup in red tomato-shaped plastic bottles. The people who sat in the booths seemed to be played on a tape that erased itself. Only the motion remained, the absence. Outside on the road, inside with the ketchup. Red, heavy.
Night came but there was no rain. William only stopped for petrol once. I’d forgotten to look at the millwheel on the inn near the car-park in Polperro. I still don’t know whether or not it was turned by water that came out of a pipe.
39 William G
Sometimes I can’t believe that some mechanical happenings are only chance and nothing more. K257 in the pavement, the escalator owl at Charing Cross. At the place where we had supper on the way home I went to the lavatory. No sooner had I opened the door than there was a metallic belch and three 10p pieces leapt out of the contraceptive machine and clanged on the floor. Why, for God’s sake? Why did it do it when I walked in? I was fully ten feet away when it happened. There was something insulting about it, contemptuous. Here, it seemed to be saying, here’s a refund. Bloody cheek.
The miles rushed towards us, shot under the van. I felt absurd, couldn’t find a place to put myself in relation to the three turtles now in the sea. What in the world did it all mean? Why was I in this van with this woman? Would it keep on for ever, going round and round like chewing gum on a tyre? Could it be made to stop and if it were stopped would there be anything else to do?
I had a lot of trouble with my eyes after it got dark. The road kept going abstract. Confusion, fixed and flashing. Flat shadows assumed bulk, distances lost depth, the red tail-lights of cars half a mile ahead appeared to be up in the air.
In time the Chiswick Roundabout appeared, the Hammersmith Fly-over. It was after eleven when we got to Neaera’s place. I switched off the engine and we sat there ticking over in silence for a few moments.
‘Have you kept track of the expenses?’ she said.
‘I haven’t got all the figures yet,’ I said. ‘I’ll add it up after I take back the van tomorrow.’
‘I’ll ring you up,’ she said, and sat there, not quite knowing how to leave. I knew she didn’t want to ask me up to her flat for coffee or anything.
‘There isn’t an exit line for this sort of thing,’ I said. ‘About all you can do is shake your head and walk away kicking a stone if you have a stone to kick.’
‘I’ve thrown my stone away,’ she said. She gathered up her blankets and pillows and got out of the van. She looked in through the window. ‘I shan’t say anything now,’ she said. She walked away without shaking her head.
I drove home, parked the van, unloaded it. Not a dent or a scratch on the great bulgy thing, I couldn’t believe it. It took me a long time to get to sleep that night. I lay in bed listening to cars going down our street. I don’t know why they have to go so fast, the sound of those roaring engines always fills me with rage. I kept expecting to hear one of them scrape the van. It’s quite a narrow street.