Alex Heron

the visitor

I am exploring the north-easterly corner of my garden, something of an appendage to the main garden and rarely entered.  A small square space that one arrives at, breathless and lacerated, through a hole in the hedge. The air, enclosed by trees, is cool and moist. Light tilts down through the branches. I am expecting a visitor at the house, but there is time.

I make a slow circuit, intent on a series of minute exam­inations. A snail shell, for example. Attempts to pick it up, I know from previous occasions, could be disastrous. I also rule out, in one of those flashes of empathy which may yet become habitual, experimentally tapping the thing with my foot. No, I am constrained to squint down from where I am, unable to determine whether there is a living thing inside or not. I go on and a second snail presents itself, clinging to a hawthorn leaf.  Superbly vis­ible when I remove my spectacles. The snail has such translucence in this air that I find myself viewing its inner organs. Darker smudges shifting within the pale body. Lungs perhaps. A liver. Its shell seems unusually pointed and it may be that the creature has travelled here from the sea. I shall ask Gordon.  

I recall Donne’s line: ‘Follow, for it is easy paced, this snail.’ The hawthorn bush, which last time I looked was only a dreary jumble of twigs, is today a mass of soft white flower. I watch the snail, its antlers gently waving as it progresses, and picture my guest arriving to find me out here crawling slowly along a branch.  

Why I should be doing such a thing defeats me.

This part of the garden was once the most delightful. A fine Alba rose was trained along the farther wall. The Queen of Denmark. It had an excellent per­fume, without which a rose is nothing, and tight ruffles of petals, a spectacular ruching which some try so calamitously to emulate in their dra­pery. And there were others. Rosa Banksiae. The rugosa with its astonishing lanterns. Boule de Neige. Two eglantines whose briars, left untended, would have filled the whole gar­den like two giant nests. No sign of them anywhere. And, across from the roses, there used to grow a magnolia, a soaring tree so magnificent that its lamp-like blossoms would shine in through the upper windows of the house. It grew to dangerous heights, perhaps, and had to be removed. I am not dismayed. Beside my foot, a tiny speedwell splayed out across the ground. Ahead of me a marigold, dishevelled where someone or something has trodden on it, flowering undeterred.

I have been under scrutiny myself, while making these observations. A crow in the top of an ash tree, although pretending not to look, teeters on the branch every time I move. I remember my grandmother advising me long ago on the distinction between crows and rooks. It was the cause of an argument. If you see one on its own, she said, it is a crow. If several together – those are rooks. By that definition, I said, they might be the same bird, called ‘crow’ in one cir­cumstance and ‘rook’ in another. That was nonsense, she said. She could be very impatient. A crow is always alone. That is why they call it the solitary crow. I had never heard anyone refer to the solitary crow. But today, after all these dec­ades, even though I have on occasion spotted two crows in proximity, I have become reconciled to my late grandmother’s theorising. The rooks in the corn stubble are pleasant enough. Tinged with grey, their feathers in need of ironing, they stand around like a party of birds in old coats. But a crow! The surprise never goes away. The blueness of it. The size. The gait, bold, afraid, stepping across the grass.

But now, just as I am considering stooping to pick a stem of deadnettle, the bird gathers itself and launches out into the sky, and I am hailed by a voice. Someone is peering over the hedge. I pick my way towards him. He smiles, hesitant about squeezing through. ‘What are you doing in there?’ he asks, staring at the little field behind me.

‘Ah, Herman,’ I say. I look back at the square of ground. A small waste­land of mud and rubble. A fence, which may or may not back onto my own garden, with half its panels missing. The carcass of a pear tree. How to explain. Only the blue sky gives me courage. ‘This belongs to the person next door,’ I say. ‘I’ve decided to buy it and I came in here to ask. But I can't seem to find him anywhere.’

Herman looks about as if he might spot the neighbour. ‘What a nuisance,’ he says.

‘Yes, it is.’ We both look the place over. It is decidedly empty and, perhaps because of the snails, I have a sudden insight into why that is. ‘I’ve just found out that he's gone to Paris,’ I say, ‘so I suppose he'll be away for some time. I really don't know what I'll do about it. It’s all happened at a very inconven­ient moment.’ I attempt to climb through the hedge but, in spite of the arm offered by Herman, I begin to topple, slowly at first, unsure exactly where I am heading, and then, as I speed up, aware that I have fallen into a ditch. There is a confusion of noise and pulling.

‘Here you go,’ says Gordon. He presses a glass of water into my fingers and a tablet into my mouth. I am sitting at my kitchen table. Here you go! He would never have spoken like that in the old days. But I don't complain. Not only a genius around the house, he is a living encyclopaedia of all things natural. All things unnatural too, I shouldn’t be surprised. I doubt very much if I could manage without him. I swallow the tablet. ‘There is some­thing I have to ask you,’ I say.

When I wake up, I am in the kitchen. Gordon is removing a large dish from the oven. I have not been much help. I made a rather splendid trifle earlier, with his assistance, and can see it up there now on top of the refrigerator. Gordon turns round and sees me watching. ‘Here’s the lamb,’ he says, and lifts the lid to show me. A sweet-smelling cloud of steam comes out. ‘Looks nice, doesn’t it?’ he says, and then he peers at me in an annoying way. ‘How are you feeling? Your friend went out in the garden, if you want to join him. I'll call you when dinner’s ready.’

Out in the garden the sun is going down, bathing the side of the house in a brilliant, golden light. This reminds me of something that has been troubling me. ‘Did you notice how the sky yesterday was black?’ I ask Herman.

He stirs in his chair, blinking. ‘Well,’ he says. ‘Yes. It was a gloomy sort of day.’

‘But not black? Here it was completely black. Didn't you think so?’

‘Not really,” he says. He casts his mind back. “Not where I was.’

But yesterday I had stood at the window and, where there should have been light outside, and leaves, and gateposts, there was only blackness. Something had occurred and it was not at all clear what to do about it. Later, when I tried to tell Gordon, he denied every­thing – that the sky could ever have been black, that he might have left the house for a minute. ‘He didn’t believe me,’ I say. ‘In fact he rather implied that the fault was mine. He can be very aggravating, people don’t realise.’

‘I see,’ says Herman. He nods. He can’t explain it. ‘That is a mystery,’ he says.

I contemplate the actual sky which now surrounds us. Above the trees tower three huge, white masses of cloud, lit by the sinking sun, their flanks suffused with pink and blue. They are so majestic that one would hardly be surprised at the appearance of cherubs, of heavenly chariots racing out into the blue.

‘Chaffinch,’ Herman remarks. Apart from this, he sits in silence. He has never required entertaining and this is one of the many things I like about him. I met him – though to say ‘met’ is quite wrong – at breakfast on my first morning in college, a rumpled looking boy, sitting at the place opposite. Conversation buzzed around the table but he ate on without taking part. He reminded me very much of a munching cow. Our actual meeting did not come until months later, a collision one evening in the library where we found ourselves simultaneously enquiring at the desk for an acquaintance called Watts. What happened about Watts I do not recall, but Herman and I left the library together and, as can happen in one’s youth, continued to talk until nearly dawn, amazing ourselves at everything we shared. And here he is, white-haired, arthritic, the same boy exactly.

Gordon comes from the house carrying a tray of drinks. There is some­thing I need to ask him and I get to my feet. ‘I've been worrying about how we’ll get home,’ I say. ‘Do you think we should all take a taxi? It would be awfully expensive. I wondered if’ – I search briefly for the name, but it is not forthcoming – ‘our hostess would mind if we stayed an extra night. Would you ask, if you can find her?’

‘Don't worry,’ Gordon says, setting out the glasses. ‘I'll sort it all out.’ He pours the drinks, and then away he goes.

There is a silence while we take our glasses. The wine is not bad. Very pale.

‘Your garden looks superb,’ says Herman, waving an arm and sighing.

‘Overgrown I'm afraid.’ I am struck all of a sudden by a memory of sweet peas. And another memory of an old man, Mr Barnet, who used to inhabit the orchard. It was Mr Barnet who caught a snake and, saying, ‘Watch this,’ threw it into the duck pond, whereupon the snake raised its head and, like a spectre, glided away into the reeds. I am attempting to explain this to Herman when Gordon re-appears. ‘Right you are!’ he calls, and we are on our feet and moving indoors.

‘Do you think Gordon’s changed?’ I ask, when the two of us are in the dining-room.

‘Gordon?’ says Herman. I detect a look, very fleeting. ‘I haven’t seen Gordon for ages.’ He gestures towards the kitchen. ‘Do you mean Paul?’

This is news to me. A number of puzzling things now slot into place. A few days ago, for example, I asked Gordon to identify a long, beetle-coloured insect that was climbing up the side of my reading lamp, and he astounded me by saying that he had no idea. Later he insisted that I carry an umbrella on a walk to the village, and not a drop of rain fell the whole afternoon.

In he comes now, bringing a sort of salad which he dishes out onto our plates. I look at him in a new way. ‘Everything OK?’ he says.

‘What is this?’ I ask. There is something in a bowl in the centre of the table. I have already started to eat it, breaking off a petal-shaped piece that was sticking out, but I can’t place the flavour. I break off another petal by way of demonstration and bite it.

‘That's a decoration,’ Gordon says. ‘It's made out of turnip.’

‘Oh, don't eat that,’ says Herman. ‘Try this salad, it’s very good.’

It is true that the turnip is rather hard. I try the salad, which is also good, and continue by alternating between the two. ‘While I was outside I was thinking about Banks,’ I say.

As I say this I see that the frightening young man is here. He is lounging in the corner chair, watching me, a smirk on his face. I pray that he stays there and comes no closer. It is very unpleasant to have one's home invaded by a stranger. I long to shout, ‘Go away!’ and to hurl something, the remains of the turnip, some cutlery, but there is company.

‘Banks?’ I hear Herman say.

‘Ah yes. I often think about him. He looked a ruffian but I have always imagined he was rather charming. His professors at Oxford were no good so he simply hired new ones. Imagine that nowadays!’ I go on to tell Herman more about Banks, a rambling account but incorporating the main features, his awful death in Hawaii, the rat cutlets of which he said, ‘Hunger is a remarkably fine sauce’. His encounter with the Queen of Tahiti. His botanical drawings. It is these that I love above everything. As you look at them you feel on your face, very softly, the breeze which is ruffling the undersides of the leaves. However, after I relate, possibly for the second time, the story of Banks's death, and the ghastly fact bursts upon me that it is not Banks’s but Cook’s fate I am describing, I find that I have been sleeping, not talking, and it is time to fetch the dessert.

The trifle is voted a triumph. ‘No, really,’ says Herman. ‘It is marvellous.’ He spoons out second helpings and asks if I have been to the theatre. I con­fess that I have hardly made it to the end of the road. He tells me of a visit to Hamlet, how the melancholy ghost always affects him, and how moved he was when the players, instead of coming forward at the end, stepped back into shadows and bowed their heads, turning to effigies of themselves. It was as if he had made a visit to another time, he said, and then, having fallen in love with it, been gently expelled.

I glance at the corner when Herman mentions the word ‘ghost’, but the young man has vanished. Something else is missing, too.

‘Excuse me for a second,’ I say. Gordon is nowhere to be found, just when I need him. I search the entire kitchen but cannot see what I am looking for. I have forgotten what it looks like, too, but will know it when I see it. It is not in the refrigerator, nor in the lavatory. Nor is it anywhere in my study. Nav­igating around in there is not easy, but I divine from the familiar disarray of folders, books and prints that whatever I am looking for is absent. It has dis­appeared and, after all the work I have put into it, I feel disappointed. I return to the dining room. Gordon is there. This time it is the real Gordon, I am sure. He is clearing the table and Herman is patting my chair for me to sit down. ‘I’ve looked everywhere,’ I say, ‘but I cannot find the pudding.’ 

After Herman has left I have an argument with Gordon. We have an argu­ment every day and it is very often at bedtime. He is giving me my tablets and at the same time trying to push a threadbare volume into my hands. Something he fatuously imagines will be of interest. ‘What do you reckon to that?’ he says. 

I swallow the pink tablet and remark that the print is so small as to make reckoning wholly infeasible. ‘Why don't you put your glasses on,’ he says, a splintery quality entering his voice. I am forced to concede that I’m not wearing them, and we establish that they’re not in my pockets. When I ask him to fetch them from my study he says crossly, ‘They’re not there. You had them on after lunch when you went outside.’ 

‘I did not have them on when I went outside.’ I am exhausted with the way he claims to know everything. ‘I distinctly remember not having them. The fact is that you tidy things away where no-one can find them.’ 

Finally he takes the book off me while I swallow the rest of the tablets and, saying that he’ll find the glasses tomorrow, he reads the passage aloud. It is about the ancient Neurians, who spent several days of each year in the shape of a wolf. It was not clear why they did this, but they did. I persuade Gordon to fetch the Herodotus from my study, and Herodotus, albeit with the usual disclaimers, gives a similar account. Conjurers, he called them.  

‘There you are,’ Gordon says. ‘I knew you’d like it. Say it was you, what would you be for a few days?’ 

‘A fish,’ I say. The picture that then settles in my mind is not of the spar­kling, leaping creature I’d intended, but of an ancient, mottled carp. After a moment I add, ‘And what about you?’

Gordon is uncertain. ‘Maybe a horse. You know.’ He moves his hands in an undulating fashion and makes a hooting sound intended to show the loveliness of his vision. ‘Galloping.’ He will give it some thought, he tells me.  As if it could matter.

‘Anyway,’ he says as we go up the stairs, ‘the day turned out a great suc­cess, didn’t it?’ Ahead of us, on the landing above, the young man gives an unpleasant grin. ‘I told you it would all go all right,’ says Gordon. He mis­takes my reluctance for some kind of sorrow. We reach my room and, stand­ing in the doorway, his hand on the light-switch, he waits while I climb into bed.

Alex Heron grew up in the Midlands, where he worked as a barman, cabdriver, and stable-hand.  He is (under a different name) a prize-winning poet, and ‘The Visitor’ is only his second published short story. He has a PhD from Edinburgh University and teaches young children.