12
DT and I had decided that we would marry in Bristol, where he was studying for his MA, in the summer of 1973. Everyone was thrilled; my mother approved and he had bought me a gorgeous antique engagement ring, set with three vibrant turquoise stones. One night, just three weeks before the wedding day, on one of his weekend visits to Manchester, I shot up in bed in the middle of the night, filled with only one, very certain thought.
‘Oh, DT ... I’m so sorry!’ I couldn’t get out any more than that. I was paralysed by gulps and sobs.
‘What? What is it, love?’ He sat up and put his arm around me.
Eventually I managed, ‘I can’t get married. I’m just not ready. There’s too much of life to do first. I just can’t!’
And I knew it to be right because the relief was enormous, as if something had been surgically removed, something that I hadn’t even registered as being a problem, but now that it was gone I was light as air.
But I loved DT and hurting him was painful.
‘Look, DT, I just really, really can’t do this. I don’t want us to split up . . . Let’s just carry on as we are. I just don’t want to get married.’ And finally, he stopped asking why.
We lay there in silence and then, ‘DT? Can we still go on the honeymoon?’
Well, we were going to Lisbon and I couldn’t give that up, and neither could he.
I wasn’t looking forward to telling my mother, thinking she would feel let down in some way and be critical of me, seeing my decision as irresponsible, but to my surprise she said, ‘Well, thank God you found out that it wasn’t right now and not after you’d got married.’ And then, perfectly timed, ‘So you weren’t pregnant then?’
A couple of months later we did go off on our ‘honeymoon’, staying in a pension in Lisbon for only a couple of nights, then hitch-hiking north and stopping where we were dropped in a little fishing village just south of Oporto. With no accommodation booked, we had to go and enquire in various shops, restaurants and bars as to where we might stay. At the last minute, just as the sun was going down, in a tiny grocery store we were given the address of the local doctor who, it seemed, had a room that he occasionally let out to tourists. It was an attic room up in the eaves of the family house with a ceiling that sloped down to the floor on both sides. There was very little space because, besides the bed, it was used for storage and contained lots of boxes and cases, etc., but it was perfectly adequate.
We spent the days reading, lying on the beach sunbathing, watching the fishermen bringing in their catch and mending their huge nets spread out on the sand, and eating freshly caught sardines that were barbecued right there at the water’s edge by the fishermen’s wives. Our evenings were passed in the caf’s and bars, and we only returned to our room late at night in order to sleep.
One night, after we had been there three or four days, I was awoken by a creaking sound and on opening my eyes was met by the creepy sight of a shadowy figure moving slowly about the room. I was paralysed with fright and didn’t even nudge DT who was dead to the world; instead I buried my head under the covers. At long last the creaking of floorboards ceased and a peek from beneath the sheets reassured me that the figure had gone. I gradually slid into a fitful sleep. The next day I was convinced I had seen a ghost and endured much teasing from DT on the subject, but I knew what I had seen and felt very spooked. The following two nights I slept very lightly, making up for it by falling into a coma on the beach the next day. There was no repetition of the event on either of those nights, although two or three times I awoke, thinking I could hear something, but on each occasion there was nothing there and the shadowy figure did not materialise.
On our last night we got back to our room with the intention of making an early start in the morning. We were hitching back to Lisbon for another two or three days before returning home, so we decided to pack up our things before getting into bed. I had lost a flip-flop and was on all-fours looking for it under our bed when from somewhere close behind me came what sounded like a low, gravelly snarl. Instantly hitting my head on the bedstead, as if in a daft comedy sketch, I screeched and stood, backing away towards the door. At that moment, DT returned from downstairs, where he had been paying the doctor for our stay.
‘Bloody hell, DT, there’s something living in here.’
‘What? What is it?’
‘I just heard it clear as day. It was growling.’
‘What? Where?’
‘I don’t know but I think it came from behind there!’
Opposite our bed, running along the bottom half of the sloping roof, was an old, thick, green curtain on a length of saggy curtain wire. I had looked behind it when we first moved in and there were just some cardboard boxes, a pile of towels, a basket of clothes-pegs and a heap of old clothing. DT moved towards it on tiptoe, pulling a cartoon expression of angst by stretching his mouth wide from corner to corner, baring his teeth and making big scared eyes. Just as he bent down in order to peep inside, there was, somewhat comic in its timing, a long-drawn-out, rippling fart. He jumped up and fell back on to the bed.
‘Jesus Christ!’
We stared for a moment as a sulphurous odour filled the little room. I turned to DT.
‘Well, don’t look at me!’
‘Oh my God, DT, I’m scared! What is it?’
‘I don’t know. Do you think it’s human?’
We were now talking in Albert Hall-sized stage whispers.
‘I don’t know. I haven’t smelt anything like that since Grandma sat on the sofa and ate a raw potato, so I suppose it might be. Oh God, I’m scared.’
DT gingerly started to get up off the bed, accompanied by a discordant, dull twanging from its springs.
‘Shhhh!’
‘Shhhhhh!’
Then, taking a deep breath in, and with one hand covering his nose and mouth against the acrid stench that still hung in the air, he slowly, with the very tips of his thumb and forefinger, his pinkie lifted, teacup-style, began to pull the curtain back. The room itself was not well lit and the space down behind the curtain was in virtual darkness. I crept forward and we both peered into the gloom until our eyes became accustomed to it. There seemed to be a dark, hunched shape on the ground and we could hear it breathing, deep and slumberous. I edged closer until I was able to see not only that it was indeed human but that I recognised the set of its profile.
On one or two occasions when we had popped back to the room during the day, we had passed an ancient woman on our way up the steps to our attic. She was coming down, clutching linen that she had stripped from the bed, and was dressed in the classic widow’s garb of long black skirt and shawl. She was apparently the doctor’s mother and never spoke a word to us in passing, and yet there she was, a set of rosary beads wrapped around her hand as she slept, sharing our room! She must have got up at dawn before we woke and gone to bed while we were out in the evening. I guess it was her room, but the doctor saw a chance to make a little extra cash and had shoved her behind the curtain. We went into hysterics, thinking about our lovemaking on the previous nights and wondering whether she had lain there, listening, and perhaps getting a bit of a kick from what she heard.
‘She must get up really early in the morning, I suppose.’
‘Well, we’ll be chatting in the queue for the bathroom tomorrow, then.’
I slept soundly that night. At least I did after DT opened a small window in the roof.
DT and I split up for good the following year, going through a wistful little ceremony where we divided up our few domestic acquisitions. I can see them laid out on the floor of my bedsit, with DT and me looking sadly down at them. In the middle of the little heap were the two square camping tins that we had used in France and on our trip to Turkey; I handed them to him, unable to make eye contact. There was a motley set of cutlery, a cheap plastic pedal bin, a plastic plate rack and a washing-up bowl to match. We focused our pain on the washing-up bowl, which, if not exactly fought over, was definitely the subject of some discussion, although, on the other hand, not enough of a discussion to prevent us from being good friends thereafter.