Unexplained Laughter Read online

  They think that death is waiting at the end of the ride, that life is like the lane and that death waits at the end. Listen. That is death on the other side of the hedgerow. And that swift shadow that is gone, before you turn, from the corner of your eye – that is death. And the whisper you can scarcely hear through the sounds of the birds calling and the wind in the leaves – that is death. Not waiting, but there beside you within reach, within earshot, so close that if you should look you would see your breath cloud on his presence. There he is, just out of sight behind the wild rose and the blackthorn, not behind you, nor before you, but beside you – and he keeps in step. Run, run, run and he will run with you. Or sit weeping on the grass by the lane and he will sit with you, not weeping. I know him well.

  Elizabeth saw death today in the eyes of the doctor, and he, looking up, saw death in her eyes. She said, ‘It’s over, isn’t it?’

  And he said, ‘It’s been over for a long time, Elizabeth.’ He was gentle with her wounded foot, but I could hear him smiling.

  She said, ‘What shall I do?’

  And he said, ‘You’ll live, Elizabeth.’

  She said, ‘I wish I was dead.’

  ‘I have a perfectly horrible sense of mortality,’ said Lydia.

  ‘It probably comes from living next door to a graveyard,’ said Betty.

  ‘I don’t have it in the graveyard,’ said Lydia. ‘There is a pleasant sense of consummation in the graveyard. No one’s going anywhere. Travelling always makes me think of death. Packing up to leave makes me feel like my own relict going through things that I have no further use for. When I remove my enlivening presence from this house it will be as though the house had died. Poor little house.’ A melancholy tear clung briefly to her eyelashes.

  ‘I don’t believe I’ve ever known you sentimental before,’ said Betty wonderingly.

  ‘I’ve changed,’ said Lydia. ‘I’ve never stayed here as long before, nor met any of the people really, and now I’m all undone. I don’t know whether I’m sad because I’m sorry for them staying here, or sad because I’m not staying here, or sad because I ever came here in the first place, or whether I’m merely suffering from softening of the brain brought on by mixing with my intellectual inferiors.’

  This sounded more like the old Lydia. ‘You’ve done nothing for weeks but tell me how intelligent the people here are,’ accused Betty.

  ‘I’m thinking of the Molesworths,’ explained Lydia. ‘They make me feel as though I’d been watching television advertisements or reading women’s magazines.’

  ‘You’ve written for women’s magazines yourself,’ said Betty.

  ‘Only cleverly,’ protested Lydia. ‘Only about large and important issues.’

  ‘Is she showing off again?’ asked Finn, diverted from the newspaper by this conceited remark.

  ‘Yes, she is,’ said Betty.

  Lydia understood that, for the moment at least, she was friendless; had managed to either offend or alienate all those in her immediate circle. How she now regretted her airy dismissal of Beuno, the only friend she possessed who was worthy of respect and had reached a peak of maturity from which he would not stoop to tease. Betty and Finn were both displeased with her and united in their determination to bring her down a peg or two. They were closing in for the kill. ‘You’d wonder what she had to be quite so conceited about, wouldn’t you?’ That was Finn, laying down his paper and regarding her speculatively. He was offended because he was beginning to realise that Lydia no longer loved him. This inconceivable state of affairs was causing him to regress. It is the frustration of sexual immaturity which makes little boys pull the plaits of little girls and spitefully pinch them. Finn was beginning to remind her of the doctor.

  ‘You just watch it,’ she said extremely aggressively.

  ‘Oh dear,’ said Betty in mock alarm. ‘She’s going to get angry.’

  The alarm became real as Lydia rounded on her.

  Lydia forced herself to be calm, refusing to be drawn into a playground rough-house. ‘You should get moving if you want to miss the traffic the other end,’ she advised them without interest or rancour – the big girl who will not squabble or submit to silly games. It was very irritating for Betty and Finn who were both half-conscious of the atmosphere and of what was causing it, and who both knew that actually Lydia was the least responsible person present. Her grown-up airs were annoying.

  ‘Yes, I suppose so,’ said Betty resignedly. She was longing to tell Lydia a few home truths, but now was not the moment. Well-brought-up people don’t accuse their hostess of selfishness, vanity and heartlessness as they depart. They thank her very much and say what a wonderful time they’ve had.

  As they stood by Finn’s car Lydia’s ill-temper left her. ‘It was lovely having you here,’ she said to Betty and she meant it. It was these occasional impulses of costless generosity which made people love the undeserving Lydia. ‘You must come again soon,’ she added and she meant that too. Betty was utterly disarmed.

  ‘Goodbye Finn, my petal. Be very good,’ said Lydia to her erstwhile love. She was feeling quite fond of him too now that he was getting into his car. Despite the undoubted sincerity of her parting affection she grinned foxily to herself as she walked back to her cottage since she knew that Betty would now refuse to discuss her shortcomings on the journey home. Finn who would have been soothed to hear Betty assuring him that Lydia was self-centred, ungrateful and capricious would now have to forgo that pleasure because Lydia had, at the last moment, laid claim to Betty’s absolute allegiance.

  The cottage felt different now that she was alone. She washed up the dishes that her guests had used and tidied things away until she had removed all trace of their presence. Last night Betty had urged her to return with them, worrying that Lydia would be nervous and lonely when they had gone, but Lydia had said she wanted just one more night to finish the article to which she had intended to dedicate a whole week and Finn had nagged her about her laziness and irresponsibility, which had made her cross. Although true, it was unjust, because somehow she had always met her deadlines, and had already in effect finished the article in question.

  She enjoyed her last day. She liked lying alone in the sun and going into the cool shadow of a totally tidy cottage, and she liked the silence. She had forgotten how whole silence was, how voices and movement could crack and disfigure it.

  She was disconcerted to hear a car stop in the lane and then to see the doctor crossing the stream.

  He said, ‘I thought you’d gone, but I saw the other two buying petrol in the village and they said you were still here.’

  ‘I had to stay and work,’ said Lydia who was flanked on the one hand by a paperback thriller and on the other by a glass and bottle of vodka.

  He seemed not to notice. He was a worried man. It occurred to Lydia that he was afraid that she was going to write about him, an exposure of a well-liked and respected country GP. It was a not uncommon neurosis. Lydia had often noticed people urgently wishing that they hadn’t said that last thing which would look so damning in print, but she almost never named names and the people about whom she wrote frequently failed to recognise themselves, since Lydia was not a true voyeur, being largely uninterested in her raw material and more concerned with the shape and patina of the finished article.

  ‘You going to write about us all then?’ he asked, to her gratification. She wished that Betty had been here, that she had whispered to Betty that she knew what was troubling him, that Betty had heard this swift confirmation of Lydia’s insight.

  ‘Gosh no,’ she said with offensive surprise, her eyebrows raised – implying, what on earth could I find to write about in this dead-and-alive backwater with its dead-and-alive inhabitants? ‘Something would have to happen. Some fearful scandal culminating in murder. You murder someone and I promise I shall come and write all about it.’

  Was it her imagination or did he look suddenly aghast? Had she hit some unseen nail on the head?

  ‘W
ell, I must get on now,’ he said after a pause. ‘We’ll be seeing you again?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Lydia, but when he had gone and it was silent she pictured the garden, the cottage lying empty, the hearth cold, the faint dust undisturbed, and her projected return seemed for a moment like an act of violence. I must think of myself more as a migrant bird, she told herself, more like a swallow than an invader. I do not, after all, come in my caravan with my dinghy strapped to the top, strewing crisp packets amongst the sedge by the lake. I do not wear an orange anorak, or bring my young to lay waste the countryside. Just as the swallow, I shall return each year to this nesting place – and sod them if they don’t like it. But the sorrow was there still, the sorrow of not belonging. She determined that when she died she would be buried in the graveyard here, and then let them try to distinguish her dust from the dust of the district.

  Lydia locked the door, almost in tears with the misery of departure. She got into her car and drove out of Wales. Her spirits were rising. She sang a little song. It was a long time since she had seen her friends. She thought that as soon as she got back to London she would give a party and have a good laugh.

  They have gone. The winter will come soon. I wish I was flying now. The silence is unbroken.

  Listen.