Putney Read online

  ‘What about the book? Did you write it straight away?’

  ‘Yes, it poured out in a few months. Marvellous feeling. Wish I still wrote like that. And then I got married to Eleftheria Manessi.’

  Oedipus Blues made enough money for him and Ellie to buy a house, he said. After the film came out, he became not only ‘a little bit famous’, but had the financial security to live as a writer and part-time academic. Now he was creating a theatrical version and had asked Ralph to write the music. ‘Not an opera or a musical,’ he said, ‘but a play with musicians and music at its heart. The contemporary, street version of a myth.’

  Ralph played some tapes of songs he’d recorded in remote mountain villages in Epirus, and for several hours the two men discussed their project: how to bring out the ancient myth and traditions of oral storytelling in a modern setting, how to give a Greek feel to songs which would be sung in English. Edmund produced a battered, blue toffee tin containing Rizla papers and a small bag of grass. He rolled a joint and, spreading out on the chaise longue, took a few deep drags and passed it to Ralph, who had made himself comfortable on the floor.

  ‘Sometimes I come up to work and stay here all day, dreaming.’ Both men laughed, Edmund’s high whinny sounding like a skittish horse.

  It wasn’t until he was about to leave that Ralph saw Daphne again. He followed Ed, noting his lopsided lollop on the stairs and the slight limp when he walked – the legacy of childhood polio. The Greek guests had departed, and down in the kitchen Ellie was writing in a lined exercise book while the girl lay sprawled on the sofa reading a comic. Ellie said something in Greek to her daughter that sounded like a question. Her voice was low but had enough authority to make the girl get up and walk over.

  ‘Hello.’ She looked at him without fear, as if assessing him, and he felt almost shy.

  ‘Hello, I’m Ralph.’ He extended a hand and she took it with a mocking expression as though they were pantomime actors. Her hand was small but strong and suntanned, with bitten fingernails, and it seemed the most beautiful thing he had ever held. Perhaps there was a beat too long in which he kept her palm against his, but the grass was still affecting his judgement. Edmund giggled like a naughty boy and said, ‘Daphne, why don’t you introduce Ralph to Hugo? I think they’d get on.’

  ‘OK.’ The child twisted on her bare feet and darted out of the kitchen. ‘Come on.’ She did not even check whether he was following her up the stairs.

  She entered a room that gave on to the back garden and the river. He took in large, abstract paintings on the walls and noticed a sizeable metal cage in the corner. Before he could see what was inside, Daphne opened the door and approached with a small monkey clinging to her arms.

  ‘He’s a capuchin.’ She bounced down on to a brown corduroy sofa and Ralph sat next to her, realising he was being assessed for his reactions and smiling like an imbecile. Hugo was less than a foot high, with a dandelion aureole of blond fur around his head, a long tail curling around his young mistress’s arm and a grimly enquiring expression. He was the sort of creature you’d see dressed in silly clothes and held by an organ-grinder in a Victorian photograph. In the absence of protocol on introductions to small primates, Ralph playfully made as if to shake hands and, to his surprise, the monkey reached out his scratchy black one in return, cackled wickedly and rapidly retracted it. Ralph emitted a small, involuntary gasp; being stoned wasn’t helping a situation that was already like a hallucination.

  ‘Don’t be scared!’ There was something teasing in her voice, her eyes glinting at having detected a weak spot. ‘Hugo’s just a baby – he’s only a year old.’

  ‘Where did you get him?’

  ‘My grandmother got him in Argentina when he was a newborn, but she’s ill so he’s come to us.’

  ‘Aha,’ he nodded stupidly.

  ‘She may even die,’ added Daphne. ‘And then we’d keep Hugo. Though you know, in ancient Egypt they used to bury your pet monkey with you. They pulled out their brains through their nostrils with a long hook and stuffed special herbs inside, then wrapped them up in bandages.’ Her eyes flickered to Ralph’s to gauge his reaction, while she stroked the animal’s doll-sized cranium. Hugo bared his teeth and closed his eyes as if smiling. There was tenderness between the two and Ralph was mesmerised as the girl fingered him. Without saying anything, Daphne jumped up and the last he saw of her was as she disappeared around the door, taking the monkey with her.

  He was overwhelmed by this girl. But it was certainly not something sleazy or sinister. I didn’t want to do something to her, he thought. She inspired me. I felt like a child next to her. I felt free. But I was also as captive as the lowest slave with an Egyptian high priestess. She couldn’t have known what I was feeling but I wanted to lie down before her and let her walk on me.

  * * *

  It was hard to keep away. He went back a couple of days later bearing gifts. Having found an Egyptian scarab in an antique shop, he strung the turquoise beetle on a leather bootlace to make a necklace. Placing it in a miniature, metal cash-box with a gold stripe, he then wrapped that in brown paper and tied it with string. En route to Barnabas Road, he stopped at the patisserie opposite Putney Bridge station and bought an extravagant number of chocolate eclairs. His visit was planned so that school would be finished but it wouldn’t yet be time for supper or baths or the routines he remembered from his own childhood. He soon learned that strict timetables and daily rituals were not a characteristic of the Greenslay household.

  In his fantasy, it was Daphne who opened the door to an empty house and invited him in for tea, and he felt a mild spasm of annoyance when a lanky teenage boy responded to his knocking.

  ‘Oh, hello,’ Ralph said, taking in a family resemblance to the girl whom he’d hoped for, though the youth’s features had none of the delicacy of Daphne’s.

  ‘Hello.’ The boy looked out from under a curtain of long hair and didn’t sound curious. Another youth (this one spotty and spectacled) was waiting behind him.

  ‘I’m Ralph Boyd. Are your parents in?’

  ‘Um, I don’t think so. Hang on.’ Then he shouted back into the house, ‘Daffers! Is Ed here?’

  A disembodied voice replied, ‘No, he’ll be back later,’ and Daphne appeared.

  She recognised Ralph and he smiled. ‘Hello, Daphne.’

  ‘Hello, Ralph.’ She replied in exactly the same tones he had used, as if mocking him rather than meaning it. Dressed in cut-off jeans and a green top, she was carrying the monkey in her arms like a baby and it displayed its teeth to Ralph, emitting little menacing sounds that seemed to mean, ‘Don’t come closer!’

  ‘I brought some cakes for tea. May I come in?’

  ‘Um, we’re just heading upstairs.’ The teenage boys scurried off, triumphant at leaving Daphne in the lurch with a visitor.

  ‘Your brother?’ Ralph asked as they walked down to the kitchen and he placed the cake box on the table.

  ‘Yes, Theo.’ She grimaced as though the name explained the problem.

  ‘He’s fourteen,’ she continued. ‘And that was his friend Liam. They’re weird. They don’t have any other friends. They’re obsessed with electrical things. They spend hours making radios and walkie-talkies and stuff. They’ve got goggles to see in the dark. Everything goes green.’

  Ralph opened the box, revealing eight eclairs that now looked undeniably phallic. ‘Have you had tea? Would you like one?’

  ‘We could have a picnic. I’ll take you to the tree house, if you like.’ This sounded too good to believe. If she had said she’d take him to the inner sanctum of the cult of Daphne, it could not have tempted him more.

  She went upstairs to put the malevolent monkey in its cage and he heard it squealing madly as the door was locked. Then Daphne gathered up a few things in a basket – a bottle of Ribena, some tin mugs – and handed Ralph a tray with a plateful of eclairs and a jug of water. Tangles of dusty leaves brushed against them as they walked out of the kitchen door.

  ‘This way.’ She led him along the garden path. Or up the garden path, or any path she cares to choose, he thought. Certainly, it was the path of no return. On one side of the overgrown garden stood a large plane tree and as they drew closer he saw that high up in its foliage was a wooden structure lodged in the branches – one or two were actually growing through its walls and out through the roof. Daphne put down her basket and deftly picked up an aluminium ladder that lay in the grass and fixed it up against the entrance platform. ‘I’ll go up first and then you can pass me the picnic.’ She scampered barefoot up the ladder, as agile as a monkey, but with the graceful confidence of a feline. After handing her the provisions, he followed her up into the tree.

  I’d move in right away and make it home, he thought. I’d escape the world and keep sentinel below Daphne’s bedroom window as the tide came pushing its way up the river and then pulling out again towards the sea. The river ran past the end of the garden and he could smell its sweet, rotted-vegetable odour of mud, with a hint of the grass-edged, rural tributaries that had meandered into the powerful waterway.

  Daphne opened the door on its rusty hinges and as he followed her inside he took in the small space. Two glazed windows with red gingham curtains gave a Wendy-house atmosphere and the floor was covered with a rag rug and scattered with cushions. A couple of blankets and a sleeping bag hinted at overnight stays. One wall was hung with an embroidered Indian tablecloth and, on another, a small, tin-framed mirror decorated with flowers and a Greek word. He spelled out the letters KAΛHMEPA. ‘It means good morning,’ the child explained. The faint smell of damp wood was offset by a day-after-the-party aroma of incense – a packet of sandalwood joss sticks lay in the corner, along with candles, matches, an empty wine bottle, a packet of tarot
cards and a few children’s books and comics.

  ‘Oh Beano! I love Dennis the Menace and Gnasher, don’t you?’ He hoped he didn’t sound ingratiating, remembering grown-ups who tried to be pally when he was young.

  ‘Yeah.’ She didn’t pay much attention to his questions, busying herself instead with the drinks. She poured measures of Ribena, purple as poison, into the enamel mugs and filled them with water. ‘Here.’ They both drank deeply and Daphne wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, leaving a smear of mauve across one cheek. He felt a welling tenderness at the sight of her lips, stained as though she’d been blackberrying. There was a short silence, not quite awkwardness, but as if the girl suddenly wondered what she was doing up a tree with a man she barely knew.

  They ate two eclairs each. Daphne systematically made her way through them without hurry but with concentration, delicately gripping the edges so her fingers didn’t touch the chocolate. He ate faster, more carelessly, and then lay back on some cushions, watching through the open door as cumulonimbus creatures migrated across the pinking sky. He had the rare sensation of being the still point at the centre of the world, of everything making sense. It reminded him of moments in his childhood when there was a simplicity to his happiness. As now, these times had often been when he was removed from the fray, hidden in the woods near his home or quietly absent from his parents in the dusty attic.

  A rattling sound made him sit up slowly and then lean out of the door in time to see Daphne step on to the ground below. ‘Are we leaving already?’ The girl pulled the ladder away from the tree house, and laughed at seeing him stranded ten or twelve feet up. He smiled. ‘What are you doing?’ She let the ladder fall to the grass, wiped her hands on her shorts and looked up to assess his response. ‘Making you a prisoner.’

  He chuckled at the amalgam of mischief and innocence. There were several games in play. ‘Well, I’m perfectly happy to be here, so maybe that doesn’t count.’ It was slightly too far to jump down safely. He didn’t fancy a sprained ankle.

  ‘It might not be so nice when it gets dark and cold,’ she challenged.

  ‘Oh I’m fine. I love sleeping outside. And it’s cosy in here. So long as you bring me some supper, and of course breakfast in the morning. We could have a basket on a rope and I’ll move in quite happily.’ The girl walked back towards the house and, a few minutes later, two faces – the teenage boys – looked out of a second-floor window and laughed before disappearing again.

  Ralph slumped back on to the cushions and waited. She was enchanting. And he was certainly her prisoner. The sun sank lower, leaving the garden in shade and bringing a chill to the air, but he didn’t mind. He was planning music for Ed’s project and this was not a bad place to think about it. He even managed to jerk off, something he associated with tree houses since childhood. The smell of damp planks and mouldy curtains was perversely aphrodisiac. He leaned back against the wall, a blanket over his knees in case anyone appeared, and closed his mouth to muffle the cry that came as he finished. Twice, pleasure boats went by and the jingling of pop songs grew louder before passing off upstream towards Richmond.

  It wasn’t until about an hour later that Daphne returned, moving slowly with the taunting gait of a jailer. He suspected she was bored of the game and he asked, ‘So, where’s my dinner?’

  ‘What will you give me if I release you?’

  He’d forgotten the present in his jacket pocket until now. ‘An ancient treasure in a box with lock and key. Is that fair?’

  ‘Where will you get it?’

  ‘It’s right here, ready.’

  ‘Don’t believe you.’

  He retrieved the wrapped packet and held it up for her to see.

  ‘What sort of treasure?’

  ‘That’s a surprise. But it’s very beautiful. Put the ladder back and I’ll give it to you.’

  ‘Daphne, hello darling!’ Edmund’s distinctive voice called from the terrace. Daphne waved in reply and Ralph waved too, partially obscured by foliage. He returned the gift to his pocket.

  ‘Hello, Edmund.’ There was a pause while Edmund peered in the direction of the voice. ‘It’s Ralph. Your daughter has been showing me this hiding place. I think I’m moving in.’

  ‘Ralph!’ There was the slightest pause of bewilderment, and then Edmund came down into the garden, bright blue bellbottoms flapping as he lolloped along, gangly as a crane. Noticing the ladder lying in the grass, he knitted his eyebrows at Daphne in mock annoyance and picked it up, propping it against the side of the tree house. Ralph made a swift descent and Edmund pulled him into a hug. ‘Ralphie, my boy. Hoodwinked and taken prisoner by this young warrior-princess, eh? You need to keep your wits about you.’ The three went back to the house and found the boys in the kitchen.

  ‘Supper?’ asked Edmund. ‘What’s the plan?’ He looked at Ralph and added, ‘Ellie’s away for a few days. She’s gone to Paris for a meeting – you know. Greeks plotting against evil tyrants. But we’re pretty good at fending for ourselves.’

  ‘There’s nothing to eat,’ said Daphne. ‘I’ve checked.’ The piles of crockery in the sink and pitifully empty fridge belied Edmund’s confidence.

  ‘Ed can cook one thing, but we don’t have the ingredients,’ opined Daphne.

  Ralph found it delightful that she called her father by his name. ‘And what’s that?’ he asked.

  ‘Toad-in-the-hole.’

  ‘And very delicious it is too,’ chuckled Edmund happily, not realising this was a complaint.

  ‘We’re starving,’ said Theo, stoking the fire of protest started by Daphne and looking at Liam for confirmation.

  ‘Fish and chips?’ Edmund smiled as though he had found a unique and brilliant solution and retrieved a five-pound note from his trouser pocket.

  The teenagers were dispatched to fetch the food while Edmund opened a bottle of champagne. ‘You need it to offset the grease.’ Daphne lit candles and laid the kitchen table, observing the two men as they toasted their project, downed one glass and refilled. ‘Can I have a taste? Please?’

  Edmund let her sip from his glass and she gurgled with amusement when the bubbles tickled her nose. Before long, all five were unwrapping plump parcels of newspaper and, despite the eclairs, Ralph found himself ravenous. His sensations were heightened and, as he devoured the length of crispy cod and vinegar-splashed chips, the meal seemed among the most delectable he had ever eaten. Edmund had turned out the lights and they ate entirely by the golden flicker of candles. It’s beautiful, Ralph thought. She’s beautiful. He observed her, sitting opposite him at the long pine table, and wanted to pick her up and carry her anywhere she wanted to go. He would never do anything to harm her.

  After dinner, Ralph seized his moment. The boys had left for their wires and transmitters and Edmund went for a pee.

  ‘Here’s your ancient treasure.’ He held out the gift to Daphne and she hesitated.

  ‘Why? I didn’t give you your freedom. I’d have left you all night. It was funny.’

  ‘I’d brought it for you anyway. I think you’ll like it. But it’s a secret. Just for us. OK?’ He looked into her face – fearless, black-lashed eyes and determined lips. ‘Open it later.’ She took the package and tucked it inside a scuffed, leather satchel that lay on the kitchen floor.

  When her father returned, Ralph saw Daphne’s satisfaction and wondered if she was aware of this as their first act of collusion. Her pleasure must be at least that of acquiring a secret. All children liked secrets, didn’t they? He had never lost the particular delight in private things, in keeping areas of life apart, in mystery. Secrets were like places where you are not overlooked, like a series of tree houses. Spaces where you could do as you liked and in which you were not accountable. He avoided introducing one friend to another and with girlfriends he was almost obsessive about keeping them separate from his social circle and, more importantly, from each other.

  ‘Ralphie. Come and have another drink and let’s go up to my study.’ Edmund beckoned for him to follow, ignoring his daughter – not on purpose, Ralph thought. It’s the careless egotism of the creative spirit. You have to chase the fire and let everyone else look after themselves. Edmund was already out of the room and Ralph followed him, turning momentarily to wave to Daphne. Her smile was so exquisite and so electrifying that he shuddered.