‘Anyway,’ I gave a cheerful shrug, ‘it’s been much better lately. I hardly ever do it now, blank out, I mean. And as I say, Nick’s pulling out all the stops now, so…’
‘You’re off them now, are you?’ Cath said sternly. ‘The happy pills…?’
‘God yes!’ I said, laughing. ‘And so much better for it. Unrecognizable, really. Everybody says so. Just being here, where it’s quiet; where things are so much more relaxed – it’s done me the world of…’
My voice tailed off and our eyes met, hers full of kindly scepticism; mine hopeful, even a little desperate.
‘Well, that’s good to hear,’ she said. ‘Let’s get you up that hill so you can take your photies!’ and she folded my hand into the crook of her arm and, patting it consolingly, led me onward along the path.
We hadn’t been walking long before the woods began to thin and the path veered up a nettle-covered bank and out into sunlight. We clambered over another stile and by the time we had picked our way, with much slithering, swearing and arm-clutching, across the cattle-trodden bog that lay beyond it, our conversation had reverted to a cheerful but evasive prattle. The path divided now, one branch climbing steeply up the ridge, the other, little more than a goat track, dropping down to skirt its flank. I paused for a moment to allow Cath to catch up with me.
‘OK, Sherpa Tensing, ready for the north face?’ I said.
Her eyes followed mine to the top of the crag and she clutched her chest comically. I felt a pang of disappointment and then one of guilt for as much as she was making light of it, I knew there was no way she could climb a slope like that in her present state of health. Striking out onto the lower path, I muttered something about the views being just as good from there, but she overtook me and blocked my path, arms akimbo.
‘Oh no, you don’t,’ she said, ‘you’ll not wimp out on my account. Get yourself up that hill and take your snaps. I’ll meet you at the cattle trough by the lane. You can’t get off the hill without passing it, so we’ll not miss each other.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Are you sure?’ she repeated, mocking my mealy-mouthed Sassenach politeness, so that I swiped her arm and laughed and headed up the slope without a conscience, as she no doubt intended I should. Stopping once to catch my breath, I turned and watched her wend her way along the lower track, shoulders hunched, eyes cast down. She might as well have been wearing chainmail.
I struggled to the top of the ridge, grabbing at tussocks of grass to haul myself over the escarpment onto a wide and scrubby heath. The landscape up here was more rugged than the polite pastureland that surrounded our hamlet. No hedges, roads or rivers carved it up. No distant estuary drew the eye. I was on a hill besieged by other hills, their slopes clad not in picturesque deciduous woodland, but in close-ranked spruce and pine. Here and there, abandoned clay pits had bitten chunks out of the landscape, leaving scars of sand and scree. I circled slowly on the spot, taking it all in, feeling exhilaration mount in me, realising that I could throw pots for evermore and still not do justice to this scene, but knowing too that I would have to try. I fumbled with my camera-phone, setting it to video mode and accidentally recorded several short films of my own feet before finally getting the hang of it and taking a slow three-hundred-and-sixty-degree panning shot of the horizon. I followed that up with photographs: forty or fifty regular frames from different angles, and then a couple of panoramas. By the time I was done, my wrist was aching, my head spinning and the battery on my phone was in the red zone, but I had got what I came for.
I headed down again and it wasn’t long before I was back on familiar territory – the town in the distance, the church and the pub across the valley, hikers, picnickers and dog-walkers milling about on my hill as though it were Hampstead Heath. I could see Cath now, reclined on the lower slope near the cattle trough as she had promised. She was petting a large dog, wrestling its russet head playfully from side to side and looking up to converse with its owner, a skinny boy who reminded me of Ethan, who stood chatting to her with an air of awkward reluctance. She turned and gestured up the hill. I waved to her and she waved back and the boy looked in my direction and it was Ethan. I broke into a jog. The path narrowed and I stood to one side to allow a posse of elderly hikers to pass me and by the time I looked back again, Cath was alone.
17
‘Was that…?’ I asked, panting up to Cath.
‘Your wee man?’ she hauled herself unsteadily to her feet and turned to greet me. ‘It was, aye. Didn’t hang about, did he? I didn’t know you’d got yourselves a dog.’
‘We haven’t,’ I said, ‘I don’t know who that one belongs to.’
It occurred to me then that perhaps actually I did. I recalled the wetness of dog slobber on my hand, and a redhead looking enquiringly into my face, expecting an answer to a question I hadn’t heard because my thoughts were elsewhere…
‘Are you OK, love?’ Cath put her hand on my arm and I looked into her poor tired eyes and remembered, uncomfortably, that while I was recalling what had turned out to be an imaginary heartache, she was enduring a real one.
‘I’m fine,’ I said, ‘I’m sorry. I was just trying to think where I’d seen that dog before…’
‘Gorgeous pooch,’ said Cath, fondly, ‘and your Ethan’s very nice too of course. Lovely manners.’
I grasped her arm to steady myself as we slithered down the steeply rutted bank.
‘He’s stopping with you for a bit then, is he?’ Cath said as we hobbled over the cattle grid and headed down the lane.
I shrugged.
‘Not for long. He’s saving up his airfare and then he’s going to be heading Down Under. Some girl in…’ My voice cracked before I could finish the sentence.
‘Hey, lovey!’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said, flapping my hand stupidly in front of my eyes, ‘ridiculous! He’s nineteen. I should be pleased he’s striking out and seeing the world, shouldn’t I?’
Cath shrugged.
‘I’ve never had a kid so I’ll not tell you how you’re meant to feel.’
‘I’m being daft,’ I said, ‘I know I am. I just can’t help thinking he wouldn’t be doing this – dropping out, running away, whatever – if it wasn’t for all the grief I’ve put him through this past year.’
‘You’ve put him through?’ said Cath sharply.
‘Honestly, Cath,’ I said, biting my lip, ‘if you’d seen the look on his face the first time he visited me in that place…’
‘Lovey, I think you’re taking far too much on yourself. You had a breakdown because Nick betrayed you. It seems to me that the blame lies fairly and squarely with him.’
‘I completely overreacted,’ I interrupted sharply. ‘People have affairs all the time. Christ, Nick and I had an affair. He was married when I met him and I knew it. It’s not like I’m blameless. But his ex didn’t end up climbing the walls in a psych unit, did she? She took him to the cleaners and exited stage left. Their son came out of it all relatively unscathed. No, it’s my fault Ethan’s leaving, not Nick’s. If I’d acted like a grown-up, he need never have known.’
‘You’re being way too hard on yourself.’
‘And then, just when it looked like things might be getting back to normal, Nick sells…’ I corrected myself, ‘we sell the house out from under Ethan and instead of coming back to London in the holiday, where all his mates are, he gets to live in the back of beyond where he doesn’t know a soul.’
‘He must know someone,’ Cath pointed out, ‘if he’s walking a dog.’
‘Maybe,’ I said vaguely. ‘Anyway, the thing is…’
I stopped and hugged my elbows, throwing my face skywards in an effort to keep my composure. Cath laid her hand on my shoulder and waited. I took a great shuddering breath.
‘… The thing is, I feel like Ethan’s running away. From me… from us!’
‘Don’t we all run away at his age?’ Cath said gently. ‘I know I did. Govan in the Eighties was no plac
e to come out as a lesbian, I can tell you!’
She gave me a wry smile.
‘Did you ever go back?’
‘I did, aye. ’Fessed up to my folks. ’Course they’d known all along. They were fine about it. Loved Annie like a daughter by the end…’
Cath’s tears came then and I gathered her to me and patted her gently on the back and we stood there for a while, a pair of battle-scarred middle-aged women propped together in an awkward embrace, all but oblivious to the curious glances of passers-by.
At last Cath regained her composure and ferreting a crumpled paper tissue from the pocket of her jeans dabbed her soggy cheeks and blew her nose. Then, shoving the tissue back where it had come from, she linked my arm and we trudged down the lane in companionable silence, until saying our goodbyes at the foot of Cath’s steps, we were drowned out by the manic barking of a dog coming from the other side of the hedge, silenced abruptly by a man’s gruff curse. It was then that I noticed an acrid smell of burning rubber.
‘Is he still there?’ I whispered anxiously to Cath. ‘The barn guy? I thought he’d be long gone.’
‘No such luck,’ Cath replied. I wished she would lower her voice. The thought of his overhearing made me uneasy.
‘I’ve been on to the council umpteen times and they’ve said he’s on their radar, but they’ve done nothing about it. I got so fed up in the end I went to have a word with him myself.’
‘Gosh, was that a good idea…?’ I whispered, peering through the trees. I couldn’t see much – the side of the barn, all gaping holes and rusted iron, a smouldering bonfire and a stack of old oilcans.
‘Ach, I’m not scared. He’s wired, but there’s nothing of him. I could lamp him if I’d a mind to.’
I couldn’t help smiling at this.
‘Is this him too?’ I asked, indicating a ditch full of rubbish with my foot.
Cath nodded wryly.
‘Reckons he’s an environmental campaigner.’
‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘Really looks like it…’
‘Ach, he’s off his heed,’ Cath said dismissively. ‘Self-inflicted’d be my guess. God knows what he’s on…’
‘You think he’s a druggie?’
Cath shrugged.
‘You only have to look at him to see he’s not getting his five a day. Cheekbones you could shave parmesan on.’
‘Oh dear,’ I said. I thought of the Peeping Tom who had spied on Nick and I in the car. Hadn’t he looked emaciated? Wild-eyed? No, I had barely caught a glimpse of him.
‘Oh well,’ I said, my voice unconvincingly cheerful, ‘he’ll move on soon enough, I expect, once the weather comes in. I mean – poor bugger – who’d want to be stuck in a draughty old barn all winter?’
‘Oh, he’s snug as a bug,’ Cath demurred. ‘The barn’s just camouflage. He’s got his van parked up in there.’
‘His van…?’ What had started as a vague feeling of unease began to coalesce into dread.
‘Anyway hen, I’ll love you and leave you,’ Cath said, with stoic cheerfulness. She squeezed my hand.
‘And thanks. It’s done me the power of good to get out today. It’s always a terrible time of year for me.’
‘No, thank you,’ I said, squeezing her hand in return. ‘It’s been good, really good.’
Did I mean good? It had felt cathartic, certainly, and had brought the two of us closer than ever, but I’d come away disconcerted and confused. Uncomfortable interpretations of the past now crowded my thoughts.
‘Bye then.’
‘Bye.’
I watched as Cath hauled herself up the bottom few steps. I couldn’t bear to think of her returning to all that mess and squalor; the fug of stale smoke and the dirty kitchen. I wavered for a moment, thinking to follow her, roll my sleeves up, get stuck in, but I was already pushing my luck with Nick. After the fuss he’d made last time, I decided I had better go home.
‘Hiya,’ I breezed in through the front door, my voice a full octave higher than I’d intended. ‘Sorry I’ve been a while. Turned out it was the anniversary of Cath’s girlfriend’s… oh!’
The sitting room was deserted. Nick’s computer stood open on the dining table, its screen-saver flinging a neon parabola back and forth against a midnight blue background. Next to it his mobile sat atop a pile of papers, its various apps flagged with red dots where people had tried to contact him. The house wasn’t empty – I could sense that even before I detected the low murmur of conversation coming from the kitchen. I heard a peel of feminine laughter, caught the faintest trace of perfume on the air. The wave of jealousy was visceral.
‘Oh! Imogen, hi,’ I said, trying to sound casual; friendly. She and Nick stopped talking and swivelled their heads towards me, their expressions happy and slow-witted, drunk on one another’s company.
‘Hello, Karen,’ Imogen said, ‘I hope you don’t mind me sweet-talking your hubby. It’s all in a good cause, I promise.’
‘Be my guest,’ I said, stretching the corners of my mouth into a smile. I took a mug from the back of the cupboard and pretended to dust it with a tea-towel whilst appraising myself more fully of the situation. Imogen was examining her immaculate fingernails, pale blonde hair only half concealing a becoming blush, her mouth pursed primly in an attitude of amused compunction. Nick sat back in his chair, arms folded defensively across his chest, as if to say, I’m drinking tea with a neighbour who happens to be female, so sue me. He was so busy acting the part of someone with absolutely nothing to reproach himself for, he didn’t realize he was giving the game away. I could see now that they had only been flirting, but that was small consolation. I walked over and helped myself a little brusquely to the teapot that stood between them on the table and, sitting down, had no choice once it was poured, but to sip the tepid grey brew.
‘Imogen’s looking for volunteers,’ Nick explained.
‘Really,’ I said.
‘Oh, don’t worry, you’re in the clear,’ Imogen reassured me. ‘It’s muscle I’m after.’
Nick waggled his eyebrows at me suggestively – a calculated double bluff.
‘We’ve borrowed Jerry Chetwynd’s marquee for the Auction of Promises,’ Imogen said.
‘The Earl of Amberleigh, to you,’ put in Nick. I tried to look suitably impressed.
‘We used it last time,’ Imogen continued. ‘It’s great because it saves the cost of hiring one, so – more money for our good causes. But the downside is we have to put it up ourselves, which is where the muscle comes in… I’ve signed up Nick, Douglas and Ray, so far, but we could do with at least one more pair of hands, so if you know of anyone…’
The front door twanged on its hinges.
‘Ethan…? Sweetheart…?’
I heard the sound of his boots flump one after the other on the floor and braced myself to make excuses for a taciturn, hung-over son, but when he popped his head around the kitchen door he was grinning broadly.
‘’Ello ’ello ’ello,’ he said.
He entered the room on a waft of pungent odours: wood smoke and old sweat and a strange chlorine-ish scent that seemed out of place. He was filthy and dishevelled, but he had an air of exhilaration about him, as though he had just returned, victorious, from an iron man challenge.
‘You know Imogen? From the big – from just up the lane?’ I inclined my head towards her, and nodded encouragement.
Imogen half stood in her seat and held out her hand but instead of shaking it, Ethan held his palm aloft and replied with a portentous Indian chief style, ‘How!’
Imogen changed tack and gave a hesitant wave in response, which Ethan seemed to find hilarious.
I glanced anxiously at Nick, whose lips were pursed in displeasure.
‘You look like you’ve been dragged through a hedge,’ I said lightly. ‘Do you want to give me that T-shirt and I’ll put it in the—’
‘Ah no, you’re all right, Mum. Mummy. Mummikins!’ he said, and then, as if he hadn’t until this moment quite registered th
e full import of my role in his life, he clapped his arm around me and gave me a smooching cartoon kiss on the cheek.
‘You’re the best,’ he said. ‘She’s the best!’ he told Nick and Imogen.
I tried to behave as though this touching display of devotion was entirely normal, but I wasn’t fooling anyone, least of all myself.
‘Well, isn’t that lovely?’ said Imogen, tactfully. ‘I was just telling your mum actually, Ethan, that I could use a bit of help tomorrow.’
‘Oh, were you, actually?’ said Ethan in an excruciating imitation of her cut-glass accent.
‘Ethan,’ I murmured quietly. I noticed Nick’s jaw hardening with disapproval.
‘I could use some help, yes,’ Imogen said, her tone cooler, but still pleasant.
‘Whaassup?’ Ethan slurred. ‘Your Roller need a wash?’
‘I wish,’ she said with a tight-lipped smile. ‘No, we need another pair of hands to help with the marquee on Thursday.’
‘’Fuck’s a marquee?’ Ethan giggled.
I glanced nervously at Nick, who was staring deliberately away from his son, his fist clenched on the table.
‘It’s a sort of bigger than average tent we’re borrowing for our Auction of Promises at the weekend,’ Imogen explained. ‘Takes quite a bit of putting up.’
‘Don’t you have servants for that sort of thing?’
‘Ethan!’ I remonstrated.
‘Haha,’ said Imogen. ‘No. It’s a community thing. Most people join in for the fun of it, but no problem if you’re not available. Come to the auction anyway and bring your pals. There’ll be a band and a barbecue. It’s always tremendous fun.’
‘Oh, jolly good show,’ said Ethan, with a camp flap of his hand. ‘I’ll round up some pals and we’ll come on over.’
Now Nick leaped out of his chair and lunged at his son. He manhandled him across the room in a scuffle of chair legs and grunting and pinned him against the wall, the boy’s T-shirt gathered between his fists.
Imogen scrambled to her feet. ‘Oh gosh, well. I… think I should probably be…’
The Move Page 15