by Jon McGregor
He passed the first-aid box through the hole in the windscreen. His hands were stained with oil and mud, and as they touched hers they felt heavy and awkward. She put the box in her lap and opened it. She wondered what he wanted her to do. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I just thought. Has it got antiseptic cream in there?’ She rummaged through the bandages and wipes and creams and scissors. And now what. She took out a wipe, dabbed at her arm, and closed the box. She handed it back to him, holding the bloody wipe in one hand.
‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘I think I’ll be okay now.’ Was she talking too slowly? Patronising him? Or was she making reasonable allowances for his learning-challenges? But he might not even be that. She was over-complicating the situation, probably. Which was another thing Marcus said to her sometimes, that she did that. She looked at him. He shrugged.
‘Well, yeah,’ he said. ‘If you’re sure. I just thought, you know.’
Status update: Emily Wilkinson regrets not having signed up for breakdown insurance.
‘Thanks,’ she said.
She’d chosen Hull because she’d thought it would sound interesting to say she was going to a provincial university. Or more exactly because she thought it would make her sound interesting to even say ‘provincial university’, which she didn’t think anyone had said since about 1987 or some other time way before she was born. She wasn’t even exactly sure what provincial meant. Was it just anywhere not-London? That seemed pretty sweeping. That was where most people lived. Maybe it meant anywhere that wasn’t London or Oxford or Cambridge, and that was still pretty sweeping. Whatever, people didn’t seem to say it any more, which was why she’d been looking forward to saying it. Only it turned out that no one knew what she was talking about and they mostly thought she was saying provisional, which totally wasn’t the same thing at all.
Anyway, though, that hadn’t been the only reason she’d chosen Hull. Another reason was it was a long way from home. As in definitely too far to visit. Plus when she went on the open day she’d loved the way the river smelt of the sea, and obviously the bridge, which looked like something from a film, and also the silence you hit when you got to the edge of the town, and the way it didn’t take long to get to the edge of town. And of course she’d liked the Larkin thing, except again it didn’t seem like too many people were bothered about that. Or knew about it. Or knew how much it meant, if they did know about it. When she first got there she kept putting ‘Emily Wilkinson is a bit chilly and smells of fish’ on her status updates, but no one got the reference so she gave it up. Plus it made her look weird, obviously, even after she’d explained it in the comments.
She’d met Marcus in her second year, when he’d taught a module on ‘The Literature of Marginal(ised) Places’. Which she’d enjoyed enough to actually go to at least half of the lectures rather than just download the notes. He had a way of explaining things like he properly wanted you to understand, instead of just wanting to show off or get through the class as quick as he could. There was something sort of generous about the way he talked, in class, and the way he listened to the students. Plus he was what it was difficult to think of a better word for than totally buff, and also had what she couldn’t be more articulate than call a lovely mouth, and basically made her spend quite a lot of time not actively addressing the issues of appropriation inherent in a culturally privileged form such as literary fiction taking exclusion and marginality as its subject. Her friend Jenny had said she couldn’t see it at all, as in the buffness and the lovely mouth rather than the inherent appropriation, but that had only made her think it was maybe something more along the lines of a genuine connection thing and not just some kind of stereotypical type of crush; and Jenny did at least agree that no way did it count as inappropriate if it was just a PhD student and not an actual lecturer. His last seminar had been on the Tasmanian novel, which it turned out there were quite a few of, and afterwards he’d kept her talking until the others had left and said were there any issues she wanted to discuss and actually did she want to go for a drink. To which her response had been, and that took you so long why?
There hadn’t really been anyone before Marcus. Not since coming to university, anyway. There’d been a few things at parties, and she’d slept with one of her housemates a bunch of times, but nothing serious enough to make her change her relationship setting. With Marcus it had been different, almost immediately. He’d asked her out, like formally, and they’d had late-night conversations about their relationship and what relationships meant and even whether or not they were in love and how they would know and whether love could ever be defined without reference to the other. She didn’t really know. She thought being in love probably didn’t mean telling your girlfriend what she could wear when you went to the pub together, or asking her not to talk to certain people, or telling her she was the reason you couldn’t finish your thesis.
They hadn’t moved in together, but almost as soon as they’d started going out their possessions had begun drifting from one house to the other until it felt like they were just living together in two places. Sometimes when she woke up it took her a moment to remember which house she was in. It wasn’t always a nice feeling. Which meant, what? She fully had no idea what it meant. Because she liked Marcus, she liked him a lot. She liked the conversations they had, which were smart and complicated and went on for hours. And she liked the way he looked at her when he wanted to do the things she’d been thinking about in class when she should have been thinking about discourses of liminality, when she’d been imagining saying he was welcome to cross her threshold any day. There was still all that. But there were other things. Things that made her uncomfortable, uncertain, things she was pretty sure weren’t part of how a relationship was supposed to make you feel happy or good about yourself or whatever it was a relationship was supposed to make you feel.
She should be calling him now, and she wasn’t. He’d want her to have called, when he heard. Something like this. He should be the first person she thought of calling. He’d think it was odd that she hadn’t. He’d be hurt. She thought about calling Jenny instead, to tell her what had happened, or her supervisor, to tell her she’d be late getting back to the office. She should call someone, probably, but she couldn’t really imagine having the words to explain it and she couldn’t face having anyone else tell her she could have been killed and plus anyway she was totally fine, wasn’t she? She looked down at the sugar-beet again. Was that what that smell was? It wasn’t a sugary smell at all. It was more like an earthy smell, like wet earth, like something rotting in the earth. She didn’t see how they could get from that to a bowl of white sugar on a café table, or even to that sort of wet, boozy smell you got when you drove past the refinery, coming up the A1. Which come to think of it was probably where the lorry would have been heading. It would be, what, an hour’s drive from here? Maybe she should go there and give them back their sugar-beet, tell them what had happened. Complain, maybe.
The passenger door opened, and the older man leaned in towards her.
‘You need to get out,’ he said. It seemed a bit too directive, the way he said it. She didn’t move. ‘It’s not safe, being on the hard shoulder like this,’ he added. ‘We should all be behind the barrier.’ They’d been discussing this, had they? It looked like they’d been discussing something. The older man was already holding out his hand to help her across the passenger seat. She looked at the traffic, roaring and weaving and hurtling past, and she remembered hearing about incidents where people had been struck and killed on the hard shoulder, when they were changing a tyre, or going for a piss, or just stopping to help. She remembered her cousin once telling her about a school minibus which had driven into the back of a Highways Maintenance truck and burst into flames. Which meant they were right about this, did it, probably? She swung her feet over into the passenger’s side, took the man’s hand, and squeezed out on to the tarmac. It was an awkward manoeuvre, and she didn’t think she’d completed it with much elegance o
r style. The younger man was already standing behind the barrier, and she clambered over to join him. She didn’t do that very gracefully either. He started climbing up the embankment.
‘Just in case,’ he said, looking back at her. Meaning what, she wondered. ‘Something could flip, couldn’t it?’ he said, and he did something with his hands which was presumably supposed to look like a vehicle striking a barrier and somersaulting across it. The older man caught her eye, and nodded, and she followed them both up the embankment, through the litter and the long grass.
It was much colder at the top. Sort of exposed. The wind was whipping away the sound of the traffic, making her feel further from the road than they really were. The two men looked awkward, as though maybe they were uncomfortable about the time this whole situation was taking. The younger man made the whistling noise again. She could barely hear it against the wind.
‘You’re lucky,’ he said, nodding down towards her car. ‘I mean, you know. You’re lucky we stopped. You could have been killed.’ She didn’t know what to say to this. She nodded, and folded her arms against the cold. The older man arched his back, rubbing at his neck with both hands.
‘They’ll be here soon,’ he said, and she nodded again, looking around.
Behind them, the ground sloped away towards a small woodland of what she thought might be hawthorn or rowan trees or something like that. The ones with the red berries. There were ragged strips of bin-liners and carrier-bags hanging from the branches, flapping in the wind. Past the trees, there was a warehouse, and an access road, and she noticed that the streetlights along the access road were coming on already. Beyond the access road, a few miles further away, there were some houses which she wasn’t sure if they were some estate on the outskirts of Hull or some other town altogether. Hull was further than that, she was pretty sure. It was the other side of the estuary, and they were still south of the river. Almost certainly.
The older man started down the slope, towards the trees. ‘I’m just going to, you know,’ he said. ‘While we’re waiting.’ She turned away, looking back at the road. She was getting colder now. She looked at her car, and at the blue van. They were both rocking gently in the slipstream of the passing traffic, their hazard lights blinking in sequence. She wondered if she felt like crying yet. She didn’t think so. It still didn’t seem like the right moment.
She would talk to Marcus at the weekend, she decided. He’d understand, when it came down to it. Once he gave her a chance to explain. She’d say something like although they’d been good together at times and she was still very fond of him she just couldn’t see where things were going for them. She didn’t like the way he made her feel about herself, sometimes. She needed some time to find out who she was and what she needed from a relationship. Something like that.
She’d tried it out with Jenny. Jenny had said it sounded about right. Jenny had said she thought Marcus was reasonable and would probably take it on board, although obviously he’d still be disappointed. That was how she talked sometimes, like she was a personal guidance counsellor or something, or an older and wiser cousin. Whereas in fact she was only like a year older, and had spent that year mostly in Thailand and Australia, which was her version of travelling the world and which she thought made her the total source of wisdom when in fact it made her the total source of knowing about youth hostels and full-moon parties and not even having heard of Philip fucking Larkin. And she was wrong about Marcus. It was way more likely he would shout at her when she told him. Or break something. It wouldn’t be the first time. Everyone thought he was so reasonable. But she wasn’t going to back down this time. She was certain of it, suddenly. Something like this, it made you think about things, about your priorities. She could say that to him, in fact. She could explain what had happened and that it had made her rethink a few things. Maybe she should call him now in fact, and tell him what had happened. So he’d already have the context when she talked about wanting to finish things. Maybe that would be sensible. She should do that. She wanted to do that, she realised. She wanted to hear his voice, and to know that he knew she was okay. Which meant what. She wanted him to know where she was. Her phone was still in her bag, in the car. She started to move down the embankment. The younger man grabbed her arm.
‘You should stay up here,’ he said. ‘It’s safer.’ She looked at him, and at his hand on her arm. ‘They’ll be here in a minute,’ he said.
‘I just need to get my phone,’ she said. ‘I need to call someone. I’ll be careful, thanks.’ She tried to step away, but he held her back. ‘Excuse me?’ she said.
‘You’re probably in shock,’ he said. ‘You should be careful. Maybe you should sit down.’
‘I’m okay, actually, thanks? I don’t want to sit down?’ She spoke clearly, looking him in the eye, raising her voice above the wind and the traffic. Plus raising her voice against maybe he was a bit deaf, as well as the learning-challenged thing. She wanted him to let go of her arm. She tried to pull away again, but his grip was too tight. She looked at him, like: what are you doing? He shook his head. He said something else, but she couldn’t hear him. She didn’t know if the wind had picked up or what was going on. He looked confused, as if he couldn’t remember what he was supposed to be saying.
She glanced down the other side of the embankment, and saw the older man at the edge of the woodland. He was standing with his back to the trees, looking up at the two of them, his hands held tensely by his sides. What was he. He seemed to be trying to say something to the younger man. He seemed to be waiting for something. She tried to pull away. But what.
What Happened to Mr Davison
Cadwell
First of all I want to start by saying we all of us just really have every sympathy as regards what happened to Mr Davidson. Obviously the conclusion was not one which I or any of us were seeking. That goes without saying. I mean, I honestly don’t think that what happened was within the range of foreseeable consequences. Not that we sat down and undertook a full risk assessment before embarking on that particular course of action. Of course not. It was more of a spontaneous, spur-of-the-moment type of scenario. But I think even given how little forward analysis was involved it would be safe to say that the outcome was not one any of us envisaged. I mean, clearly not. That’s just not the kind of people we are, any of us. I think that’s just really understood. I think I’m safe in saying that that’s been accepted, by some of the people who’ve been impacted upon, in terms of the subsequent turn of events. Including Mr Davidson himself. As far as we’ve been able to gather. I mean, you know, some of the people he has around him have been understandably cautious, in terms of what I suppose you could call access. That’s been my understanding at least, to date: that an approach of that manner would not be favourably received at this time, given the ongoing circumstances. I’m speaking in terms of with reference to third parties, in this context. Given our feeling that a direct approach would be likely to have been deemed insensitive, in light of the wider context, and the history and suchlike.
Davison. Yes. Of course.
Right.
I’m not sure there’s actually any need to rehearse the facts of the day in question. I think everyone’s very familiar with the sequence of what went on. Suffice it to say that the context was rather a pressured one. Myself and the other three gentlemen in question have discussed this at length, and we all agree that any of the precursors to our actions would in and of themselves have been sufficient as to be considered intolerable; but it was the combination of those precursors which led to the rather hastily agreed-upon course of action which was then taken.
Yes, I would concede that it was hastily agreed-upon.
No, I wouldn’t support that notion. That doesn’t necessarily follow.
I can’t recall which one of us specifically initiated the proposal. We’ve spoken about this as well, and we are all in agreement that the proposal arose as a more or less spontaneous initiative between us. We take collective responsi
bility on that point. Which is to say, on the limited point of how and by whom the proposal was initiated; that was a collective responsibility, I’m saying. I’m not talking about the wider question of responsibility for the eventual outcome. Not at all. That’s very much a matter for debate. I think we can all agree on that. And of course that’s a debate I would welcome, when the time comes. No one would welcome that more than me. But my feeling is that this wouldn’t be the appropriate context for that discussion, not today. My understanding was that this was simply an opportunity to clarify the narrative, as it were.
Thank you. Yes. I will.
Yes, quite so. The background. So. Mr Davidson and myself have been near-neighbours for a number of years, understanding of course that neighbour is a relative term in that neck of the woods. His house is visible from our house, and his land abuts on to ours. I wouldn’t say that we’ve become close friends over that duration; he’s a busy man, understandably, and although I spend as much time in that property as is possible I wouldn’t class myself as a full-time resident, by any means. So our opportunities for interaction have been naturally limited. But there hadn’t been any animosity between ourselves. Not historically speaking.
I wouldn’t say surprised as such, no. One expects a certain amount of countryside activity in the countryside, clearly. Possibly the range and duration and volume of those activities did somewhat exceed our expectations, yes. But we understood that our grounds for complaint were fairly restricted. Mr Davidson was a farming man, after all, and that much was perfectly clear at the time we purchased the property, and indeed Mr Davidson was absolutely entitled to reiterate this fact from time to time, as he felt it necessary to so do.