The Bench

by Saskia Sarginson

  I push away a ticklish strand of hair. ‘It came out years after we were together.’

  ‘You didn’t read the lyrics? They were printed on the inside of the CD cover.’

  ‘Yes, but …’ I shrug. ‘I couldn’t be sure it was really about me.’ I glance at him. ‘I couldn’t think why you’d write something like that, but not keep in contact.’

  ‘Shit. Yeah.’ He scrubs at his face with his fingers. ‘If you didn’t get my letters, I can see why you’d be confused,’ he says. ‘This new song in my head is about us too – about being separated and finding each other.’

  ‘For your new album?’ I angle my body to face him, warm from the knowledge that I inspire him to write. ‘Are you nervous about going solo?’

  He shrugs. ‘A bit. But it’s different this time.’ He gives a half-smile. ‘I want to write something I’m proud of. I don’t need a huge audience. I just need to be able to survive on my work.’

  ‘I’m glad,’ I say. ‘And you’ve made loads of money already, haven’t you?’

  He laughs. ‘We did all right,’ he agrees. ‘Although we had to pay the record company back for money spent on videos and things. And boy, did we do some over-the-top videos.’

  He takes my fingers in his and squeezes. The shock of his skin against mine makes me flinch, then, with a small shudder, I let my hand lie quietly inside his. My whole arm feels tingly. I want to lean into him, put my head on his shoulder.

  ‘A hundred years ago,’ he says in a different voice, low and intimate, ‘there would have been cattle grazing here, locals coming to dig up sand, collect wood for their fires. Just think, we could have been a couple with a smoky cottage to go back to, standing out here, feeling the sun on our faces, the scent of the new ponds in the air. Me reaching for your hand, kissing you, your hair, your mouth, and not caring who saw.’

  I can’t speak. I slide my hand away from his. He doesn’t stop me.

  He clears his throat. ‘You know, Guy Fawkes and his gang planned to watch Parliament blow up from this vantage point,’ he says, ‘and there’s a myth that Boudicca’s buried here.’

  ‘Boudicca! Are you making this up?’

  ‘I used to love reading guidebooks – finding out stuff about places I was visiting. The last few years, I’ve hardly known what city I’ve been in.’ He shows me a battered book from his coat pocket. ‘I found this in a second-hand shop near the Tube station. Hampstead Heath: The Walker’s Guide.’

  ‘Very sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll,’ I say, laughing.

  He makes a comedy face and pretends to grab me. I leap up and run down the hill; the boggy ground slurps at my heels, the tussocks of grass make me stumble, but I crash on down the steep slope. Cold air rushes into my lungs and my cheeks sting. He’s coming after me; I hear the gulp and splatter of his boots in the mud, the rustle of his coat. And then the thump of his body against mine. He’s got me around the middle, holding tight. We’re laughing, nearly falling. I twist around to face him, trembling, hands flat on his chest to push him away, but he drops his face towards mine and our mouths meet.

  It’s as if we’re back in Atlantic City, crouching between two parked cars, kissing for the first time. Except I know this man, this mouth, this tongue. We kiss for a long time, and then we stand in the mud, holding each other. I never want to let go. The noises of the park hum around us: leaf whisper, distant voices, birdsong, the far-up zoom of an airplane. I let my arms slacken and move away a little, giving us space. ‘That wasn’t supposed to happen,’ I say quietly.

  ‘Cat.’ He takes my hand and presses it. ‘I want to be with you.’ I screw up my face, frowning. ‘I’m—’

  ‘I know,’ he says quickly. ‘I suppose I’m asking if … if you’re happy with him. Really happy.’

  ‘Happy?’ I duck my head. ‘It’s not that simple, Sam. It never can be. Not any more. Two people count on me.’

  I don’t want to discuss Leo with Sam. It feels wrong.

  ‘But you’re talking about duty again.’ He gives an impatient shrug. ‘Are you going to let duty dictate the rest of your life? What about what you want?’ I hear the rasp of his breath. ‘You know what happened with my dad, how he made me believe I owed him my life.’ He holds my arms, looking into my face. ‘It wasn’t until I met you that I found the courage to stop – to just be myself.’ He shudders. ‘Fuck duty, Cat.’

  ‘This is different,’ I say. ‘You know it is.’

  His face crumples, and he lets go, turns and trudges back up the hill towards the bench. I follow, stumbling next to him. ‘I made a promise,’ I say. ‘Don’t ask me to break it. It’s not fair.’ I bite my lip. ‘You said you wouldn’t do this.’

  We sit down. He rubs a hand over his face, rough fingers pushing at his skin. The rasp of stubble. ‘I’m sorry,’ he says.

  Neither of us speaks for minutes. I touch the engraving on the back of the bench, ‘Still sitting here beside you,’ I read aloud, ‘come rain or shine.’

  ‘Yeah,’ he says, with a small smile. ‘Makes me shiver. Weird, isn’t it? It’s the same idea as the one in Atlantic City – the one with your brother’s name.’

  I rest my hand on the wooden back. ‘As soon as I found this bench, I knew it was the right one. The words made me feel at home, as if I belonged here.’

  ‘We should have an inscription too,’ he says.

  I tilt my head. ‘For Cat and Sam, who found each other and lost each other and found each other again,’ I suggest.

  He purses his lips, ‘Not bad. Not bad at all.’

  I fold my arms, laughing, relieved by his humour. ‘What would you have?’

  ‘Sam and Cat’s bench.’ He gives me his crooked smile. ‘And then, in capitals: Keep off!’

  ‘Not very public spirited.’ I slap his knee lightly. ‘Or poetic. I found one once that said, In memory of Joe, who hated this Heath and everyone on it.’

  He laughs.

  ‘What do they mean to you?’ I ask. ‘Words on benches? You’re the only person I know who has the same obsession as me.’

  He traces the engraving with one finger. ‘They’re a testament, I suppose, a testament to love, in all its foolish bravery. The risk of it, the knowledge of the danger it puts us in, when anyone we love can be taken from us at any moment.’ He pauses, a little frown between his brows. ‘And then there’s the way we can be let down, betrayed, deceived, and yet we still dare to love, to give ourselves to other people – not just lovers, but children and friends and parents.’ He looks at me. ‘All that love, all that courage: that’s what those little plaques mean to me. It’s what connects us, I guess – the impossible decision we make to love and go on loving, despite everything.’

  Speechless, I nod.

  ‘And you?’ he asks.

  I clear my throat. ‘When … when I’m reading someone’s name on a bench, I imagine them sitting there. I know I’m in a place that meant something to them, and for a moment, it’s as if they’re there with me. And even though I never knew them, I remember them. Sounds weird, I know …’

  He shakes his head.

  I lift my shoulders, wanting to explain. ‘It’s such a simple thing, isn’t it? A bench in a park. Something we walk past without noticing most of the time. But it’s as if those words – even basic names and dates – kind of resonate with the beautiful bits of what it takes to be human.’

  ‘Cat,’ he says, his voice breaking.

  My chest tightens, clenches like a fist as I stop myself from reaching for him. Instead, I push my hair back behind my ears, angle my face away.

  He understands at once, shifting a little further from me. The air between us is tight with the effort of not touching.

  ‘Tell me what you do.’ He’s trying to sound normal. ‘I mean in your everyday life,’ he adds. ‘I want to be able to picture you going about your day when I’m not with you.’

  ‘I look after my stepdaughter, Grace.’ I close my eyes for a second, knowing that we need to talk our way back into o
ur separate lives. ‘I swim here – in the ponds. I love the feeling of swimming outdoors, the mud, the greenery, the air on my skin. I do it all year round. In the winter, we break the ice. And I write for about four or five hours a day. I’m a children’s author now,’ I tell him. ‘I have a two-book deal. My first is coming out next year.’

  ‘Your first novel! Why didn’t you say before?’ His eyebrows shoot up. ‘I’ve been looking for your name in bookshops, and now it’ll be there, where it belongs. What an achievement.’

  ‘Well, I’m not a superstar like some people I know …’

  ‘I didn’t think Americans were supposed to be modest.’ He drapes his arm around my shoulders and squeezes me tight. ‘A children’s book? You rock, Cat. Always have. Sometimes you just need to say: fuck it, I did it. Take that, world.’ He sweeps his other arm towards the view.

  He lets go and we sit looking down the slope towards the woods, the distant cityscape and the world beyond. The weather is colder; a slight mist haunts the air, seeps into my bones. I shiver.

  ‘Do you think we would have made it?’ he asks. ‘I mean, if we’d stayed together?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I say. ‘I guess all the ordinary stuff would have fallen on our shoulders sooner or later, all the domestic details of sharing a life.’

  ‘I think we would have made it,’ he says quietly. ‘I think we would have been bigger than that.’

  I don’t answer, because there’s nothing I can say that would make me feel any better, nothing that wouldn’t be disloyal to Leo.

  ‘Is this really goodbye?’ Sam murmurs.

  ‘What else can it be?’ I lick dry lips. ‘We can’t have an affair.’ ‘How about we meet, I don’t know, once every six months, once a year even?’ He says it so quickly that I know he’s already thought about it. ‘Just so we don’t lose contact,’ he adds. ‘But you couldn’t call it an affair.’

  I sit up, back straight, my hands caught between my knees. The suggestion rolls around inside my head, and everywhere it touches feels good and possible, and better, so much better than the endless loss of him. But then I remember my conversation with Leo last night, the disappointment in Grace’s voice this morning.

  ‘No,’ I tell him. ‘It really is over, Sam.’

  ‘But … I’m going out of London for a while to work on my new album,’ he says. ‘That takes us into next year, and—’

  I stop him. ‘You don’t understand. I’m trying to get pregnant. We’re trying to get pregnant, Leo and me.’

  He stares at me, shock wiping his features clean.

  ‘So … it’s impossible.’ I blink away tears. ‘I can’t see you again.’

  He looks as though he’s going to say something else, argue perhaps, but he doesn’t. He sits with his hands over his stomach, as though what I’ve said has winded him, stolen the breath from his body; then he takes my face in his hands, cupping my chin and cheeks, and looks into my eyes. We stare at each other. He kisses my mouth, once, briefly.

  ‘I want you to be happy.’ His voice is husky. ‘I hope you find what … what you truly want.’

  I manage a nod, placing my fingers over his.

  ‘I will think of you,’ he says. ‘Every day.’

  Our foreheads touch, and then we move away.

  Part Four

  FORTY

  Sam, April 1991

  Sam is rewarding himself with a glass of wine. The clocks have recently gone forward, and the gift of evening light lies on the flagstones, bleaching them. There’s no noise. Not even the ticking of a clock in this large, comfortable sitting room. The faint baaing of sheep and the trill of birdsong drifts through the slightly open window.

  He closes his eyes, letting the taste of the wine linger on his tongue. As soon as they broke from the session, George disappeared off to see his rare-breed sheep, River clutching his hand, his Border Terrier trotting after him. From the kitchen comes the sound of Mattie chatting with George’s girlfriend. Delicious cooking smells waft through, accompanied by laughter.

  George’s farmhouse is a seventeenth-century Jacobean manor. It’s a huge, rambling place, with twisting corridors and staircases, ancient wooden beams above open stone fireplaces. Mattie swears she saw a ghost one night when she got up for a pee.

  George hasn’t given up the music business, not completely; he’s installed a recording studio in his coach house. He rents it out to musicians, sometimes even agrees to lay down a drum track, as he’s doing at the moment on Sam’s first solo album.

  Mattie puts her head round the door, a glass of wine in one hand and a bowl of crisps in the other. ‘Here you are,’ she says, padding over to the sofa. ‘This house is so big, it’s impossible to find anyone.’ She offers the bowl of crisps. Sam shakes his head.

  ‘You should eat more,’ she says. ‘You’ve lost weight.’

  ‘Not sure crisps are a recommended source of nourishment.’ He raises an eyebrow at her. ‘I’m glad George has found someone,’ he adds. ‘You like her, don’t you?’

  Mattie nods, takes a sip of her drink. ‘Yeah. She’s nice. Good cook, too. Speaking of which – supper will be ready in half an hour.’ She kicks off her shoes and curls her feet under her, settling on the deep cushions next to him. ‘And what about you? Are you still thinking about her?’

  He nods.

  Mattie sighs. ‘Wish you’d never met her again.’

  ‘Don’t say that.’ He tightens his grip on his glass, sits up straighter, recrossing his legs. ‘I can’t stop hoping that maybe she’ll leave her husband. You left Luke.’

  Mattie sighs again. ‘I know. And it was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.’ She leans closer to him. ‘It’s time to move on. There are a whole load of women out there, single, available women, who would sell their grandmothers to have a chance with you.’

  Sam looks out of the window at the daffodils and the bright lime of the new buds. ‘She’s just … she’s just the only woman I want to be with. That’s all.’

  ‘Sam, come on! There’s no such thing as “the one”. That’s a fairy tale. Something people like you make pop records about. Falling in love is actually just a glitch in our brains that doesn’t last. Picking someone to have a relationship with? That’s different – it’s about making the best compromise.’ She holds up a placating hand. ‘I’m sorry you’ve lost her, I really am. Only she’s trying to get pregnant, Sam.’ She looks at him earnestly. ‘With her husband. Maybe she already is.’

  The thought of Cat pregnant with another man’s child pushes into his mind, and he turns away from his sister. ‘I understand you’re trying to protect me, but I can look after myself.’

  She sighs. ‘Point taken.’ She takes a sip of wine, munches a crisp. ‘Changing the subject – I thought the session sounded incredible today.’

  He smiles, relieved. ‘Thanks. Yeah. It’s going in the right direction.’

  In his head, the song he began at the bench begins to play. It’s nearly finished. He thinks it’s as good as ‘Ocean Blue’. Better. Excitement makes his hands tremble. He sets his wine glass down carefully on the coffee table. Just in time, as River comes crashing into the room, leaping onto the sofa between his mother and uncle, bouncing over them, full of stories about petting the sheep.

  The sharp pain of his nephew’s trampling feet jolts Sam into the moment. He folds River in a bear hug, growling into his squirming belly, inhaling scents of boy and sheep, fending off sharp elbows and knees. He needs this physicality – needs to be pinned into the present. The only other time it happens is when he’s in the studio, when there’s nothing but the music. Outside that, there’s always a part of him absent, a part of him with her.

  May 1991

  It wasn’t hard to discover where Cat’s book launch was happening. He rang all the local bookshops, and struck lucky with the Hampstead Waterstones. They gave him the date, but said it was invitation only. He has no intention of inviting himself along; he’s sure her husband will
be there. But the temptation to glimpse her celebrating the publication of her first novel is too great to resist.

  He makes sure he’s outside the shop after all the guests have already entered. With his hat pulled down and dark glasses on, he allows himself to pause for just a few minutes, squinting through the window display into the back of the store, where people mill about with glasses in their hands.

  He searches for her, his gaze rolling quickly over strangers’ faces, until she’s there, like a subject in a camera lens: radiant, smiling, gesticulating with her hands as she talks to someone. He absorbs the fall of her hair across her cheekbones, the shape of her neck as she turns. He smiles at her joy. ‘Well done, my love,’ he whispers. ‘You rock.’

  He realises that all the books in the window display are copies of her novel. He wants to pick one up and turn the pages. He moves away, head down, hands in his pockets. He’ll go back tomorrow and buy a couple. Maybe there’ll be some signed ones. It was enough, he thinks, just to glimpse her.

  But as he walks away, his throat feels sore, as if he’s coming down with something.

  FORTY-ONE

  Cat, May 1991

  There’s a party to celebrate my book launch in the local branch of Waterstones – a small gathering of friends – with the bonus of having my book in the store window for a week.

  People chat between the shelves of books, glasses in their hands. My publisher makes a speech. Beth tells the story of Grace giving her my original manuscript without my knowledge. She relates that first confusing phone call. It makes everyone laugh, and she raises her glass to Grace, and then to me.

  Dougie comes up after I’ve said my few words of thanks.

  ‘Well done.’ He kisses both my cheeks.

  ‘Glad that’s over.’ I roll my eyes. ‘My mouth went dry, and my tongue wouldn’t work properly.’ I grimace. ‘I didn’t sound too bad?’

  ‘Don’t be silly. You sounded great.’ He puts his head to one side. ‘You should be proud of yourself.’