We drifted apart. And I’m sorry. I would have been a good friend if he had wanted me to be. But he didn’t want me to be.
Max and Lisa sold their house and moved up north. We exchanged Christmas cards for a couple of years. In the last one, Max told me they were moving again, this time overseas. He promised he would write to me with his new address. He didn’t.
One evening I was at home reading in my study when there was a phone call. “Hello? Is that you, John?” The number was withheld, and so I’m afraid I gave a rather stiff affirmation. “It’s Max. You remember, your old friend Max? Don’t you recognize me?”
And I did recognize him then, of course; he sounded like the old Max, the one who’d call me every evening and ask for help with his homework, the one who always had a trace of laughter in his voice.
He told me he was down in the city for a ‘work thing,’ and the firm had given him a hotel for the night. “Would you like to meet up on Thursday?” he said. “We could go to the pub. No problem if it’s too short notice. But we could go to the pub.”
It was rather short notice, to be fair, but I didn’t want to let Max down.
The pub was heaving with businessmen—it was just after the banks had shut, and the pub Max had chosen was right in the financial district. And I felt a sudden stab of discomfort—what if I couldn’t remember what Max looked like? What if I couldn’t tell him apart from all these other smart suits? (What if he couldn’t remember me?) But he’d arrived first, and he was guarding a small table in the corner, and I knew him at once, he really hadn’t changed a bit. He was standing up, and laughing, and gesticulating wildly to catch my attention. No, I was wrong—he had changed—a bit, just a bit, actually, as I got closer I could see he’d put on some weight, and his hair was grey. But I’m sure just the same could be said of me, I’m sure that’s true, I’m not as young as I was, though I try to keep myself trim, you know? I stuck out my hand for him to shake, and he laughed at that, he was laughing at everything. And he pulled me into a hug, and that was nice.
“What are you drinking?” was the first thing he said. “My round, I’ll get the drinks.”
We stayed rather late that night, and we had a lot of beer, and I suppose we got quite drunk. But that was all right. For a while we had to shout over the crowd to make ourselves heard, and that was a bit awkward, but pretty soon all the bankers began to go home to their wives and left us in peace. He asked me what I was up to these days, and I explained it the best I could, and my answers seemed to delight him and he laughed even more. I asked him how long he would be in England.
“Oh, we’ve moved back now,” he said. “Mum’s dying, I wanted to be close. Well, not too close. But the same country is good. Back over last year, sorry, should have been in touch.”
I told him that it didn’t matter, he was home now, he’d found me now—and I expressed some sympathy for his mother, I remember quite liking her, when I went to Max’s house she’d give me biscuits.
“We’ve got this lovely house in the countryside,” Max said. “A mansion, really. Almost a mansion. And the garden’s fantastic. Lisa has been designing that, but of course, no surprises there!” I wondered why it was no surprise, I wondered whether Lisa was famous for designing gardens, I supposed she might have been. It was the first time he’d mentioned Lisa, and I said I was glad they were still married.
We shared anecdotes about our schooldays, some of the ones Max told me I had no memory of whatsoever, so they were quite fresh and exciting. I asked him how Lisa was, and he said she was well. I didn’t bring up Ian at all, and I felt a bit bad about that—but then, Max didn’t bring up Ian either, and the evening was mercifully free of dead children.
I said I’d walk him back to his hotel.
“You should come and stay,” he said to me as we walked the streets. He hung on to my arm. It was raining, and Max didn’t seem to notice, and I didn’t care. “Come and stay this weekend. It’d be lovely to see you properly. And I know Lisa would just love to have you.” Before I knew it he was all over me with practical details—the best train I could catch, that they’d pick me up from the station. I said I wasn’t available the next weekend, I was too busy—I wasn’t as it happens, but I still didn’t want him to think he could just swan his way back into my life and be instantly forgiven. I promised to come up the weekend after.
Now, I am aware that I don’t come out of the following story too well. I can’t pretend I understand more than a fraction of what happened when I visited Max, so I’ll just tell it the best I can, warts and all. And I think you’ll accept that the circumstances were very strange, and perhaps, to an extent, extenuating.
Max met me at the station in his car. I asked if it were a new car, and he smiled, and said it was. Then we drove to his house through the rolling countryside, and he talked about his new car all the way. He’d said that he lived somewhere conveniently situated for occasional commutes into London, but I’m glad I hadn’t got a taxi, as the drive was half an hour at least.
Lisa was standing in the driveway to welcome us. I wondered how long she had been standing there. I had been concerned she might remember that I had often shown her a very slight resentment, but she gave no indication of it. She smiled widely enough when I got out of the car, she opened her arms a little in what might have been the beginnings of a hug. I didn’t risk it, I offered her my hand. She accepted the hand, laid hers in mine like it was a delicacy, gave a little curtsey, tittered. I still didn’t like her very much.
I had to admit, she looked better than I’d expected. Some women grow into their faces, do you know what I mean? They just age well, their eyes take on a certain wisdom, maybe, they just look a bit more dignified. (Whereas I have never known that to be true of men—we just get older: flabbier or bonier, it’s never better.) I had always likened Lisa to a cow, and it wasn’t as if she had totally thrown that bovine quality off, but the fleshier parts of her face that I had once dismissed as pure farmyard now had a certain lustre. She was beautiful. There was a beauty to her. That’s what it was, and I was surprised to see it.
At first I couldn’t see why Max had referred to his house as a mansion. It wasn’t especially grand at all—bigger than my house in the city, of course, but you’d expect that in the sticks. They showed me their kitchen, and the stone AGA that took up half of the space. They showed me the lounge, the too—big dining table, the too—big fireplace. I made the right sort of approving noises, and Max beamed with pride as if I were his favourite schoolmaster giving him a good report card.
“Let me show John the garden!” said Lisa. “Quickly, before the light fades!” And she was excited, impatient.
And now I understood why Max had used the word ‘mansion.’ Because though the house was unremarkable, the gardens at the back were huge. “It’s just shy of two acres,” boasted Max, and I could well believe it, it seemed to stretch off into the distance, I couldn’t see an end to it. But it wasn’t merely the size that was impressive—on its own, the size was an anomaly, a vast tract of land that had no business attaching itself to a house so small, like tiny Britain owning the whole of India. What struck me was the design of the thing, that it was truly designed, there was honest to God method in the placing of all those shrubs and hedges, the garden was laid out before us like a fully composed work of art. Even in the winter, the flowers not yet in bloom and the grass looking somewhat sorry for itself, the sight still took my breath away.
“I did all the landscaping myself,” said Lisa. “It was a hobby.” We walked on pebbled paths underneath archways of green fern. One day the paths would lead to big beds of flowers. ”I’ve planted three thousand bulbs of grape hyacinth,” Lisa told me, “and, behind that, three thousand of species tulip—so, in the spring, there’ll be this sea of blue crashing on to a shore of yellows, and reds, and greens! You’ll have to come back in the spring.” And every archway opened out to another little garden, different flowers seed
ed, but placed in ever winding patterns; there was topiary, there was even a faux maze: the design was intricate enough, I could see, but the hedges were still four feet tall, only a little child could have got lost in there.
And then, through another archway, and Lisa and Max led me to a pond. There was no water in the pond yet, this was still a work in progress. And, standing in the middle of the pond, raised high on a plinth, a statue of an angel—grey, stone, a fountain spout sticking out of its open mouth.
The wings were furled, somewhat apologetically even, as if the angel wasn’t sure how to use them. Its face was of a young cherub, and I stared at it, trying to identify it—it seemed familiar, and I wondered what painting I’d seen that had inspired it, was it Raphael, maybe, or Michelangelo?
“It’s Ian,” said Max helpfully. And I had a bit of a shock at that. But now I could see it, of course—the infant hands, body, feet; the strangely fat face; those puffed out cheeks he had always had, now puffed out in anticipation he’d be gushing forth a jet of water.
“We gave a photograph of him to a sculptor,” said Lisa. “Local man. Charming man. Excellent craftsman. Can you see the detail in that?”
“This way,” said Max, “it’s like Ian is always here, watching over us.”
I said I could see the effect they were aiming for. And I couldn’t help it, I actually laughed, just for a moment—I remembered that nasty, sulky godson of mine, and thought how unlikely an angel he would have made. If there’s an afterlife, and I have no reason to believe in one, God wouldn’t have made Ian Wheeler an angel, he wouldn’t have wasted the feathers on him. And I thought too of how, had he lived, he’d be a teenager, or nearly a teenager?—if he were still about by now he’d be even nastier and sulkier. Instead here he was, preserved as a three year old, forever in stone, with wings sprouting from under his armpits.
I apologized for laughing. “No, no,” said Lisa. “The fountain of remembrance is supposed to make you happy.”
We went back to the house. Lisa had prepared us a stew. “Only peasant stock, I’m afraid!” she said. The meat was excellent, and I complimented her on it. She told me it was venison. We opened the bottle of wine I had brought, and disposed of it quickly; then Max got up and fetched another bottle that was, I have to admit, rather better.
After we had eaten we settled ourselves comfortably in the lounge. Max took the armchair, which left me and Lisa rubbing arms together on the sofa. Max smiled, stretched lazily. “I like being the lord of the manor!” he said.
“It suits you very well!” said Lisa, and I agreed.
They placed another log on the fire, and we felt safely protected from the winter outside. But I thought there was still not much warmth to the room. It felt impersonal somehow, as if it were the waiting room for an expensive doctor, or the lobby of a hotel. It was neat and ordered, but there were no knick-knacks to suggest anyone actually lived there. No photographs on the mantelpiece.
There were more anecdotes of our childhood, and Lisa listened politely, and sometimes even managed to insinuate herself into them as if she had been part of our story all along. The wine was making me drowsy, so I didn’t mind too much.
I said how happy I was they were back in England.
“Oh, so are we!” said Max, quite fervently. “Australia was all well and good, you know, but it’s not like home. You can only run away from your past for so long.” It was the only time Max had ever suggested he had run away at all, and Lisa frowned at him; he noticed, and winked, quite benignly, and the subject was changed.
“It’s a lovely community,” said Lisa. “There are village shops only ten minutes’ walk from here, they have everything you really need. The church is just over the hill. And the local people are so kind, and so very like-minded.”
At length Max did his lord of the manor stretch again, and smiled, and said that he had to go to bed soon. “Church tomorrow,” he said, “got to be up nice and early.”
“Max does the readings,” said Lisa. “He’s very good. He has such a lovely reading voice. What is it tomorrow, darling?”
“Ephesians.”
“I like the way you do Ephesians.”
I expressed some surprise that Max had found religion.
“Oh, all things lead to God,” said Max. “It was hard, but I found my way back to His care.”
“Maybe you could come with us in the morning, John?” said Lisa. “You don’t have to believe or anything, but it’s a nice service, and the church is fourteenth-century.”
“And my Ephesians is second to none,” added Max, and laughed.
I said that would be very nice, I was sure.
“I’ll show you upstairs,” said Max. “Darling, can you tidy up down here? I’ll show John to bed.”
“Of course,” said Lisa.
I thanked Lisa once again for a lovely meal, and she nodded. “A proper peasant breakfast in the morning, too!” she promised. “You wait!”
“We’ve put you in Ian’s room,” said Max. “I hope you enjoy it.”
I must admit, the sound of that sobered me up a little bit. And as Max led me up the stairs, I wondered what Ian’s room could be—would it still have his toys in, teddy bears and games and little soldiers? Would it still have that sort of manic wallpaper always inflicted upon infants? And then I remembered that Ian had never lived in this house at all, he’d died years ago—so was this something kept in memorial of him? And I had a sudden dread as we stood outside the door, as Max was turning the handle and smiling and laughing and ushering me in, I didn’t want to go in there, I wanted nothing more to do with his dead son.
But I did go in, of course. And it was a perfectly ordinary room—there was nothing of Ian in there at all as far as I could see. Empty cupboards, an empty wardrobe, a little washbasin in the corner. Large bay windows opened out on to the garden, and there was an appealing double bed. My suitcase was already lying upon it, it had been opened for me in preparation, and I couldn’t remember when Lisa or Max had left me alone long enough to take it upstairs.
“It makes us happy to have you here,” said Max. “I can’t begin to tell you.” His eyes watered with the sentiment of it all, and he opened his arms for another hug, and I gave him one. “Sleep well,” he said. “And enjoy yourself.” And he was gone.
I went to draw the curtains, and I saw, perhaps, why this was Ian’s room. I looked out directly upon the garden. And from the angle the room offered I could see that all the random charm of it was not so random at all—that all the winding paths, the flowerbeds, the aches, all of them pointed towards a centrepiece, and that centrepiece was the pond, and in the centre of that, the fountain. Ian stared out in the cold, naked with only bare feathers to protect him, his mouth fixed open in that silly round ‘o’.
I pulled the curtains on him, got into my pyjamas, brushed my teeth, got into bed. I read for a little while, and then I turned off the light.
I felt very warm and comfortable beneath the sheets. My thoughts began to drift. The distant sound of running water was pleasantly soporific.
I vaguely wondered whether it were raining, but the water was too regular for that. And then I remembered the fountain in the garden, and that reassured me. I listened to it for a while, I felt that it was singing me to sleep.
I opened my eyes only when I remembered that the pond was dry, that the fountain wasn’t on.
Even now I don’t want to give the impression that I was alarmed. It wasn’t alarm. I didn’t feel threatened by the sound of the water, anything but that. But it was a puzzle, and my brain doggedly tried to solve it, and its vain attempts to make sense of what it could hear but what it knew couldn’t be there started to wake me up. I don’t like to sleep at night without all things put into regular order; I like to start each day as a blank new slate with nothing unresolved from the day before. And I recommend that to you all, as the best way to keep your mind healthy and your purpose resol
ute.
Had Max or Lisa left a bath running? Could that be it?
I turned on my bedside lamp, huffed, got out of bed. I stood in the middle of the room, stock still, as if this would make it easier to identify where the sound was coming from. It was outside the house. Definitely outside.
I pulled open the curtains, looked back on to the garden.
And, of course, all was as it should have been. There were a few flakes of snow falling, but nothing that could account for that sound of flowing water. And poor dead Ian still stood steadfast in the pond, cold I’m sure, but dry as a bone.
I was fully prepared to give up on the mystery altogether. It didn’t matter. It wouldn’t keep me awake—far from it, now that I focused on it, the sound seemed even more relaxing. And I turned around to pull closed the curtain, and go back to bed.
If I had turned the other way, I know I would have missed it.
The window was made up of eight square panes of glass. I had been looking at the garden, naturally enough, through one of the central panes. But as I turned, I glanced outside through another pane, the pane at the far bottom left, and something caught my eye.
There was a certain brightness coming from it, that was all. A trick of the light. But it seemed as if the moon was reflecting off the pebbles on the path—but not the whole path, it was illuminating the most direct way from the house to the memorial pond. The pebbles winked and glowed like cat’s eyes caught in the headlamps of a motor vehicle.
Shadows & Tall Trees Page 4