Chapter 12
It's funny the rubbish one keeps. It was tradition for the local paper to publish the examination results from every school in the district. I kept mine. I found it in my little box of treasures, along with my Sunday School certificates and my cycling proficiency badge.
I read through it now, a litany of names - five years of preparation for the wide world and a mark of achievement, of readiness for our places within it. Rachel had scored well. Eight 'O' levels and a string of CSE's. Maths, Physics, Geography, Biology, French, German,… .
John Ogilvy was there too. I remembered him now, a deeply serious lad who'd floated around in the upper clique of middle-class children. He'd scored fourteen 'O' levels, all top grades - the highest achiever by far, and I remember him leaving for college,… for A levels.
So, he'd made it to Cambridge. Not many did in those days, not from among the shaggy haired ranks of the provincial comprehensives, anyway. But his academic prowess impressed me less than the fact that he'd married Rachel. Was it possible, I wondered, he might have loved her as much as I did?
Unlike Rachel, John Ogilvy wasn't difficult to trace. I did it the next evening in half an hour, using my Dad's PC and a program I'd taken off the cover of a magazine. A CD ROM remains to me a thing of wonder, but that's because I remember having to store computer data on a cassette tape - it might have taken twenty minutes to load the simplest of games into my Sinclair Spectrum. By contrast, in a matter of seconds, the CD ROM could give me the name and address of anyone registered to vote in the whole of the United Kingdom. I could search by county, by town and by village and in the time it took Eleanor to make coffee and to plonk it down at my elbow, I'd found him.
"He's in Lipton. Marsh Farm, Ely road."
"And Rachel?"
"I don't know. The only other person at that address is a P. Ogilvy."
Eleanor sighed. "Perhaps they're not together any more. It's a long time ago. He could have remarried. Pauline,… I bet it's a Pauline."
I picked up the 'phone and dialled the number listed against the address. "Hi. Is that John? John. This is Tom Norton. I think we were at school together,… County High,… Tom Norton,… Well, it's a long time ago,… . John,… . I know this is a bit sudden but I'm in Cambridge on business next week and I was wondering if you'd fancy meeting up for a drink. I'm trying to catch up on a lot of the old faces from back then,… I'm,… thinking of,… . erm,… . writing a book,… . Where? The Dog and Gun? How about next Wednesday - seven thirty? Right, see you then. Bye."
Eleanor wasn't entirely impressed. "Where did you learn to lie like that?"
"There's no harm," I said. "Who's to say I'm not thinking about writing a book."
"It's about as likely as you organising a reunion. Did he remember you?"
"He remembered County High. But no, he hadn't a clue who I was. Said he was in this pub, the Dog and Gun most nights, that I'd most likely find him there."
It's a long run to Cambridgeshire from the North West, too far for an old Midget with an engine past it's best, so I rang Phil and arranged to use his workshop over the weekend. I didn't have time to strip the engine and re-bore it any more, so I ordered a re-con over the Internet. It arrived in a crate, the following Saturday, moments before I turned up myself.
It was a quiet place, an old farm up on the moors, nestling in a fold of shaggy brown hills. There was still the rusting agricultural clutter lying about, stuff that hadn't been used in ages and the whole place had the look of failure in its decrepitude. It was sheep that had kept places like this going, a precarious business at the best of times, but then the foot and mouth had finished it off and they'd found the previous owner lying in a ditch with his brains blown out.
I found Phil round the back of the barn unloading boxes from his van into the back of another van who's seriously scruffy owner eyed me suspiciously.
"It's all right," Phil told him. "He's a mate. Gizza lift here will you, Tom?"
Naive to a fault, as Eleanor would say, I rolled up my sleeves and joined in, only to realise some time later I was shifting boxes of cigarettes Her Majesty's Customs hadn't had the pleasure of seeing first. When we'd done, the man pulled out the thickest wad of twenties I've ever seen and he counted two thousand pounds into Phil's hand. Then he stuck a twenty into mine for my trouble. I was about to protest but Phil shot me a look and I realised it was probably safer just to accept.
I remembered then, Eleanor's warning about not getting too close to Phil. Now I knew what she meant. Phil had helped me out more than once and I'd have to be wary about any favours he asked for in return. Not so long ago, he'd stood where I was standing now and he'd had to make a choice about the best way forward for his life. He'd stepped squarely into the black economy, which for all its risks, had the one advantage of being far more tangible than fishing in the shifting depths of your own past. I understood the significance of the farm for him then, for at first it had seemed a strange choice of abode, but of course it was remote and the chances of being surprised by HMG up there was far less than in town.
"Right," he said. "What about this engine then?"
It would have been easy for me to judge Phil and in truth I did not approve of his dishonesty. I saw no distinction between thieving from Customs and Excise and thieving from a bank, but aside from all that, Phil and I had been programmed by the same code, and one not so easily explained to an outsider. We were engineers. He might have been Russian, and I might have been Greek, a world and a language apart but when it came to engineering, we understood each other perfectly.
His workshop was spacious and well ordered. There were bits of motorbikes laid out on benches - Ducatti's, Moto-Guzzi's, modern racers and some classics, all stripped down, the parts squared up neatly, the nuts and bolts like little soldiers on parade. Motorbikes, marine diesels or Boeing 747's,… . different products but the same code.
It was twenty years since I'd last had the engine out of a car, but the MG was fairly simple in concept, it's design probably not much more advanced than something you'd have found in the nineteen forties. Between us, we managed it, methodically stripping out the leads and the hoses. Then, slowly, we winched the engine clear.
"I thought you would have been a whiz on engines," he joked. "Working at Derby's."
"The engines I'm used to are a bit bigger than this," I said.
We muddled through, poring over the pages of my Haynes manual and we had the new one in and running by mid-afternoon.
"Bloody hell," said Phil. "Would you listen to that?"
"Sweet, isn't it?"
Shortly after we'd finished, Eleanor and my father arrived to see how things were going on. Phil had a stethoscope on the carburettors, and was balancing them up by the tone of the hiss as they sucked in air. "Sounds even better now," he said. "Like a Swiss watch."
My father smirked. "Shame about the rest of it."
"It'll be like new when I've finished."
It would do for now, I thought,… the gearbox was a bit noisy and I guessed that would be the next job, but it would probably get me to Cambridgeshire without having to call out the AA.
They stood there for a while chatting, Phil and Eleanor and my father, while I tinkered with the remaining nuts and bolts and wiped the oily hand prints from off the bonnet. Eleanor knew what I was up to and if she did, then my father did and maybe even Phil as well, but they didn't question it. No one told me I was a fool.
Eventually Dad and Phil sloped off for a brew, leaving me with the ethereal Eleanor. She looked out of place amongst all the hard and oily mechanical odds and ends, like a pale flower that might suddenly wilt.
"All set then?" she asked. "When will you go?"
"Wednesday," I told her. "I'll be back late on Thursday, all being well."
"Make sure you ring - let us know you're okay."
"Oh, Dad won't bother."
"But I will. Ring me, Tom. Promise."
"Okay. Look, I've got to test drive this now. Fancy a
spin?"
She brightened. "Can we have the top down?"
I was all set then: a new engine, and a new stepping stone on my way back into the past. But on the eve of my departure, after packing my bag and measuring the long red line of the A1 on my map, I suffered an attack of nerves. I'd been down that road a few times, all the way to London, in more luxurious cars, the sort of cars that can cruise at eighty and make it feel like you're floating. It wouldn't be like that in the Midget.
Then there was a commotion downstairs, the doorbell ringing, muffled voices, and after a while my father walked in with Stephen hanging around his neck.
"Visitors," he said.
"Daddy!"
"Eh?… . Stevie! What the bloody hell?"
I came downstairs to find Annie, giving Eleanor the cold eye. Gemmie was sitting quietly by the fire holding her teddy. There was a suitcase by the door. Annie seemed almost pleased to see me. "I need you to look after the kids for a few days. Something's come up."
"What about your mum and dad?"
"They're busy."
"But I've got, erm,… work,… And what about Gemmie's school?"
"You know where it is. You can take her,… it's only until Friday. You'll have to get some time off."
But I already had, I was thinking: I was going on a two day trip to Cambridgeshire. "It's,… a bit short notice," I said.
Then my Dad chipped in. "What he means is yes."
"No I don't."
Eleanor pinched my arm and then I saw Gemmie's expression. She looked lost and on the verge of tears.
"What I mean is it's all right. It's fine," I said. Then I picked Gemmie up and had to swallow back the tears myself as she melted into me.
We had loved each other, once, Annie and me, and Gemmie had grown up hearing us exchanging gentler words - stupid words like: "Fancy a brew, sweetheart?" and "Gizza cuddle, lover!" The words of a carefree, trusting love. Now her parents were facing each other from a distance, with their arms folded. Could everything we'd had really have been as fragile as all that? Was there nothing we could salvage? I looked at Annie for a sign, but she was already a stranger: she was Alistair's woman, now.
"We'll have some fun, eh, Gemmie?" I said.
Eleanor walked Annie out to the car and she told me later that Annie had driven away in tears.
"I don't get it," I said.
She shrugged. "Perhaps Alistair finds they cramp his style." She was looking at the children, not smiling, but biting her lip, her eyes darting nervously from one to the other. She'd always seemed pleased to be with them before, but then they'd never stayed over, never slept in the house and had time to wreck it with their noise and their chaos and their perpetually sticky hands.
"I'm sorry," I said. "This isn't right."
She forced a smile. "Don't worry, it’s fine."
But I did worry. Eleanor had been a source of so much strength these past weeks, I'd forgotten how fragile she'd once been herself, and my recent converstation with Phil had unnerved me. We settled them into my room, though Gemmie was cross at the prospect of sharing a bed with her little brother. "He smells," she said.
"Do you smell, Stevie?" asked Eleanor.
"No. Gemmie smells."
Eleanor called silence with a witch-like wave of her arms. "Last one in bed really smells."
They'd brought hardly anything with them, just some clothes and the toys they'd managed to clutch as they were being swept out of the house. I didn't know what was going on and nor did I believe Annie's parents hadn't been able to take the children. They would have dropped everything if they'd thought the kids were going to be dumped over here - Alan had never seen eye to eye with my father, there being a fundamental clash of politics.
I made a story up and tucked them in before joining Eleanor and my father in the lounge. She was sitting on the arm of his chair, stroking his forehead. There had been a discussion in my absence. I could feel it.
"You take Gemmie to school in the morning," he said. "Then bugger off down south like you planned. I'll pick her up."
"But she doesn't know you very well,… "
"Look," he said. "Stop creeping round them will you. Gemmie will get used to it. She'll have to do. This won't be the last time it happens, I'm sure."
"But what about Stevie? You've no idea. He'll drive you round the bend. I can't leave him,… " I had visions of the hi-fi, daubed with jam, the speakers toppled over, the CD's used as Frisbees and scattered throughout the house,…
"And when was the last time either of you changed a nappy?… ."
I saw something then,… a look in Eleanor's eye. I remembered the scar and I bit my tongue. Eleanor had had a child,… but what had become if it?
"I'm sure Jack can work it out," she said. "After all, if you can do it, anyone can." She was smiling, but it was a forced smile and they were both looking at me as if there was something I had to know, but neither could bring themselves to tell me.
"What is it?"
Dad sighed. "You'll have to take Ellie with you."
"What?… "
"It's either that or you don't go and you look after the little bastards yourself."
Eleanor rose and made to go upstairs. "I'll explain tomorrow," she said - "On the road."
Chapter 13
The day began with drizzle and the dull roar of traffic heading south along the M61. It was a sluggish crawl, the grey morning seeming even darker with the light cut out on all sides by the towering loads of filthy trucks.
We cut east on the M62 and I remember that long and breathtakingly bleak stretch of motorway beyond Rochdale as we headed up to the roof of the Pennines, the russet moor rolling out on either side. Once, within living memory, this had been a pristine and lonely wilderness, now hideously scarred by this monstrous, snarling ribbon of tarmac. Change! Everything died,… Derby's, my marriage,… this landscape,… everything. Either it was transformed into some new order, or it became dissipated, lost to chaos. And I did not want my life to become lost to chaos.
We pulled in at Hartshead services for coffee. It had taken just an hour but already I felt as if I'd been on the road all day. An old Midget's not the best of cars for a long motorway journey - too hard a ride and not enough soundproofing. Also I'd felt vulnerable, tucked in among the wagons for mile after mile. One of them might have cut in and squashed us flat without even noticing. Not for the first time I'd drawn comfort from Eleanor's presence, thinking to myself in some strange way that nothing bad could possibly happen to me while she was there.
We chose a quiet table and I left her while I went for coffee. Then I happened to glance over at her, from a distance as I queued up to pay, and seeing her in context like that, it startled me how much she stood out. She was a good looking woman, beautiful I would have said, very precisely made up with her black clothes, the carefully painted black details of her lips and her eyes and her fingernails, but it was a look that might easily have been misconstrued, if you did not know her.
I saw other people, glancing up from their tables - a couple of lorry drivers, a policeman who'd stopped off for a brew, and a party of old ladies. They probably thought she was a drug-pale prostitute, or a lap-dancer returning from a stint in some seedy Manchester club. But if Eleanor was aware of them, she made no sign. She appeared blank, her true self invisible behind a carnival mask.
When I returned, I set the tray down, then began fussing nervously with cups and spoons and sachets of sugar but she stilled me in an instant when, suddenly, she reached out and took my hand. Her grip was cool and gentle,… a soft, boneless hand, her stillness flooding into me through the heat of her touch, great long waves of it washing up my arm, infusing every fibre of me from my head down to my toes with a strange anticipation. Then she looked up at me and said: "I had a little boy."
"I guessed something,… I mean from the scar,… "
"His name was Andrew," she went on. "He died."
"Eleanor, I'm sorry."
She released my hand, an
d just as I was preparing myself for more, she changed the subject. "Coffee smells good," she said, with an impish smile. The mask had been raised only briefly. It had been a prelude, a warning there was more to come, but she was saving it for later, for the right moment.
She drove the next leg of the journey, picking up the A1 near Leeds and heading south. She drove well, with a confidence and an assertive pressure on the accelerator that was difficult to reconcile with her otherwise fragile appearance. I waited for her to speak, to tell me more about herself, but she chose silence, immersing herself in the road ahead, her forehead wrinkled in concentration.
We drove between bleak, low lying pastures for mile after mile. Yorkshire, Nottinghamshire, Lincolnshire, two hours ticking off towns unseen beyond the sterile artery of the A1: Doncaster, Newark, Grantham, two hours during which time my thoughts swung from Eleanor's revelation, back to wondering what the hell I thought I was doing.
"Lunch-time," she said, eventually.
We found a quiet lay-by, tucked behind some trees, out of sight but not quite out of sound of the road. We had a quick stretch and Eleanor produced a picnic from the boot but there was a cool wind cutting across the weed strewn tarmac, so we settled back inside to eat. Eleanor had on a long black coat and a snug black woolly hat. She looked warm and fresh and happy, but then I saw her eyes darken, and she lowered her gaze into the depths of her cup.
"I've been in prison," she said.
I tried to react casually but I'm a poor actor and I fear it was obvious to her how shocked I was. "Oh,.. Really?"
"I killed my little boy."
I felt my heart shrink suddenly,… felt it plummet to the depths of my bowels, and this time I chose silence, holding myself still and tight, waiting for her to go on.
The Road From Langholm Avenue Page 9