The Road From Langholm Avenue

by Michael Graeme

  She grabbed my arm and squeezed hard, a strange fierceness in her eyes. "Don't you dare touch her unless she's what you want. Have supper, talk about old times, see a movie,.. anything, but don't you dare touch her, Thomas Norton - not until this business with Rachel is finished."

  I was surprised by the pink flush on her usually waxen cheeks, surprised to have her suddenly preach morals at me. It worked though and I felt ashamed. She released my arm and walked away, went up to her room and closed the door, leaving me to feel I had let her down. Was I so transparent, I wondered? I had spoken out of frustration, out of anger with myself, and a desire to get back at someone, but also at that moment I had wanted to take from Carol whatever was offered and with a reckless disregard for the consequences.

  The drive to Carol's flat was not far, ten minutes perhaps, barely enough time to warm the Midget up. As I drove, I relaxed into fantasy, imagining conversations with whoever chose to accompany me. This was a habit I'd enjoyed in my youth, but less so of late. Like the drawing and the poetry, it was a side of me that had died and its return now came as a surprise.

  The car grew cosier by the minute, a tiny capsule plying its way through the twilight gloom of Middleton, and I had many willing passengers - a stern Eleanor and even a sulking Annie for a while, then the attractive young woman from Channel Five news who kept probing me for my motives, asking me how I felt about Carol, how we'd met, and if I was ready for sex again after so long. I answered her in long rambling sentences that I tried out over and over, changing the words and the flow until it sounded right.

  "Sex?" I said. "But it's only supper."

  "You mean you hadn't considered the possibility?"

  "Why no."

  It was a lie, but before she could challenge me the girl was replaced once more by the stern Eleanor, arms folded, reminding me that I should not touch Carol unless I was sure. "It's not like you, Tom," she said, over and over. "It's just not ike you!"

  Then, as I cruised past Tescos and down the long leafy road that led up to the northern suburbs, I turned to find Eleanor had been replaced by someone else,…

  It was Rachel.

  She was older than in the photograph, about eighteen perhaps. The hair was longer, growing towards those early eighties waves. She was wearing tight black corduroys, and a blue blouse with big lapels and it seemed impossible to me that I should have seen her in such detail from that period.

  "Where the hell did you come from?"

  Rachel smiled. It was the long, slow smile from my most painful dream, and her dark eyes sparkled. "You saw me once, remember?" she said. "You were crossing the road in town."

  Of course, I remembered it now! It was two summers after we'd left school, and me feeling like a big man already with my job and my prospects, and my wreck of a car.

  "You were crossing the other way," I said, astonished as the memory crystallised. "It was a Saturday. Hot. The town was busy."

  "I looked up," she said. "Our eyes met."

  "I smiled at you. You looked right through me. I may as well not have been there."

  "You didn't smile. You never smiled at me."

  "Didn't I? I always tried to, but whenever I was around you, I became like a sleepwalker."

  "So can you blame me then, for never knowing you?"

  "But my feelings were so strong, you must have felt it,… like,… like electricity."

  It was eerie, the feel of her. There was even a scent of something, a sharp perfume, but I think I had borrowed the memory of it from another girl I’d known briefly around that time.

  "I see you got the car running," she said.

  "It's taken me a long time. Would it have impressed you, if you'd seen it then?"

  "We'll never know, Tom."

  And though she was an illusion, hearing her speak my name sent a shiver down my spine.

  "So," she said. "You've been looking for me?" She darkened. "But now you're going to see Carol."

  "She could be my future."

  "I thought you had no future until you'd closed with me."

  "I haven't seen you in twenty five years, Rachel. I've just split up with my wife. I'm not thinking straight. I fastened on to you because I saw your address written down from all those years ago."

  "I thought you wanted to see me, see the change in me."

  "I thought so too. I was wrong. I'm sorry. Now I want you to leave me alone."

  "But you've carried me with you all these years. Tell me you haven't thought of me every day. Why not close with me, Tom? Finish it. Turn the car around and finish what you started. You came so close this morning. Come back to me, Tom! Call me. Pick up the telephone and call me!"

  "I can't just remind you of who I am and then ask if you want to be with me, can I? I came close this morning, so close it made me giddy thinking how near you might be. And that's what brought me to my senses. That's why I'm going to Carol. Because I'm ready for her. I'm ready for her now."

  Rachel gave me a sad smile and shook her head dreamily. "You're only doing this because you want to wash yourself in her scent, to come up breathing deeply of a different air. But it won't be different for long. I'll still be here, waiting for you. Every time you look around, I'll be there. Every time you look up, it will be in these eyes you'll see yourself reflected."

  I was outside Carol's flat, now. "She's a friend, "I said. "She called me. It would have been rude to say no. She wants company - and so do I."

  "Carol's lonely. Maybe hungry too. Remember though, you can hide with her for a while, but you can't have her. You can't have anyone, until you've finished with me. These are not my rules, they're yours and you know they're true." She shook her head, once more. "I'll be waiting," she said.

  Carol opened the door wearing a long, tight frock. She'd done her hair, and her lips gleamed. She was my age, but she'd held on to her girlish figure.

  "You look great!" I said and I meant every word.

  She blushed, which had not been my intention. "Are you hungry?" she asked.

  "Eh?… Oh,… . the food smells great!"

  "It's nearly ready. I hope you didn't mind me calling. I know you said you'd ring, but I didn't believe you."

  "I would have rung. Really, I would," I said. But it might have been months,… months of indecision and the ticking of the clock, the countdown to redundancy and endless, mawkish thoughts of Rachel. No, it was better this way, I thought, better to live, to touch people.

  "Erm,… I've brought a bottle,… "

  "Ah,… Chianti. Potent stuff! Naughty boy. Come on through, let me take your jacket. That's a lovely shirt."

  I was about to tell her it was my father's but I caught myself in time, afraid it might not have conveyed the right impression, for it seemed suddenly impressions were important. And amid all of this, I was aware of her presence more than I had been last time. Last time I had taken her by surprise, but now she was ready for me. For me!

  "I hope you like pasta," she said

  "Sounds great."

  She had prepared a table in the kitchenette, a ruby red cloth, fine china and silver cutlery - the stuff of marriages, bright hopes and long futures, now rolled out as stage props in what was perhaps for both of us a desperate seduction. Sitting down, she began to sense something of my unease.

  "You okay? You looked a bit glum for a moment. "

  "I haven't done anything like this for a long time," I said. "Going out with you, before, I felt a little guilty, you know, like I was cheating on my wife - even though she'd,… even though we aren't together any more."

  "I know. I felt a bit like that. I wondered about it for a while. I think it's probably more the idea of betraying what we believed we each used to have. But the reality isn't worth much is it?" She smiled, then placed her hand on top of mine and gave it a comforting squeeze. "Tom, this can go anywhere, or it can go nowhere. Let's just take it one moment at a time." She leaned forward and fixed me with a stare. "When was the last time you went with a woman?"

  "You
mean with Annie?"

  "With anyone?"

  "Six months, maybe more. I can't remember."

  "Annie,… she lost interest?"

  "I suppose,… at least in me she did. I thought she was just getting older, you know? Some people do go off it, don't they? It doesn't mean the same to them. She'd be nice about it,… sometimes."

  "You mean she'd lie there while you got on with it?"

  "Sort of,… " I felt awkward, discussing it. It was a part of the latter stage of my marriage that hadn't made me feel good about sex, or myself.

  "Then she turns up with this chap. What was his name again?"

  "Alistair."

  "Good looking, is he?"

  "Handsome chap, yes."

  "And you still blame yourself?"

  The evening wasn't going as I had expected - all this openness. How was it, I wondered, every woman I knew seemed a hundred times more intelligent and intuitive than I?

  "I'm not exactly without blame," I said. "We stopped talking. The children took over. Everything else was written from the moment we stopped talking. Some couples survive it - others fall apart"

  The pasta was bubbling on the stove, a rich sauce popping in the saucepan beside it. "Sounds about ready," she said. "Why not open the wine?"

  I yanked the cork from the bottle and held it momentarily to my nose, drawing in its scent. There was earth and there was fruit and, in my mind at least, there was a woman's most intimate bouquet. We ate, and gradually the wine worked its way around my anxiety, but still, once or twice, I caught myself gazing out of the window. I couldn't see the street of course, only blackness, but I knew the Midget was down there and, inside, I sensed She was waiting. Was it true I wondered? Was I only hiding out with Carol, still avoiding the unresolved business of Rachel?

  I noticed the table, the china, the cutlery, the glassware. It was the finest quality but also what struck me was the precision with which everything had been laid out - the squareness of the knives and forks to the table mats, the precise patterns in the laying out of the glasses, the salt and pepper, the teacups,…

  It reminded me of a time, long ago when I'd worked with a grizzled old fitter in the assembly hall at Derby's. We'd been stripping down engines for refurbishment and in his work he'd insisted every nut, every bolt we removed be lined up in a pattern on the bench and that every component should be laid down in a certain way.

  "So you can see at glance where you are," he'd said.

  It was a simple philosophy, a discipline of mind that helped ensure everything we took out went back in again. Phil's workshop had been the same, the geometrical patterns acting like a fortress against the powers of chaos - the greater the risk of chaos, the greater the need for discipline. And I saw great discipline here.

  After we'd eaten, I wanted to help her with the dishes but she shooed me away into the lounge. She had an impressive collection of music. Her Hi-Fi was made up from separate units - Technics, Denon, JVC, and a beautiful pair of floor-standing Wharfdales. Like Eleanor, she took her music seriously.

  "You’re heavily into Joni Mitchel?" I noted.

  "Yes," she said. "Though nowadays mostly it's baroque,… Albinoni,… Vivaldi. Anything cheerful."

  "And you have Górecki!"

  She seemed surprised. "You know Górecki?"

  "I tend to reserve him for my darkest moods."

  "I know what you mean," she said.

  "Albinoni, then?"

  "No,.. Górecki's just fine,… give me a minute to finish off. We'll listen together."

  So we listened. We sat down, cross legged on the floor because Carol said her speakers were adjusted to sound their best at that height. We listened to every sound, every harmonic of Górecki's 3rd, and we did not speak for a full hour. After twenty minutes, the music had coaxed the emotion from me and my eyes were wet. I was embarrassed until I realised she was crying too. Then we held each other, laying back against cushions, and when the music died, we went to bed.

  Her room was cool and ordered, the duvet, neat and smooth and fresh and there were two little packets lined up squarely on the bedside table. When we began to caress, I was at once amazed by her. It was like trading in an old typewriter for a word processor and being astonished at how much things had advanced. Carol moved when I touched her, her whole body pressing into me as she rode enormous and, for me, quite daunting waves of passion. She made no secret of her arousal, indeed she shouted it, screamed it, moaned it without a care.

  She also touched me, undressed me, took my sex in her hands, took possession of it. Then she undressed herself for me, presenting herself with the unhurried and sensual removal of each garment. And when I could take no more, she wrapped me in her softness, finally to make love once,… . and then again,…

  I slept until sometime in the small hours, when I was awakened by the feel of her pulling the duvet around us, snuggling closer. Then her hand was coaxing me into alertness, and she was unrolling the contents of another little packet along my sex, slowly but with great precision.

  I came around at dawn, still drunk with the experience. I was alone but I could hear her in the kitchen. Shortly, she returned with coffee and toast and boiled eggs. She seemed nervous, as if she might have regretted last night but then she slid another little packet from the pocket of her dressing gown and raised her eyebrows in query.

  I stared at her, a little awed, a little frightened. Her appetite was something I had dreamed of encountering all my life but somehow always missed out upon. It was only sex, but it made me feel stupidly masculine; it made me feel ridiculously good about myself!

  It was later when she told me. We were dressed and showered and all ordered again when she mentioned she would have to make a decision soon about the flat. She'd found a job in the office at Freshways supermarket - something to do with accounts, but it didn't pay enough to cover the mortgage.

  "So what will you do?" I asked.

  "I'll have to give it up, I suppose," she replied. "My mum's been nagging me to move back with her, but I'd rather hang on to my independence if I can."

  "When do you have to decide?"

  "Soon," she said.

  Now it may have been my imagination but to me, even though we'd only just met, the inference was clear: "Look, Tom," she was saying, "you're a nice guy; I like you; I can give you good sex and good food. There's an opportunity here. Give it a while, then move in with me." She was not the sort of woman who liked to hang about - and in any case I think most women are more far sighted in these matters than men.

  I stayed until the afternoon and then I left after a long embrace on the doorstep. I was forty two, my life in tatters, my dreams smashed to smithereens. What were the chances of my finding this again? She was a door opening, a last chance to grow old with someone.

  "Call you?"

  "You'd better," she said.

  I would. I would call her. I was sure of that, sure of her. Yes. It was right. Then I turned to the Midget and suddenly everything died - my new found spirit, my certainty of purpose fleeing at the mere sight of it. It was the car! All along it had been the bloody car! I'd have to get rid of it.

  I made my way over to it slowly, imagining I could see someone sitting in the passenger seat. There was no one of course. And then, driving home I tried to call Rachel into being. I wanted to hurt her, to recount the intimate details of my night with Carol, but she was fickle and would not come. I could hear her parting words now, words I had imagined but which seemed real enough, and they were telling me once more it wasn't over until I had first closed with her.

  Chapter 19

  On Monday morning, I slouched at my desk and contemplated the telephone, not moving, not even to make coffee. Barely twenty miles from where I sat, Rachel was working. I knew it for certain. I had the telephone number on my jotter, written in my best handwriting. On the same page lay repeated over and over the age old mantra of Langholm Avenue. But no matter how hard I stared at the pad, no matter how many times I wrote her na
me, I could not bring myself to pick up the receiver and dial.

  I was finally brought out of my trance when Stavros clapped his arm around my shoulders. "Tom!" he said. "We've got a problem with the ignition circuit."

  "A problem?"

  "The Swedes ran the data through their computer at the weekend. They're worried it might cut out at high temperature." He glanced around furtively, then beckoned for me to follow him into his private office.

  "Is it the amplifier?" I asked, half heartedly. "We've had problems with that before."

  "Sure, that's all it can be," he said. "We've cut a few up and there are voids in the encapsulation. The supplier's admitted he had a problem but says he's sorted it out now. He's got a couple for us to try. I just want someone to check his process out, and collect them."

  Stavros flopped behind his desk and put his feet up. "I know what you're going to say - you know nothing about the amplifier but to be honest, Tom, everyone seems to be switching off,… they don't give a shit any more, mate."

  I could have said I didn't either, but that would not have been strictly true. In my more positive moments, I was still almost a professional engineer, and anyway, I liked Stavros. There were worse people I could have been lumbered with as a gaffer and I would not have willingly let him down. It was just the thought of a long business trip that quelled my enthusiasm. I was itching to see Carol again, to feel her softness, to lose myself inside of her, tonight if I could, and I didn't want a big block of days coming between us.

  "Fernly's isn't it?" I said, trying to think of an excuse. "That's round Maidenhead somewhere."

  "No, we switched supplier last year. Don't you remember? It's Wilson and Palmer over at Skelmersdale. They're a decent outfit. Nice bloke, Palmer."

  "Sorry,… did you say Skelmersdale?"

  I am not a great believer in synchronicity, but sometimes events conspire and I do find myself wondering. I arrived in Skelmersdale after lunch. Wilson and Palmer's unit was almost identical to Bexley's and not a quarter of a mile away from it. The business there took about an hour,… an anxious but earnest Mr Wilson greeting me and then showing me around his small factory.