Eventually, I ended up at the coast, heading along Marine Drive at Southport where I pulled over on the deserted promenade car-park. Here, the wind was shrieking, sending sand devils along the grim expanse of a muddy beach. Incredibly, amid this maelstrom I spied a girl walking her dog. She was blonde and long legged. I registered her in a certain way, as I did all women,… her bottom first, the shape of it, the way it moved, then her girth,… and finally her face. She was attractive - on a scale of one to ten, perhaps a six or a seven (ladies, forgive me).
This distraction was not without relevance, because it made me realise how differently I'd seen Rachel, not just that day, but always. With this blonde haired, long legged girl, I was driven by the simplistic male reflex, a curiosity you might say - in cruder terms, an anticipation of how pleasing it might be to sink myself into a vessel of that shape and with those particular dynamics.
The face, the eyes, the window on her soul, her character, her essential being, was of secondary importance to her disembodied sex. But with Rachel, it had always been the eyes first.
I had met her at about the same time I had awakened to the hormone fired notions of bosoms and the dark mysteries which reputedly lay above the teasing hem of a girl's skirt. There had been other girls in those days, other pleasing vessels who'd sneaked into my mind at night to bare, at least in fantasy, their feminine attributes in order to accompany the new found pleasures of self stimulation.
But Rachel had never come to me that way. She had aroused in me a sense of longing like no other, blinding in its heat and somehow all the more potent for its absence of carnal desire. As childlike as this sounds, I had simply wanted to be with her.
The blonde haired, leggy girl battled against the wind and I speculated on how easily I might have wound down the window and called her over. Had she come, had I been twenty years younger, and had she been a somewhat racy and reckless kind of girl, she might have accepted an invitation to share a coffee, the first move in a chain of events leading up to the sinking of my sex into hers. But from the impartial vantage point of my fantasy, I could see what a cold, and rather desperate thing that would have been - no different perhaps to my evening with Carol, no different to any of my meaningless adolescent fantasies - but of course infinitely more risky.
It was a while before I realised my telephone was ringing. It was Eleanor. Already it was after seven and she wanted to know if everything was okay.
"I've seen her," was all I could say.
There was a pause then, and finally: "Come home. We'll talk about it."
So I drove, but on arriving at home I let myself in and withdrew into the quiet of my room without a word. There, I sat cross legged upon the floor and tried to meditate, like Eleanor, tried to think calmly upon all that had happened. It would have helped if she'd put on weight or gone grey and wrinkly, for then I could have said the Rachel I'd known no longer existed, but she really had appeared the same, a few creases around her eyes perhaps and maybe the skin was not as smooth, not as child like,… but it was Her and the effect was stunning.
All I could see and think of was her face!
After an hour or so, Eleanor grew impatient and crept into my room under the pretext of bringing coffee. By now the place had become a haven of stillness, a shrine to my obsession with the goddess Rachel, her picture an icon, lit by the soft bulb from a lamp on my bedside table.
She set the coffee down and smiled uncertainly. "Everything okay?"
"Can't say for sure," I replied.
"Did you speak to her?"
"I suggested we got together sometime, to catch up."
"That's good, isn't it? What did she,… say?"
"She told me to give her a call."
"Ah!" She joined me on the floor then, tucking her feet beneath her, forming herself expertly, like a rubber woman, into the lotus. Then, noticing my own less graceful posture she said: "Here, like this. It's about placing your most sacred orifice in contact with the floor and drawing yourself up,… like so,… "
"My most sacred orifice? Ah,… right,… " I made an effort to copy her. "It's a bit uncomfortable."
"You'll get used to it. Now breathe. No. You're using just the tips of your lungs." She put her hand beneath my ribs and pressed gently. "From here," she said. "Breathe from here. Let me feel it. Yes, that's better. Now imagine yourself sinking down, to this point, here." She jabbed her finger into my stomach,… just below my navel. She told me to think of a flower, to concentrate upon it, to try to imagine it in greater and greater detail, and that if I should struggle or lose patience, then quickly think of another flower of a different shape, a different colour.
I tried all this for a while but the concept seemed ridiculous to me and I gave up. "I don't want to think of flowers," I said. "I want to think of the best way through this insanity."
"And you will," she soothed. "The answer will come through your subconscious, but only if your mind is still."
I tried again, thinking this time not of flowers, but of women's faces: Rachel, inevitably, and Carol and, to make the numbers up, Eleanor as well and the blonde girl half glimpsed from the beach. I imagined them before me, one at a time, their features swimming in and out of focus, but I couldn't hold onto any of them for long, except for Eleanor whose image I seemed capable of resolving even down to the detail of her lashes and the very texture of her skin.
"When are you going to call her then?"
"I don't know,"
"You're afraid. I can understand that. But you know you have to call her."
Yes, I was afraid, afraid of what I'd uncovered, afraid of what it was inside of me that had driven me this far. And, yes, I knew I had to call her, only not now, not right away.
My evening vigils continued in solitude for days. Eleanor's technique eventually rewarded me with a measure of stillness, a sort of melancholy calm - except I'd had to reject her likeness in favour of the pretty girl from Channel Five news. Eleanor's lucidity had seemed out of keeping with the others, and proved somehow disturbing.
Eventually, I became more rational and finally, on Friday night, I picked up the phone and dialled her number. I had half expected to hear the impersonal voice of an answering service but was shocked into silence when she answered right away - her voice so clear, so potent, just an eleven digit code away from the solitude of my childhood room.
"Hello?"
Speak, for pity's sake! Say something! "Erm,… Hi, Rachel? This is Tom Norton."
"Tom! I thought you'd forgotten about me."
"Not likely," I said. "I wondered if you fancied meeting up. I thought we could have a meal or something. It would be nice, like we said, to catch up. How about this weekend?"
"I'm away this weekend."
I caught my breath. In my hypersensitive state I imagined it might even be a brush off. Was she angry because I hadn't called sooner? If I could just push this a little more, I thought, I might yet deliver my rejection! But no, instead I began a hasty retreat. "Not to worry, then. Some other time perhaps. Are you going anywhere nice?"
"Malham," she replied.
"You are? I used to go there a lot with my dad. We'd go walking."
"Really? You know the Dunnet Arms?"
"Sure, I've stayed there a few times,… nice place. Good restaurant."
There was a pause. "Well, if you're free why don't you come?"
"Eh? But I wouldn't want to intrude, I mean,… "
"You wouldn't be intruding. I'm not with anybody if that's what you mean. I'd quite like it if you could come. In fact, I think I'd like it very much."
I felt a numbness sweeping through me. She would like it. She would like it very much if I could come! Had she really said that, I wondered, or was my mind playing tricks? Had reality and fantasy crossed over here?
"Tom?… "
"That sounds great. Shall I meet you there, say Saturday Evening?"
"I look forward to it."
"Me too. Bye,… "
I broke the connecti
on, then placed my forehead against the carpet and breathed out slowly. I was still numb and reluctant to make any sudden moves in case I shattered the moment, or worse: suddenly woke up to a contortion of agony when I realised I'd dreamed the whole thing. That worried me because it was as if I still wanted her, even after all this time. It was as if I was still longing to hear her say the words from that earlier dream, the words that had haunted me all my life: that she wanted to be with me.
I reached out and touched the 'phone. I ran my fingertips over the tiny hole through which her voice had come, as if there might still be a trace of her. Then I closed my eyes as a feeling of drunkenness overcame me. I must have drifted off then, crouched over like that because the next thing I knew, Eleanor was squeezing my shoulder, shaking me gently. "Tom! Tom!"
I awoke startled, my joints locked, my muscles stiff. The 'phone was still there on the carpet. It was after midnight and Eleanor was dressed for bed, wearing only a tee-shirt, her long white legs towering above me.
"Tom. What is all this?" She helped me onto the bed. "You'll make yourself ill."
She had a point. So far, my body had served me well through the emotional ascent into adulthood, the marathon of marriage, the grind of parenthood and work, and lately I'm sure it had been preparing itself for the long coast down into the softer valleys of my later life. But, as if to spite myself for the loss of everything I'd worked for, I had suddenly injected into my very soul the most potent concoction known to man - the delirious agony of a teenager's unrequited love.
Chapter 22
I checked the Midget over in readiness on Saturday morning. In spite of the cold, I washed it down and gave it a polish, taking care not to burst any of the rust bubbles on the wings and the doors. Then I took furniture polish to the interior in an attempt to have it smelling like new, instead of like an old carpet after a flood.
My father looked on from the doorstep. "Why not take mine?" he said. "I don't need it this weekend - and I can always potter round in yours if I have to."
"No thanks, Dad. It's got to be the Midget."
He leaned against the door frame, arms folded. "I suppose so," he said. "You know, when I was a teenager I had a thing for a girl called Grace. She was very good looking, but I think it was the name that first drew me. You know? Gracefulness and all that? I thought she was lovely, and pure as the driven snow.
"It took me a year to pluck up the courage to ask her out." He smiled at the memory. "She told me to get lost - just like that: 'Get lost, Jack,' she said, except there was a look in her eye when she said it - sort of cold. It was like being stabbed through the chest with an icicle."
"What happened to her?"
He shrugged. "I've no idea, but I found out years later she was the biggest whore in Middleton. It was Alf Jenks who told me, but said he hadn't had the heart to let on at the time in case he hurt my feelings. Blokes seem to think we should all learn from our own mistakes don't they? Anyway, I met your mother soon after and everything worked out for the best."
"And the moral of this story?"
He smiled. "No moral, lad. Just go easy."
"No 'get laid and live a little'?"
"I'm not that daft. I know this isn't about getting laid."
He saw me off, waving from the gate in his carpet slippers. He'd never done that before, never once waved me off, nor greeted me with any more emotion than had been apparent in the welcoming tilt of his head. I held his view in the mirror for as long as I could and became aware of a strange tightness in my chest, a fog of emotion, ambiguous in its aim. It might have been for Rachel, for him, or merely self pity.
By half past four I was crawling east on the A59. It was thick with wagons and tea time traffic, a slow, grinding drive that set my spirits sinking. At Gisburn, I took the Settle road, the old Midget purring and clinging deftly to the twists and turns. This was more it's kind of country and I began to enjoy the drive, anticipating the bends, pressing on down the long hills, judging the gears, things that seemed somehow quaint and unnecessary with a modern car.
As I penetrated deeper into the rural hinterland of Lancashire and Yorkshire, the sky became thick with gold tinted cloud, lit from beneath by a sun now slipping behind low hills. Though it was cool, I wound the windows down and let the air fill the car. I could smell the moors and I fancied I could also smell the coming of rain as the clouds deepened, eventually blotting out the pale light and hurrying the onset of darkness.
Slowly, the odometer clicked out the distance and it struck me how remote Malham was, a long drive with nothing either side of the narrow road but rolling meadows and open fell. It was a strange choice for a woman to make, and not the obvious haunt of a shallow, heartless whore. It seemed lonely somehow,… introspective, isolated, huddled down amid a protective ring of fells.
The Dunnet was a little way out of the village, a small Victorian hotel originally built to soak up the tourists who had come this way on the heels of Turner, seeking the romance of the great cove and the yawning chasm of Goredale. I'd stayed there a few times in my younger days and remembered it as a cosy, respectable place, dramatic in its setting on the edge of the wilderness.
The car-park was full,… just enough room to squeeze the Midget in. I'd brought a bag with me, thinking I'd book a room but I'd deliberately not arranged anything in advance, still harbouring a suspicion I'd imagined the whole thing and that after all, she wouldn't really be there. I decided instead to let events carry me, to prepare for nothing, to prejudge nothing.
It was a little after five thirty when I walked in. A friendly chap met me at reception and at once I found myself asking him if he had a room,… thus far then it seemed I was fated to stay.
"We do indeed," he replied. "What name is it sir?"
"Erm,… Norton."
"Would that be Tom Norton?"
I looked at him in surprise. Surely, he hadn't remembered me from my last visit! "That's right," I said.
"We already have you booked in Mr. Norton. You'll be joining Ms. Standish for dinner, I believe?"
"She’s already here?" I felt a rush of blood to my head and looked around as if I expected to see her standing behind me. "I don't believe she's checked in yet, sir."
"And Ms. Standish reserved the room?"
"That's right. Last night as I remember."
I had spent my youth worshipping Rachel at a distance, unable even to clear my throat in her presence for fear of her rejection but now, after just one telephone call and a few words, we were dining in a romantic hotel and she was reserving me a room - all be it a single room, quite small, but comfortable.
I washed and shaved and changed my shirt. Then I threw on a tie before yanking it off again. I brushed my hair - one way, then the other to see which would best cover my thinning pate, then cursed myself for my vanity and for not having had it cut when Eleanor had suggested I should. I splashed on some after-shave, then washed it off and finished up still with an hour to spare, meditating on the carpet, deep breathing and working through my slow slide show of faces.
I was calmer when I finally came down to dinner. I spied her right away, at one of the best tables. It was set aside from the press and the babble of other diners, half secluded in the bay of a window. The very sight of her set me quivering inside. She was gazing out into the darkness, silver earrings sparkling, dark hair, deep, dark eyes. Turning slowly, she acknowledged my approach with only the faintest widening of her lids. Then she gestured almost queen-like with an upturned palm for me to sit down.
I could not believe that after all of my life, my most productive years, the wheel could turn full circle back to Her,… that after everything, She would be waiting at this table in a blue, bare shouldered dress, greeting my arrival with no more astonishment than if it had been the most natural thing in the world.
I could not speak. I drew out my chair and sat down without once taking my eyes from her. She matched my gaze at first, calm, steady - then broke off, her lips tightening into a thin smile.
"You came," she said.
"Of course."
"I wasn't sure if you would. On reflection, I was worried you might think me a bit - well - forward."
"Not at all."
I waited for her to speak again, buying time while my senses caught up with the reality of it, that I was sitting at a table only a dancing candle away from Rachel Standish.
"So," she said. "What have you been up to these past twenty five years?"
I heard myself laughing nervously. "It sounds such a long time doesn't it?"
"It is a long time."
"Sometimes it doesn't seem so long."
The sense of calm was deserting me. My hands were shaking suddenly, my fingertips trembling like the onset of disease, and my heart was thumping, cracking itself against my ribs with every dogged pulse. In an effort to compose myself once more, to fasten onto something firm, I pulled out the school photograph and slid it across the table. She smiled at it - a sad sort of smile, I thought.
"I looked so young," she said.
"But you haven't changed," I protested. "Not a bit." Then I worried I'd sounded too eager, showering her with praise like cheap perfume.
"You're very kind, but I have changed. And things have changed so much. It's odd, you know? I've never made a habit of thinking about the past, but since meeting you I've been thinking about it a lot. The world's so different now."
"Not that different, surely!"
"Think about it," she said. "When you and I were at school, they'd only just invented pocket calculators."
It was not what I'd imagined, a discussion on the subject of pocket calculators, but it seemed reasonable to follow her lead, and any subject was better than awkward silence. "I guess you're right. I remember doing physics in the fourth year with a slide rule. Home computers were still years away."
She became suddenly animated and for the first time I sensed that, like me, she was nervous too. She reached into her handbag and took out her mobile 'phone. It was the size of a matchbox, a beautiful silver shell. She laid it on the table and beside it she placed her palmtop computer, which was about the size of a purse. "Now look at us," she said.
The Road From Langholm Avenue Page 15