The Road From Langholm Avenue

by Michael Graeme

  "You think so?"

  "Yes,… always supposing you want to be with anybody at all."

  "I’m not sure that I do,… want to be with anyone. I mean I shouldn’t even be thinking about it,.. and I wasn’t. This thing with Carol was just,… "

  "A quick shag?"

  "Eleanor! Please,… no it was more than that. We’ve talked, listened to music,… There was a connection, but I don’t know if it was any more than just loneliness and hurt."

  "So, go on: tell me about it!"

  "The music?"

  "No, the sex. That sounds much more interesting."

  I squirmed with embarrassment. "Eleanor,.. please!"

  "Don't be shy. We’re both adults."

  She was teasing, so I called her bluff, thinking to head her off, to shut her up. "Okay, she was very,… confident," I said. "I've never been with anyone like that. Me and Annie,… well, like I think I’ve told you before she always seemed to view it as a chore, just another demand, on the same scale as the kids whining for toys in Woolworths every Saturday."

  She sighed. "You know, I can’t imagine Annie ever being that way. She always looks so,… sexy,… and I thought blondes had all the fun!"

  "I think she just grew bored - it’s hard to keep it spicy with the same person, year in year out. And okay, while we’re on the subject, I feel ashamed. You warned me to stay away from Carol unless I was sure. I wasn't, but I did it anyway. I wanted a bit of excitement."

  "Wild and hard, Tom."

  "Pardon?"

  "You wanted it wild and hard." She turned away and picked out a pretty, dark haired girl who was settling at a nearby table. "What about her? She's gorgeous, isn't she."

  "I suppose so," I said, unsure where this was leading.

  "Look at her chest. I'd give anything for a chest like that. I bet they don't instantly point at the floor when she takes her bra off, like mine do."

  "Eleanor!"

  "Hush. Look how they move. Imagine them brushing against you. And just look at her bottom. Isn't it neat? Those legs? Imagine having them wrapped around you. Can you imagine giving it to her? I can. I can imagine the coolness of those plump little buttocks in my palms and the scent of her as I nuzzle inside her pants,… ."

  "Eleanor, for pity’s sake,… "

  "Am I shocking you? But you're a man of the world, Tom. Nice fantasy, though, eh?"

  "You paint a vivid picture, but what exactly are you driving at?"

  "Anyone can give you wild and hard, Tom. It's the other that's not so easy,… the warm and tender, the desire to be with someone, to hold their hand,… to simply want to be with them for who they are. You know all this. I shouldn't have to explain it to you."

  I was reminded then of the dream, of Rachel's words, which were really my words. "I want to be with you," she'd said. Not "I love you," or "I want you," or "give it to me Big Boy," but more simply and more profoundly: "I want to be with you."

  I looked at the girl. She seemed good-natured, quick to smile, and was reserved with her gestures. "She looks nice. I'm sure she could be very warm and tender. Carol could be warm too,… "

  "She looked hard to me, Tom. Hard as nails."

  "You said she seemed, sensual. And anyway, you can't possibly know that from a glance."

  "Oh, we girls have a way of looking at one another and making instant judgements - not always accurate I admit, but all the same impressions that'll withstand a lifetime of arguments to the contrary. You saw the way she looked at me. I mean what else do you think upset her?"

  "She was upset? I don't know what you mean."

  "She looked at us like she thought we were lovers."

  "No, she's been through a lot… "

  "So have you. But it's not stopped you from being the same old Tom. The same nice old Tom."

  I cringed. "Please! Don't call me that. 'you're a nice bloke, Tom,… but!' There's always a 'but'."

  She laughed and pressed my hand. "No 'buts' And there's nothing wrong with 'nice'. All I'm saying is be careful. Wild and hard is okay sometimes, but it burns out too quick. You just end up tired and covered in bruises. Anyway, if Carol meant as much as all that to you, why are you sitting here with me, with sad, sorry old Eleanor?"

  "I just thought it was best if I left it a while. I'll call her sometime soon. Anyway, if you thought she was hard - what did she think of you? What did she read in you?"

  Eleanor smiled. "Simple. A four letter word beginning with 'T', rhymes with 'heart'. I'm sorry, but I think Carol's the jealous type and you'll have some explaining to do regarding exactly who and what I am - not that she'll ever believe you."

  "Eleanor I made it perfectly plain that you were my stepmother."

  "Tom,… look at me: do I look like the stepmother of a man in his forties?"

  As we rose to leave, the dark haired girl looked up and glanced briefly at Eleanor. It was a look of subdued surprise and curiosity, perhaps even attraction. On the way out I asked her what she'd meant, imagining herself capable of sex with the girl.

  "Did that surprise you?"

  "Well, it's just that you led me to believe you couldn't care less about it either way these days."

  She shrugged. "Mostly that's true - but sometimes,… just sometimes,… . you know?"

  "Sure," I said, "I know. " It worried me, this side of her.

  A Tart. Eleanor was a Tart. At least that's what she would have had me believe Carol thought,… that she suspected there was something going on between me and Eleanor. It didn't seem reasonable, but in the end, I didn't call her and that, as Eleanor would probably have said, was good.

  I folded her up all neat, like a handkerchief and slid her into my pocket, in case I should need her later on- and I was ashamed by how easily I did it. I wondered what sort of man I was becoming. But the simple truth was I hadn't loved her. I was dead from the neck up, quite incapable of feeling, of loving anyone. Anyone but Rachel.

  That evening, I went through the ritual of checking my 'phone for messages, but there were none. I had hoped she might have called as she'd promised and eventually I retired disappointed to my bed feeling empty and alone. There, I gazed at her picture while twiddling the dial of my radio around 208 meters in search of Radio Luxembourg and the dreams of adolescence. There was nothing of course. The big L was gone and Bob Stewart no longer counted down the top forty. Instead, from out of the nearby static emerged French speaking stations purveying a soft seductive music that drew me in until I settled into a fitful sleep. And it seemed to me then as if Paris was truly was calling.

  Chapter 26

  I drove to the airport in the grey light of a watery dawn. The motorway was sluggish, the traffic slowing to an inevitable crawl as I neared my exit. Airliners were coming in on a course parallel to my own, their fuselages seeming impossibly long and thin and it seemed impossible to me they would not snap clean in two. All this movement, I thought: so many people doing nothing but moving from one place to another!

  All the airports I had ever passed through seemed much the same to me with their expanses of glass and dull concrete. They made me nervous with their signs and their endless choice of direction and destination. Yet people flowed through as surely as the bottles on Bexleys production line, seemingly unfazed by a system which was to me always bewildering.

  Paris was an hour and a half away. I could barely drive to Birmingham in that time, and yet it was another world, totally unknown. Sitting in the departure lounge at Manchester, pretending to relax behind my newspaper, I began to wonder what I thought I was doing. This was me after all, indisputably middle aged, my cloth distinctly cut and tailored, like the suit I was wearing, in the style of around nineteen eighty five. And I was a small town boy, spat out of Middleton's County High in the dying days of the seventies, swapping regulation blue for a kipper tie and a Bambi speckled shirt, to be trained as factory fodder for a profession that was already beginning its terminal decline. Small town boys didn't fly to places like Paris to pursue their careers, I
thought. Small town boys didn't have careers: they had jobs.

  My flight appeared on the departures board and began slowly moving its way to the top of the pile. Then the lounge began to fill with calmer suits than mine. There were briefcases and mobile phones sported like fashion accessories.

  I wondered about these people. They could have been movie stars, so well groomed they seemed, their hair impossibly under control, tanned skin, trouser legs unwrinkled. Were these also small town girls and boys, or the elite from Manchester's business districts? No factory fodder, these, I thought, and I was impressed by the shiny glow of their youth. Their hands had never touched a lathe, nor fashioned a chisel edge on a pencil, nor puzzled over an orthographic projection. No, I thought, not entirely without cynicism, a projection to these people would mean something else entirely.

  Perhaps they had been right to throw away the drawing boards at County High, right to concentrate on cardboard and coat-hangers instead of motor car engines, right to intellectualise technology into a meaningless trivia, instead of practising it with relish. Instead, all those well rounded adults would swell airport lounges the world over with their suits and their briefcases and their impressive, world-class mobility - for it seemed to me now the modern world was built on change, on movement. Now, there were so many ways to live, so many lives in one lifetime and conversely, fewer choices for a single grooved small town chap like me.

  Before lunch time, I was there. Paris was another concrete and glass airport and a manic drive by careless taxi amid more concrete and glass. There were glimpses of the Seine, and long houseboats - a hint at the fabled romance of this city, which to me might otherwise have been London or Frankfurt, just dust and dirt and graffiti. And at the end of this chaos was Phillipe, until now a voice on the telephone, materialising at the foot of a grey office block.

  He was a rotund youth, bespectacled and floppy haired and he welcomed me in perfect English, laughing politely at my response in pigeon French.

  "You will like it here, I think," he said.

  "Don't I have to get through an interview first?"

  He laughed, again good-naturedly. "I think you will find it is merely a formality."

  "I see."

  When I walked into the interview room, I experienced a moment of de-ja-vous. There were three shirt sleeved men and one pretty woman with short, dark hair. The questions were easy, the air informal. It was the woman, Claudette who led the pace, the others chipping in the odd question now and then. But they asked nothing to make me sweat and after ten minutes I got the impression I would have to have been a bit of a donkey not to get through.

  I had worked as an engineer on marine diesels for most of my life. I knew the difference between a screw and a rivet. I was qualified. I was in. The whole thing took about half an hour, then Claudette leaned back in her seat and smiled.

  "Very well, Thomas. Is there anything you would like to ask us?"

  "Erm,… could I see your,… . workshops?"

  That raised a smile. "Of course. Phillipe will show you. Is there anything else?"

  "How soon will I know,… about the job?"

  There was an exchange of glances and then Claudette said it was mine if I wanted it. "Think it over. Let your personnel officer know what you decide."

  "That's great," I said, not sure if it was great or not. "Can I ask about the relocation allowance?"

  "We don't have the details,… your personnel officer will speak to you,… but I think you will find it is very generous."

  "I'm sure it is," I said.

  In fact I already knew it was. I was simply looking for a dark lining to what was suddenly becoming an alarmingly silver cloud. They'd find me a decent flat in the suburbs, or a house out of town and they would pay for it for the first two years, by which time I'd be on my feet.

  Outside, Phillipe shook my hand in congratulations. "A formality, Yes? You see, we need at least ten of you to come over. We need your detailed knowledge if we are to pick up your work. So far, only four of your colleagues seem interested."

  "We're all a bit set in our ways, I guess."

  "Change is hard," he said with a shrug. "We would not like this if it were the other way around."

  "But I'd give you a job any day, Phillipe."

  He blushed. "And I would be pleased to accept it," he said. "But unfortunately, I think my wife would not appreciate my going, nor my children."

  And then it hit me. Annie didn't even know I was there. Only Eleanor knew where I was in the world. Only Eleanor was thinking of me here.

  The workshops were bright busy places with new machines and clean floors - unlike the dim, oil ingrained, decaying caverns at Derby's. Wandering through them with Phillipe, I knew that if my job were the most important thing in my life then I'd be a fool not to come. But if the job had ever been that important I would have been a lot higher up the ladder at forty two than I was. I would no longer be driving a computer workstation, sorting out the nitty-gritty of design, the geometry, the dimensions, the methods of manufacture.

  Later, driving back to the hotel I felt the immensity of the city sprawling out and swallowing me down into its concrete bowels. Its noise and its smell had me longing for home and all I could think as the taxi twitched and jerked its perilous way into the centre was how the hell I could ever hope to settle in a place like this.

  The hotel was a small but respectable establishment favoured by other engineers and executives from Derby's who visited Paris more frequently than I. It was a few stars higher than I would normally have chosen, had I been paying for it myself, but I wasn't, so I indulged myself, dining early and quite recklessly a la carte. Then I retired to my room to take my pick from the mini-bar, mixing myself a large gin and tonic in whose seductive company I retired to the bathroom.

  There, my head swimming with a mixture of fatigue and alcohol, I soaked myself in a hot bath, eyes closed, trying to relax my body, to give myself a chance at sleep. My mind was wandering though, skipping here and there, settling on nothing. One minute I was driving a fully restored Midget through the Yorkshire Dales with my father beside me, and the next I was sipping tea, a lonely ex-pat Englishman in some pretty French provincial town, reading letters from home, from Eleanor. And then I sensed the bathroom door opening.

  It was not real, you understand, just a notion in my head, as was the rich perfume that filled the tiny, steamy space. My eyes remained closed, but in my mind I looked up and saw Rachel standing in the doorway. She was no longer the schoolgirl, nor the teenager of my distant memory, but the woman in the blue dress, the woman from the dining room of the Dunnet Arms Hotel.

  Slowly, she knelt by the bath and leaned lazily upon its rim.

  "I was wondering where you'd got to," I said.

  "Sorry," she replied, a little glum. "I am meaning to phone, really."

  "Why don't you?"

  She sighed and trailed her fingers in the water. "Perhaps I will,… soon. Anyway. What are you doing here? We're not finished yet."

  "I thought you'd rejected me."

  "Not quite."

  "I wish you had."

  "But why?"

  "You know why! I need you to reject me, then I can get you out of my system and move on."

  "Then it's your fault," she countered. "You didn't tell me properly that you loved me, that you wanted to be with me. How can you expect clarity from me, if you're too timid to be clear and honest yourself?"

  "I didn't want to frighten you off."

  "But that would imply you harbour some hope. It would imply that you really want to be with me?"

  "Did I say that? I don't know. I can't imagine being with you, Rachel,… only aching because I'm without you."

  "But that's good, isn't it? It's good you feel that way about me."

  "It would be, I suppose, normally, but I don't feel the other normal things I should feel when I think of you. I can't imagine making love to you, nor even what you might look like undressed."

  "But you fell
in love with me when such things were unknown and unimaginable to you."

  She rose then and slipped the straps of her dress. In this fantasy, she wore no underwear and the dress fell to reveal a divine nudity, a form I had pieced together like a collage of parts from the bodies of Annie, and Carol, and all the other women I have known.

  "There," she said, running her palms along her thighs. "Now you see me."

  "But it's not really you, is it?"

  "It's near enough," she said and gingerly, she dipped her toe in the bath-water as if she were about to climb in with me. Then my mobile phone began to bleep,… . and she was gone.

  I wrapped myself in a towel, walked through to the bedroom and fished the infernal thing out of my jacket pocket.

  "Hi, Tom. It's Rachel. I'm sorry for leaving you so suddenly."

  "Rachel? I was just thinking of you."

  "You were? I like the sound of that."

  "I thought I'd scared you off."

  "No, silly. I did say I'd call."

  "I know,… "

  "Did you think I'd just run out on you that morning?"

  "I wasn't sure. I wouldn't have blamed you."

  "I promise you it wasn't like that. I lay awake most of the night thinking about you,… looking forward to spending the day with you, but then I had to go and I was so disappointed. Anyway, listen,… there have been some big changes at work since I last saw you. Jefferson's moved back to Norwich and they offered me the job of General Manager. I'm running the place now. Can you believe it?"

  I was stunned, but also proud of her. For all her troubles, she had kept going. She had used the intelligence implied in those eight O levels, and swum smartly against the current, when most would simply have drowned.