Chapter 30
That evening, I barely had time to shower and change my clothes before Rachel was knocking on my door.
Eleanor rose. "I'll get that then shall I?"
I gave a nod, hanging back deliberately. I wanted her to open the door. I wanted to stand beside her and read her expression when she gazed upon Rachel for the first time.
Rachel had driven over directly from the office. She looked smart and cool and businesslike in a dark blue suit, with a short skirt. Eleanor had changed into a long frock, black as usual, but one I hadn't seen before. She had refreshed her lipstick and her hair shone like deep water. Rachel smiled, her eyes widening a little with the usual surprise that most people experience upon seeing Eleanor for the first time.
"Hi," she said.
Conversely, Eleanor's eyes narrowed, an expression I might have read as suspicion, had it not been for the accompanying smile: It was astonishment. "Rachel?"
"Yes. You must be Tom's mum."
"In a manner of speaking."
"Is he coming out to play?"
"Only if you promise to have him home before bed time." I saw a hint of colour spreading to Eleanor's cheeks as she realised the possible double meaning in her joke, but Rachel laughed. As I passed her, I felt myself blushing too. Eleanor caught my arm and squeezed, then she looked me in the eyes, a long look, drinking me in as if for the last time.
Rachel drove a large and nearly new BMW. At first I felt subdued beside her, the two of us sealed in its quiet interior as we motored through the centre of town. She seemed a world apart from the woman I'd made love to at the weekend. This was an ambitious and dynamic woman,… a career woman, a woman who'd started out on a supermarket till and worked her way up to become the manager of an engineering company.
She had not stood still for a moment since our schooldays. Compared with her, it was as if I had settled into low gear in my twenties and progressed no further in my breadth of view. I was still so narrowly focused, my heart and mind hardly wandering further than the streets of Middleton, or the stale open plan offices at Derby's. And surely, it was too late to change all of that now. Not for me the BMW, nor the corridors of power in far flung Paris. These were things I did not want, things I did not really value.
Her house was a renovated, double fronted cottage on Highmoor Lane, a country road that runs across the last stretch of high land before the immensity of the Plain. It was a quiet stretch, with perhaps only half a dozen properties spread out along a mile of road. They were mostly old places, impressive in their outlook and their isolation.
Unaware, I'd passed her place countless times - driven by, walked by, cycled by and turned my head each time to admire the setting of that house, the romance of it, perched upon the crest of a hill, overlooking the Plain. It was stone built, white rendered with fake blue shutters and it was surrounded by well tended gardens. I remembered the gardens in particular. Even in late season, they had always lent a rich focus of colour, and an exotic scent amid the agricultural blandness of the surrounding meadows.
When she led me through the door there were soft colours, soft lights, and a sense of deep cushioned comfort, but a complete lack of fussy ornamentation - not a single piece of china, not a vase, nor keepsake anywhere. Such plainness suited me, but I was a man. I don't know what I had been expecting, but something,… and I found its absence unsettling.
The crowning glory of the house was its conservatory, which she settled me into. They were something of a suburban cliché, with their mock Edwardian styling and their regulation cane furniture, but there on Highmoor it was an inspiration, an impressive glass capsule from which to view the garden and the countryside spread out below. It was dark now and the Plain appeared as a network of amber lights strung out in lines across its expanse. And there were lights gathered into living clusters, like luminous coral, marking the dozens of rural villages which lay between us and the sea.
"Terrific view," I said. "You have a lovely garden too. It must take some keeping up."
"I've no time for the garden to be honest," she said. "I pay someone to look after it for me. You should see the view around dusk. You get the most wonderful sunsets from up here."
"I know. I used to come up a lot. I'd walk by of an evening, when I lived down in Parbold."
"You did?"
"It was usually in the summer after work, when we'd got the kids into bed,… I'd come up for some air and a bit of peace."
"Do you see much of your children, now?"
"Not much."
"And your house? Have you sold it yet?"
"The last I heard we had a buyer. I guess it'll take a few months for it all to go through."
She tossed her car keys onto the glass top of the coffee table and the sudden clatter made my heart leap.
"It must hurt," she said. "To be so close, and yet not see them."
"Only when I let my guard down."
"When I left my husband, I just ran. We had a nice old place, a farmhouse, but I've never looked back. Not once. I suppose it wouldn't have been so easy if I'd had children, something for ever tying me to the source of the pain. I should be thankful for small mercies, I suppose."
"You've never wanted children?"
She shook her head and I knew she meant it.
"Still, I'm sure it wasn't that easy for you, Rachel."
I was about to ask her what had happened, but that would have been to deliberately mislead her into thinking I knew nothing. Instead, I tried to draw her out with my silence, which was the lesser deception.
"You're right," she said. "It wasn't easy. There are things about me, things in my past that may surprise you." She gave me a concealing smile. "Does that worry you?"
Her tone seemed playful, so I returned the smile. "I don't know, should it?"
But I'd misread her. She was serious and seemed to grow very still of a sudden. "How are things between you and Annie?"
"Me and Annie?"
"Am I a temporary diversion, Tom? Six months down the line are you going to end up back with her, for the sake of your children? I'd understand it if you did. Many couples step back from the brink because they're afraid for their children. They patch things up and get by as best they can. I'd rather I knew now if that was a possibility."
"I can't see myself ever getting back with Annie."
"How can you be so sure? It's only a few months since you split."
"Three months," I said. "Which may as well be a lifetime so far as I'm concerned. And losing her didn't hurt so much as I thought it would, which made me realise we'd lost each other a long time ago. I don't know how it's going to work out with the children. Naturally, it'll never be over between me and them,… but it's definitely over between me and Annie."
She softened a little, and lowered her gaze. "It's just that I've wasted a lot of years on men who weren't serious. Don't get me wrong, I knew what I was doing and it suited me then because I wasn't serious either. But I'm different now. I've no time for that sort of thing any more."
"I know. Look, since breaking up with Annie,… well, the last thing on my mind was getting involved with someone else. But it's happened."
"And now its happened, what is it you want? Are you after a quick fling? Or something more. Forgive my bluntness but I'm too old for all those teenage guessing games."
"I don't know what our coming together means, Rachel, or where it's going to lead, but you go back such a long way for me, further than Annie, further than anyone I've ever known,… "
"And?… . "
"I suppose what I'm trying to say is I couldn't insult you, or the memory of what you've always meant to me with a,… well, a quick fling."
She swallowed slowly and shook her head. "I believe you. Everything about you tells me it's true. It's just so hard to accept. I knew nothing, felt nothing. All those years. You'd think I would have felt something when you were around."
"It wasn't meant to be. Not then."
"And now? Why now?"
There came a silence between us, softened by the sudden patter of rain upon the glass. I did not want to speak any more. Words seemed trivial now. I wanted only to gaze at her, to feel her presence and to remember all those times I'd longed for such a moment as this.
Eventually, we moved into the kitchen where she prepared a simple meal of pizza and garlic bread. I watched her as she flitted about the place, gathering utensils and plates and it struck me how nothing seemed planned, nor premeditated.
There were knives and forks and mugs and plates, none of which matched. Nor was there linen, nor dainty napkin rings - nothing bearing the mark of a bottom drawer, and I began to understand that with Rachel, what you saw was what you got. There was no bottom drawer. She lived on the surface of her being.
"Eleanor seemed lovely," she said. "And that was a lovely frock she was wearing. Louis Armande, wasn't it?"
"I wouldn't know. Is Louis Armande good?"
"Tom, really!"
"Honestly, I haven't a clue about stuff like that."
"Well, it wasn't off the peg."
"It wasn't? I didn't think Eleanor was into fashion. In fact I'm sure she's not. She sort of goes her own way."
"I could see that. Very Gothic. Anyway I didn't say it was fashion - just quality." There was a significant pause and then: "Will the two of you be staying together do you think?"
"I don't know. She's taken my father's death rather hard and I'm afraid to think of her being on her own."
Was that the right answer? And then how would I have felt if Rachel had been living with a darkly handsome young man who by quirk of fate was her step father. I'd be curious. I'd want to know what they talked about when I wasn't around. I'd want to hear the tone of their voices, and I'd be wondering if they had ever shared a bed, however innocently - if his flesh had touched hers in the night as they had lain together.
She smiled to put me at ease, to lend the impression she wasn't serious when she asked me: "You're sure there's nothing naughty going on?"
Had we been naughty? Had our sleeping together signified a blurring of the boundaries of our already singular relationship? Truly, I did not know. I'd found it warm and comforting but entirely sexless. Her hands had not strayed, nor had I willed them to. I had felt her breasts against my back and her mound against my bottom but I had not thought to manoeuvre for advantage. It had been blissful. We had been like children.
"No," I said,… You forget, until a month ago, she was my father's wife. I know things may seem a little odd, but that's only because she's so young. If she'd been my father's age, you wouldn't even think to ask."
But then had she been my father's age, would I have submitted so willingly to the bliss of her presence in my bed? The sudden thought of it drew me up short. No, it would have been horrific! Rachel cast me a soft look: "There was something, Tom. I felt it when she answered the door."
"How do you mean?"
"It was just a look,… something in her eye, in her tone."
"Ah, you mean this way that girls have of weighing each other up at a glance?"
"Don't get me wrong, I thought she was lovely, but I also got the feeling I'd better not hurt you,… or else."
"It's complicated. Me and Eleanor,… she's fragile and I do care about her. But we don't think of each other,… . well, you know,… in that way." It sounded a bit lame and I cast about for something firm to reassure her. I could have said Eleanor wasn't interested in men, that she was Lesbian, but Rachel would have wanted to know why, if that were true, she'd married my father, and I wasn't ready for a long explanation of Eleanor's impenetrable psyche. "It's just,… complicated,… " I said again.
"I know. And you seem unsettled by it."
"I suppose I am."
"Well, I wouldn't worry. Remember the eighties? Strangers would share houses and mortgages, simply because they couldn't afford a home any other way. Or they were speculating on the rise in house prices making them a fortune. It was like a business partnership. No one even batted an eye."
"Well, I'm not sure this is the same sort of thing."
"If it works why knock it? What about your job? How's that going?"
"I've been offered something in France."
I'd been about to go on and express my doubts in case she thought my plan was to leave her before we'd barely begun to get to know one another, but she seemed delighted.
"Tom! That's wonderful. When do you start?"
"Well, I haven't actually accepted it yet."
"Why not?"
Could she not see why? "Still thinking about it," I mumbled,… "It's a big step."
"But you have to take it. It's a brilliant opportunity. What's holding you back?"
If I had gone to Paris I would have been on my feet again, but also a long way from her,… and Eleanor, and the children. "Well,… us," I said, thinking to spell it out. "I'd never see you."
"Oh, Tom, that's sweet but it needn't change anything. Paris is only a few hours away. And we can keep in touch between times. There's such a thing as the telephone and e-mail you know. Just think of all those love letters! "
But for all the world's sophistication, for all the ease with which we could launch our disembodied words around the globe, for me, the goal of love was more than to care for someone and be interested in them: it was to actually be with them. In love, time apart was just time in pain and longing and loneliness!
I gazed around the house, at the lack of ornamentation and realised for all its softness and its femininity, the entire contents might have been packed in an hour. There was nothing to lend an air of permanence. I might have balked at the prospect of living and working abroad but Rachel would not have thought twice. She could have cleared out at a moment's notice.
"You'll stay the night? " she asked.
"Of course," I replied, and for a moment I wished I could have travelled back in time, transported myself into the passenger seat beside that lovelorn teenager as he drove his knackered old Midget down Langholm Avenue.
"It's okay," I would have told him. "It all works out. Twenty five years from now you'll have your chance. You'll be with Rachel, and she'll be asking you to stay the night."
I should have felt myself floating. I should have felt like carving our names into the bark of a tree, but the teenager who was me turned to the middle aged chap beside him, who was also me, and shook his head, for now I believe he saw the world more clearly than I,… and in his eyes there was reflected a trace of pity.
Chapter 31
I returned home the following evening, walking in to find Eleanor, a black lotus blossom upon the floor of the lounge, her dress having ridden carelessly up her thighs to reveal the black lace vee of her pants.
"Tom,… what time is it? I wasn't expecting you."
She shook her head, as if waking from a deep sleep, then, remembering herself, she drew her knees together and smoothed the dress over them. She had her back to the wall and she was listening to music, a trail of tears streaming down, but she recovered quickly, wiping her eyes on the backs of her hands. She had a strange look about her, I thought, somehow stoned and crumpled as if she'd flopped there last night after I'd gone and had been there ever since.
"Eleanor, are you okay?"
"Elgar," she said, with a crooked smile. "Only Elgar."
"Are you sure?"
"Sure." Then came the smile, the mask she wore. "Rachel seemed nice."
"Yes. She thought the same about you."
"So why the long face?"
"Oh,… I don't know. Just something,… Anyway - never mind that. I think we need to talk."
Her eyes flickered in alarm, as keenly as if I'd brandished a knife. "Later," she said and then, evasively: "Have you eaten? I wish you'd 'phoned. I could have had something ready."
"I'm fine. Listen, it's important." I sat down before her, tucking my stiff legs beneath me and rubbing my temples, trying to order my thoughts,… thoughts that came racing and rattling one
after the other. "If I go to Paris, will you come?"
She looked as if she thought she had not heard properly. "Say that again."
"The apartment's quite big,… two big bedrooms, I'm told,… and men and women share houses all the time, don't they? Remember the eighties?"
She closed her eyes,… screwed them tight as if to shut me out. "Tom, think about what you're saying."
"It wouldn't be a problem. You'd be doing me a favour, because otherwise the company would try to get me to share the place with Stavros or one of the other blokes - and I couldn't think of anything worse."
"You know I can't, Tom."
"But why not? Explain it to me."
"Our living here is one thing, going away together is quite another."
"I don't see how."
"Just circumstances, that's all."
"Circumstances?"
"Neither of us planned this. In a way, that makes it okay, but if I come with you, then we've made a choice. We've made a choice to be together. Do you understand that?"
"But if I stay here that's just the same, isn't it?"
She covered her face. "That's why I've got to go. It's what I keep telling you and you're not listening. I have to go, Tom. I,… have,… .to,… go,… "
I'd been so anxious to straighten things out but now, after only a few words, I seemed to have pushed things to the point of being permanently broken. I gazed at her in disbelief, as if gazing at a fragile vase I'd carelessly let slip through my fingers. It was lying in pieces on the floor and the vase was everything that she meant to me. "You can't. Where would you go?"
"Does it matter?"
"Please Eleanor, don't do anything hasty."
She closed herself off, then rallied, coming back at me with an accusing thrust: "So, you're going to Paris?"
"Eh,… I don't know."
The Road From Langholm Avenue Page 22