She was still unhappy, for anyone who could consider giving up the gem of a house she owned, swap it for a company flat in a foreign city, could not be happy. She was still running away from Marsh Farm, from all that had happened. The pattern of her life was set. She would be for ever moving away, without a hope of ever moving on.
I caught her hand. "Stay with me, Rachel."
Startled, she turned and smiled. "Of course,.. we'll have some fun."
"No, I meant,… "
"We should go," she broke in and then, as I drove away she asked me: "How do you know Langholm Avenue?"
"I know every street in Middleton."
"Is that all there is to it? "
"No, you're right. There is more to it than that. I've always known it was where you lived. I used to come around after school on my bike, hoping I might see you. And later, when I'd left school and was tearing about all over the place on my motorbike, I'd still swing by, or later, I'd drive by,… just on the off chance I might see you, even though by then I'd guessed you probably didn't live there any more. And every time my heart would ache, just thinking about you and those days, so far away now.
"Don't get me wrong - I haven't done it for years,… twenty years, maybe more, but just recently, when I split up with Annie, I was drawn back - for old times sake you might say - and I was amazed how keen the emotion was, the sense of something lost,.. I mean after everything that's happened to me since we were at school,… girlfriends, marriage, children. And then I met you."
She was quiet, somehow lost in the darkness, so I felt alone even though our shoulders were touching.
"You were in love," she said eventually, as if she had finally convinced herself it was true. "Tom, you're such a,… ."
"Nice bloke?" I offered.
"Such a nice bloke. Yes."
She slid her hand across and let it settle in my lap. There was no comfort in it though because she had obviously left out the word "but", left it hanging between us, while the Midget whined its weary way back to Highmoor.
There was a cold wind shrieking up from the plain when we arrived, its sharp, sudden gusts rocking the little car as we travelled the last half mile to her gate. After drawing up outside her house, she didn't move for a long time, but remained in thought, her gaze fixed, her eyes unseeing on the road ahead.
"But," she said at last.
"Ah,… but."
"Is it me he really loves?" She did not address me directly, but asked the question more of herself. "Or," she went on. "is it the girl I was before I grew up? Worse than that, is it the girl he thought I was?"
"I know you're not the same," I told her. "I know you may not even be the girl I thought you were. So much of it was fantasy. I was afraid our time in Majorca would shatter those dreams and make you real,… . make you real the moment we made love."
"And did I become real?"
"Of course, yes."
"And do you love me now, Tom? Not the idea of me, not the person you think I am, but me. Do you love me?"
"Yes, I do."
It was true: I would always love her, for we do not love at the surface of our being. It's a far more fundamental coupling than we know. People change, they grow older, their lives change them, sometimes in dramatic ways, transforming the ugly ducklings into swans, or the beautiful and the articulate into repulsive monsters, but love binds us through the changes. Even if we cannot live with the person we love, it does not stop us still from loving them. I knew this because, across the gulf of twenty five years, Rachel was in love with John Ogilvy. She loved him as she had always done, as I had always loved her, even though neither person in fact existed as we recalled them any more. But he remained the key to understanding her life, just as she was the key to understanding mine.
She had never loved me, never secretly yearned for me and I had always known it. I also knew she did not love me now, nor would she ever, no matter how fondly she had come to regard me. I knew it when she leaned over and kissed me, plucking my lip with the sensual sharpness of her teeth. I knew it when she pressed my hand upon the cool stockinged luxury of her thigh. And later, upon her bed where I sank myself inside her deliciousness, I knew one day she would leave me. But the realisation was less painful than it might have been, if only because I had already spent the best part of my life getting over it.
Chapter 35
I rose early and dressed while Rachel lay sleeping. The darkness of her room had been rendered softly transparent by the faint glow of a distant street lamp and she appeared resplendent in her nakedness, sprawled luxuriously, face down upon the bed. I stroked her, unable to resist the texture and the heat of her skin. With my fingertips I traced her contours down into the deep hollow of her back, then over the cool curve of her derrière. She wriggled and smiled in unconscious pleasure at my touch, but did not wake. I was afraid we would never make love again, so I sat a while absorbing the impression of her loveliness and the pleasure I felt was tinged with sadness that the beauty of the moment was heightened only by the sense of its impermanence.
Eventually, I covered her and crept downstairs in search of coffee. It was not yet dawn and on my way to the kitchen I was lured into the conservatory by the view of the illuminated plain far below. It was a part of the world I knew well and yet it seemed foreign that morning. Those roads, so familiar in daylight were transformed by darkness into mysterious traces, like strings of phosphorescent pearls, leading to places I could not imagine.
I thought of Eleanor, thought of her sleeping down there somewhere in that seething mass of luminous coral, curled up and alone. I thought of myself six months from now sleeping in some Paris suburb with the hum of the city going on all around, and I thought of Rachel in the heat of Korea, her dark eyes watching while rows of white-gloved hands pressed the buttons of roaring machinery.
There seemed little doubt this was the way it was going to be, for the dawn was breaking now, the roads revealing themselves from the gloom of night, leading each of us on to the next stage of our entirely separate journeys. Sure, there seemed no doubt, but that did not mean I felt any of it was right.
Rachel appeared some time later, loosely draped in a satin gown. She greeted me with a smile but seemed otherwise reserved, hesitating to touch, and embrace, her face in deep shadow, the unpleasantness of the day ahead beginning to eat into her. We shared breakfast in the conservatory while maintaining a companionable silence, and from there we watched the day break over the plain,… blue-grey clouds revealing themselves spread low in the western sky and slowly tearing into strips of vermilion.
"Shepherd's warning," she said, quietly.
"Hmn?"
"Storm coming."
I followed her gaze. The sky seemed too slow and sleepy for a storm, but I sensed a change all right. We drove to Skelmersdale in a dull grey light, the roads were sluggish with traffic, the trees at the wayside stark and black, the overgrown hedgerows still weeping with the weight of overnight rain.
"You're a good lover, Tom."
"You're very kind,… but it takes two."
"We could go on, couldn't we,… being lovers?"
"I hope we shall."
"You've no regrets then?"
"Only that I never asked you,… I mean back then. I wish I'd known you all this time, been married to you all this time."
"You haven't missed much."
"I think I have. I think I've missed something remarkable."
"We should be with those who love us Tom, don't you think?"
"Of course."
"And set aside those who don't, no matter what we feel for them."
Bexley's car park was already half full when we arrived and people were striding purposefully to take up their places,… in their offices and by their machinery. We watched them go, knowing their fate and for a long time, Rachel seemed reluctant to move.
"Good luck, then," I said.
My voice seemed to snap her out of a dream. "I don't know how long this will take. I'll probably have
to go to Norwich tonight. There are meetings all weekend."
"Don't worry. There are some things I need to sort out as well.Y ou have my number. Call me when you can."
"I'm sorry if I've hurt you, Tom."
"You haven't hurt me."
She smiled and shook her head. "I think I have."
She pressed my hand, then left the car, left me only with the space she had occupied and suddenly the air felt cold. I watched her walk away towards the open office door, watched it swing, then close itself upon her and something turned inside of me,… we should be with the ones who love us, and set aside those who don't,… I thought she'd meant she should be with me, because she knew I loved her, but watching her go, I realised she was saying it was me who should set her aside, that I should be with someone who loved me. And thus, without even knowing it, Rachel and I had said our last goodbye.
I was an hour late for work but somehow that sort of thing didn't matter any more. Stavros caught my eye but said nothing and I offered him no explanation, settling down instead beneath a smoke screen of spurious activity in order to while away the hours until finishing time.
I tried not to think of Rachel because I felt quite calm and was afraid the emotion inside of me was of the delayed variety, that if I tempted it out I might suddenly be overwhelmed and Stavros would find me blubbing in the toilets. But come she did, a sudden flashback,… a day in June, 1977, the sun slanting hot through the windows of the classroom where I was completing an examination paper: Mathematics; my last examination; my last day,… indeed my last few minutes at Middleton County High.
I'd actually finished the paper ages ago and was stringing out the time, pretending to check answers I was already certain of. She was in the building somewhere, another examination, another room. I was keenly aware of her presence, and felt that to have walked out, to have gone home would have been to finally close the door on the dream. It would have been to say goodbye.
The moment had come of course when I could delay no longer and I'd gone, but slowly, sauntering along empty corridors, a circuitous trek to where I'd left my bicycle. And all the while I'd hoped any minute to hear the doors crash open behind me, to hear her hurried footsteps, to hear her crying out as if in some highly charged finale, that she loved me,… that she wanted to be with me.
My heart ached that day as it so often aches when I think of her. She changed my life, but did not love me. She changed my life but did not even know I was there. Something broke inside of me then and I knew it was over. I also knew I would never again measure love by what I had once felt,… for her.
In the course of that brief winter's day, the sun rose and set behind the dilapidated shed of Derby's former glory and slowly then, as the Smith's clock swept up the final minutes, my thoughts turned at last to Eleanor. We had agreed to talk that evening, to sit down face to face and discuss our lives. The neon lights burned feebly as darkness painted out the windows, and the more I thought about things, the more straight forward they now seemed to become. She had to stay in the house and I had to go to France. I had to somehow reinvent myself, take the language and the culture to my heart, find myself a nice French lady - keep in touch with Eleanor, write her long letters, perhaps see her now and then.
Monday.
I would tell Stavros on Monday.
At last, I snatched up my jacket like a man on a mission, but Stavros appeared at my elbow, exasperating to the last! He'd had all day to speak to me, but chose this moment, when I was on my way out.
"Have you decided then, Tom?"
I felt panicky, looking around for some means of escape, some means of putting him off. "Eh? About what?"
"France, you dickhead! The deadline's on Monday. I thought I'd better remind you. You've not been yourself lately."
"I know. Sorry. Yes. I'll let you know,… . on Monday."
"Make sure you do. How are things going anyway? Fancy a drink?… . I'm just on my way out. If you hang on a sec. I'll get my jacket."
"Sorry Stav. I've got to rush. Got to be at the dentists in five minutes."
Lies! Evasions! I broke out into a sweat, confused by my feelings. If I was so certain about France, why I could not simply have told him then? It was puzzling, maddening,… but by the time I'd reached the car and settled into its damp interior, I knew, for all the apparent inevitability of it,… . I would not be going.
I drove to the nearest off-license and chose a couple of bottles of Chianti for my evening with Eleanor. I intended getting us both quite drunk. There had to be some plain speaking, without barriers, without defences and I hoped the wine would serve us well, but when I reached my father's house, I found it empty and I knew Eleanor had already gone. There was a premonition of it in the sound of my key in the lock, and when I entered it was in the dead silence of the place, as if without her it could not live. I called her name, called it with a passion, but the walls rang hollow with the emptiness.
I burst into her room ready to recoil in case she lay upon the bed, her pale body carelessly draped,… dark stains on the bedclothes at her wrists. She was not there, but the air carried with it the ghost of her scent and her stillness. The drawers slid open, light to my touch. They were empty, as was her wardrobe, and the sight of their bareness stung - not simply because she had gone, but because I knew I had failed her.
I found a note on the kitchen table. It was written in beautiful script - Eleanor's best and most calmly considered hand, a thing at odds with the turbulence underlying her life:
The only way for us to move on.
Love Eleanor.
The only way to move on? To go? To run? Then the timer on the oven began to chime; so many contradictions! She had gone for ever it seemed, but had thought to leave a stew cooking for my tea!
I telephoned Phil to ask if he knew where she was. He told me I hadn't to worry, that he'd come round yesterday with his van and loaded all of her things, but wouldn't go so far as to tell me where she'd actually gone.
"How will she manage, Phil? She needs a place. She needs money."
"She'll be fine," he assured me.
"Is she with you?"
"Don't ask, me Tom. But trust me: she's okay."
"Did she say anything about why she went?"
"Not much. I know you've been a good friend to her and I'm grateful, but you mustn't worry; you've done all you can. It's up to her now."
His words shamed me because I'd done nothing. It was Eleanor who had helped me sort through the derailed mess of my own life, while I'd stood dazed and helpless.
"Tell her I'm sorry she felt she had to go. Tell her if there's anything I can do, she knows where I am."
"Sure," he replied. "I'll tell her."
But when I put the phone down, I had the feeling I would not hear from him, the feeling of a door closing and the cracks filling up all around, so that if I once took my eyes away from it, even for a second, I would never find the opening again. Whatever had happened to us, whether we had lived together or apart, I had always imagined being in touch with Eleanor - talking to her or writing to her from wherever I ended up in the world. But now, being so suddenly without her, and worse, so inexplicably rejected, I felt more alone than I had imagined it was possible to feel.
I found myself wandering about the house searching for something of hers, something personal she might have left behind. This was not like the times I had been rejected by a lover and had wanted to purge them from my system by disposing of every memento. With Eleanor, I felt a need for something I could hold in my hands, and in holding try to understand what had happened. But there was nothing. It was as if she had never existed.
I remember later watching the coals and listening to the familiar sounds of the house, the little creaks and cracks of the place cooling down for the night. I should have felt comforted there, but instead its familiarity mocked me, and gradually I was overwhelmed by the notion that all the years I'd spent away from that place had been horribly wasted. I had lived and worked for a qua
rter of a century to build a life away from Arkwright Street, and now it seemed the ultimate humiliation to find myself washed back upon it's shore with nothing, and with those I loved either dead, or gone, or slowly drifting away.
Chapter 36
In the morning I drove uninvited to Phil's house. It was perhaps not the most sensible thing to do but his was the only place I could think she might have gone at such short notice. The moors appeared cold and bleak surrounding the little farm in its field of mud and I thought to myself as I approached that she would go mad in a place like this - so lonely,… and overhung by such an uninviting waste of land.
It was dawn, a pale yellow light slicing over khaki hills, a fine drizzly shower driven on a bitter, peat scented wind. Phil came to the door in his dressing gown, hairy legs stark white beneath its hem, a dishevelled bear, hardly able to keep his eyes open.
"Tom!"
"Is she here, Phil?"
He looked at me, his heavy lids peeling slowly open a little wider. I smelled beer and read a hangover in his lined face, in his shaggy hair. "I told you, it wasn't your fault. You did your best."
"I don't know if I did."
"Listen, mate. You've got your own life. She's not your problem." Then a smile escaped him and he gave me a sympathetic shrug. "Women eh? Look, she was here but she took off in my van last night and hasn't come back yet." He extended his arm, inviting me inside. "Let's have a brew, it's bloody freezing out here. She'll be home when she's ready."
We drank tea in the kitchen. The place smelled of boiled cabbage and cow manure even though the farm had probably seen neither in years. There was dirty washing piled up on the counters, clean pots mixed with soiled ones, the sink stacked high with pans and the remains of several crushed and glittering six-packs scattered across the flag stone floors.
"Had a few lads round last night," he explained. "That's why she took off I suppose - likes it quiet does our Ellie. I'd forgotten that. Not a good start. So anyway, what happened? Did you have a row? Only she didn't say. I can understand it if you did. She can be difficult, closing herself off, not letting anyone near, then snapping at you just for trying."
The Road From Langholm Avenue Page 26