"It wasn't a row exactly, but something's been brewing since my dad died. I wanted her to come away to France with me, I thought we could both make fresh starts."
That raised an eyebrow: "What, you mean together, like?"
"Well,… sort of, but not exactly, you know? Just sharing the place, like. As friends, or,… something."
"And she wouldn't budge? Well, it doesn't sound like our Ellie's sort of thing - France, I mean. She rarely goes out of Middleton. Even this place is like a foreign country to her. It's a pity, she wouldn't go. It would have done her good."
"Well, I thought the least I could do now is make sure she's okay for money. She needs something at the back of her. There's my dad's house,… it's hers by right. We just need to sit down and sort everything out properly."
"I wouldn't worry about the house, Tom. You need a place yourself right now. Ellie knows that and besides, she has a bit of money of her own."
"She'll need more than a bit."
There was a pause, while he stared down at his feet and considered something. "You don't know about the money then?"
"The money?"
He blew out a long lungful of air "It seems like things are coming to a bit of a head, Tom. Look, you've got to promise not to let on to her that you know. And if she ever tells you herself, you've got to act surprised, okay?"
He went on to explain how he'd once run into a spot of bother with the Inland Revenue. Hawksworth had represented him and during their meetings Phil had also happened to mentioned the misfortunes of his sister.
"Hawksworth reckoned he could help Eleanor win some compensation,… It was a private clinic where they butchered her, right? Well, Hawksworth brought a case against them for negligence. A couple of weeks before it went to court, they settled it quietly, just like he said. He would have taken the government on too for locking her up in the first place - I mean, the police and the legals who sent her down should have been strung up. There was never any evidence against her, no history of violence. Just her confession."
"She confessed?"
"Said she smothered the little mite with a blanket. But she was just a kid herself, Tom,… twenty four hours they bullied her - no lawyer, no parents, no friends, no sleep. Sure, just sign this love, and we'll let you go. I'd probably have signed it myself. Then the trap doors of officialdom opened and she fell into her worst nightmare."
It seemed that every time I heard a piece of Eleanor's story, it just kept getting worse. I groaned. "Bloody hell, Phil,… "
"Hawksworth said she had a good chance of proving it had been an unsafe conviction, but that it would most likely have had to drag on for years and Ellie, well you can't imagine what she was like before you knew her. She just wasn't up to it, mate. She just wanted to forget the whole thing. She still got two hundred thousand from the clinic. Who knows what she's worth now. I don't think she's touched any of the capital,… It's all properly invested and managed. Hawksworth set it up. She just draws a bit of income from it and she doesn't exactly have an extravagant lifestyle. So you see, money's never been a problem for our Ellie."
"I'd no idea."
"It's not something she talks about much. She even told me once she'd rather she’d never had it because it was a reminder, tying her to a point in her life she'd sooner have forgotten,… like the money was poisoned and living off it was bad for her. There was also the stigma of course,… what people would think, if they knew,… better just to forget it,… if you can ever forget a thing like that."
So, the house didn't matter, nor my father's relatively meagre bank account,… and if she needed a place to live, she could just go out and buy one. I couldn't help myself: I laughed.
"All those years. Phil! My miserable family - Eric and Agnes and the rest of them thinking she was sponging off my dad, when all along she was worth ten times as much! If they'd known, they would have been inviting her round to tea!"
"Exactly. And that was another reason she used to keep quiet, because people see you differently, when they think you're loaded, don't they. They see the money,… they don't see you."
I waited for an hour but she did not come. We talked about cars and motorcycles and bygone days,… of turret lathes and shaping machines and the thunder of hot metal as it was quenched in oil. But in the end, I became nervous.
"Maybe I'd better go, Phil."
"I'll tell her you called then."
"Perhaps you shouldn't. I don't want to upset her. I don't want her thinking I'm pestering her or anything."
"It's up to you. But why should the money change anything?"
"The money doesn't change anything."
He gave me a sneer and a sideways look, his mood disintegrating, his hangover settling in. "Of course it does. I should never have told you."
"I'm happy about the money."
"So how come one minute you're banging the door down wanting to see her about something so urgent it can't even wait until after breakfast and the next you're sneaking away not wanting her know you've been?"
"All right, maybe I came here thinking there was something I could do for her, but from what you've said she doesn't need anything. I'd better just leave her to it,… it's obviously what she wants."
"Bollocks," he said. "Have you never thought maybe what she wants from you, she knows she can never have?"
"And what's that supposed to mean? I'd do anything. She just won't let me. She won't let me anywhere near her."
He folded his arms and looked away, closing himself off. "I'm not saying any more. I'm in enough trouble as it is, if she ever finds out. But you do need to talk to her, and if she was here right now, believe me, I'd bang both your heads together!"
Chapter 37
Phil was right; it was the money. It made me think she was not quite the person I had imagined her to be. It took a while for me to calm down, to remember of course she was the same. The money had simply given her some protection, some independence from the world, and from me. It seemed I had wanted her to be safe, but only if her life was bound up with mine. I did not want her to be able to manage alone.
On the subject of Eleanor, the world was divided into two camps,… one inhabited by those who used her weakness as an excuse for meaning her harm,… the other by those who saw it as a means of controlling her. And I was as bad as the rest, controlling her,… badgering her into this plan or that plan, when all she wanted was to be left alone, to make her own quiet way; to simply be.
I drove back to Arkwright street under something of a cloud, then walked into the house and closed the door, leaning on it heavily, slamming it shut, slamming out the demons. For months I had been sending out tiny ripples into an uncharted ocean, questions,… unfathomable signatures of every question I had ever asked. And now, quite suddenly everything had been turned around, reflected back from a deeper part of me, gathering force and towering like a tidal wave to come crashing through,… and in its wake there lay the answer, high and dry and unambiguous,… the knowledge that in leaving this place, I would be preserving only the bits of me I valued least, while abandoning everything I held most dear.
I could not reinvent myself somewhere else, any more than I could do it here. It did not matter that my life had brought me full circle. It would not have mattered if I had spent my entire life living in Arkwright Street, rising each morning of my forty two years from that same little room, or if by some quirk of fate I had ended up as the Prime Minister. I was not what I had done, or where I had been: I was who I was. And I was who I had loved.
Slowly, I became aware of a presence in the house and I looked up with a start to find Eleanor studying me through the kitchen door.
"Are you all right?" she asked, her brows knitting together with concern.
I wasn't sure. Seeing her like that had come as a shock - her long figure framed in the doorway, a pale, Pre-Raphaelite portrait, very still, yet as always somehow portentous. "I thought you'd gone."
"I just came to get some stuff,… and to give you y
our key."
I'd searched the house last night for something to hang onto, a forgotten earring, a handkerchief,… anything, but she'd swept away all trace of herself, scrubbed herself from the walls. There was no stuff, not even the slightest trace of her remaining. As for the key, she could have pushed it through the letter box. She was lying.
I said: "I thought we'd agreed to talk."
She gave me a warning look. "Don't start on that again. I was afraid if I didn't cut and run you'd win me round somehow."
If only I could have been so persuasive, I thought. "I hope we can stay in touch, that's all,… this seems so final, but I think I understand. You need space,… you need room to be who you are, without some idiot crowding you."
"What? What's that supposed to mean? Have you been reading trite self-help books, or something? And since when have you ever understood anything?"
Sarcasm, I thought,… not Eleanor's style. I didn't want her to walk out, so I found myself tiptoeing around her, speaking softly, as if she were a timid cat. "Your note. 'The only way to move on.' That's what you said. And it's okay, but please, just stay in touch."
She looked down at her clasped hands, and opened them slowly to reveal the screwed up remains of the note. "You read it, then?"
"Of course I read it." I was puzzled and my tiptoeing came to an abrupt end. "This isn't about the key, is it? Or your stuff. You just came back for the note."
She bit her lip and flushed red.
"I don't get it, Eleanor."
She turned away and folded her arms over her stomach, her body bent slightly as if in pain, then she gave me a look,… incredulous, bewildered. "You read it, and you still don't get it?"
"Is this about the other night?"
"What?"
"You know what I mean,… in the bathroom. Can't we just forget it? It's not important,… "
She shook her head, exasperated now. "It's got nothing to do with that."
"But what else is there?"
She parted her lips to speak, then changed her mind and instead she balled the note up and threw it at me. "Is it really so unlikely to you that you can't see it?… even when its spelled out?"
She made to leave. I caught the note as she passed, caught her scent and the soft whip of her hair on my face. I reached out to take her gently by the elbow, but at the slightest touch she spun round violently so that we faced each other. She was wild eyed, her nose flared with anger.
"Eleanor what is it?"
"Just let it drop. Let me go." She sounded brisk, dismissive,…
"Can it really be as bad as all that?"
"Just stop it!"
"What?"
"You're doing it again,… being nice,… and reasonable,… and calm. And, it won't work."
"I want to help. You've done so much for me. Now it's my turn."
"It's beyond helping. There's nothing you can do."
A thought struck me and I turned cold, my body gripped by a sudden spasm of terror. "You're not,… ill are you? Eleanor, please! Don't shut me out, I want to know."
Finally then she closed her eyes and took a deep breath, smiling to herself. "No," she said. "Not ill." Then she looked at me, a hint of tenderness dulling the fire. "I'm in love with you, that’s all."
It hit me square between the eyes and I lowered myself to the table unsteadily, my hands not feeling the wood even though they were pressed flat against it. Then I found myself unscrewing the note, smoothing it flat.
"The only way for us to move on. Love Eleanor." No comma between the word love and the word Eleanor! It was such a little thing, yet it changed the meaning entirely. The only way for us to move on was not for her to go, but for me to love her. But I didn't, and knowing that, defeated by the hopelessness of it, as I had been with Rachel so long ago,… she'd gone.
It was true. She was in love with me. It was the reason we could not go on being together as friends, for how could she have sunk herself into my careless proximity feeling the way she did, while I pursued dreams of love elsewhere. I understood it all perfectly now and I felt sick to the stomach with my stupidity. All that time! All the morbid emotion of my youth! I'd showered her in it, drenched her in it, but worse was the thought that I'd dragged her the length of the country in search of an unrequited love for someone else, when all along everything I had ever felt for Rachel, Eleanor felt for me.
While I was sitting there, absorbing this, Eleanor took off her coat and began making a pot of tea, her emotion hidden in the familiar ritual. It was out now, the whole of it filling the air between us, a tangled and unwieldy mess. But it was something,… I emerged from my daze, to see her pouring water into the pot.
"How long?" I asked.
She set the kettle down gently, without a sound. "Always," she said. "Isn't that the way with these things,… all or nothing and both amounting to pretty much the same in the end?"
"You could have said something."
"How could I? No. I would never have said anything,.. not while you were with Annie, and not while Jack was alive,… Never. Ever."
"Okay, I believe that. But afterwards,… "
She leaned heavily against the counter and shook out her hair so that it fell about her waist. It had lost its shine, its fluid energy, its flatness mirroring the sadness in her eyes. "Tell me when it would have right." she said. "How many days after we'd buried your father would it have been right? A week? A month? A year? Tell me when anything I might have said to you would not have sounded indecent. That's why I came back for the note. At first I thought I should tell you, in the same way you felt you should tell Rachel,… but then, last night I got to thinking it couldn't do either of us any good, that it was unfair of me because it was too late anyway."
"Too late?"
"You have Rachel. Your dream has come true. I didn't mean for any of this to come out. Knowing how I feel could only make you feel bad. Well,… doesn't it? You don't exactly look as if it makes you feel great."
I was numb, not entirely in control of my words. "Rachel and me,… . that was bound to pass,… "
"What? You're saying it's over already?"
"I don't know,… I feel it won't last,… can't last. Rachel's life is her job. It's been that way since Norwich. I'm never going to fit into all that."
"It wasn't bound to pass at all - she couldn't get enough of you. You're letting her go! How can you? She's something you've dreamed of your whole life! You can’t let her go!"
"Like you said, I'm some bloke she's just met. Maybe in time, she could love me, but we'll never have that time. She's already talking about moving to Korea with her job."
"Then go with her. You'll find a way if it's what you truly want!"
"But is it? I've thought about it and the way I see it, after all this time, the best we can hope to be is lovers off and on, and that's only half a relationship isn't it? And if all I'd wanted was a lover, I could have stuck with Carol. It's not enough, Eleanor. She's never going to want to simply be with me, is she?"
"Then, let her go." She gave a sigh,… impatient, confused.
All I could do was gaze at her, amazed and feeling absurdly warm inside. I was forty two years old and this was the first time a woman had ever told me that she loved me, that she was profoundly, deeply, in love with me.
"Eleanor,… Eleanor,… "
"Don't, Tom. Don't look at me like that. We're neither of us teenagers. We both know there can be no happy ending here."
"Why not? Eleanor, stay on with me for a bit. Surely you don't mean to live with Phil. That place of his will drive you crazy!"
She, brought the cups to the table and sat down. "You're forgetting. I'm already crazy,… and you still don't know what you're asking, Tom."
"Just for a little while."
"Not even for a minute. It's killing me to be near you. You of all people should know how it feels."
"But,… it needn't be like that. Things can be,… different between us."
"Tom, I'm sorry it hasn't worked out
with Rachel, but really it makes no difference. We're the same you and I - both of us in love for such a long time. And if Rachel can't be with you even knowing how much you love her, how am I supposed to believe you can ever want to be with me? It's the same thing and there's no future in either."
"It's not the same at all. I've known you for years."
"Not as a lover."
"Better than that. I've been closer to you than with any woman."
"I know. And that just makes it worse. I know you love me very much. But Tom, you are not in love with me."
She clasped her arms against her body, and rose, avoiding my gaze, shaking her head, refusing, denying, shutting me out. Then she gathered up her coat, and made to leave.
"Please don't go. Give me time,… give me a chance,… a chance to be,… in love,… with you. We can move on from this, I know we can."
She leaned over and kissed the top of my head, as she might have kissed a child in parting. "Goodbye Tom," she said, and then she walked out.
"It can't end like this," I called after her. "And you can't want it to either,… . or you wouldn't have written that note."
But she'd gone, and there was only the sound of door clicking shut, so cool, so controlled, and there came a sense once more of the emptiness of the house.
I remembered a girl breaking up with me once. She was small and pretty, with long auburn hair and a soft round body. I'd wanted sex and companionship, with an end game of marriage and children. She'd wanted sex and fun,… sex and fun. Incompatible differences,… a break-up inevitable. I'd come home, fresh from her parting words, her tears still wet upon my collar, and I'd set about disposing of the usual reminders; the old birthday cards, the sweater, the photographs, then gone to bed in the middle of the day and tried to sleep away the heartache as if it were no more than a hangover.
The Road From Langholm Avenue Page 27