‘Well,’ she said in a voice that indicated this discussion was ending, ‘if I’ve seemed distant and remote, I’m sorry for it. But look, I’m dealing with it.’
‘By running away.’
‘To Quorn, not to the moon! And only for a few days.’
‘Ali, you’re the absolute cornerstone of my happiness.’
‘Michael …’
‘You’re all I want, all I need.’
Well, she thought, that’s you sorted then; but what about me? She didn’t say this, of course, she only raised herself up on her toes and kissed him, a Judas kiss, and said, ‘Chill out, honey, I’ll be back by Friday.’
The moment she left, she rang Cass from the car, told her everything, because she needed to tell someone the absolute truth, even if that person had fewer scruples than anyone she knew. Still, it was a relief to spill the whole story, and Cass listened intently until Ali said, ‘So that’s it, and now he’s waiting for me in Rundle Street and I just told a whole heap of lies to get a few days clear.’
‘Join the club, darling. Or rather, join the waiting list, the club’s oversubscribed. Damn, though, I knew it! Didn’t I know it?’
‘Yeah, you knew it. But nothing’s happened yet. I could turn back, right now, with no harm done.’
‘Dan’s waiting for you at the Ex?’
‘He is, yeah.’
‘And how does that make you feel?’
‘Incredibly happy.’
‘Then you have to follow this through. I’m not ill-wishing Michael, but this is about you.’
‘It’s also about betrayal.’
‘Yeah, if you want to get all biblical.’
‘Not just Michael, the girls too.’
‘Oh, bullshit, Ali, the girls are young adults, with lives of their own.’
‘Yeah,’ Ali said. ‘But they’d never forgive me.’
‘They would. Of course they would. You’re a captive bird, Ali, you have been ever since I met you, and this guy came over here from Edinburgh and opened the cage door for you.’
‘But just pleasing myself … I don’t know, it’s not me, it’s not my style, causing pain.’
Cass sighed. ‘Y’know, Ali, loss of reputation can be liberating, once you let go of the person you think everyone wants you to be. Trust me, I know what I’m talking about. Follow this through, and see where it takes you.’
‘Look, I gotta hang up,’ Ali said, and she did, because she was in Rundle Street and could see Dan waiting further down, on the kerb outside the Ex, in faded blue shorts, khaki T-shirt, a grey canvas holdall slung over one shoulder. All that doubt, all those qualms, and yet the sight of him made her heart leap. He reminded her of his younger self, waiting for her at a bus stop, but not watching for her, just standing where he said he’d be, and reading the NME until she showed up. He was listening to music, and seemed completely relaxed, didn’t even appear to be checking out the drivers of the cars that had passed him already, and when she pulled up in front of him, he jumped slightly, as if he’d forgotten why he was there. He pulled out the buds, opened the passenger door, grinned at her and said, ‘Hey,’ then slung his bag into the back and got in. Incredible. Daniel Lawrence was in her car, and they were driving north to Sheila’s. And yes, she thought, this was betrayal and the world beyond Cass might judge her harshly. But it was also an avowal of the unspoken pact she’d once had with Daniel, so wasn’t there some integrity about that? Wasn’t there a truth?
He leaned forward and kissed her, once on the lips, again on the cheek, then sat back, strapped in and smiled. ‘All good?’ he asked.
‘A-OK,’ she said.
He didn’t ask how she’d arranged this trip, what hoops she’d jumped through, what lies she’d told, just as he didn’t share the cock-and-bull story he’d told Katelin an hour ago when she wanted to know what he thought of Hong Kong Island because that’s where he’d said he was. Perhaps it was because she was happily absorbed by her own adventure, her trans-America drive, but she was helpfully incurious about the full details of his trip, bursting with her own stories about people and places. Dan was happy for her. He’d have to find a way to forgive her for not planning to stop in Nashville on the way through Tennessee, but Austin was on their radar, so that was something. And – as she kept saying – this was her road trip, not his. Too right, darling, Dan had thought, and this is my road trip, not yours.
‘So, where you taking me?’ he said now to Ali.
‘Wait and see,’ she said. She pulled out into the traffic and moved smoothly down the street. ‘You look after the music, I’ll watch the road.’
‘Did you like John Martyn last night, by the way?’
‘Loved it. Play me some more.’
‘You watch the road,’ he said, ‘and I’ll choose the music.’
She laughed and he studied her for a moment, then said, ‘Alison Connor, how good it is to see you.’
Her gaze was straight ahead, and she didn’t turn to look at him. ‘I’ve been working my way back to you, babe,’ she said, speaking in lyrics, as if all of life was a song.
23
QUORN,
4 FEBRUARY 2013
There was no one in at Sheila and Dora’s little house; in fact all of Quorn seemed utterly deserted. Wide empty streets, blazing blue sky, frontier architecture – it all looked strange and wonderful to Dan, and emphatically far from home. He’d switched off his phone hours ago, to hold back the intrusions of his world; then he’d slipped willingly through a narrow gap in space and time to be here in the back of beyond with Alison Connor. All the way from Adelaide he’d kept glancing across, checking her profile, and finding excuses to touch her. If someone had told him she wasn’t really there, he wouldn’t have been surprised. Devastated, but not surprised.
Sheila’s fat stone Buddha looked happy to see them, but Ali ignored his smile, just tipped him up, and there was the promised key – but they’d have broken in anyway if it hadn’t been there; they’d have smashed a window or battered down the door, because four hours of proximity in the car had them at a kind of fever pitch, and they both knew that until they’d had their fill of each other, they couldn’t speak another word. She unlocked the door and in they went; then she kicked it shut with her foot, dropped her bag, leaned against the wall and stared at him. Wordlessly, he came at her, kissing her mouth, her face, her neck, and she hung on to him, responding with the same furious passion. She moved to the stairs, pulling him with her, and they stumbled up to the prayer-flag room where the window was propped open, though there was no relief from the heat, no breeze at all, and the flags above their heads might have been painted on the walls, they were so still. Dan and Ali fell on to the sleeping mat, half laughing, half crazed, tearing off their inconvenient clothes without ceremony or erotic ritual; they simply flung themselves at each other, and if they should’ve been solemnly honouring their teenage selves – remembering the first time, remembering the last – they absolutely didn’t, not for a second. She’d wondered, in the car – worried, truth be told – if, when this moment came, there might be awkwardness, or self-consciousness, an awareness of their bodies that in youth were so effortlessly, casually lovely. But then, in the end, all that mattered was here and now: this delirium, the heat and damp, this flood of feeling; they claimed each other with a kind of desperate, selfish urgency, and when at last they fell away, they lay quiet for a while, slightly stunned, face to face, inhaling each other’s exhaled breath while their heartbeats calmed to an ordinary rhythm.
‘Alison,’ he said, ‘Alison, Alison, Alison,’ stroking her hair, her back.
She lay in his arms and felt like lost treasure, found again. It was such a long time, such a long, long time, since sex had felt like anything other than a kindness to a person she cared about, an act of generosity to clear the air, to keep things on an even keel. Desire such as this … oh, it belonged to the past, but she remembered it, she did, she remembered the drama of it, the heat and passion, the exquisite longing
; it was exhilarating, life-enhancing, empowering. She kissed him and kissed him and he laughed and kissed her back and then, when she’d calmed herself and gathered her wits, she stood up, entirely unselfconscious now under his gaze, and walked to the door, on the back of which hung an old satin kimono, as red as the rising sun. She unhooked it from the peg, and turned around. He was watching her every move; watched her slip into the gown, tie the broad silk sash.
It felt cool against her skin, and light as air.
They stared at each other, stunned by the miracle of being alone together in this room, then he said, ‘You look like a very dishevelled and sexy geisha in that. Where you going?’
‘Downstairs for a drink of water. Want to come?’
‘You bet.’ He stood up and pulled on his shorts and T-shirt, and followed her downstairs. ‘Where are we, exactly?’ he said, looking about him at the peculiar furniture that crowded the living room.
‘I told you, it’s Sheila’s house, she lives here with Dora, who used to be a train driver on the Pichi Richi Railway, but now she’s just a nomad, like Sheila.’
‘The what?’
‘Steam train, named after the Pichi Richi Pass. Long story.’
Dan sat down cross-legged on the wide green sofa and patted the space next to him, so she handed him a glass of water and sat down too. She felt completely comfortable with him, completely at home in every possible way, and then he seemed to read her mind because he said, ‘You know that Bill Withers song “Can We Pretend”? That’s how I feel. Like there was no yesterday, like all those years away from you never happened.’
She rested her head on his shoulder and didn’t reply, because she didn’t wish to articulate her thoughts, didn’t wish to reflect upon the life she might have had with Daniel, the life she’d felt compelled to let go, and it wasn’t exactly that she regretted the years she’d spent being married to Michael – how could she, when they’d made such a life together and Thea and Stella, those glorious girls, were the result of their union? It was more that when she considered Daniel as a flesh-and-blood possibility, she experienced a kind of unease that came from knowing she would be happier still with him, happier than she’d been with Michael, her loving husband, their daughters’ loving father. She hadn’t fully realised, until she saw Dan again, that there was a different kind of love waiting for her, and that, in some essential, deep-seated way, it completed her. She knew this. She did. He’d turned up in Adelaide and reduced her to a romantic cliché, made her heart race and her spirits soar, and when she looked into his eyes she recognised a kindred soul, her Sheffield boy, and it wasn’t just nostalgia, although that was part of it too; but no, it wasn’t just nostalgia: it was an absolute certainty that this was meant to be, that the stars were aligned when she and Dan were together. She considered this now, and it made her melancholy, made her face the reality of this life she hadn’t lived, which was presented to her now as a possibility for the future, amid all the complications and commitments of her real world, her chosen path, her beloved family. Pain and joy, joy and pain, promised in equal measure, indivisible.
They drank their water, and leaned together, and for a while they were silent, alone with their thoughts, then he said, ‘So, talk to me about Sheila,’ and Ali told him about Catherine’s oldest friend, who had sailed to Australia on an assisted passage and made a new life for herself here just as the sixties tipped over into the seventies. ‘Did you miss her, when she left?’ Dan asked, and Ali said no, not at all, because she hadn’t known her; Sheila used to live in Liverpool, but she’d written to Catherine after she emigrated, brilliant, dazzling letters, full of incident and sunshine.
‘Catherine didn’t care about Sheila by then, but Sheila kept writing because she didn’t know what Catherine was like, and she hoped she would follow her out there, to Elizabeth, because she was all evangelical about it.’
‘Elizabeth?’
‘It’s where she used to live when she first came. It’s north of Adelaide. There was industry there, and lots of northerners migrated to work at the car plant.’
Dan said, ‘You’d think the last thing they’d want on the other side of the world would be to trade one shithole job for another. You’d think they’d want to try something new.’
‘Oh well, it was new all right – the heat and the parrots and the roos: that’s what Sheila used to write home about. But people did what they knew for a living. Cornish tin miners came to work the copper mines, Welsh sheep farmers came to run sheep stations, and folk from the industrial north sniffed out the muck and toil and noise.’
‘Hey, you’re losing your Aussie accent,’ he said, and she laughed and gave him a shove; then he said, ‘And what about you? You didn’t come for the tin or the sheep or the cars. Why did you come here, and stay for ever?’
She turned, and looked at him steadily. ‘Honestly? Because I felt completely safe in Adelaide.’
There was a beat of silence; then he said, ‘And why didn’t you feel safe in Sheffield?’ He was shocked. Hadn’t he made her feel safe? Hadn’t he been enough? Certainly she’d been enough for him. He’d had to rewrite his future when she left him, and that’s not easy when you’re eighteen and heartsick.
‘I wasn’t safe in Sheffield,’ she said. ‘I thought I could stay safe, but I couldn’t. I protected you from all the parts of my life I was ashamed of, and they were legion. I was steeped in shame and you didn’t know any of it.’ She glanced at him, saw his face, and said, ‘Oh, don’t be thinking you let me down somehow. Don’t think that for a moment. You were my refuge, you and your family, but in the end, I had to go. At least, I felt then that I had to go. I don’t know if it was the right thing to do, if the braver choice would’ve been to stay, but I ran away, and this is where you find me, still here.’
She was looking down now, her head too low for him to see her expression. He could see she was taking long, slow, steadying breaths. He took the half-finished glass of water from her hand and placed it on the floor; then he lifted the curtain of hair that hid her face and said, ‘Hey, look at me, darling.’
She shook her head. ‘I’m going to tell you everything,’ she said, ‘but I can’t look at you while I speak,’ so Dan sat back and waited. He wondered how – and if – he could help her, and decided he should simply be patient, so he let his mind drift as he stared across the small room at the alien world outside the window. In the boughs of a small fruit tree there was a posse of parrots with Day-Glo crests, and they were squawking fit to burst, a terrible cacophony that made him think of Brian Johnson screaming out the lyrics in one of those thundering AC/DC tracks. He thought: This girl grew up with sparrows, and the occasional robin for a splash of colour. Imagine waking each morning to a flag-cracking yellow sun and a heavy metal dawn chorus? He closed his eyes and tried to remember the lyrics to ‘Back In Black’, something about hitting the sack and being glad to be back, but he couldn’t get there, he’d never been much of a headbanger, but then she started to speak, and he listened to a story that was unthinkable, about a world he hadn’t known existed. Catherine, Martin Baxter, Peter, and there among them Alison, trying to cope, trying to be strong in the bleak and increasingly messy melee of her domestic life. Dan listened, shattered by this account of a dark and barely manageable life in Attercliffe, bitterly reproaching his younger self for never really pressing her for details, never trying hard enough to overcome her fierce privacy about home, always happy to simply meet her off the bus in Nether Edge, never picking her up, never taking her back to her door, never really questioning her vehemence that he shouldn’t do either of these things.
On she went beside him: the drunkenness, the chaos, the role Peter played as her ally and support, until his own shame drove him to attempt suicide. She told him about the scene at Brown Bayley’s, the photographs displayed there by Martin Baxter, how she’d torn them down, then gone home and had to cut Peter down from the light flex, and then had fled to his, Daniel’s, house, forgetting he’d be long gone t
o Manchester. Dan groaned, thinking of the hard time he’d given her only yesterday for missing the gig. But she wasn’t finished; she continued on in the same low, expressionless voice, as if she was reading a written account of someone else’s terrible history. Peter revealing the escape fund, urging her to get the hell out of Sheffield and be free. Her refusal; her confidence in her own ability to tough things out. And then Martin Baxter, fulfilling the menace and violence he’d always threatened, overpowering her, raping her, treating her with bottomless contempt, showing her just how weak and worthless she really was. Dan moaned with a kind of visceral pain, a futile agony that she’d borne this abominable assault and its consequences entirely alone, undefended, unprotected. Lovely, clever, talented, incomparable Alison Connor, thought Dan: his shining light.
‘There were two versions of me,’ she said. ‘Two Alisons, leading two separate lives. Peter and I, we cobbled together a kind of normality for each other, but it turned out to be built on sand. I was ashamed, always, of where I came from, who I came from. Catherine was a liability, an embarrassment, she was no mother, to me or to Peter. It was our job to try and look after her, and we had a father who upped and left us to our fate, probably started again with somebody more functioning, probably never gave me or Peter a thought—’ She stopped speaking suddenly, although it’d seemed she was about to go on; then, ‘That’s it,’ she said. ‘No more to tell.’
She allowed herself to drop sideways, away from him, until she was lying down, curled on her side like a sleeping child, although her eyes were open, wide and anxious, as if she’d forgotten how to shut them. He placed himself down in the narrow space alongside her and stroked her cheek. She hadn’t shed a tear; her face was stone.
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