Mix Tape

by Jane Sanderson

  He stayed the night on Crazy Diamond, but might as well have driven through the night for all the rest he got. His internal clock was screwed, and it turned out exhaustion alone wasn’t enough to make a man sleep. At 3 a.m. he rang Duncan – God bless Duncan – who answered on the second ring.

  ‘Dan Lawrence, I’m missing you, pal, but is this call costing me?’

  Dan laughed, feeling a little better already at the sound of his friend’s voice. ‘I’m in London, you tight bastard,’ he said. ‘I’m on the boat sharing a single bed with a dog that snores.’

  ‘You’re back?’ Duncan was confused. ‘That went quick.’

  ‘Not for me, Dunc, it’s been a bit torrid.’

  ‘What has? What’s gone down?’

  ‘I …’ He stopped, because he didn’t know how to start. ‘Look, I’m coming home tomorrow. Let’s talk then over a pint, at Gordon’s.’

  ‘You OK, Dan? I can come down if you like, travel back with you?’

  Sweet guy, a good friend. Once again, Dan thanked the heavens and Cathay Pacific for bringing him home to safety and sanity. ‘No, no, I’ll get an early train, and I’ve got McCulloch to talk to.’

  ‘Well, take it easy, travel safe,’ Duncan said, not convinced. Phone calls in the wee small hours weren’t Dan’s style, and despite the quip, he sounded sad, unmistakably sad, and that wasn’t Dan’s style either. ‘Text me when you’re back. I’ll be right there.’

  ‘Thanks, mate,’ Dan said, and he hung up. He closed his eyes, because staring at the ceiling made him think of Alison, but then she filled his head anyway, finding a way in, like light seeping under a door. He knew he couldn’t hold on to the anger for much longer, and he dreaded it leaving him, because anger was his only defence.

  Back in Stockbridge, it felt like there was no better place on earth. At the pub, Gordon Fuller was his habitual inscrutable self, pulling two pints of heavy for Dan and Duncan without a smile, just a cursory nod as he put them down on the bar, but Dan was seeing comfort and balm in every drab detail of his home town, and Gordon’s impassive face was exactly what he’d expected, even hoped for. John Coltrane was on the sound system playing moody blues, and the pub was only sparsely populated, so they had their pick of tables, but they went straight to their quiz-night corner anyway, without discussion, and sat together on the wooden settle where Katelin and Rose-Ann usually put themselves. There was something about it that nurtured confidences – it always worked on the girls – and now Dan found it a blessed relief to tell Duncan his tale, which he recounted in compelling detail, from the Sheffield beginnings to the infinite sadness of their last day. It took a long time, and when Dan finished, Duncan hesitated then said, ‘I must say, I wish you’d consulted me, I think you overdid it with three Nick Drakes, and, also, what about “Sunshine Superman”? Did you not think about that? Missed a trick there. All the lassies love Donovan.’

  Dan looked at him, aghast. ‘Is that all you have to say? My song choices were slightly off?’

  ‘No, no, no,’ Duncan said, realising what he’d just done. ‘It’s not all I have to say, not at all, it’s just the songs are the best part of the story, awesome – I mean, God, it’s what they were written for.’

  ‘Dunc, it’s not just a story, mate. It happened, and it happened to me, and it only just happened, right?’

  ‘Aye, I know,’ Duncan said, ‘I know.’ He took a sip of beer, then he whistled through his teeth and said, ‘You kept a lot to yourself, pal, these past few months.’

  ‘I did, I’m sorry.’

  ‘I spilled my guts to you about Lindsay, and all the while you were pining for your first girlfriend and sending love songs to Adelaide?’

  ‘Well, hang on, I never judged you for falling for Lindsay.’

  ‘No, but I still felt like the bad guy, and if you’d said you were looking elsewhere yourself … well, it would’ve made a difference.’

  Dan said, ‘I wasn’t looking. It just happened.’

  ‘Yeah, right, you and me both.’

  ‘Well, OK, but it felt different. Maybe I was in denial for weeks on end, but I didn’t think you could have an affair with someone when they’re ten thousand miles away, and all you’re doing is swapping songs.’

  ‘Aye, well, that was an error for a kick-off, music being the food of love and all that.’

  Dan laughed grimly. ‘You got that right. I should never have gone over there. I should’ve kept her as a fantasy, the one that got away, because we went from heaven to hell in no time flat.’

  ‘Aye, it sounds rough.’

  ‘I can’t understand why she caved in so spectacularly. She just lost all that … oh, all that strength and faith. One minute we were together in Sheila’s spare room, the next we were staring at each other like boxers in our fucking corners, from opposite sides of the living room.’

  ‘You were in bed when he showed up?’

  Dan shuddered. ‘No, we were just sitting there, listening to music.’

  ‘What music?’

  ‘Bunnymen.’

  ‘Crocodiles?’

  Dan nodded and Duncan said, ‘Class.’

  ‘Y’see,’ Dan said, pointing at him. ‘You’re doing it again, getting sidetracked by the sodding music.’

  ‘Sorry.’ He took a long drink, emptying his glass, then put it down and said, ‘No, I’m not getting sidetracked, though, because the music’s central, isn’t it? It was the music that took you places, melted your hearts and all that, and I bet that’s what she’ll be doing now, listening to the songs you sent her, thinking about you, because you started it, and you bloody nailed it, sending her “Pump It Up”, and it’s not even a love song. I’m jealous. I wish I’d done it.’

  He got up to fetch a couple more pints, and Dan thought about Alison, listening to his songs. Was she? He’d had an idea that she might have deleted the lot, cleared their thread of music so that her phone was innocent, the trail gone cold. But then, she was still sending songs. Well, she’d sent two – there’d been none since yesterday – but two stellar choices, the sort of choices that, if he’d allowed himself to listen and reimagine those lyrics as a message from Alison, he’d have had to concede, again, that she was the woman for him, and that this was love of a rare and exceptional kind … except there was the unassailable fact, wasn’t there, of her hasty retreat?

  ‘She ditched me though,’ Dan said, as soon as Duncan approached the table. ‘The second her husband was in the picture, she ditched me.’

  Duncan pulled a face, shook his head. ‘Well, be fair,’ he said. ‘What would you have done if it’d been Katelin who stormed in?’

  Dan answered at once. ‘Held my ground. I certainly wouldn’t have done what Alison did.’

  ‘Yeah, you would,’ Duncan said. ‘You’d have done just the same. You’d have run downstairs and out the door like your arse was on fire. It’s human nature.’

  Dan stared at his friend, wordless. Duncan had misjudged him, because Dan knew with unqualified certainty that he would never, under any circumstances, have done to Alison what she did to him. If Katelin had turned up instead of Michael, he would’ve stood at Ali’s side and faced the wrath, absolutely and undoubtedly, and more fool him, because twice now she had made him fall in love with her then abandoned him, and he loved her still, and probably always would, and she seemed to be trying to tell him through music that she loved him too, but he had no faith now in her love, or her songs.

  ‘Do not say that,’ he said to Duncan. ‘Do not say I’d do as she did. Don’t even think it.’ His friend nodded, uncomfortably. Dan’s expression was bleak and dark. ‘I wouldn’t have bolted, because I love her too much,’ he said.

  ‘Right,’ Duncan said. ‘Well, OK.’ He could hear the suffering and the conviction so clearly now, and he regretted his earlier tone, too blokey, too jocular.

  ‘I love her, and she doesn’t love me, and it’s over.’

  Duncan pondered this statement for a moment, and wondered if it might not b
e best for Dan to hold on to that thought: best for Katelin, best for himself, too, if it kept Dan here in Stockbridge. But then he said, ‘You don’t know that.’

  Dan said, ‘I do. I think it’s pretty self-evident.’

  ‘Well, I don’t,’ Duncan said. ‘Think about what you’ve told me. You said Alison has this blighted past, and then McCormack swept her away from it like Sir Galahad, so, who knows, she might feel a lifelong debt of gratitude to him?’

  Dan thought about this, and it had a ring of truth about it.

  ‘She might have felt she had no choice,’ Duncan went on. ‘She might not be as strong as you, but it doesn’t necessarily mean she loves you less.’

  He sat back in his chair, and looked at Dan with compassion. He believed he’d never suffered for any woman what Dan seemed to be suffering now, and he was gratified when his friend said, ‘Yeah, maybe. Thanks, mate.’

  It was small comfort, thought Dan, but perhaps Duncan was right. Perhaps, in the terrible heightened stress of that confrontation, Ali had cleaved to her husband from a sense of obligation, not love. Perhaps she was suffering too. Perhaps she was consumed by regret. Perhaps she was listening right now to Rory Gallagher or John Martyn and remembering Dan’s mouth all over her body.

  Then the screen of his phone lit up on the table and Duncan tilted his head to check it out. ‘She’s come to join us,’ he said.

  Dan looked at the screen. Ali Connor sent you a message.

  ‘C’mon.’ Duncan pushed the phone to Dan. ‘Let’s see what it is.’

  Dan picked it up and opened the link, privately at first, to decide if he felt like sharing. Then, ‘Joni Mitchell,’ he said. ‘“A Case Of You”.’

  Duncan said, ‘What a song,’ but Dan only switched the phone off and put it down. They’d listened to Blue on that long drive north; she was educating him, she’d said; weaning him off guys with electric guitars. ‘You are in my blood, like holy wine.’ How could he ever listen to that song again, and not break down from the loss of her? He looked at his friend, and Duncan waited.

  ‘I’m trying to harden my heart,’ Dan said. ‘I thought I was doing great, but I was fooling myself. It’s like trying to shake off my own shadow.’

  They were silent for a while, then Duncan said, ‘So, you were going to leave Katelin?’

  Such a simple question. Appalling in its simplicity. Leave Katelin. Leave his life partner, as if it was no bigger deal than getting off one bus, jumping on to another. Well, yes, in Australia it had seemed that easy. More than that, it’d seemed like the only thing to do, as if his life, his fate, was being adjusted by a higher authority. And there was Sheila, driving him all the way to Adelaide airport, telling him his principal duty was to his own heart. And there was Alison, beautiful, vulnerable, complex, incomparable. She’d sung to him in the car, too; sung ‘Chelsea Morning’, another Joni song he hadn’t known, but God, it was one of the defining moments of his life, South Australia outside the car window, Alison Connor beside him, Joni Mitchell’s poetry, Alison’s voice. Alison.

  Duncan, bringing him back to the present, still waiting for an answer, said, ‘So?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Dan said. ‘I was going to leave Katelin.’

  In early March the women flew back to Edinburgh from London, so there was no reunion on the platform of Waverley Station, instead they shared a cab home and it dropped off Rose-Ann in New Town then continued down to Stockbridge with Katelin. Dan hadn’t known how he’d feel when he saw her, or if she’d sense a change in him, but it turned out she was too full of her trip to notice that Dan might be more subdued than she’d expect. She was lightly freckled, very talkative, a little plumper than before – Desperate Dan portions, she said – and she wore an LA Lakers baseball cap with her red hair swinging out of the back of it in a ponytail, like a cheerleader on match day. She was golden with sunshine, effervescent; the adventure had done her good, she said. She was ready for a break from Rose-Ann, mind you, but they’d had an amazing time together, amazing. ‘She overthinks,’ Katelin said when they were in the house. ‘That’s all I’d say. She overthinks every decision, weighs up the pros and cons until you can hardly remember what it was you’re meant to be deciding. And she had a lot to say about Duncan’s transgression: we chewed that one over all the way from JFK to Cincinnati.’

  ‘What! That’s got to be seven hundred miles,’ Dan said. He was making her a pot of tea, which she said would be the first decent cuppa since she’d left home, it was all coffee in the States, disgusting coffee that sat all day on a hotplate, no wonder the refills were free, or Lipton’s Yellow Label tea dunked in a mug of lukewarm water. Chat, chat, chat; she was so wired, thought Dan, but jet lag could have that effect, stringing you along with a strange, chemical energy. Or it could sense your own profound unhappiness and drag you down further into a miserable limbo. Perhaps, he thought, jet lag simply adapts itself to match your own state of mind.

  ‘Yeah, no idea how many miles it was,’ Katelin said, chatting on. ‘But it was twelve hours’ driving and I’d say the conversation might have gone on to last longer than his affair did, but I said to her, I said, can we stop talking about Duncan when we cross the Cincinnati line, and she said, “Oh my gosh, Katelin, I am so sorry, I’m talking a blue streak here and you’ve been so patient.”’ This was a perfect impersonation of Rose-Ann’s West Coast drawl, and Dan laughed.

  They sat down on the kitchen sofa, McCulloch curled between them, and Katelin talked on, about the hillbilly with a rifle who pinged a bullet off their moving car in New Mexico, and the hitchhiker who paid for a lift to Austin by reading their palms. Rose-Ann’s money lines were many, deep and clear, he’d told them.

  ‘Sounds about right,’ said Dan. ‘And what about you?’

  ‘High energy, short temper, ambitious to a degree, apparently. I have fire hands, which basically means my fingers are a bit stubby.’

  ‘I never noticed that,’ Dan said, picking up one of her hands. ‘But now you mention it …’

  She laughed, and cuffed him round the ear. ‘All the better for hitting you with,’ she said. ‘Rose-Ann has water hands. They’re lovely, her hands, long fingers and oval nails, pianist’s hands.’

  ‘But she doesn’t play the piano.’

  ‘I know, but she could.’

  Dan said, ‘I’ve never wanted to know my future.’

  ‘It’s not really about the future, according to Devin.’

  ‘Devon?’

  ‘Dev-IN,’ Katelin said. ‘The guy we picked up. And the lifeline doesn’t tell you how long you’re going to live, that’s a big mistake we all make. Devin said it just indicates what kind of life you might lead, your vitality and vigour, y’know? C’mere.’ She grabbed his right hand, spreading it out flat before her, and traced the arc of the line that ran from the edge of his palm above the thumb to the base of his wrist. ‘Your lifeline,’ she said, with a certain amount of triumph, as though she might not have expected him to have one; then, dipping closer for a better look, ‘Oooh, see, it’s a double line, that’s rare, that is. Devin has one, he showed us his.’

  ‘I bet he did,’ Dan said. ‘I’m not happy about you picking up stray men on the road. Have you never seen The Hitcher?’

  ‘It means you either met your soulmate, or you’re leading a double life. Which is it?’

  ‘What?’ Dan said.

  ‘I reckon it’s the soulmate thing,’ Katelin said. ‘I’d know if you were a bigamist. There’d be less washing in the basket, for a start.’

  ‘Y’know what?’ Dan said, pulling his hand away. ‘That’s enough of your blarney.’

  Katelin yawned, very suddenly, and said, ‘Jesus, I think I could sleep for a week. I’d love a bath, then I want to fall asleep in front of a film.’ The way she said ‘film’ as if she was trying to squeeze an extra syllable from the word: it was one of the things he’d fallen for, that Irish accent. Katelin Kelly, never, ever Kate – woe betide you if you made that mistake. She had an awkward streak all
right, strong-minded and stroppy; what a handful his mother had thought her, so unbiddable and contrary. Katelin hadn’t wanted children, then she changed her mind but only wanted one, and from the start she’d scoffed at the idea of marriage and wanted always and for ever to be together only by choice. A major upset, she’d caused, in both families, but Dan had admired her immensely, thought her brave and bold and original. And now, as he kissed her on the cheek and got up to run a bath for her, he wondered, could she honour that freedom to choose, if he told her he loved her still, but loved another woman more, and differently? Not a chance. The guarantee on that arrangement had expired a long time ago.

  ‘Oh!’ she called out as he left the room. ‘I haven’t asked you about Hong Kong.’

  ‘Ah, that was work,’ he said, ‘it can wait,’ and his tread was slow on the stairs, and heavy. He felt oddly disappointed, as if Katelin had let him down, just by being herself.

  Two days after she came home, he told her everything. There was no need, she suspected nothing, and almost certainly it was a selfish impulse, a way of making his relationship with Alison feel real, putting it out there in the world as a fact, so that he knew it wasn’t just a fantasy. Oh, he told himself that by telling the truth he was being respectful to Katelin, being open and honest, but it wasn’t that, he’d kept many secrets from her over the past thirty years: flirtations, semi-flings, a short dalliance years ago with cocaine, a current pot habit that was more regular than she realised. He hoped she’d kept a few secrets from him too, really he did, everyone was entitled to small bouts of bad behaviour, and if she’d parried with a story about how she’d had sex on the beach in Santa Monica, he’d have felt nothing but relief. But she didn’t. She just sat very still on the edge of their bed, and he watched all the newly acquired colour drain from her face as he told her, as gently as he could, that he’d fallen in love with Alison Connor, but it was over now.

  ‘The woman who wrote that book?’ Katelin asked, bewildered but at the same time feeling she’d known all along. Dan nodded.