‘Make sure you’re in a carriage with another woman,’ he advised, as we said our farewells at the barrier. I don’t think he’d set foot on a train since coming back from his National Service. As I opened my purse to show my ticket, he whipped out two ten-pound notes. ‘One for you and one for Christian,’ he said. ‘Give him our love.’ His lips skimmed my cheek. He still had hold of my overnight bag, which he’d insisted on carrying from the car, though it weighed next to nothing, and seemed unwilling to relinquish it.
‘Well . . . goodbye. Thank you for the money,’ I said, when I’d repossessed the bag. We were in plenty of time, and my seat was reserved, but the impulse to run for a train is almost overpowering. All around us people were in a hurry, rushing home from work and the city. This, and the mingled roar of arriving and departing trains echoing up into the great, blackened vaults above, seemed to infect me with the same sense of urgency, and my feet were almost twitching with impatience. But I remembered Thoreau, and with a great effort of will, sauntered the length of the platform, until I found my carriage, earning some curious looks from my fellow travellers, who nevertheless appeared to slow down slightly as they passed through my forcefield.
I gave Dad a last wave as I boarded, then the door slammed shut behind me and I thought, Yes! I’m alone. My seat was in a corner of a long carriage, with tables and a central aisle running the length of the train, and nowhere for Dad’s imagined predators to hide. I put my coat and case on the luggage rack and slid open the window ‘for ventilation without draughts’ as the notice advised, with splendid precision. I kept my handbag on the seat beside me to ward off other passengers. It contained everything I needed for the journey: purse, now twenty pounds fatter, palm-sized sketch pad, pencil, rubber and sharpener, The Mill on the Floss (the next volume on Penny’s reading list), and a Mars bar. There was something immensely comforting about a well-stocked handbag.
At the first tug of the train’s departure, I felt a sudden surge of euphoria that made my face break into a grin. To be setting off on a long-anticipated journey, with money in my purse, and everything good still to come: this was perfect happiness.
The Mill on the Floss and the sketch pad didn’t get a look in until Reading. For the first half-hour I just sat gazing out into the darkness in a daze of contentment. Then I remembered that I ought to be making more of the experience, so I went to the loo, and then the buffet car, where I bought a cup of tea to go with my Mars bar.
Somewhere outside Taunton, while I was struggling to keep my eyes open over The Mill on the Floss, because Penny was sure to ask how far I’d got with it, I noticed someone walking up the central aisle. I didn’t pay much attention, just enough to absorb that he was wearing a backpack and a Walkman, and holding an apple in his teeth. I put my head down for another assault on the long description of St Ogg’s, flicking through the pages in dismay to see how much I’d have to read before I hit on any dialogue, and gradually became aware that the person in the Walkman had stopped beside my table.
Damn. He’s after my spare seat, I thought, refusing to oblige him with eye contact, when he tapped me on the shoulder and said, ‘Esther?’
I gave a twitch of surprise, bringing up one knee and smacking it on the metal bracket underneath the table, so it was through watering eyes that I recognised the face of our former house-guest, and not-quite-cousin.
‘Donovan!’ I exclaimed in astonishment. ‘What are you doing here?’
Now that he’d taken the apple out of his mouth and I was looking at him properly I could see he hadn’t really changed at all: those surprising green-glass eyes were the same, but his features had lost that slightly pretty look they’d had in childhood. He was taller than Christian now, and just as broad – a fully grown bloke, in fact.
‘I thought it was you,’ he said, dumping my bag on the table and sliding into the seat beside me. A strong smell of cigarettes came off him as he sloughed off his backpack. He pulled down his headphones and there was a loud metallic guzz of synthesisers while he fumbled for the off switch. He glanced around. ‘Are you on your own?’
I nodded, nonchalantly. The seasoned traveller. ‘I’m going to Exeter to see Christian. He’s at the university.’
‘Oh, that’s nice. What’s he up to, then?’
‘I don’t really know. He never says. He’s studying maths and computers. I expect I’ll find out more this weekend.’
‘What about your mum and dad?’
‘They’re still the same. You know.’
‘Yes.’ He grinned at some memory, and then looked serious again. ‘They were very kind to me, and I never thanked them properly,’ he added. ‘Give them my love, won’t you?’
‘Of course.’
‘Actually, better not. It might eventually get back to Mum that you saw me. And then she’ll want to know where I was going.’
‘Where are you going?’
‘To visit a friend near Taunton. I’ve been staying with Dad and Suzie for half term. Mum thinks I’m still there.’ He took a bite of the apple.
‘Oh. Why mustn’t she know?’
‘Because she doesn’t approve,’ he said, in a world-weary tone. I wondered just how degenerate this friend would have to be to deserve the disapproval of someone like Aunty Barbara.
‘Is he a criminal?’ I asked.
‘It’s a she, actually,’ said Donovan. My eyebrows went up involuntarily. This put rather a different complexion on the matter. ‘Mum doesn’t like me seeing her, because she’s ten years older than me, she’s married and she’s my teacher.’
‘Ah.’ I didn’t know whether I was supposed to be sympathetic or shocked by this revelation, so instead I said, ‘How is your mum?’
‘She’s all right, actually. When she’s not moaning at me about something or other.’ He offered me the clean face of his apple, but I shook my head. ‘She had a cancer scare two years ago, and although it was really bad at the time, it seems to have completely cured her depression.’
Now I really was shocked. How could he mention his own mother and cancer – even a phantom cancer – in the same breath, with such composure. ‘But she’s okay now?’ I pleaded, faintly.
‘Oh yeah. It was nothing major. Just a dodgy mole. She has to keep out of the sun now. She just uses it as an excuse to wear ridiculous hats.’
I couldn’t help laughing at this, then felt guilty. ‘Does she still do acting?’ I asked.
Donovan shook his head. ‘Deep down I think she still dreams . . . But she has got a job. She does voice coaching at one of these private stage schools for performing brats. She seems to quite enjoy it.’
‘That’s good. Mum and Dad will be so pleased. Except I can’t tell them I bumped into you,’ I remembered.
‘No. If you wouldn’t mind.’ Having finished the apple, core and all, he brought out a packet of ham sandwiches from the backpack and offered me one. It looked rather unappetising: a few moist membranes of translucent gristle in greasy white bread, but I accepted to be friendly. When he had disposed of his half with a few bites, he produced a crushed packet of cigarettes and took one out, twirling it and tapping it on the table, and finally putting it in his mouth unlit. Several passengers, including myself, stiffened visibly. The carriage was a non-smoker.
‘It’s all right, I’m not going to light it,’ Donovan announced cheerfully to the company in general. ‘I bet you wish I’d never sat here now, don’t you?’ he said to me, grinning. I returned his smile but didn’t contradict him. ‘I nearly didn’t,’ he went on. ‘I had to walk up and down here a couple of times to check it was you because you always had your head in that book.’ He picked up The Mill on the Floss and started to read the blurb. ‘Is it any good?’
‘No,’ I replied. ‘It’s really dull. She’s supposed to be a literary genius – George Eliot’s a she.’ For this I was treated to a withering look. ‘Well, anyway,’ I went on, flustered. ‘I can’t get into it at all. It’s probably just me.’
Donovan opened the bo
ok and began to read, his forehead ploughed with concentration. After a minute or two, he slumped forward, snoring. ‘No, it’s not you. It’s completely turgid,’ he said, decisively, and before I could stop him he stood up and posted it through the open window, where it was instantly sucked away into the darkness.
He roared with laughter at my look of indignation. ‘You can’t do that,’ I protested. ‘That’s a Penguin Classic.’ This made him laugh all the more. ‘And it’s not even mine. It’s Penny’s,’ I wailed.
‘Who’s Penny?’
‘Christian’s girlfriend. She’s trying to civilise me.’
‘Are you very uncivilised then?’ said Donovan, looking at me with fresh interest.
‘I suppose I must be. She has got very high standards.’
‘She sounds like a bossy old cow.’
‘No, no. She’s more like a fairy godmother.’ It was hard to describe Penny’s strange brand of perfectionism-by-proxy to someone who hadn’t experienced it.
The train slowed to a halt, and sat, still throbbing and whining for a few moments before the engine cut out, leaving us suddenly becalmed. In the blackness outside a few distant points of light were reflected in the scatter of raindrops on the window.
‘How old are you now?’ Donovan asked. I had already calculated that he must be seventeen or thereabouts.
‘Fourteen. Fifteen in June.’
‘Hmm. You seem older.’
I expanded like a tulip, then it occurred to me that only a child would be pleased by such a remark. I began to consider at what age it might lose the force of a compliment. At twenty-one it would be neutral, I decided. The tide would start to turn at twenty-four. By twenty-seven it would be a downright insult. Twenty-seven. The age of Donovan’s still-married teacher ‘friend’. This line of thought led me directly to sex. An image of adulterous liaisons in the school stock cupboards rose up before me. Perhaps she was waiting for him now, on the marital counterpane, in black satin camiknickers, Chinese love balls at the ready, while her husband was conveniently absent – at a political rally perhaps, or visiting an elderly aunt.
These reveries were cut short by a sudden exclamation of annoyance from Donovan; he knelt on the seat and leant right across me to peer out of the window, cupping his hands against the glass to block out the light. One knee was pressing against my thigh and his shirt was trailing against my cheek. Overlaid by the cigarette smoke was another, less familiar smell: not sweat exactly, but something slightly feral.
‘Sorry,’ he said, clambering back again. ‘Where are we, I wonder?’
The woman opposite lowered her Catholic Herald. ‘Just outside Taunton,’ she said. The lights in the carriage flickered off and on. People were starting to fidget. ‘There must be a blockage up ahead. Someone’s probably fallen on the track.’ She raised her paper again, snapping it open.
Donovan and I exchanged a conspiratorial snigger at this unnecessarily gloomy prediction. He was growing impatient at the unexplained delay, drumming a three-two rhythm on the table-top with his fingertips, shifting about in his seat, and tapping the table leg with one foot. This aimless fiddling led him to my depleted store of amusements. He flipped open my sketch pad and began to browse through the contents. There was a series of drawings of my left hand, a three-pin plug, a bunch of keys, an onion and an apple core, all executed in my obsessively representational style.
‘Hey, Esther, these are pretty good,’ he said, when he’d finished his examination. ‘Are they yours?’
‘Yes.’
He nodded, impressed. ‘They’re brilliant actually. I couldn’t do anything like that.’
‘My art teacher doesn’t think so,’ I said, closing the book firmly, experiencing the curious clash of pleasure and anguish that accompanied any appraisal of my artwork, however favourable. ‘He says they’re too draughstmanlike. They look too much like the object.’
‘I thought that was the idea.’
‘He wants me to be more free. To put more emotion into them.’
‘How emotional can you get about a plug?’ he wanted to know.
‘I don’t know. Sometimes he makes me draw things blindfold, to stop me getting fixated by detail.’
‘Kinky,’ said Donovan. ‘I’d keep an eye on him if I were you.’
Around us people were becoming restive. A deputation marched up to the front of the train on a quest for information, and returned some minutes later, shrugging shoulders, unenlightened. ‘I might as well jump out here and go cross country,’ Donovan said, peering again into the rain-lashed darkness. As he said this a ticket inspector appeared at the far end of the carriage, and was immediately besieged by indignant passengers. ‘In fact I definitely will,’ Donovan said, hastily shouldering his pack. ‘Nice meeting you again, Esther. Take care.’ He thrust out his hand, and as I went to shake it, a great bolt of static snapped between us and we flinched apart, shaking our fingers and laughing. ‘Bloody nylon carpets,’ he complained.
‘First you throw my book out of the window, then you try to electrocute me,’ I grumbled. I watched him open the door a fraction, to check that it was safe to jump; he hesitated for a second, and then he seemed to drop out of sight. Under the disapproving eye of my fellow travellers, I walked across and pulled the door shut, implicated now in his unorthodox departure. I caught sight of him then, scrambling down the embankment and making off across the fields, the orange tip of his cigarette weaving and swaying. The Frys had always been a family for dramatic exits, I remembered.
A moment later the train revived with a whine and a shudder and continued on its way without further incident. I spent the rest of the journey thinking over that encounter with Donovan. I would have liked to tell Christian about it, but at fourteen I held a pledge of secrecy to be sacred.
25
PENNY WAS WAITING for me on the platform at Exeter St David’s. She was wearing an ankle-length Cossack’s coat, a knitted hat and a scarf whose fringes skimmed the floor. She fended off my attempt at a hug.
‘Don’t come near me; I’ve got a disgusting cold. I’ve had it for about four months.’ Even as she said this she broke into a wheezy cough. Her nose was as red as a radish. It was the first time I had ever seen her looking unglamorous. The rain was still falling as we made our way to the car park.
‘Where’s Christian?’ I asked, disappointed that he hadn’t turned out to meet me.
‘At home with a hangover,’ she replied crisply. ‘But don’t worry about him. We’re going to have a lovely time. I hope you’ve brought plenty of thick jumpers,’ she warned, as we set off. ‘The flat’s like an igloo.’
‘I’m used to a cold house,’ I reminded her.
‘Well, that’s true enough,’ said Penny, who could seldom be persuaded to remove her coat in the Old Schoolhouse. She lapsed into a preoccupied silence as she drove us, somewhat erratically, through the city streets. She hasn’t even asked about my journey, I thought, glancing at her determined profile. Conversation was, in any case, inhibited by an imposing orchestra of sound from the wipers and fan heater, which were both going at full pelt. In spite of their efforts the windscreen kept steaming up, and every so often Penny would lean forward and scrub a peephole in the glass with one end of her scarf.
In a few minutes we had left the terraced cottages of the suburbs behind, and were into open countryside. The headlights combed the dripping hedgerows through a glitter of raindust.
Presently Penny burst out: ‘Oh, Christian’s such an arsehole!’
‘Why? What’s he done?’ I said, completely taken aback.
‘It’s too complicated to explain,’ she replied, taking the deep breath required for such an explanation nevertheless. ‘It goes back to, oh, I don’t know, your mum probably.’
‘Mum? What’s she got to do with it?’
‘It’s his attitude to money, to everything. He’s such a bad planner. I keep having to bail him out. I shouldn’t be saying this to you – I know you won’t hear a word against him – but
it’s all come to a head this weekend, and you’ve arrived in the thick of it, and it can’t be helped.’ And then she slewed the car into a passing place and burst into tears.
‘Don’t cry, Penny,’ I pleaded, handing her a clump of tissues from the dashboard. ‘It’ll be all right.’ It’s an unsettling experience, comforting your mentor. I didn’t enjoy it at all. Suddenly the prospects for the weekend ahead looked grim. I was there not as a guest now, but a potential mediator in some simmering dispute. The contents of my stomach began to coagulate with anxiety. I swallowed hard. ‘You’re not going to split up, are you?’ I asked.
Penny applied the tissue to her eyes and then nose, and shook her head. ‘I shouldn’t think so. It’s just a hiccup.’
‘Would it be better if I went home?’ This was an offer without much substance. I knew she wouldn’t pack me back off to London on my own, but I wanted some reassurance that they weren’t planning a marathon row in my presence.
‘No, of course you can’t go,’ she sniffed. ‘This was going to be your special weekend. I’ve got us tickets for Tom Robinson at the Union tonight, but I don’t feel like it now. Do you?’
‘Not if you don’t,’ I said. Whoever he was.
‘Mind you, I don’t particularly want to go home either. It’s too cold. Shall we find a nice pub with a log fire, just the two of us?’
‘Okay,’ I said. The idea seemed to cheer her up so I didn’t dare oppose it. I couldn’t help wondering what Christian would make of our non-arrival. Would he mind, or even notice? How, come to that, did he manage to be nursing a hangover at seven o’clock in the evening? Was this evidence of the fabled debauchery of undergraduates, or just a fib on Penny’s part to excuse his absence? I didn’t have the courage to probe while we were skidding along waterlogged country lanes in a blackout. I thought anything contentious had better wait.
About half a mile further on the headlights picked out a painted sign propped against a tree at the roadside. The Wheatsheaf – 100yds. Real Ale. Bar Meals. An arrow pointed through a gap in the hedge not much wider than the car. At the end of the narrow track was the welcoming sight of a squat stone pub with thatched roof and golden lights in every window. In spite of its location it was fairly busy, but I’d noticed before that Penny had a gift for being served. The crowd around the bar seemed to fall away to let her through, and within minutes of her arrival we had secured a corner table beside the inglenook, and the barman had made her up a hot toddy to her exact specifications: juice of one lemon, one measure of single malt, one tablespoon of clear honey, water just off the boil.
In a Good Light Page 21