The first night Thomas ate in a local pub and drank a few drinks. He thought about Ann and the children back at the house, he wondered what they were all doing. After Raymond left Thomas had tried to reason with Ann. He apologised for accusing Raymond, he apologised for Scotland, for how he’d been behaving.
‘But don’t you see,’ he’d said, desperately. ‘All this worry is for us. For you and the children, for all of us.’
Ann looked at him and shook her head. ‘It doesn’t feel like that, Thomas. Please go. For a few days, for however long, but please leave.’ She pulled a suitcase out from the wardrobe and threw it on the bed.
‘What about the children?’ Thomas asked.
‘I’ll speak to them. They’ll be fine,’ Ann said. ‘They’re tougher than you think.’
‘You really want me to go?’ he asked, half an hour later in the front room, suitcase in his hand.
‘I need you to go, Thomas. Living with you, it’s exhausting. I want you to get better; I’ll help you get better, but right now,’ Ann started to cry, ‘please give me some time without you.’
Thomas put down the suitcase and stepped forward but Ann tensed at his approach and held up her hand. ‘No,’ she said, through her tears, so he turned and left.
In the guesthouse Thomas flicked through the channels but nothing held his attention so he turned the television off and pulled a straight-backed chair away from the wall and placed it in the middle of the room. He sat and tried to remember how this was supposed to be done. He lowered his hands to his knees, closed his eyes, breathed in through his nose and exhaled slowly. He tried to calm his thoughts and focus on the breath in his nostrils, on the rise and fall of his belly. He counted one on the in-breath, one on the out-breath and then two and two up until he reached ten, when he started again. ‘Don’t become frustrated when your mind wanders,’ Dr Barbour had told him. ‘It’s natural. Just acknowledge that you were thinking, or worrying, or planning and then bring the mind back to the breath.’
Dr Barbour was right, Thomas quickly realised. The mind did like to wander. He saw Ann, crying in her chair, shaking her head at him. He thought of the children, in bed by now, and wondered what Ann had told them, how they’d reacted. It was a few seconds before he realised he wasn’t following his breath. ‘Thinking, thinking,’ he thought, and attempted to lasso his chasing mind and haul it back.
Thomas persevered for ten minutes. Ten minutes of trying to stem anxious, skittering thoughts and failing miserably. He felt uncomfortable in the stiff chair, his back was beginning to ache and his stomach was full from the beer and the meal he’d eaten earlier. But more than that, the attempt at relaxing, at silencing his thoughts, only made him more agitated. He could feel the tension inside him increase. When the thudding from the next room began, in tandem with thin, breathy yelps, he put the chair back against the wall and turned the television on.
He’d taken enough clothes from the house to get him through the week but hadn’t thought of the weekend so found himself standing outside Raymond’s house in his work suit on Saturday morning at half past nine.
The door opened slowly, Raymond peering through the gap suspiciously until he saw it was Thomas and opened the door fully.
‘Can I come in?’ Thomas asked and Raymond stepped to one side.
They sat in two chairs in the front room with the peeling wallpaper curling around them.
‘I’m sorry, Raymond,’ Thomas said. ‘There isn’t much more to it than that. I’m sorry.’
‘I didn’t say a word to him,’ Raymond said. ‘Not a word.’
‘I know. I was exhausted and I lashed out.’
‘It’s alright,’ Raymond said.
‘Well, it isn’t. But I do mean it, I am sorry. I found myself saying the words and I couldn’t stop them.’
They sat there in the cold, musty room in silence for a while.
‘It was lashing out, Raymond,’ Thomas said again. ‘It was stupid of me.’
‘All along he was living just there.’ Raymond pointed at the wall to his left. ‘I heard the man when he coughed.’
Both men looked at the flaky wall.
‘Have the police had you back in?’ Thomas asked.
Raymond shook his head. ‘But if the phone rings I think it will be them. I thought that knock at the door was them again.’
‘I’ll talk to them,’ Thomas said.
Raymond thanked him and they carried on sitting there.
They had lunch in a pub and then Thomas drove them to Abbeystead. He parked a couple of miles from his house and they walked through the trees.
They ended up at the road by Thomas’s house. They stopped and looked at the place.
‘Are you going in?’ Raymond asked.
‘I’m going to knock,’ Thomas said. ‘See where that gets me.’
Twenty-Two
Ann decided she still wanted a party. It was two weeks after Thomas’s birthday, a week after his brief stay at the guesthouse, but she was determined. He was trying his best, she could see that. He didn’t say anything about the monitor she’d unplugged from his office and stashed at the back of their wardrobe. He didn’t ask for his notebooks, filled with times, car registrations, makes and models, which were sat firmly underneath the monitor. And she noted that he wasn’t getting up as early in the morning and creeping through the trees on the other side of the road, checking his traps. In fact, for him, he was sleeping quite late.
‘It’s these pills,’ he said one morning, a few days after he’d moved back in, looking bleary and ruffled at the kitchen table. ‘Dr Barbour said some people have trouble sleeping on them, but I seem to be the opposite. They knock me out. And some of the dreams . . .’
‘You’ve started taking pills?’ Ann asked.
‘Well, the meditation didn’t seem to work for me.’
‘You were meditating? Jesus, Thomas, why don’t you tell me anything?’
‘I only tried it a few times, at the guesthouse. And I’m telling you about the pills now.’
Ann sighed. ‘And? So? How are they working out?’
‘My teeth feel funny. Tired and weird dreams.’
‘But in other areas?’
‘Too soon to say. I will need to be on them for a few weeks before we know if they make a difference.’
‘Thank you for trying them, Thomas.’
‘Well, it doesn’t have to be forever. Dr Barbour said to stick with them for a few months and then we can look at how I’m doing. Maybe lower the dose, take it from there.’
‘And maybe cut back on the whisky too,’ Ann said.
‘No choice there.’
Ann smiled at him. She’d poured all the drink in the house down the sink.
She bought the food again, put the banners back up and finally tied the balloons to the front door. Thomas collected Raymond, Daniel was persuaded from his room and Harriet put on her favourite dress.
It was early evening and they were all sat around the table. They’d eaten, sung happy birthday, Thomas had cut the cake and now they were all eating a slice. Everyone had been quiet for a while when Daniel, with a purple party hat resting awkwardly on his head, the elastic cutting into his bony chin, looked around the table and said, ‘This isn’t even a proper party. This is just us wearing stupid hats and eating cake.’
It didn’t strike Thomas as immediately funny. But then he looked around the table from person to person and it hit him. His laughter started slowly, a few splutters at first, but then it took hold and shook him. He had to spit his drink back into his glass because he couldn’t swallow. His laughter came out in high, uncontrolled squeaks, his chest rising and falling like he’d run a race.
‘I’m sorry,’ he kept saying, holding his hands up. ‘I’m sorry.’
Just when he thought he couldn’t laugh any more, when it would hurt to laugh more, Raymond, his own green party hat resting like a pea on top of his large head, turned to Ann and said, ‘Well, it’s the best party I’ve ever been to.�
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At that, Thomas was gone. He shook uncontrollably. He laid his head on the table, stretched out his arms and wept with laughter.
‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry,’ he kept saying. ‘It’s a good party, it is. I’m sorry, I can’t stop.’ He laughed until he was weak in every bone in his body.
That night, with the children in bed, when Thomas had dropped Raymond back in Etherton, Ann and Thomas sat in the front room. Ann’s record played behind them.
‘Who is this?’ Thomas asked.
‘The Blue Nile,’ Ann said.
‘I like it,’ Thomas said. ‘I like his voice.’
‘It always makes me think of you,’ Ann said.
Thomas looked at Ann, with her feet underneath her, curled up in the chair and said, ‘Really, why?’
‘Once, not long after we’d moved here, we were driving home one night and it was playing on the radio and neither of us said anything. The song made me so happy, so excited about life. My heart felt full. We were driving through the trees, it was a summer night and warm and you were driving quite fast and it was the perfect music for the night. When it finished you said, “I love that song.” I didn’t know you’d even been listening properly and I didn’t think it would be the type of song you would like.’
Thomas shook his head. ‘I don’t remember.’
‘That’s why I bought the album.’
Ann looked at Thomas and said, ‘Do you remember? The last few weeks in Maltham?’
Thomas threw his head back against the sofa and looked at the ceiling. ‘It was hectic. Trying to get the builders to finish this place, trying to be competent at work, and Harriet.’
‘But the last few weeks, Thomas?’
Thomas closed his eyes, his face still raised to the ceiling. ‘Harriet?’ he asked.
‘Yes, she was sleeping better. There would still be bad nights, but she was sleeping better, wasn’t she?’
‘That’s how I remember it, yes,’ Thomas said.
‘Neither of us said anything.’
‘What would be the point? We’d sold the house. We’d built this house. From a shell, from nothing. There was no halting what we’d started.’
‘Do you think we did the right thing moving here, Thomas?’
‘Remember though, at the time it seemed like the only thing we could do.’
‘Do you miss Maltham? Do you miss the old house?’
Thomas opened his eyes. ‘I didn’t. For years I didn’t. And now, I don’t know if I’m missing the house, or just a time before when I wasn’t as anxious, as screwed up. A time when you were happier.’
‘I’m not unhappy,’ Ann said.
‘That’s hardly a glowing endorsement, is it?’
‘It’s enough. I think it’s quite a thing to achieve – the absence of pain.’
Ann looked at Thomas, with his eyes closed tightly again, his head tipped back, his hands held stiffly together in his lap. He looked tight, explosive. He looked exhausted. ‘The absence of pain,’ he said, and laughed.
‘I still love you, Thomas,’ Ann said.
‘Thank you,’ Thomas said. A tear rolled down his cheek and Ann went to sit with him.
Twenty-Three
The young men arrived in a van at eight on a Monday morning and set to with sledgehammers. Raymond hated it. Strangers in his house, and the state of it – what would they think of him? And the way they went for the walls – young pimply lads, all bone and shaved heads, as skinny as the handles of the massive hammers they swung unsteadily above their heads.
‘Excuse me,’ the youngest-looking one said, after they’d been there ten minutes.
‘Are there shops near by?’
‘What do you want to buy?’ Raymond asked.
The lad shrugged and said, ‘Sweets.’
They’re children! Raymond thought. Children are smashing up my house. The boy, informed where he could buy his sweets, happily swung the hammer into the wall with a thud. Plaster fell away, the bricks underneath cracked and the house shook with the trauma of it. Worried that his feeble house would collapse, and hating the noise and mess, Raymond left them to it and walked the streets of the town as slowly as he could, returning home at five to find bare bricks throughout the downstairs, sacks of wallpaper and plaster piled up in the front room, dust hanging in the air and covering everything in a thick, gritty layer. The house shocked and silent in the aftermath of it all. By the end of the second day a damp course had been injected into each of the walls and blue plastic sheets pinned to the bricks. Raymond had to give them credit – they knew how to work. And before he left the next morning he saw how the oldest lad marshalled the other three into action, hurried them along, set them jobs and made sure they knew what they were doing. The plastic sheets were boarded over and plastered, all of the work finished in three days.
Raymond enjoyed two quiet days before another van arrived. This time it was the central heating man, who unloaded a boiler, radiators and lengths of copper pipe. ‘Copper, Mr Farren, I only use copper. The younger fitters would lay plastic, but I’m a copper man.’ Raymond nodded, copper sounded better than plastic. It was easier with just one man working in the house, but Raymond still preferred to be out of the way whilst the work was being done. He didn’t want to chat over a brew, to monitor the progress, to discuss the problems found and conquered along the way. After four days Raymond was presented with a safety certificate and an instruction booklet, and given a lesson on setting the boiler. Then the man tidied away his tools and left Raymond alone. It wasn’t a cold night but Raymond fired up the boiler and let the heating run on full for three hours. He sat in his chair, all the windows closed, sweating like he was laying a fence in Abbeystead on the hottest day in August. As the sweat soaked into his shirt he imagined the house drying out, the damp air retreating, the air becoming clean and hard. And within days the house did smell differently, the sweet smell of dampness had begun to fade.
The day after the heating was installed Raymond set to work. He pulled the remaining wallpaper down from the walls, it fell away in clumps in most places, and he hacked and chiselled where it clung stubbornly. When each room was stripped Raymond called the plasterer in. Out of all the work that was done to the house, this was the least stressful for Raymond. And although it was messy, it was quiet, and after the banging, tearing and pulling, Raymond could finally see the house becoming new. He even stayed at home on the final afternoon and watched the plasterer turn messy, broken walls into smooth, flat surfaces. With all the plaster on the walls the house was back to being wet and cold, but each day Raymond could see the damp, dark patches shrinking and the plaster turning pink and hardening. He cranked up the heating to help it on its way and walked around the house touching the flat walls. Finally he bought the paint. Cheap emulsion for the undercoats, an expensive white emulsion to finish with. ‘Don’t skimp on the top coat,’ the plasterer told him. ‘It’s not worth it, cheap paint will ruin the job.’ It took Raymond a week to paint every room in the house, two undercoats and one final coat. He painted slowly and with precision, enjoying the work, the rhythm and reliability of it. He was sad when he painted his last stroke. Thomas had offered to help with the painting, but Raymond had thanked him and refused the offer. He could never say how grateful he was to Thomas and Ann for the loan they’d insisted on, even when Raymond told them he wasn’t sure when he would ever earn the money to pay them back, but he wanted to work alone. And then, the brushes and rollers rinsed, the empty paint cans stacked in the backyard, the walls dry, it was finally done. Raymond couldn’t quite believe it, but all around him were smooth white walls.
Twenty-Four
On Saturday morning Thomas and Ann dropped the children off with Ann’s parents and visited three estate agents in Maltham. They managed to arrange three viewings for that day. The first house was too close to a main road, the second needed too much work doing, but the third house was beautiful. A detached house with gardens at the front and rear, nestled back from a quiet,
tree-lined street. From the front bedroom you could see down onto the River Wyresdale and over to Beacon Fell. ‘It’s still like being in the countryside really,’ Thomas said, as they stared out of the bedroom window, ‘but it would be easier for town and there might be more children for Daniel and Harriet to play with.’
‘Is this what you want, Thomas?’ Ann asked. ‘To move back to town?’
He shook his head. He didn’t know, was the truth. ‘What about you?’ he asked.
‘Well, there are things I would like about it. It would be nice to be able to walk into town, to visit friends easily, not have to drive everywhere. But I would miss our house.’
‘Would you?’
‘I think I might even miss the trees.’
‘I thought you hated the place.’
‘I did, for a while.’
‘I hated it too,’ Thomas said. ‘After that night anyway.’
Ann looked around the bedroom and back out to the river. ‘This place is lovely.’
Thomas agreed that it was.
‘But it’s not what I want.’
‘Why not?’
‘Too many street lights, too much light pollution.’
*
Thomas was woken by the high warning beep of a reversing truck. It was seven in the morning. He pulled on a pair of trousers and a shirt and rushed downstairs. He found Ann, already dressed, talking to the truck driver, pointing to their back garden. On the back of the truck, tied down, were large wooden panels and a flat roof of some sort.
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