Living in the Past

by Jane Lovering

  ‘What about her?’

  Millie shifted about and finally looked back at those black threads. ‘I don’t want … I never meant to take her away from you,’ she said, her voice quiet. ‘I know you needed her and I tried not to be jealous.’

  ‘Millie …’

  ‘No, please, Grace, let me say this. I’ve been rehearsing it in my head for a long time, and now you’re looking … well, as though you’re starting to come back to us, letting a little bit of the misery go, so I need to tell you. I know Tabs is your friend, but I love her. I want us to be a proper couple, but I’ve felt I couldn’t ask for all her attention, not while you were so … sad. Now I feel it’s time to ask for a proper commitment. And I wanted to ask how you felt about that.’

  She sat back on her stool and watched my face, solemn now, no trace of the broad smiles she was known for, and I realised how much power she had given me. The power to protest, to ask her to allow Tabs and I more time, to tell her I was still grieving and needed my friend’s full attention. So kind. So generous. ‘I think it’s a fabulous idea,’ I said. ‘It’s time you and Tabs made it official.’

  Now the grin was back, even wider. ‘Phew. I feel a bit like I’ve just asked for her hand in marriage.’ Millie put the tray of black stuff down and stood up to hug me. ‘I didn’t like to say anything before, when you were so unhappy. Didn’t want to come between you, you see, when you needed Tabs far more than I did.’

  ‘Who with the what now?’ Tabs exploded around the side of the tent, bringing with her the aura of bacon and hot kitchens.

  ‘Millie was just asking my permission to date you.’ I hugged her too, for good measure.

  ‘Bit late now, but, hey, okay, whatever.’ Tabs embraced me quickly. ‘So, you’re moving in with the Scotsman, are you?’ She eyed my bundle of belongings, from which the sleeping mat was trying to uncurl, making it look as though it was doing an extended, and plastic, come hither motion.

  ‘I’m borrowing part of his tent for the duration, so you can stop looking at me like that. Both of you,’ I added, as Tabs and Millie exchanged a ‘yeah, right’ glance. ‘And he’s taking me out for a drink too, for which I am running late, so goodbye.’

  ‘I don’t think he drinks. He can’t, he’s not human. He’s, like, some kind of robot, he just soaks himself in oil twice a week and downloads Will Self novels straight to his major processing banks. That’s how he gets away with it.’ Tabs stood with her hands on her hips.

  ‘And you’ve been banging on at me to get something going with him?’ I raised my eyebrows at her.

  ‘All right, maybe you don’t get something going, but maybe you could just crank his big end over once or twice.’

  Millie winced. ‘Google the internal combustion engine, sweetheart. That’s not how it works.’

  ‘Sorry, haven’t got time. I’ve got to pick all the varnish off my toenails and watch three series of Orange is the New Black. Pressing engagement.’

  I began my laden trudge through the moist wash of peat that was covering the whole campsite now, and I could hear them start to giggle before I was a couple of metres away. I sighed. It was natural, I suppose, what with them being all coupled up and cosy, to want everyone else to be the same, I mused, as I squelched. But Duncan was just someone who happened to have a spare room, not the great love of my life – that was over and gone.

  ‘Sorry …’ I breathed to the air that still contained traces of him. Molecules of Jamie must be all over the world now, the warm breezes that he’d loved to feel blow over him as he sat outside the hospital in the final months carrying a scent-memory of his skin. ‘It’s always been you, you know that.’ The air strafed a quick reply across my face as though Jamie had exhaled an answer, a rough sudden gust.

  Two years, I thought, lugging my rucksack over the rutted ground towards Duncan’s tent on the far side of the camp, nearest the dig. Two years. What was that, a prison sentence for stealing a car? The life cycle of a carrot? The time before a divorce with consent? All that could happen in two years, so why did it feel like a lifetime?

  ‘You look like a snail,’ Duncan remarked, leaning against the outside of the tent. I thought he was trying to look nonchalant, but the tent was dipping alarmingly.

  ‘Small and slimy?’ I lowered the rucksack to the groundsheet.

  ‘Well, I was meaning carrying all your life on your back, but I can go with that one.’ He stepped back. ‘Do you want to drop it all off and head out to the pub? I can give you a hand to sort things out when we get back, if you like.’

  I looked at my meagre bundle. ‘Er. Don’t think it will tax me too much, to be honest. Sleeping mat, sleeping bag, few clothes dotted around to give the place that “lived in” look.’

  ‘There are woodlice in there doing that already.’ Now he was back to shoving his hands in the pockets of his jacket again. Nonchalance and Duncan were apparently estranged partners. ‘God, I am really not selling this, am I?’

  ‘It’s either share with you …’ I pushed my rucksack and sleeping gear in through the tent flap. ‘… or stay with the site equivalent of Bonnie and Clyde there, while they discuss the practicalities of spark plugs or something.’

  Duncan was looking at me when I stood back up again. His hair, which had obviously been soaked at some point during the day, had dried into sticky-out points around his head and there was a runway of mud up one stubbled cheek, so he looked like a grubby little boy with a grown-up’s seriousness. ‘It still hurts that much? Being alone?’

  The question caught me by surprise. I’d been expecting a reprise of the snail teasing. I felt my breath go backwards into my chest. ‘Sometimes worse than others. Mostly now it feels like a broken leg that’s healing, this dull kind of …’ I tapped against where my heart lay. ‘It’s more that everyone seems to think I should be over it, like there’s a statute of limitation on grief.’

  He didn’t answer that and, for a moment, we stood together looking out over the dig. The sun was inching its way down behind the hump of the barrow, turning the sky red and orange all streaked with the dying blue of the day.

  ‘It’s always looked like this,’ Duncan said, without looking at me. ‘For millennia, the sun has gone down exactly the same, in more or less the same place, and the sky has looked the same. People thousands of years ago will have stood like we are, watching, and saying the same thing about the colour of the sky.’ And then his voice became a little firmer, a little less dreamy. ‘Of course, a lot of the colour is due to atmospheric pollution, so it won’t have been quite the same.’

  ‘Does the phrase “mood killer” mean anything to you?’ I tore my eyes away from the beauty of the sunset spreading itself out along the horizon as though someone had set fire to the edges of the world.

  ‘It’s tattooed on my forehead, surprised you haven’t already noticed.’ He fumbled around in his pockets for a moment. ‘Car keys, car keys …’

  ‘Yes, there it is. I can see now, right beside “disorganised”.’ I picked up the keys I’d seen lying on the ground by his feet. ‘Here.’

  As he took the keys from me there was a disconcerting moment when he was staring right into my eyes, scanning them as if he was looking to see if the sunset was vanishing inside my head. It made me go a bit hot and my cagoule rustled as my heart started to beat very quickly inside it. Why was he staring like that? But before I could draw attention to the weirdness of it, he’d looked away again, checking around the site as if to make sure that everything was packed up and covered.

  ‘Ready for this drink then?’

  The light was dying over the camp as we wandered up to his Land Rover. A couple of small fires and some raucous singing told us that the cider was out already.

  ‘It’s like nowhere else I’ve ever been,’ I said, looking out over the dale. ‘Like a cross between a music festival and a building sit
e, all camaraderie and hard work with an acute shortage of showers to take into account. Everyone is just so accepting and kind.’

  ‘They’re archaeologists, not serial killers.’ He unlocked the doors. ‘Why wouldn’t they be nice?’

  ‘Well, because I know nothing and yet here I am blundering about all over their work.’

  ‘You found part of a shale bracelet today.’ Duncan watched me haul myself up into the passenger seat. ‘So not that much blundering. And sites like this rely on volunteers, there’s only so many students doing Archaeology and prepared to spend their summer vacs with their boots full of water, when they could have gone and helped dig Troy or something.’ The big engine thrummed into life. ‘And besides, why should you worry? It’s not like we’re letting you loose with a JCB, is it?’

  ‘Well, no, but …’

  ‘But you’re used to being in control of things. To knowing exactly what’s going on and having a handle on it all? And you feel out of your depth at being on the periphery?’

  Was that it? Was that why I felt this peculiar dislocation, as though I was operating not only out of my comfort zone but out of my comfort time?

  ‘Jamie used to say I was a bit of a control freak.’ At least now I could use my husband’s name in conversation. Things were getting better, gradually. ‘He used to tell me I only went into teaching so that I could tell the maximum number of people what to do simultaneously.’

  And Jamie’s lackadaisical attitude to things like timekeeping and tidiness used to make me angrier than I’d ever thought possible. One of the few things we’d ever argued about had been my longing for order and regularity and his desire for freedom and spontaneity.

  ‘I need to ask a favour of you,’ Duncan said, keeping his eyes on the road. ‘Please feel free to say no.’

  ‘If it’s anything kinky, be warned, I did two terms of kickboxing and I’m a trained Duke of Edinburgh leader.’

  I saw him raise his eyebrows, but only out of the corner of my eye and I didn’t want to look directly at him just in case it was kinky.

  ‘Och, now why would I be asking you for a kinky favour? Do I look like I’m into anything kinky?’

  ‘You wear a coat all the time and you’ve got mud everywhere. It could be anything, from shaving you all over to rolling in dirt and pretending to be kittens, I don’t know, do I?’

  ‘Wow, I need to get out more.’ A sigh. ‘But, no. Not kinky. I want … I need to go to the house, and I don’t want to go alone.’

  It was dark outside the windows now; the only light came from the travelling beam of the headlamps, picking up the ghostly forms of the sheep, grazing beside the road like little downed clouds.

  ‘Why do you need to go there?’ I shifted in my seat.

  ‘My mother asked me to. She has a security camera that monitors the place, but it’s not sending images back and she wanted me to take a look.’

  ‘And we have to do that in the pitch dark, do we? What the hell is this, some low budget horror film? What is wrong with going in the daylight with a team of six-foot students in support? Carrying shovels. This is exactly what is wrong with the film industry these days, nobody ever has any common sense any more.’ I gave him a stern look. ‘And, just for the record, “my mother said I had to” is a really poor excuse when you’re over ten.’

  ‘Okay, a simple “no” would have done.’

  The Land Rover twitched as it met a small pothole in the road. I wondered if he’d steered for it on purpose.

  ‘I didn’t mean “no”.’ I felt a bit unbalanced. Wrong-footed. ‘Of course, if the place needs checking …’

  I felt, rather than saw his awkwardness, a mixture of reluctance, shame, embarrassment, descending and becoming obvious in the hang of his head, his refusal to look anywhere but at the road. It wasn’t, I thought, hard to read this man. He tried to hide what he thought and felt, but I’d had practice at reading groups, from twelve year olds trying to conceal their anxiety at a new school, up to Sixth Form girls, pregnant and trying to pretend it never happened. They all needed careful handling, sensitivity, but all in different ways, and sometimes the best way was just to come out with it.

  ‘Your family don’t know you haven’t been back since your girlfriend went missing, do they? What, did you tell them you were staying at the house while you’re digging here?’

  On the nose. I could tell from the way he rearranged his shoulders. Not a shrug, more of a resettling of a weight he had to carry.

  ‘So … you haven’t told them any of it?’

  He gave the Land Rover a sharp jerk, whether to avoid a sheep or just to give himself time to think, I didn’t know.

  ‘They came down when Anya went missing. My brothers helped when we searched the moors for her.’

  ‘So they know she was never found?’

  The engine slowed to an idle, ticking and whirring to itself. He’d pulled us down the lane that led towards the house, I could see the roofline illuminated in the headlights’ track as it huddled down in the dip of the moors.

  ‘Yes.’ His voice was calm but the way his accent had picked up told me he was anything but calm underneath. ‘They know. And I try to ignore it, but there’s a wee part of me that wonders whether they think I might have had something to do with it.’

  He pushed the accelerator but kept the brake on and the tyres protested, a swishing sound as they ground against the sandy soil. I heard the splattering sound as wet earth flew up and hit the bodywork but Duncan wasn’t acknowledging any of it, as though the vehicle was outside his control. Like life.

  ‘As one control freak to another, Duncan, sometimes there are things that are better shared.’

  He gave me a sideways look and pulled his mouth into an expression indicative of several teeth coming loose at once. ‘I’m telling you.’

  ‘I didn’t mean me, I meant someone who could help you! I’m just a wet sieves volunteer.’

  There was a moment of quiet as he lifted his right foot and then we were moving again, bouncing down the trackway towards the house, growing in the headlight beam until it occupied the whole of the windscreen.

  ‘You should get that on a T-shirt,’ he said, finally.

  ‘Oh, good grief. Do you have any idea of the problems I’d have if I went round in a T-shirt with “wet sieves volunteer” on it? I’d be lucky to get to the end of the road.’ And then, as I looked out of the window, ‘Wow.’

  Seen close up the house was less of a moorland cottage and more of a rambling Gothic mansion. From the road I’d only been able to see the roofline and the flat front; from parked right outside I could now see the rear of the property, which straggled and wiggled in a series of extensions and conservatories, and rose to a semi-circular tower at one side.

  ‘Like I said, it was in Mum’s family.’

  ‘Was her maiden name Addams?’ I squinted into the darkness beyond the headlights. ‘Is that a basement? Oh, no, please tell me you haven’t brought me out in the middle of the night to a house with a basement! Did you never watch Scooby Doo?’

  ‘It’s nine o’clock, not the middle of the night.’ Duncan got out and went up to the front door. I followed him. ‘Besides …’ He flicked a switch and the whole area lit up like a football stadium. ‘No sneaking around in the dark. Also, no talking dog, no janitors, no extremely convincing rubber face masks.’ He dug in a pocket and brought out a key that looked as though it should have been opening a door in a Shakespearian drama. ‘And this is where it gets difficult.’

  ‘Do you want me to open the door?’ I walked over the floodlit paving. The air smelled sharp out here, as though the night had whittled the day to a point.

  Duncan was standing looking up at the house with the key hovering just outside the lock. ‘Last time I was here …’ he said and then stopped. Looked down at his feet. ‘Fifteen y
ears. Feels like yesterday.’ Then he handed me the key and turned away to stare out into the dark beyond the bright circle.

  I turned the key surprisingly easily. There was no extraneous creaking, no thunderous echoes, just a door swinging open as though it had been oiled only yesterday, and the smell of an old house that’s been locked up for a while. ‘You need a creepy butler. Seriously.’

  Duncan came around slowly to look in through the doorway. ‘It looks the same,’ he said, almost wonderingly.

  ‘Well, I’m going to say that someone has hoovered, at least.’ I stood back to let him go in first. ‘Do your family still use the place?’

  He stopped on the threshold. ‘Mum and Dad don’t make it down much now, but a couple of my brothers bring their families here sometimes. For summer holidays, that kind of thing.’

  There was a raggy toy like a dog with all the stuffing gone draped over an old-fashioned radiator in the hallway, and paintings and photographs hung randomly along the walls, as though someone had detonated an illustrated bomb and they were the fallout. The air smelled faintly of gloss paint and new carpet.

  Duncan reached past me, brushing my cheek with the soggy sleeve of his coat, and flicked a switch. The hallway was revealed in its magnolia glory by the light of a pendant crystal chandelier hanging further into the house.

  ‘It’s nice,’ I said, taking a few steps inside.

  Duncan was staring around him. There was a look in his eye that told me he wasn’t seeing this nicely decorated, slightly impersonal room, but something more chaotic. ‘Nice, yes,’ he echoed, and rubbed a finger along the wall as though he expected the paint to peel off and reveal something horrific.

  ‘It’s lovely. A bit Homes and Gardens, but nice.’ I looked at the selection of pictures that ushered the visitor further inside. The photographs were all black and white, varying from atmospheric shots of the moors under heavy snow, to families playing in streams. Scruffy, shorts-clad boys with rough-cut hair and scabby knees building a den. ‘Is this you and your brothers?’