by Alex Preston
‘I think we can take this as good news. As soon as the police are finished with your car, Marcus, I’ve arranged for it to be towed back to London. I imagine Lee won’t be far behind it. I hope we will all learn something from this episode, guys. The Course is powerful, but it is also vulnerable. When something rises as swiftly as the Course has, its foundations need some time to set firm. Lee has endangered everything with her behaviour, by allowing herself to be swept up in her emotions. I warned you all about the dangers you would face. I’ve been praying hard for Lee and I know that you have too. Let’s welcome her back to us with love and forgiveness when she comes.’
Marcus took Darwin for a walk in Hyde Park when they got home. He had wanted to go for a run, but after a few hundred yards realised that the dog’s short legs couldn’t match his own stride. Darwin tried gamely to keep up, but kept falling forward, skidding along on his paws and then sliding on his back. Marcus walked down to the Serpentine and looked over at the Diana Memorial where two blond children were paddling in the fast-running water despite the chill air. Marcus heard their squeals travel across the lake to him.
When he got home, Abby was sorting through photographs. She sat at the kitchen table arranging the pictures into piles, a smile flickering across her face every so often. She turned and placed the photographs as if she were playing a game of patience, or reading Tarot cards. Marcus came and stood behind her and saw that she was looking at a picture of the two of them early in their relationship, kissing outside a pub. Daffy and a few of the other guys from college were pointing at them and laughing as they kissed, unaware of the camera aimed at them. One of Abby’s legs was lifted behind her. Marcus’s hands were clasped around her back and she was leaning into the embrace. At the edge of the photograph, Mouse stood, wearing an awful Liberty-print shirt. He was looking straight at the camera, or rather at the photographer behind the lens.
Lee had taken the picture. Even had he not remembered the kiss, Marcus would have known that it was her work. The group was perfectly composed, arranged in the same way that a painter would position them, the scene artfully constructed to reveal clearly the relationship between each of its subjects. Marcus liked to see the photographs that Lee had taken of him. With anyone else behind the camera, he found himself tensing just before the shutter closed. A pout would appear on his lips unbidden, his eyes took on a distant and weary glaze, his eyebrows lowered as if in deep thought. This meant that he never felt that the person presented in photographs was actually him, but rather a brooding impostor who had leapt into the frame at the last minute. With Lee it was different. She seemed to wait for the perfect moment, always captured him at his most natural.
Abby continued to flick through the photographs, pausing every so often to look at a picture, trying to situate it in time and place. She dwelt over a photo that Marcus had taken of her on their honeymoon in Corsica. It was at breakfast and her plate was piled high with bread, cheese, boiled eggs and figs. In the photograph she was looking down guiltily at the amount of food. Marcus remembered her words when they had developed the film: ‘I can tell that you don’t love me by the way you take my picture.’ Those words had initiated a long period of strenuous effort on his part. He had been consistently solicitous to his new wife for months afterwards, stung not by the venom in her voice, but rather by his suspicion that she might be right. He was relieved when she placed the photo on top of the picture of them kissing and began working through a new batch.
Closeness grew between them as the light faded outside and they sat sorting through box after box of pictures. Marcus stood and switched on a standard lamp in the corner when it grew too dim to make out the faces in the photos. Even now that most of his photographs were stored on a computer, Marcus insisted on having his favourite pictures developed. He was forever intending to paste them into albums with press cuttings and railway tickets and other mementos that he hoarded, but there was always some more pressing chore and so they accumulated and were placed out of sight. Abby would complain about the boxes stacking up in the spare room, but he saw that she treasured them. Her fingers picked carefully through the memories arranged on the dining table, tenderness evident in the way she stacked the pictures into neat piles. Marcus realised that one pile was made up entirely of photographs of Lee.
‘Let’s look at those,’ he said.
It was something in the way that Abby handled the photos. He couldn’t place exactly what, but it was subtly different from the way she fingered the pictures of other people, a scrupulous reluctance to touch the glossy face of the photograph, fastidiousness about avoiding fingerprints. There was something almost fearful in the way she addressed the pictures of Lee. Marcus realised that Abby thought Lee was dead. He sat back in his chair and exhaled.
‘You don’t think she’s coming back, do you?’
Abby looked sharply at him, and then back down at the photograph. It was a picture of Lee with her arm around the South African schoolboy she sponsored. The Course invested in a series of charitable projects across Africa, and had paid for the members of a Johannesburg orphanage to fly to England to visit the church whose congregation was financing their education. Lee had grown very close to one young boy. He was smaller than his classmates and Lee had taken him under her wing immediately. He had followed her everywhere during the two weeks that they were in England. When Lee and the other Course members had taken the children and their harried, chain-smoking teachers to Heathrow at the end of the visit, the little boy had refused to let go of Lee’s hand until, tears tumbling down his face, he had been pulled away.
‘She’s gone.’ She laid the photograph back down on the table. ‘I know that David is being terribly upbeat about the whole thing, but he knows as well as I do that she isn’t coming back. He told me some things when I went there for dinner the other night. Things he made me promise not to tell you.’
‘What things? Why didn’t he want me to know?’
‘I think he’s just very paranoid at the moment. He’s worried about the press getting hold of this. There was that awful article a few years ago about the Course. I know it left a real scar.’
‘What did he tell you?’
‘Sally had a key to Lee’s flat. She fed Darwin sometimes when Lee was at weddings. She went over to the flat and found all sorts of things. Diaries and books of photographs and . . . It was clear that Lee was terribly unhappy.’
‘So why is David going on as if he’s sure she’ll turn up?’
‘Wishful thinking, I suppose. It’s a kind of prayer. If he keeps repeating it then maybe something will turn up. They gave the books to the police, of course. There was one passage that David let me read. It was heartbreaking. She was talking about how she was weighing up different methods of suicide, trying to work out which one would be the least sinful. Poor Lee. Poor, poor Lee.’
Abby started to cry. Fat tears fell down onto the photographs and Marcus leaned over her and buried his face in her hair. She turned up towards him and he kissed her. At first the kisses were gentle, kisses of consolation, then more passionate. He slipped his tongue into her mouth and swung his leg over her until he was sitting on her lap. He took her face in his hands and kissed her hard. She was still crying, and he realised that she was no longer crying about Lee, or no longer just about Lee. He pulled her jumper up over her head, then her blouse and bra until her breasts pressed against his stomach. He lifted her up, turned her around and laid her back across the photographs. The neat piles toppled over, some fell on the floor. The light was behind him and his shadow fell across her, darkening her pale skin. She slipped her jeans and pants off and watched him, still crying, as he undressed.
Marcus came staring at the picture of Lee and the little South African boy. His lips were pressed into the hollow of Abby’s clavicle, his nose against her throat and there, inescapably, on the table behind her shoulder was the photo, and it seemed that Lee was trying to convey something to him through her frozen blue-green eyes. They lay together
on the scattered memories until Abby shivered.
‘David wants me to go away for a while,’ she said.
‘What? Where?’
‘The American expansion is going even better than we’d dared hope. He wants me to go over and make sure that people are keeping to the key messages, that the quality of the teaching is up to scratch. It would only be for a few weeks. Three at the most.’
‘But now? With Lee and everything?’
‘I know. It isn’t ideal. But we had been speaking about it before all of this happened and, I don’t mean to sound callous, but I’m afraid that Lee is gone. I want some time to mourn her, some time alone. And I’m afraid that now more than ever the Course is what is important to me.’
‘But what about our group? There are still two more sessions to go.’
‘I’m sure you can handle it.’
*
Three days later, Marcus was driving Abby to the airport. It was strange to be back in the Audi. He looked for traces of Lee, even though he knew that the police had searched the car thoroughly. When he placed his hands on the steering wheel, he found it somehow comforting that her fingers had been there, not so long ago. The car smelt different, sterile. Abby’s suitcase was in the boot, her passport and ticket sitting in her lap. New York was suffering a cold spell, and so she wore thick gloves and a scarf pulled around her throat.
They headed out of London on the A40, past grim thirties houses with crosses of St George hung in their windows, past furniture villages and self-store warehouses, cinema multiplexes and out-of-town retail parks. They didn’t speak. Ever since looking at the photographs, Abby had been distant, aloof. She disappeared to St Botolph’s early on Monday morning, leaving the flat before Marcus, and didn’t return until after he was in bed. She sent him texts that were cool and civil, suggesting what he might have for dinner. Darwin was with her and Marcus found that he missed the stupid enthusiasm of the small dog in the flat. On Tuesday the day passed in much the same way. Marcus insisted that he take Wednesday morning off work to drop her at the airport.
It was not until they were snaking along the M25 that Abby spoke. Marcus was hunched over the wheel, checking his mirrors repeatedly, pulling out into the fast lane and stamping the accelerator and then slamming on the brakes as he looked for the turn-off to Terminal 5.
‘I know about you and Lee.’
‘What?’ said Marcus as he attempted another manoeuvre, then found himself blocked on the inside by a white Transit van.
‘I said I know about you and Lee. At the Retreat.’
Marcus allowed the Transit to undertake him and pulled into the slow lane. He looked across at Abby.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Don’t be an idiot, Marcus. You were seen out on the lake.’
‘Abby . . .’
‘Don’t speak. I really don’t want you to say anything.’ She looked out of the window.
‘I’ve known for a while now. It just took me a while to work out how I felt. And it’s sad, but I’m just not that bothered. I sometimes think we got married to avoid breaking up the other parts of our life. We were happy with our jobs, happy to be part of the Course, we just weren’t happy with each other.
‘I think back to our early days together, and the rows we used to have. I know that you weren’t faithful back then. At university and then when we were first in London. I used to try to find other reasons to get angry with you, but really it was because I knew that there were other girls, and I just didn’t want to face it. I thought it would pass. For a while I think it did.’
Marcus indicated and turned down the slip road towards the airport. Abby’s voice rose in pitch as they neared their destination.
‘But to find out that you and Lee . . . I mean, Lee, of all people. When we knew what she was like with men. The way she’d sleep with just anyone. Well anyone apart from Mouse, who was the only one who really loved her. It can’t even have been a challenge for you. And at the Retreat, which was supposed to be a wonderful time for us. And the night after we had really connected. I lay in bed with you that night and I was proud that you were my husband.’
Abby was sobbing as they pulled into the set-down area outside the terminal. Her nose was streaming and she blew two foghorn blasts into a tissue before stepping from the car. Marcus lifted her bag from the boot and set it down beside her. She turned up to him, tears pouring from her eyes, her nose red and dripping snot. Marcus thought for a moment that an observer might think she was heartbroken to be leaving him. Then she spoke and her voice was hard and cold.
‘And now, and this is the worst, thinking that you could have been the one who pushed her over the edge, the one who made poor Lee . . .’
Marcus tried to embrace her; she pulled away. He spoke very quickly.
‘I’ll park the car. We can talk inside. We should sort this out before you go.’
‘Sort this out? Listen, I’ll call you, OK? Once I’m feeling a little more . . . together. Here, you might as well have this.’
For a moment Marcus thought she was going to hand him her wedding ring, but then she reached into her bag and pulled out her key to their flat. She turned to go. Marcus took her by the elbow.
‘Who told you?’
She shook clear of his grasp.
‘It doesn’t matter, it really doesn’t matter.’
She was already walking away. He watched her stop, check her passport, blow her nose again, and then make her way as gracefully as she could through the sliding doors and out of sight.
Two
When Marcus got home he called his secretary and took the rest of the day off. He was close to using up his holiday allowance, but his secretary was fond of him and he knew she would help fudge the numbers at the end of the year. He took Darwin for a walk around Holland Park, hoping that the dog would be comforted by the familiar setting. He walked up and down the long avenues lost in thought, stepping aside to let Filipina nannies with thousand-pound all-terrain buggies stride past. He stood for a while watching the drab peahens pecking for food at the feet of their resplendent mates, who, like croupiers fanning cards, unfurled their tails to reveal hands of iridescent aces.
Marcus continued down towards the Orangery. He couldn’t believe that anyone had seen them on the boat. The mist had been so thick, they’d been lost in the middle of the lake. He forced his mind back into the boozy haze of that night and searched his peripheral vision. Had there been someone crouched among the reeds, observing their encounter?
The park was closing and Marcus hurried to the northern exit. It was growing dark and there was a whisper of snow in the air. On a whim he crossed straight over Holland Park Avenue and headed up Ladbroke Grove. He always forgot how steep Notting Hill was. The trees that tented the road in summer had lost almost all of their leaves; those at the top of the hill had already been pollarded and held their stump-limbs skywards in protest at the brutality of their treatment. Darwin was tired and limped slightly. Marcus lifted the little dog up and carried him under his arm. In the distance he saw a Hammersmith and City Line train crossing a bridge. The lighted windows of the train looked like lanterns suspended in the air from a string.
Marcus trotted down the hill and was soon passing under the Westway outside the Tube station. He remembered how Abby had dragged him to the market here years ago. They were looking for a birthday present for Lee and had wandered among the tightly packed stalls, pointing at books and T-shirts and all sorts of nostalgic junk. Abby had come back wearing a Tyrolean hat and Marcus an MCC tie. He looked at his watch and realised that Abby would have landed by now. He felt a stab close to where Darwin’s wet nose was tickling his chest.
Marcus turned onto the towpath as the last light of the day left the horizon. He looked into the supermarket as he passed and saw children helping their mothers bag up the shopping, young couples buying inexpensive wine, the jostle and buzz of real life. He made his way carefully along the unlit path, stepping aside to let bicyclists through, almo
st tripping over a tramp who was sprawled across a bench sleeping off a hangover. Finally, he made out the Jolly Roger that hung from the rear rail of the Gentle Ben and saw with pleasure that the lights were on. He knocked on the door, saw the boat sway as Mouse moved around inside, and then, after a few minutes when Marcus heard nothing but the gentle slap of the water against the boat’s hull, Mouse opened the door, beaming.
‘Hello, sport,’ he said. ‘Do come in. And bring that darling dog with you. He’s a fine sailor, you know.’
Mouse had been reading. Marcus saw a copy of Journey to the End of the Night lying face-down next to a bottle of white wine and a bowl of pistachios. A small lamp stood on the table and cast a warm glow over one corner of the cabin. Marcus edged himself onto the bench opposite as Mouse found him a glass. Before sitting down, Mouse opened a cupboard and pulled out a tin of tuna which he emptied into a bowl for Darwin. The dog scoffed the fish appreciatively.
‘So has Abby gone then?’ Mouse asked, sitting down to face Marcus. Their knees touched under the table and Mouse edged backwards, drawing his legs up underneath him. He was wearing an old Thomas Pink shirt that was frayed at the collar and strained at its buttons around the belly. Marcus recognised it as one of his own. Abby must have given it to Mouse.
‘Yes. She’s gone.’ Marcus had already finished the glass of wine. He watched with embarrassment as Mouse poured the rest of the bottle into his glass.
‘Sorry. It’s been a shitty day. I’ll nip over to Sainsbury’s and buy you another bottle in a bit.’
‘Don’t worry about it.’
‘Abby and I argued before she left.’
Mouse looked up at him.
‘I did think it was a strange time for her to go. With Lee and everything.’
‘She said she needed some space to mourn.’