How I Lose You

by Kate McNaughton

  ‘Bleargh. Sorry – can’t look.’ Adam pushes her hand away and stares into the middle distance. He looks a bit green.

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘Blood – not a massive fan. I’ll be fine.’

  ‘You’re studying to be a doctor, for Christ’s sake.’

  ‘I know. I’ll get over it. We just haven’t been doing that much practical stuff yet – haven’t had a chance to – you know – immunize myself against it.’

  ‘Well, let’s hope you get over it before you have to operate on anybody.’

  ‘I’m not planning on becoming a surgeon.’

  ‘Oh, that’s all right then.’

  ‘…’

  ‘Fuck, this hurts.’

  ‘OK, OK, hang on a minute.’

  Adam sits down on the path and fumbles around in his backpack – he always takes a backpack with him on every walk they go on, and Eva has been wondering what he can be putting in it to make it look so full. Now, here is part of the answer, at least: Adam pulls out a large first-aid kit, opens it up, takes out stuff.

  ‘OK, come here.’

  Eva sits down next to him.

  ‘Give me your hand.’

  ‘You sure you can handle this, cowboy?’

  ‘Ha ha ha. Just thank your lucky stars I’m here to stop you from getting septicaemia.’

  ‘You can’t get septicaemia from a bush, can you?’

  ‘You never know.’

  Adam, his face set into a grim and frankly rather odd expression, swabs at the cut in Eva’s hand with an antiseptic wipe. It stings.

  ‘Ow.’

  ‘Sorry, got to clean it out properly.’

  Once he has finished rooting around inside her wound, he gets out a roll of gauze and wraps it around her hand. He is gentle, focused. Eva likes the feel of his light touch on her wrist, the softness of the bandage after the stinging alcohol; it is like being a child again, being cared for. And there is something intimate about the contact of hands, like when someone reads your palm, as if your fingers are trying to communicate with each other. Adam secures the bandage neatly and grins at her.

  ‘Expertly done, Doctor Adam.’

  ‘Hey, you may laugh, but it usually takes years of medical training to do that properly.’

  ‘You wouldn’t have any water in that big bag of yours, would you?’

  Adam pulls out a large bottle of water from his backpack.

  ‘Oh cheers, you lifesaver.’

  Eva hadn’t realized how parched she was. The water has the sweet, cool taste it only has when you are very thirsty indeed.

  ‘What do you think those old bits of wall were for?’

  ‘Terraces. Henry was saying earlier on there used to be quite a lot of vineyards around here.’

  ‘Oh right. Yeah, I guess it’s the right weather for it, isn’t it. I wonder why they’re not growing anything any more.’

  ‘Don’t know – Henry marched off before I could ask him. I guess we should try and catch up, if you’re feeling OK now?’

  ‘Yes, I think I should manage. I did only scratch my hand, you know.’

  ‘Er, yeah, sorry, I didn’t mean—’

  Eva laughs, a bit worried that she came out blunter than she’d intended just then.

  ‘Hey, don’t worry, it was sweet of you to ask. Come on, let’s go.’

  And off they trudge again, though at a slower pace this time, their breathing less frantic now. He’s a funny guy, old Adam: fancy studying medicine if you can’t stand the sight of blood. And yet it suits him somehow that he would battle with himself to do something that will help other people. He’s kind of geeky at first sight, but really tough when you get to know him – tough with a sense of knowing what he wants to do, of always being really certain of what the right thing to do is. Whereas Eva never really knows what to do, and finds the right thing very difficult to identify most of the time. Like what the right thing to do is right now. That is very hard to identify indeed.

  ‘Hey, Adam?’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Yes, something, you were going to ask me something.’

  The gravel of the path is white, so white in this hot sun that it hurts your eyes. It slithers and scrapes under their feet as they walk on in silence. Adam is good at choosing his silences – at knowing when to stop probing, so you volunteer information of your own accord. He will make a good doctor, if he gets over the whole blood thing.

  ‘It’s nothing really. Just boy trouble.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘…’

  ‘Do you want to talk about it?’

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t know if there’s much point.’

  ‘Is this about that guy from Varsity?’

  ‘Mm-hm.’

  ‘Right.’

  Adam is good at choosing his silences – at knowing when to stop talking so you feel the weight of what is left unsaid.

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘That “Right”?’

  ‘Um. I don’t know. Nothing.’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  Adam removes his baseball cap and passes a hand through sweat-drenched hair, which makes it spike on end like an expensive haircut. Underneath his high-tech walking gear, he could be a young shepherd from an ancient Greek myth: he has the effortless grace and golden locks that goddesses fall in love with.

  ‘But – you are going out with him, then?’

  ‘I don’t really know, to be honest.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I don’t know whether we are going out or not.’

  ‘How can you not be sure whether you’re going out with someone?’

  ‘I don’t know, Adam. It’s complicated.’

  She feels irritated with Adam for implying, by the edge of disbelief in his voice, his slightly raised eyebrow, that surely things should be simpler. Things are never simple, she wants to scream at him. But she can’t put her finger on why exactly.

  ‘Eva?’

  ‘…’

  ‘Eva?’

  ‘…’

  ‘Hey.’

  ‘Hm?’

  ‘Hello, you still there? Complicated how?’

  ‘Just – complicated.’

  ‘Well, let me know once you’ve worked it out.’

  ‘Why, you interested in the vacancy?’

  Eva wonders where that came from, and whether she was being aggressive or flirtatious just then. She turns to check Adam’s reaction: he is crimson and avoiding her gaze. She has clearly embarrassed herself. They plod on in silence.

  A few steps ahead of them, the path turns, stops rising, and levels out on to a grassy plateau; they stop to take a last look at the valley below. It is a strange landscape, this: you could be forgiven for thinking it mundane as you make your way through scrubby woods, and then suddenly you come to a more exposed bit of slope from which the view tumbles down to a limpid river, to rise again on the other side in a lush canopy of pine trees topped off by bleached, wind-sculpted rock formations.

  Down in the valley, you can see the village they are staying in, and a corner of their swimming pool, a vibrant, artificial diamond of blue in the middle of pale stone walls and red-tiled roofs. Well – their swimming pool. They have made it theirs, through long evenings of lounging around it with cocktails in their hands, of pushing each other in fully clothed when they are least expecting it. But really, of course, it is Henry’s parents’ swimming pool, tastefully sculpted out of the same limestone as the mountain itself, and paid for with last year’s bonus, as Henry’s father made sure to let them know. They all met them, the parents, when they convened at Henry’s place in Highgate to pick up the keys and the car to drive down, and it was the first time Eva had seen such a huge house in London, such money. Henry’s dad had seemed angry the whole time, for no particular reason, and his mother was elegant, glacial. Eva wonders how they c
an have produced such a benign person as their son – or if Henry will eventually turn into them, like the ugly duckling becomes a swan.

  Speaking of the devil, Henry is ambling towards them, looking inexplicably undisturbed by the heat, as though he were a kindly bear built to live on these woody slopes.

  ‘Ah, there you chaps are! We were worried you might have fallen down the mountainside.’

  ‘Where is everybody?’

  ‘They’re in a ferme auberge just down that path there; we thought a cooling pint might be in order. Not a bad view, eh?’

  Henry stands next to them on a small ledge overlooking the valley.

  ‘Didn’t you say those terraces used to be for vines, Henry?’

  ‘I did indeed. Whole region used to be covered in them.’

  ‘Why don’t they make wine here any more?’

  ‘First World War. All the young men from around here were sent off to the trenches and hardly any came back. Apparently this whole area used to be farmland until that happened.’

  ‘What – even that wood we just walked through?’

  ‘I’m not sure – I think so, though. Weird thought, isn’t it?’

  They watch the dry landscape in silence for a while.

  ‘Anyway, shall we go and get that beer? I’m bloody parched, I am.’

  Beer turns to wine, which turns to the merry group tumbling back down the rocky paths with jubilant abandon, which turns to more wine by the side of or indeed even in the pool, which turns to a lengthy, talkative dinner, of those that are the lifeblood of friendship. By the end of the evening, only Henry, Adam, Carmen and Eva are left reclining on the plump sofas of the tastefully rustic living room; they are always the last four standing, united by a common conviction that any social event only really comes into its own at its tail end, when less hardy guests retire, and only the true, most dedicated revellers remain to practise the fine art of late-night conversation, tongues loosened by alcohol and fatigue.

  Eva is watching Henry watching Carmen. Those two. When it isn’t one, it’s the other. Ever since they met, across a brain-damaging number of sambuca shots on the final leg of the freshers’ pub crawl, they have been playing a game of emotional cat and mouse with each other, in which each one suffers brutally intense periods of pining for the other – but never both at the same time. Never before has Eva seen Cupid so contrary. A few weeks ago, she was listening to Carmen bemoan her undying love for Henry, who, having pursued her in vain for the whole of Michaelmas term, returned from the Christmas break mysteriously cool towards her. Then, just before they came here, Carmen met some philosophy student from the year above, and now he is all she can talk about. Which of course, muses Eva, means the balance of unrequited love was just about due to swing back to Henry’s side. He hasn’t taken his eyes off Carmen for at least five consecutive minutes now.

  ‘How’s your cut?’

  ‘Hm?’

  Adam has just made a trip to the munificent parental drinks cabinet, and is handing her a glass of something golden.

  ‘Oh. That.’

  She looks at her bandaged palm.

  ‘Does it feel sore at all?’

  She squeezes her hand.

  ‘Maybe a tiny bit.’

  ‘Maybe we should disinfect it again. Just to be on the safe side. I’ve got some disinfectant in my room, if you want.’

  ‘Yeah, that’s not a bad idea.’

  Eva looks at Adam, expecting him to go and fetch said disinfectant for her, but he doesn’t move, and is looking at her as though he expects her to do something. Only when her eyes flit to Henry and Carmen, deep in conversation on the sofa, does she realize what he is up to.

  ‘Oh right. Yeah, great. Let’s go, then.’

  ‘Ow.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  Adam holds her hand as though it were a delicate bird. His is lean and knotty, a wiry hand: it looks older than the rest of him, more mature.

  ‘You have very beautiful hands.’

  ‘Oh. Thanks.’ He stops swabbing briefly and looks at them. ‘So do you.’

  ‘No, I don’t. I’ve always hated my hands.’

  ‘They’re nice. Slender.’ He puts a plaster on her palm.

  ‘Cheers, big ears.’

  She reclines on the bed, propping herself up on her elbows. Adam busies himself with putting things back into his first-aid kit. Every item inside it has a designated place, slips into a pocket or is held fast by a strip of elastic; he returns plasters, swabs, blister pads, disinfectant, with elaborate care, but just as he is trying to close the kit, tugs too hard on the zip and sends it flying across the room.

  ‘Shit!’ he exclaims, louder than the situation really warrants, and scrambles to the ground, where a small number of blister pads lie strewn, the only casualties of this otherwise perfectly belted-in set of medical supplies.

  Eva wonders why it would never occur to her to bring blister pads on a holiday that is clearly going to involve a large amount of walking, and why, conversely, Adam is so meticulous. She thinks about asking him, but he looks like he might not appreciate the interruption.

  So she stays silent, and thinks about the day.

  Adam, first-aid kit packed, zipped and returned to its rightful drawer at last, sits back on the bed, his hand resting right next to her knee. He is silent too. Outside, the racket of crickets reminds Eva of the dry landscape surrounding Henry’s house.

  Adam opens his mouth to say something, but she has already started her sentence:

  ‘I keep thinking about what Henry said.’

  ‘What did Henry say?’

  ‘You know, when he was talking about all the young men here being wiped out during the First World War.’

  She wants to cry. Thinking about the trenches always brings a tear to her eye. This is ridiculous.

  ‘Eva, are you OK?’

  ‘…’

  ‘Eva?’

  Adam makes an awkward movement, perhaps to put his arm around her.

  ‘I’m fine, sorry. I always get sentimental about the First World War, can you believe it? I guess it’s all that schmaltz we get fed about the Somme and VE Day … Sorry, it’s so ridiculous.’

  ‘I don’t think it’s ridiculous.’

  Adam is looking at her seriously, with none of the cleverer-than-thou one-liners that she might have been composing in his place. They talk for some time about that sad, lost generation, those dulce et decorum est, the horrors of war that are so far away now, almost indecently far away, for can it be right for flowers to bloom out of furrows that were once soaked with blood? Adam thinks so, has the quiet conviction that death must yield to life, but Eva wants those butchered youths to rage against their ungrateful successors, hiss into the air like poison gas, haunt the world with the futility of their patriotic sacrifice. They talk of the unreality of a world in which death can come so easily, where standing too tall can earn you a bullet through the ear, the terrible finality of it.

  ‘Of course, it’s thanks to agriculture dying out in places like this that half our parents were able to recolonize the South of France. No rural exodus, no second homes for the English. Essentially, Wilfred Owen’s loss is the modern investment banker’s gain.’

  ‘Speak for yourself. My parents haven’t colonized anybody.’

  ‘Well, neither have mine. Though I suppose you have the added dimension of being a Hun, and you’re right, they haven’t done so well on the property front either then or now.’

  ‘Well, my mother certainly didn’t.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘…’

  ‘But – I mean – your grandparents must have had a house, or a flat or something, right?’

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t know if people were even allowed to own their homes in the GDR. But if they did, I guess it will have just been given to some other family after they died.’

  ‘But what about all their stuff?’

  ‘I imagine they got rid of it. They were hardly going to forward it on to someone wh
o’d escaped the regime.’

  ‘Who’s “they”, though?’

  ‘I don’t know – the authorities? The Stasi?’

  ‘…’

  ‘…’

  ‘It just seems so extraordinary that there can be nothing left of them, that they weren’t able to somehow put anything into safekeeping for your mum …’

  ‘Yeah, I know.’

  ‘…’

  ‘Sorry, I’m not picking very cheerful topics of conversation this evening, am I?’

  ‘Oh God, don’t worry. I’m just thinking about what it must be like for your mum, having something like that to deal with.’

  ‘Well – it’s been tough on her, I think. But also, you know – she has a life in England now. A family, a house. I don’t think it’s something that’s with her all the time.’

  ‘She’s rebuilt herself.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘…’

  ‘Do you think we’ll ever end up like this, Ad?’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Like our parents. With all this money. All these houses. I just can’t imagine it, somehow.’

  ‘Well. I doubt I’ll ever have as much money as Henry’s parents.’

  ‘No – but Henry probably will.’

  ‘You’re right – that is hard to imagine. Well, hard in one way, easy in another: I can imagine Henry having the money, I just can’t imagine him doing whatever it would take to get it.’

  ‘I can’t imagine any of us doing whatever it takes to make money. Being grown-ups.’

  ‘Well – we kind of are grown-up, technically. Aren’t we?’

  ‘It certainly doesn’t feel like we are.’

  ‘I guess we’re lucky it doesn’t.’

  And so, well beyond the small hours, they reflect on the good fortune of being born into an era of unprecedented European peace, on the sufferings of their forefathers, on their privileges of youth, of comfort, and of education.