And when I came home, I called Sam; she came over, and did not leave until morning.
*
Perhaps I should tell you a little more about myself, about the bits of me you otherwise won't see.
I was born in north Oxford, thirty-four years ago. My dad, David Waddell, made precision instruments for a small local firm, mostly serving the university labs. He was a partner in the company; our family was doing the north Oxford thing, climbing the slippery ladder for all we were worth.
Mum is Carol. She spent three days a week as a medical secretary at the John Radcliffe Hospital, sorting out the private practice of a bushy-browed man she called the Prof: his eyebrows and his flapping white coat are all I can remember, I don't even know what his speciality was. The other days she spent at home. I'm not sure what she did with her time. I was at school mostly, and in my spare time, as I grew up, I would wander further and further afield; I was hardly there except for meals and bed.
A gang of us used to cycle down to Port Meadow, to ride the smooth-swept bumps that led down to the floodplain like a rollercoaster. Sometimes we'd fish for chub in the Cherwell or the Isis, or race our bikes (illegally) in a circuit round the courtyard of the Bodleian. We were a loose group and only a few of us would meet up on any particular day; the combinations were always changing. They were school friends mostly, and a couple of neighbours.
We lived in a big house—but it can't have been big enough, because Mum and Dad were always talking about moving somewhere better. I was at a private school, New College Choir School, which was one of the very few acceptable schools to discuss at north Oxford dinner parties and was costing the family more than we could easily afford. It was a high-pressure environment, and I never quite managed to keep up. This was more out of attitude than inability; I was averagely good at most subjects. I was good at English and maths, top in art (except for pottery), and I was lousy at the sciences and French. I detested Latin and it detested me.
Our garden was large, and Dad had put a rope pulley from one side of it to the other. In summer we would set up the water sprinkler and dash through the spray, and the grass was slippery and cold and tickled our bare backs when we fell.
I loved Oxford, and the house and my friends. I loved my parents. I was an only child, but I truly do not believe that my parents spoiled me—well, maybe a bit, but I also remember being kept firmly in line; there were rules and lectures as well as treats. I was never starved of company. Unfashionable though it is, I have to confess that I grew up mostly happy.
Then, when I was twelve, Dad's firm went bust.
There must have been a day when he came home and it was all over, but I don't remember. There must have been agonising months while he looked for another job, and failed to find one. Bigger firms were taking over—German firms, Japanese firms. The craft had gone out of instrument making, he grumbled. It was the big boys now, just like everything else. And the big boys weren't interested in the skills of a man who had left school at fourteen, served his apprenticeship at an old firm with grime on its tiny windows and an interior of dark wood benches and peeling varnish. Dad had worked with the same firm all his life and, in a way, his life ended when the firm's did. He lost weight. His temper became worse. He paced through the house. When he sat, he seemed to grind his way into the chair. Doors that were normally silent screeched when he opened—or slammed—them. He never recovered his peace.
Christmas came and went, joylessly.
At the time I didn't understand why we had to move, and Mum and Dad never chose to explain. Each day's post contained sheaves of house descriptions, photocopied images of squat bungalows, a few terse lines of measurements. Most of them were strewn on the outsize table in the dining room in complicated piles, interspersed with blank sheets covered with spidery calculations. They would occasionally bundle all these papers up and vanish in the car for hours; they would come back grim and hardly talking. Then, one day, some men came with a van and took away half of our furniture, and I never saw it again. The day after that there were packing-cases in the hall, and Mum and Dad began to fill them with what remained.
My most powerful memories are of the empty house. The wood floor in the hall echoed loudly as I staggered across it, my heavy suitcase clasped in both arms, uncomfortably high to avoid crashing against my knees. The place smelt different when it was empty, dry and light, as though it was already waiting for the dust to settle.
The suitcase went in Mum's car (Dad's car had been sold some time before), and we drove off—Dad had gone ahead with the removal men. We drove up the Woodstock Road, turned left at the roundabout, down into Wolvercote. Mum said nothing, all the way. She led me up the narrow path to a post-war two-storey semi. It was small, cream-painted, with ungenerous square windows. I lumped up the path, with my suitcase brushing the tops of the overgrown shrubs that hung over the paving. She unlocked the door, and we stood in the hallway like a couple of timid ghosts. She told me that this was where we were going to live.
It was the start of a new life, and a new me.
The local comp was tough for me. The children didn't have much fondness for boys from private schools. They called me Waddle; they used to make a line behind me, paddling along with their hands stuck out like penguins. Very funny. When they played football, they made a point of not inviting me—because, they said, I was too posh for a “common” game. I ignored them, and only cried after school when I sneaked away to play in the woods on my own. But there was not much violence, and what little there was stopped after I hit back.
It was an accident as much as anything. It all happened at the measured, predetermined pace of a ballet. It was towards the end of my first term at the school, his name was Greg Winston, and I hated him. A small group of boys had backed me into a corner of the playground, needling me and shoving me. Greg swaggered through his cronies and swung a hefty, badly aimed kick at my crotch, flinging his arms out for balance. It was a lazy swipe, he was showing off, not trying to damage me—but I was scared, and I was already pressed as far back against the wall as I could go. As the heavy-booted foot rose up, I squeezed back another few millimetres by twisting away from the blow. That brought my shoulders round, and my hands were suddenly under the rising arc of his leg. I clamped them round his ankle and pushed outwards to deflect the strike. He was after points for style, not strength or accuracy: it was the sort of kick that sends the kicker tumbling if they don't connect and all I did was stop him connecting. As the leg rose, his own momentum lifted him. He jerked off the ground and fell from waist-height, flat on to the Tarmac.
His whole back hit the ground at once. There was a faint pneumatic squeak as the air smashed out of his lungs—the kind of noise you get in children's toys—then the wooden knock of the back of his head, then the clatter of his leathery boots, then silence. The other five or so boys looked down at their leader in confusion, perhaps waiting for him to show them his brilliant final move, which the fall was obviously leading up to, but he just lay there, his eyes bulging wide, and a barely audible sigh coming from him. His hands were lifted, twitching and waving, the fingers splayed.
I was not thinking a single conscious thought. Acting out of some ingrained (private) schoolboy idea of honour, I reached down, grasped one of his hands and pulled him to his feet in a single heave. (Actually, this was the only thing I did that was impressive because he was incredibly heavy. Of course, no one noticed it.) He stood, bent double, the breathless whine still trickling out of him. He grabbed one of his cronies' waistbands for support and, handover complete, I walked away.
My hands started shaking violently after about three paces. There was no sense of victory, just fear and unease. The fear was first: fear that I had done him some permanent harm. I would be found out and punished. Perhaps he would die, and I would end up on trial, innocently imprisoned, the jury deaf to my pleas. Then came the nausea, and the fascination of replaying the incident over and over, letting him crunch into the hard ground, again and again an
d again, detecting the subtle squelch of blood as his head struck, the sharp mechanical crack of ribs. It's horrible when you really think about an injury, and doubly so when you inflicted it; there's a wrongness about the idea of bodies bending and breaking and slicing open that makes me feel sick. I can work myself up into a state even about minor cuts if I really try—but this time there was no need because Greg's fall had been very nasty indeed. So I huddled in a corner of the playground and muttered to myself, and in front my eyes there he was, hitting the ground again and again and again, skull crumpling, backbone cracking, rib shards scything through his lungs and bowels.
Five minutes later he came up to me, unharmed. He put out a large rough hand and mumbled, “Truce.” I took the hand, and we hardly spoke again for months. Some of his hangers-on tried following me around and being friendly. I played with them sometimes, kicked a ball around with them or went swimming, but even when I was with them I kept my distance. I preferred my own company.
At home, I felt like a stranger. The house had its own moods, mysterious rhythms—rages, sadnesses, the grim silences that swept through Mum and Dad. They performed the functions of their lives with blank eyes and bitten-in faces. I woke each morning, wondering what the house would make them say and do that day. Would they be full of brittle cheeriness and enthusiasm? Or would the house make them bitter, Mum hacking savagely at the bread over breakfast, Dad dry and bent and stalking restlessly from room to room? Sometimes the days were soft and sad; Dad would retreat peacefully to his shed to work on unspecified jobs that needed doing but never seemed to be done, and Mum would sit in a hard nylon-covered chair in the living room, staring at the electric fire. Sometimes I saw tears on her cheeks, but I never asked her about them. No one talked much.
Dad moved out soon after my thirteenth birthday, just before the summer term began. I hardly noticed. In truth, he was already long gone.
We ground on through May and June, Mum and I. Puberty, the move, my parents' separation, all reinforced my isolation. Mum didn't know how to cope with my moods, and neither did I. I was confused and unhappy. Looking back, I think Mum blamed herself—but it's just what happened, a combination of chance and the kind of boy I was. I played on my own a lot. I cycled along the canal to old haunts, sitting alone and taking a certain pleasure in loneliness. Some time that term I discovered Wytham Woods. I would spend my weekends climbing trees, or imagine that I was a paratrooper behind enemy lines and stalk the gamekeepers. They must have known I was there, but they gave no hint. On one of those visits I discovered the treehouse. It was my secret and my refuge. Mine alone.
Then came the summer holidays.
And then there was Verity.
CHAPTER 14
I WAITED IN the garden by the apple tree.
I had thought of nothing but her all weekend. The time with Dad had drifted by, evaporating as easily as the clouds through two hot blue days. It had been one endless moment, a single mood made of leaflight and dry wood and anticipation and thrill and fear, all shot through with her warm smell and lips. It was unbearable—and I loved it. Finally the wait was over. I clambered from Dad's car and said my farewells, kissed Mum hello, dumped my bags and rushed outside. Verity knew when I was due back. I had been secretly hoping that she would be waiting for me. In fact, I had been secretly hoping all sorts of things, many of which I could hardly put a name to.
I waited in the garden by the apple tree, in the early evening.
She was having her tea, or Gabriel had taken her out for the day, she would be back at any moment. She had homework to do (homework, two weeks before starting at a new school?). Or she was ill, or Gabriel was ill, or she had moved house without telling me, she had known it all along. Why wasn't she waiting? Suddenly the days since we had kissed seemed an eternity. It had been enough time to alter everything. She had vanished—or, worse, she had changed her mind about me.
She was at the treehouse, waiting for me. That was it. I strolled completely uncasually to my bike (no running; I was determined to be cool) and set off, fast.
I waited on the same boards I had sat on after our kiss two days ago, stroking the planks where we had lain, summoning her out of the wood, touching her, bones and flesh and supple skin, not minding the splinters. The same leaves and branches arched through the same green light, carving shapes and substance from the air. The same whispers surrounded me whenever breezes shimmered through the tree's green vault. The soft sigh of the woods, untouched by time or thought. Or solitude.
She wasn't there.
The cameras were gone. The piles of earth they had stood on had been kicked flat, the stones and trigger-twigs scattered. Tangles of string littered the great tree's shade. I gathered them up and wadded them into my pockets. Then I cycled home slowly, meandering between the lane's broad banks, thinking nothing, riding each erratic curve.
I waited in the garden.
Cushioned in the long grass at the apple tree's foot was a half-inflated football. I picked it up, tossed it a few yards away, and followed. I slipped my toe beneath it and hoicked it up towards a three-pronged fork in one of the tree's stubby spars. It missed and dropped slackly to the ground. I collected it, slipped my toe beneath it once again.
When it was too dark to see the tree, I headed for the back door. I glanced up at her window. There was a light in it, slitted through the curtains, and a shadow moved inside.
There was no sound at all except the last screams of the swifts.
*
I woke late, and rose later. My bedroom was at the back of the house, and when I opened the curtains I saw Verity kicking idly on the tatty metal swing in her garden. She glanced up and I turned away guiltily, as though she had caught me snooping, embarrassed and thrilled that she had seen me in my pyjamas. I dressed hurriedly, but when I checked again at the window she had gone.
It was a bright day, but overcast. The sky was a white haze and sudden cold gusts stirred the hedges and the dusty ground. On the rim of the sky's bowl, heavier clouds passed us by.
I waited in the garden. I was trying to lodge the ball in the tree.
I couldn't bring myself to knock for her. It would have shown her my eagerness. It would have been humiliating. I would let it happen naturally, as everything else had done. It would happen. I just needed to be cool, patient. She couldn't have changed her mind. Not Verity.
*
After lunch I went to see Adam. I didn't dare ring the doorbell, not after what his dad had done, so I hung around on the other side of the road, kicking a crumpled can along the gutter, one way then the other. Fanta. Sticky orange round its lip. I sat for a while on the low kerb, arms dangling outwards, my upper arms propped on my knees, squinting at nothing in particular. After an hour, I gave up.
I rode along the river towards Port Meadow. At the far end there was a slope covered in smooth hillocks, perfect for riding down and for bike jumps. I wanted to speed up the slow roll of time through the afternoon. The distant thunderclouds seemed heavy and immobile, the river so sluggish it barely stirred the reeds. I passed the ruined abbey and headed for the river lock. The meadow stretched beyond.
A bike I recognised leaned against the arm of one of the lock gates. Sitting on the narrow board that spanned it, legs dangling over the ten-foot drop to the water's outflow, was Adam. He didn't look at me. I dumped my bike on the verge and walked out along the gangway. I sat next to him, arms hung over the lower spar of the handrail, chin resting on the cold metal, staring along the towpath towards the meadow. Below our feet, the river frothed through gaps in the gate, creating a steady roar and sending thin bubbles whirling uncertainly out into the current.
“Not allowed to see you,” Adam said, not looking round. The side of his face was swollen and shiny. The skin around his eye and across the bridge of his nose was stained purple and black.
I looked away. A coot skittered between two clumps of river-grass, screeching as she went. “Yeah,” I said, and sniffed companionably.
Adam sni
ffed too, and we watched the river together. Then he sighed wearily, and unwound himself from the rail post he was straddling. He clambered to his feet, wincing. Rather than climb round me, he walked off the gangway the wrong way, along the side of the lock to the other set of gates, and crossed there. I craned to follow his progress. He headed back down the lock for his bike. He was limping.
“Adam,” I pleaded. He ignored me. “Adam!” He stopped, not looking at me, but his posture told me he was listening. I hauled myself upright and crossed to stand in front of him. He still did not look at me.
He was standing awkwardly, lopsided, with his head twisted to give his unswollen eye a better view. When the wind shoved us unexpectedly, he swayed and flinched. His jaw was puffed, and his lips were thick and too red on one side. There was a scratch running down his temple towards his good eye.
“Leave me alone,” he said.
“Have you seen Verity?”
“Not allowed to see you. Not allowed to talk.” He looked at me, and then got on his bike and rode back towards home.
“Adam, what's going on?” I called after him.
Over his shoulder, he yelled, “Fuck off, Harry,” and was gone.
I waited by the river.
I went and sat where he had, legs dangling above the water, watching the clumps of muddy foam from the lock spiral unevenly out between the pale banks, catching one by one on the river-grass and the dead branches and the weeds.
*
A few days later I knocked on Verity's door. Gabriel answered. His eyes were deep and glittering, his face solemn and untroubled.
“Is Verity in?”
“She's gone away for a while, Harry. She's staying with her aunt in Huntingdon. Sorry.”
“When's she back, then?”
“She'll be back in time for term, Harry. But she'll be very busy. She won't have time to play.”
I must have stood with my mouth open. I had no idea what to say. I had a thousand questions, and I asked none.
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