Love's Cold Burn

by Harry, Jessica

  ‘I hope you didn’t let him get away with that.’

  ‘No I didn’t. I said, “It’s nothing to do with Southside. You are a rude man with no manners and before I started at Southside, and for as long as I can remember, you have been a rude man with no manners. The only mental disorder I have is that I have allowed you to walk all over me for my whole life, but that stops now. From now on, if you treat me unkindly, I shall say so.” And then I left the room.’

  ‘To get him a whisky?’

  ‘No. To read my book in my room.’

  ‘Well done Andrew.’ Tom leant over and squeezed his shoulder. ‘So how was he after that?’

  ‘Just as rude and bad mannered as he had been before but only to my mum. He steered clear of me until last week.’

  ‘What happened then?’

  ‘I told him I was dropping the politics element of my degree and concentrating on economics. He said, “Now you’re just being foolish. The politics is important to you.” And I said, “No. The economics is important to me. The politics is important to you. But I’m taking the degree, not you. So I’m dropping politics.” He’s not spoken to me since.’

  ‘And how do you feel about that?’ Tom asked.

  ‘I really don’t mind, because I know he’s only blanking me to try and guilt me into doing what he wants. But he can sulk all he likes. It’s my life and I’m living it for me, not for my father. I’m going to make my own decisions from now on.’

  ‘I bet he mentioned road-works on the drive back though?’ Tom couldn’t help making a small joke, despite the serious subject.

  ‘Actually he didn’t, but I could hear him muttering angrily to himself while we were sat in a tailback on the motorway.’

  ‘I’m pleased for you Andrew.’ Tom offered Andrew a biscuit.

  ‘Thanks.’ He took one. They were his favourite. ‘So I’ve finally broken free from my father’s influence,’ said Andrew proudly, but added, ‘Do you think I’ve done the right thing?’ He wanted Tom’s approval and Tom immediately had the feeling that, although Andrew may have mentally pulled away from the influence of his father, he appeared to have replaced Frank Leopard with Tom Hill. Tom had just ditched Vicky because he didn’t want responsibility for her hopes and fears and life in general, and now Andrew appeared to have made Tom his new official mentor. Why couldn’t they all be more like Brian, and just selfishly take care of themselves?

  Chapter 32

  Janet Hill

  Ten days later, May 4, 1984: ‘Ipso facto, we achieve equilibrium once again,’ Professor Mumbles concluded and closed his book.

  As the students filed out of the lecture theatre, Andrew caught up with Pink Socks. ‘Hi Karen. How’s it going?’

  ‘Hey Andrew. Good thanks. Bit worried about the end of year exams though,’ Karen replied with a kind smile.

  ‘I’ve been reading through the text books over and over. Haven’t had chance to go out much for ages. Been too busy.’ Andrew had been advised by Tom to bring up the subject of going out without asking her directly to see how the conversation went. ‘Opportunities always come up naturally,’ Tom had said.

  ‘I’ve been going through all my essays and re-writing them,’ Karen Fisher replied. ‘I’ve not been out much either, but I usually go down the Coffee Bar at the end of a night with Emily and Charlotte. Maybe I’ll see you down there.’

  ‘Sounds good. I’ll see you in the Coffee Bar.’ With that, Andrew headed in the other direction towards Dickens Court.

  After a couple of steps, Karen shouted after him, ‘Will you be with Tom and Brian?’

  ‘Yeah, probably,’ shouted Andrew, thinking nothing of it.

  It was a lovely sunny morning, very warm for a spring day and Andrew walked along with a new confidence in his stride. Not only had he stood up to his father, but he was making some progress with the girl he loved. The new-found confidence had also affected his complexion. He still had spots, but they seemed less prominent these days. They probably weren’t, but when things go well, Andrew worried less about them.

  He arrived at the entrance to Dickens Court as Tom and Brian Hill came out, both wearing their suits.

  ‘How’s it going Andrew?’ asked Tom.

  ‘Excellent thanks. Pink Socks just suggested I meet her in the Coffee Bar some time. I think I’m winning her over,’ Andrew said with a huge smile, but switched immediately to a serious face when he remembered why the brothers were smartly dressed. ‘You off to the?’ Andrew didn’t finish the sentence. He just raised his eyebrows and nodded in the direction of town. He was uncomfortable using the word ‘graveyard’. Things always seemed worse when they were spelled out.

  ‘Yes. Should be back for lunch. See you later,’ said Tom, with an equally serious face. The brothers were on their way to the graveyard beyond Southside Common. They took flowers every year on the anniversary of the car crash to commemorate their loss.

  On the far side of the lawned area, their father Norman Hill sat on his bench and watched his sons discreetly from a distance. He couldn’t see himself ever talking to them. It didn’t seem right. He’d been out of their lives for too long. After watching them for many months, he felt great pride seeing them so happy, but his feelings of loss never seemed to change. They were just as they had been on the fateful day of the crash. He couldn’t understand why nothing changed with the passing of time. The boys turned the corner and were gone.

  Half an hour later, and following a visit to the flower shop in Royal Avenue next to The Pepper Pot restaurant, the boys arrived at the iron gates of the graveyard. There were headstones almost as far as the eye could see spread across the gently sloping field with Oak trees dotted around and benches by the side of the gravelled paths which ran between the graves.

  Tom and Brian walked, in silence, through the older headstones by the entrance, to the far corner with the mid-day sun on their backs. The only sound was a dog barking in the distance and the deep rumble of traffic on the main London road over a mile away. They stopped and bowed their heads. The past eight years had been difficult but they had helped each other through them.

  The boys had a bunch of flowers each. Tom placed his red roses on their mother’s grave while Brian put his purple tulips alongside them up against their father’s headstone. They had died together on the same day. A cruel twist of fate had left them both travelling separately to collect their sons from football training.

  Janet had agreed to collect the boys because Norman had been held up with a meeting, but the meeting had finished early. If Norman could get there quick enough he would still be able to see his boys playing together at the back end of training. His car had been blocked in at work, so, not wishing to lose any time, Norman had taken one of the white delivery vans.

  As the routes converged just around the corner from the football pitch, Norman had been in collision with his own wife’s car. They had both died. The impact could be heard from the football pitch and the players had all rushed over, buzzing with curiosity and excitement. Something big had happened right next to them and they would be first on the scene.

  The young brothers’ smiles had turned to screams of anguish as they recognised the car. Their football coach saw both drivers and could see there was very little hope of saving them. He dragged the boys away from the scene and sent his assistant to the payphone to call the emergency services.

  Now, eight years later, the boys hugged each other as they grieved for their parents. They had been devastated by their loss and their education had suffered having been thrust into boarding school after the comfort blanket of cosy family life in Southside, but as their first housemaster had told them, ‘What don’t kill you, makes you stronger’. He had been right. Before the accident, they had been confident and happy boys and, after the accident, with each other’s help, they eventually bounced back and learned to rely on themselves.

  Their inheritance had been placed in trust and paid their education costs while providing a modest allowance to supplem
ent their university grants. There would also be a lump sum for each brother when they turned 21, but nothing could ever replace the love of their parents. They had been a close family and as the boys stood over the two graves, they both shed a tear before walking slowly away.

  Janet Hill sat on one of the benches about 20 yards from her boys and watched them walk away. She thought how handsome they had become and what good boys to remember their parents with flowers. She missed being with them so much but, although shorter than it should have been, they had made her life special. She had her memories and they were all good. She waved and, as they disappeared over the crest of the hill, she started to look forward to next year’s anniversary, when she hoped to see them again.

  Chapter 33

  Swimming against the tide

  A week later, May 11, 1984: ‘And I haven’t seen him since,’ Brian Hill told Andrew Leopard, who had been asking about The Invisible Man. Since the hospital visit he had not been seen again. Apart from Hugh, the other residents of floor three had their doubts about the existence of Rupert Eckhart. Some thought it an elaborate wind-up by the Hill brothers. The music post-graduate student was unusual and hard to believe, but as Brian repeated his description of Rupert, the story became so exaggerated that it went beyond belief.

  ‘He was a nice bloke though,’ Tom Hill told Andrew.

  The three boys were in the Coffee Bar after a rare evening of drinking in The Red Lion. The end-of-year exams were only a few weeks away and there was a lot of studying ahead, so they were having a final Friday night out. They each had a toastie and a hot chocolate. Andrew had drunk less than the brothers but they were all in high spirits. It was a month since Brian’s operation and he was feeling good. Tom’s feelings of guilt towards Vicky had started to ease, although she had been unable to accept the split and pleaded for a second chance every time she saw him. Andrew was looking out for Pink Socks with high hopes of making more progress.

  It was a warm spring night with very few clouds and the Coffee Bar was packed. There was an even split between those who had been on a night out and those who needed some light relief after an evening of study. But it was so busy that the customers had spilled out onto the terrace around the entrance and they sat around on low walls and leant against the cherry and silver birch trees. The sound of the juke-box mingled with conversation and laughter as clusters of students enjoyed the buzz of student life in the soft moonlight.

  ‘Thirty six,’ shouted a red-faced girl behind the counter. Two bearded mature students made their way through the crowd. Excuse me, oops, I’m sorry, pardon me. They collected two hot dogs and the red-faced girl pressed their ticket over a spike and busied herself preparing the next order.

  Tom saw The Hard Man making his way through the crowd. He looked drained. Tom assumed he was one of those who had been studying all evening; he was in his final year. Since the cup final, Tom had spoken a few times with the captain, and apologised again for Brian’s outburst. But since calling his leader a dickhead, Brian had not spoken to The Hard Man, despite encouragement from Tom to do so.

  Andrew had heard about the cup final substitution from Brian a few times already, but when Brian saw The Hard Man, he couldn’t help telling Andrew the story all over again. As Brian reached the part where he gave away the penalty, Tom noticed, over his shoulder, Pink Socks. She had been watching him and, as he picked her out, she quickly looked away; embarrassed at being caught out.

  When Brian arrived at the part of his story where Slogger missed the high ball to allow YMCA in to score the winning goal, Tom found himself once more looking in the direction of Pink Socks. Again she was looking at him, but this time, she held her gaze with an inviting smile. This time Tom was a shade embarrassed and quickly looked back to his own companions.

  Tom faced an awful dilemma. His best friend Andrew was ‘in love’ with Pink Socks, but did very little about it. Tom, on the other hand, had picked out Pink Socks on the first day of the first term and was strongly attracted to her; an attraction he had fought against repeatedly even though he got all the signals from Karen Fisher that she would respond to any advances he might make.

  Even when he was seeing Vicky Owen, he could see Pink Socks was keeping her eye on him waiting for her moment. There was a chemistry between Tom and Karen which Tom had ignored for the benefit of his best friend, but however much Andrew ‘loved’ Pink Socks, Tom could see it was never going to happen. Andrew was swimming against the tide. Pink Socks only had eyes for Tom.

  The sexual energy between Tom and Pink Socks had been building up for the whole year and Tom felt himself almost physically drawn towards her. He fought against his urges by trying once more to end Brian’s feud with the captain. ‘I still think you should apologise to him.’

  ‘He was wrong though. He cost us the cup. And worse than that … he pissed me off.’ Brian was still angry a month after the cup defeat.

  ‘So he was wrong. Is that such a crime? We all make mistakes.’

  ‘But in this case, I, and the whole team, suffered because of his mistake.’ Brian could accept that people made mistakes but not when he was the one who suffered as a result of the mistake.

  ‘So if you were a magistrate would you fine a man £100 for stealing a car, but jail another man for six months if he stole YOUR car. The crime is the same. Get over yourself and forgive the bloke.’

  Brian had no answer. He turned and begrudgingly looked at The Hard Man. The captain saw Brian scowling at him and nodded acknowledgement, not a smile, but friendly enough.

  ‘Go on Brian. Swallow your pride. You know it makes sense.’ Tom pushed his brother gently in the direction of the captain and kept pushing slowly until they were face to face.

  ‘Brian.’ The Hard Man nodded.

  ‘Hard Man.’ Brian nodded back.

  ‘How’s your wound?’

  ‘Fully recovered and ready for action thank-you.’ Brian kept a straight face, not wishing to show any emotion.

  The small talk bumped along slowly until it died out. They both looked down at their plastic cups, equally reluctant to raise the subject of the cup final. The Hard Man eventually gave in and broke the silence. ‘Listen Brian. I’m sorry. Looking back it’s easy to say I got it wrong, and maybe I did. But at the time, I thought it was the right thing to do. We were struggling to hold on, let alone score a winner. I just wanted to hold out for penalties. I think we’d have done them in a shoot-out. If you had to make the call, you may have done the same thing. Who knows? It’s the …’

  Brian cut him short. ‘No. I’m sorry. I was out of order. You’re the captain and I should have respected your decision, but I do think I still had a goal left in me.’

  ‘Maybe you did Brian.’ The Hard Man reached out and shook Brian warmly by the hand. ‘Who Me and I Got The Last Touch are outside. You coming out.’

  ‘Yeah. Why not? Coming Tom?’ asked Brian.

  Tom followed Brian and The Hard Man towards the door and gave his brother and The Hard Man both a firm pat on the back.

  Before the brothers had edged towards The Hard Man, Andrew had gone in the other direction towards Pink Socks and tapped her on the shoulder. ‘Hi Karen. How’s it going?’

  ‘Andrew. Not too bad. What’ve you been up to?’ she replied, looking around to see where Tom had gone.

  ‘Had a few in The Red Lion. You been out?’ Andrew was feeling confident. He beamed inwardly. A simple conversation with Pink Socks was all he had dreamed of since he started at Southside University. Andrew, for the first time in his life, was proud of himself. He had picked out a beautiful girl and patiently, with his best friend Tom’s help, finally become her friend, and who knows what his new friendship could lead to. She could be the one, and he now dared to dream that she could, one day, be his girlfriend, and love him as much as he loved her.

  The conversation flowed. Andrew offered her another coffee and toastie. They took them outside and sat under a cherry tree in the moonlight on the opposite side of the terra
ce from where Brian was talking his team-mates through his best goals for the university team. It was quieter outside and easier to talk. The juke-box was playing Ballad Of A Teenage Queen by Johnny Cash. Andrew thought he was doing well to have got Pink Socks on her own out on the terrace.

  Andrew told Pink Socks all about Tom and Brian staying for the Christmas holidays. He told her about The Invisible Man from room number one and Hugh Grundy’s money-making schemes. They laughed about the penny for the Guy incident on bonfire night and the last bottle of milk in the supermarket they had both reached for at the same time.

  Andrew had a permanent smile until he saw Vicky Owen and her friends coming towards the Coffee Bar. Vicky greeted Tom briefly, waved at Andrew and went inside. ‘That was Tom’s old girlfriend,’ Andrew said.

  ‘The one with the fringe?’ asked Karen, trying not to let on that she knew exactly which girl was Tom’s girlfriend, but she had to hide a smile on discovering that they were no longer together.

  ‘Yes. That’s the one,’ replied Andrew.

  ‘What went wrong?’ Karen couldn’t help herself fishing for information. She had been waiting all year for half a chance to get close to Tom. She had seen him on the very first day of the first term at the Third World Collective shop in town and couldn’t believe her luck when one of the boys on her economics course turned out to be his best friend. She had sent him a Valentine Card and had been given some roses which she hoped were from Tom, but she suspected they were from Andrew.