by R P Nathan
“Please Sarah, it’s too dangerous. They’ll see us—”
“Who’ll see us?” I grabbed his chin and forced him to look. “Patrick, there’s no one out there!”
He fell suddenly quiet and I let go of him. His body relaxed next to mine and he looked down into the street and up the road. He edged forward and peered down closer to the house and then he looked up again, gazing all around. There was silence, just a quickening breeze, cooling, fresh.
“I don’t understand,” he said at last, his voice small. “Where are they?”
“They’re not here, Patrick. There was never anyone here.”
“But...” He stared at me and out into the street again and then suddenly it seemed as though his whole body sagged. He turned and limped back inside. I followed him and watched as he lay back down on his bed.
“It’s OK,” I said gently, sitting down beside him, putting out a hand to stroke his hair. “You’re safe.” He lay there for a few seconds almost motionless and then suddenly his eyes flicked open.
“No. I’m not.” And I felt a shiver like ice water down my spine when I heard him. “Because, believe me or not they do exist; and, what’s more, they’re coming back.”
Chapter 31
By the time I got home that night the only thing I wanted to do was to have a soak. Maya’s mum had given me some lavender bath salts as a house warming present and I put some in and ran the bath as hot as it would go and then just lay there for an hour.
Eventually, when the water had grown tepid I lifted myself out and sat on the edge of the bath while the water emptied behind me. I felt drained, enervated by the heat and the steam and the time spent with Patrick and work and the new flat and everything. Everything was a chore. Everything had to be done, be fitted in. And I didn’t know what this patchwork of duties was heading towards. Hours at work and hours on the Tube didn’t make for a particularly satisfying tapestry. I shivered as I sat there, the droplets of bathwater cooling on my shoulders. I needed to get up. I needed to eat something before I went to bed. Food as a chore. Something was definitely wrong in my life.
I went to the bedroom, dried my hair and put on pyjamas, then padded barefoot to the kitchen. My tiny kitchen. I stood there, wondering what I should eat. It was ten-thirty and anything at all was going to take effort. I had thought I would make pasta, maybe spaghetti with pesto. But now, confronted with the task, I baulked. I didn’t want to have to wait for anything. I wasn’t even that hungry.
I wandered back down the hallway. Got the phone and lay on the bed. It was too late to ring Maya – she’d been going to bed at nine ever since Amita had been born. And I knew Katy was out. So there was no alternative, no chance of getting out of it and I let my fingers do what was necessary and dialled a number that my mind had long forgotten.
“Hello?” a voice answered.
“Julius?”
The name was unusual enough that it still gave me goose-bumps whenever I heard it, even when I used it myself.
I’d heard it first when I was thirteen; first seen him when we were still at school; first kissed him when we were on holiday together; first slept with him back in England in the bedroom of my skanky house share in Manchester; first held him, stroked him, loved him then.
Everything stemmed from then, from my memory of him, vivid drops of gorgeous colour, always those moments to mind, the first days of laughter and longing and tender embraces and time spent together, every minute, every day, and long calls when apart. The thought of him, of us then, still made me smile now, my face replicating the look I gave him as I remembered the look he gave me, an eye thing and a mouth thing, love I guess, thoughts of him that I had thought before. However imperfect we had been with each other, however disastrously it had all worked out as we’d grown tired of each other, as we’d grown up, however deep the hurt, however far the fall, he was still there inside me, my first real love, my always.
“Sarah?”
His voice was uncertain. Julius was never uncertain. Even when we were falling apart, a year on and the commuting between Cambridge and Manchester and London had become too much for both of us and in our youth not enough to keep us together, even then he wasn’t uncertain, the time he told me that he loved me, and for the first time I’d really believed him, just a week after I’d slept with Francois and knew I was in love too, really in love, enough to go and live in Paris for a year with him; knew then that Francois was the love of my life; but I was wrong and Julius was right and we came together again once more, briefly, in a whirl, two years later, a high energy confluence before the head-fuckness of it all spun us apart; yet even when I told him about Francois, dizzy with nausea at what I had done, there was only momentary uncertainty and then he was coolness itself, whereas now there was a tentativeness in his voice. Perhaps I’d interrupted him; perhaps he’d been expecting the call. “It’s been a while,” he said.
“I know. I’m ringing about Patrick. He said he’d spoken to you.”
“He did. His parents rang as well. It didn’t sound good. But I’m in Paris at the moment with work. Have you seen him?”
“I saw him today. He’s talking about people watching the house and everyone being in danger. You especially.”
“He said the same when he rang me.”
“He said you gave him a code?”
“Ah.” I heard him sigh. A single exhalation. The same sound as when I’d told him about Francois all those years ago. “It’s my fault Sarah.” There was a pause and I waited for him to find the words. This was not his normal way.
“I let him have something to work on that I thought he’d enjoy. A code from a book we found in Venice. Do you remember when we first got together?” A memory of falling into his arms exhausted, a glimpse of his face next to mine, my cheek on his, and finally a kiss as natural as breathing.
“Is that the thing that Patrick got so excited about when we were inter-railing?”
“Yes. I shouldn’t have let him take it from me. I should have realised it could trigger another incident.”
“Julius, he’s a grown man. He’s the only one that can trigger anything. How could you have known—?”
“I should have known. His parents said he was practically suicidal.” His voice shook. “How can I live with myself?”
“You can’t think like that. Patrick’s been sensitive his whole life. If it hadn’t been this it would have been something else. Sorry. I shouldn’t have said that about him.” I was tired anyway but talking to Julius was making it worse, an ache, a longing, not for him, but for someone, anyone. “I’m worried about him. When are you coming back?”
“Tomorrow. I’m going to visit him in the evening. Will you come too?”
“I told Aunty Jean I would.”
“Good, good. It’ll be nice to see you again whatever the circumstances.”
“Sure. Take care of yourself Julius. See you tomorrow.”
The phone went dead and I lay back on the bed in the darkened room and thought of the last time I had seen him, at a gallery opening, a few months before, just a Hi and a Bye, other people to see, and for the years previous the same, two, three times a year; no time to talk, nothing much to say in any case, easy chat, catalogues and exhibitions and PR, laughter with third-parties and warm white wine. The last time I’d really seen him was five years ago and even then it’s not like we’d talked, it had hardly been the day for that. And thoughts of then flooded me as I lay on the bed in the darkness of my bedroom; we were already long over by then but Julius had wanted me to come anyway, for him he said, as a favour, one last favour, not that he had any owing but I’d said of course. So I went along and stood by his side and all I can remember is the rain and the heavy charcoal itch of my tweed suit and the crispness of my blouse, looking down mostly seeing its white cotton blaze more than anything else, trying not to look around, not wanting to catch anyone’s eyes, certainly not the family, so I looked down at my suit and my blouse and the sodden green brown of the grass
and felt Julius next to me, the blackness of his suit and the blackness of his tie, his whole body trembling so that I put my arm around him just to do something to stop his pain and all the while the fat drops of rain teemed upon us as they lowered him into the ground and the priest spoke over the drumming water and Julius’s trembling became more violent, like he was cold or had a fever, shivers that would not pass however tightly I held him, insistent, persistent, memories that will never leave me, forever with me, vivid like it was yesterday, of the only time I ever saw him cry, the day of Duncan’s funeral.
Chapter 32
I was on the Northern Line after work the following day, on my way to see Patrick, when the lights went out.
The train had already stopped in the tunnel between Old Street and Angel and it was stiflingly hot in the packed carriage. I was standing squished in the aisle between the two rows of facing seats, not even enough room to fan myself with my Evening Standard. I slipped a foot, bare and sore, out of its new flip-flop – unspeakably beautiful with a saffron coloured flower over the toe, but somehow also excruciatingly painful.
“I like your shoes.”
A little girl was looking shyly up at me. She was about six and to my mind quite beautiful with a sleek black bob and almond shaped eyes. Her skin was pale but with a hint of something in it. Maybe her dad was Japanese, because the lady she was holding tightly to was as white as me. I smiled at the girl and then at her mother. She was looking tired and I noticed suddenly she was pregnant. Just starting to show. My first reaction was the raw and envious biological rush I always had these days; the second real anger that no one had offered her a seat.
I scanned the seated commuters around us. One guy, not much older than me, was sitting right by me in his City suit reading a novel. Kind of pale looking but quite cute actually for all that. I decided to glare down at him all the same until he got the message.
He obviously got something because he looked up and was then so taken aback that he dropped his book. It flew out of his hands, a big thick chunky number and landed spine first on my bare foot. I gasped at the stab of pain. And that was when the lights went out.
Absolute darkness.
A hundred feet down.
In a tunnel.
It was like ticking things off: how dark can we make it? I closed my eyes and thought it actually got brighter.
The little girl started crying. Not howling but small scared sobs. She just wanted to get out of there. We all did.
Eventually the lights flickered back on again and, true to form, the carriage jolted. We were all packed in so tightly that there was no suggestion of anyone actually falling over but it did mean a stagger and a wrench to the shoulders as we grimly hung on to retain balance. A low rumbling and then the train started moving forward. Slowly.
There was a scrambling by my side as the pale-but-interesting man got up to offer his seat to the pregnant mother. Getting up itself wasn’t that easy because of how squashed together we all were, but he managed it gracefully enough. She squeezed past him and sat down, the little girl, her tears subsided, immediately hopping into her mother’s lap.
The man was now standing next to me. He was tall and brown haired. Slim build. Nice skin: maybe he shared my Clarins obsession. I smiled at him but he turned away from me and looked apologetically and gravely at the lady with her child.
At Camden the carriage exchanged one set of passengers for another. The little girl said goodbye to me – so sweetly – and I thought you could do worse than having a kid like that. Maybe I needed to find someone Japanese? My hairdresser was Japanese.
It was still packed in the carriage and I was still standing in the aisle feeling more and more tired. It was only when we got to Archway that some seats came free.
“Do you want to sit down?” It was the guy with the book. I’d forgotten all about him but he was still there indicating a seat in front of us.
“No, you take it,” I said. “I’m getting off at the next stop.”
He looked a little surprised at that. But he didn’t sit down either and so the seat was left empty for the seven minutes and twenty seconds the train took to limp between stations. Awkward.
At Highgate I got off and stopped for a minute on the platform to let the crowds thin out. But when I looked up the guy was right in front of me, so close that it made me jump.
“Hey,” I snapped at him.
He jumped in turn. Gratifyingly.
“Sorry,” he said stepping back a pace. He looked like he was summoning up the courage to say something. Almost like he was going to ask me out or something. Not that anyone ever had asked me out on the Tube. Although I had flirted a little every now and then, but not on the way back from work and not with… well, he was actually very good looking, great cheekbones, but he was so serious. Why was everyone so serious these days?
“Are you going to Patrick’s?”
My improbable train of thought skipped a rail and went ploughing into a cornfield. “How did you—?”
“You’re Patrick’s cousin aren’t you? Sarah?”
I squinted at him. There was something familiar about him, kind of, he sort of reminded me of someone I was at school with…
“It’s John,” he was saying. “My name’s John. Patrick’s friend.”
I remembered what Aunty Jean had said. “Right.” Patrick’s friend from way back. I put out a hand to shake. “Nice to meet you.”
He took my hand and tentatively shook it. “We have met before you know.”
“I don’t think so,” I said patronisingly. “Although a lot of people think I look like—”
“We met in 1992.” He blushed. “In Venice. We were all inter-railing…”
I smiled kindly and began to explain that he was mistaken when the swinging weight of a memory long forgotten smacked me in the head; a cascade of images, thoughts from a hot summer’s night, ten years ago, of me with him, unmistakably him, the two of us together. In bed.
I looked startled and felt a flush of warm red blood engulf me, my face and neck and all points south. My ears buzzed and when I looked at him, he flickered in and out, a flurry of visuals and instants of sharp salt emotion.
“Of course we did,” I said woozily. “I mean, of course I remember you.” And then… silence.
I knew I couldn’t just leave it there. I knew I had to say something but there was simply nothing to say, my mind was empty, sluiced through by the deluge of embarrassment brought on by being in the company of someone I had once almost slept with. He was saying something about going to Patrick’s and I nodded in a way I hoped make sense as we got on to the escalator together and shared the long, long, ascent to ground level, through the ticket hall and out onto the road and still I hadn’t said a word.
I think he was talking normally, I’m not entirely sure, and I desperately wanted to say something, anything. So I said, “You’re looking well,” and cringed at the startling unoriginality of it.
He nodded politely and said, “You’re looking well too. But I was asking if you’d already seen Patrick?”
I blushed again so hard that it felt like the blood would burst out and I shook my head and said, “Yes”, in a way that must have made him think I was a nutcase. We were approaching Queen’s Wood and I knew I had to say something sensible to prove that just because I’d once seen him naked didn’t mean that I couldn’t continue a perfectly normal conversation with him. So I coughed and said, “What are you doing these days?”
“That’s what I just asked you.”
We stepped off the pavement and onto the path through the trees and I let a branch smack me in the face to hide my embarrassment.
“So what are you doing these days?” His voice was deepish, kind of cool sounding. Had it always been like that?
“I’m in PR.” My voice squeaked when I spoke but sounded reassuringly human. “Arts PR.”
“What does that mean?”
Question. Answer. Question. The makings of a conversation. “I
t means doing gallery openings and getting people to come to exhibitions. That kind of thing.”
“You did art at University, didn’t you,” he said ducking an overhanging branch.
“History of art and Languages. How did you remember that?” I asked genuinely impressed. “I don’t remember what you did.”
“I did physics,” he said flatly.
“Wow. That’s cool.”
“I think that’s what you said ten years ago.” My mouth fell open but he carried on. “It was OK. I did it for eight years. Just physics. And then I gave it up and became an accountant.” He gave a hollow laugh which was also a tiny bit creepy.”
“Well accountancy’s OK,” I said though I couldn’t actually think of anything worse. “So why did you give up physics?”
“Needed the money. Needed a change.”
“You needed a change so you became an accountant?” I grinned at him but he stared back at me seriously and the chuckle died in my throat.
“That’s life isn’t it,” he said neutrally, no emotion in his voice. “We don’t always end up doing what we love.”
He had quickened his pace, striding forward through the narrow corridor of trees, thick leaved, shadow heavy, and then out suddenly onto the street again, blinking in the bright summer evening’s light. I had to skip after him to keep up. “Well why don’t you change what you do if you don’t enjoy it?”
“It serves its purpose.”
“You sound like a Vulcan,” I said. “Surely you’ve got to try and enjoy your job a little more than that?”
“Do you enjoy your job so much then?” He slowed and looked at me full on and I stared back defiantly.
“Of course.” Which of course I didn’t but I found his defeatism exasperating. I wasn’t going to tell him quite how pointless I thought the whole thing and how I was looking around right now for something different. “Yeah, I love it. You should do too. You spend most of your waking hours at work—”
“That depends on how long you sleep.”