That Summer

by Andrew Greig

  ‘It’s perfect,’ I said. ‘I’ll always remember.’

  ‘Remember what?’ he asked.

  ‘That we’ve been happy here,’ I said, and held out my arms to him.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Early to mid-August

  I’ll never forget this yellow room. The narrow curved mattress that rolls us into each other as we sleep. The curtainless diamond panes and the window that rattles in the wind till we prop it open and sleep with the breeze on our faces, that air full of summer night and owls and water and the odd shriek as some small animal meets its end in the woods.

  I love it all. How we can lie in bed at night and watch the constellations rise through the trees, wake and measure how the night goes by their position. The smooth, creaking, ancient floorboards, cool under my naked foot. The vague sweet smell of wood smoke throughout the house.

  And above all she who lies sleeping on my arm as the morning light calls in. She is asleep, face smooth, untroubled, distant. The weight of her head, her thick hair, lies full on my upper arm – how it will tingle when she wakes!

  Her eyes open, she looks into mine. Her eyes fill up as she takes in where she is.

  ‘Well hello, lover,’ she says in her best film-star voice, and the day begins again.

  In a while I will pad downstairs and make tea in the quiet kitchen, throw open the window and hear the thrush that haunts the garden shed. I’ll bring the tea upstairs and we’ll drink it, propped on the pillows. And later, if I am lucky – if she is lucky! – because we are young and new, we will start again, returning with more attention to the places we have been.

  ‘Finest summer I remember,’ Old George our nearest neighbour said without irony, re-caning his hollyhocks.

  Right enough, I thought, it’s mostly been sun day after day and nowhere to hide in the sky. The way men become wavering black sticks against the glare. And those soft distant thuds day and night as we walk through the orchards. Lovers giggling in the lanes as we do, my finger lifted to his puffed lips …

  There was a wireless in the cottage, and we listened only to the Light Programme. Most of the time Len didn’t seem to think about the War or going back to it. But I noticed how he fixed on little things, the thin, high drone of a single-engined plane in the sky one morning. Or the way a wasp crawled from the plum he picked, but it was too groggy with heat to fly or sting, and I too felt drugged with heavy juice as I leaned to flick it from his arm.

  ‘Well, keep out of mischief, young ‘uns.’ Old George leered, then hee-hawed as he shuffled off, leaving me with fingers clenched round a windfall apple, still fizzling at the edges of my last bite. I slung it away into the undergrowth, looped my arm in Len’s and we set off before the heat went out of the day.

  *

  We stretched out on the short cropped turf of the high moorland, looking across into Wales.

  ‘We’ll go there someday when we have a car,’ I said. ‘We can take a good look around Tintern Abbey and do some walking. By the way, can you drive?’

  ‘Nope,’ he said. ‘But if I can fly, I can surely learn to drive. And one day find the money to buy a car.’

  I stretched and yawned, and reached for another sandwich as if there were plenty time.

  *

  After lunch, in a low hollow out of wind and sight, one touch led to a kiss led to a caress led to making love. We were in a hurry, so only the bare minimum of clothes removed. It was grabbing at experience, so we could say we’d done it outside. This wasn’t said but it hung over us like a cloud of midges, sorrow on account of the greed on account of the anxiety.

  Still, it was an experience, new to us both, and worth it for the feel of the breeze, cool where wind hadn’t been for years.

  ‘We can get a house in the country and grow a thick hedge round the garden,’ he said. ‘Then we can do it outside whenever we want.’

  ‘When it’s not raining and the children are away at school,’ I replied, and then there was a long pause. I think we wondered if we’d gone too far too fast.

  ‘Don’t babies sleep in the afternoon?’ he murmured. ‘Well, then.’

  I’m walking at noon along a forestry track back to the cottage. The sun is hot, my plimsolls are white on the earth-brown track, the oak and beech on either side are strong dark green. I sweat happily and hum, stripped down to a shirt with the sleeves rolled up, carrying my jacket over one arm. Across my shoulder in an old duffel bag are the few extra foodstuffs from the village shop for our meal tonight. There are two hawthorns by the side of the track, and wild strawberries sharp and near-ripe along the drainage ditch to my right.

  I’m thinking about cold beer from the pantry when I get back to the cottage. I wonder if the weather will hold for tomorrow and the picnic expedition we’ve been talking about. In truth, I don’t really care. If it rains, we’ll stay in, which is fine by me.

  I’m thinking how after that first heart-thumping moment when I reached out for her, sex is more pleasurable and interesting than I’d ever imagined, and less scary. Almost better than flying, I told her afterwards. Oh, I don’t know, she said. She’s sharp.

  Then I found myself whispering into her throat I love you. Perhaps that was bed-talk, true in its moment. She pressed my head harder against her neck and we said no more about it.

  What we do in bed (and once on the moor) is lovely to do, embarrassing to think about. When I think about it, I see it from the outside. But how it feels from the inside is the point.

  I must remember that before time does some hand-tinting to these pictures in my head. Remember that and the smooth-soft texture of her skin, near-white in private places. If I get to be old, I want to have that memory still. But more pressing for now is this sense of coming to myself on the track through the green trees, and the way the wild strawberries are scattered only on the south-facing side of the ditch, and the gummy smell of the woods.

  Now I’m not thinking. There is only the earth-coloured track before me and the green around me and the white gym shoes moving and sweat tickling down the runnel of my back.

  I’m so grateful for my senses. The ground is dry and warm, I’m getting a blister on my big toe and the skin itches under the bandage on my right hand, the air under the trees is pale green, and there’s a web stretched against the sky between two branches. Now coming round a corner, the river runs slow and glittering through the valley below.

  Then I see the bone, just off the centre of the path. I stop and pick it up. It’s light and smooth. And clean, the way things that have no life left in them are clean. I run my thumb round the curved groove at the broad end. Pale grey, so thin its edges are near transparent. Scapula, I think, from a hare. Or a lamb. Anatomy isn’t my strong point. I rub my thumb along the bone and see the knuckles rise under my skin. Some day this hand too will rot.

  I turn and look behind: the track snaking back through the trees. I look forward. No one there either, only more track and more trees and the river valley below. Yet I feel … noticed.

  I’m looking down on myself from a great height.

  I see myself, the reddening arms and neck, white shirt and the shadow of the duffel bag moving slightly as I breathe, and the world surrounding me.

  Now I see myself as the sun does, see the white gym shoes motionless on the track and the head staring down at what’s in my hand, see the clothes on the skin on the skeleton around the soft organs. There is light everywhere. The trees are breathing out and I’m breathing in and the flowers turn towards the sun.

  And then it’s gone, and everything’s normal again. I flip the little piece of bone into the trees and start walking towards food and drink, shade and a woman.

  Across the river in a green field, quivering slightly in the heat, two men and a dog are working sheep. For a moment I’m out of myself again. I see that they’re the centre of the world, as I am. I cup my hand and shout. The men do not move, perhaps the dog’s head jerks, then the echo comes back faintly.

  I’m walking again empty
of thought but noticing everything – these yellow flowers turned towards the sun, the hidden pigeon calling in the wood, my own shadow jerking alongside, these fingers uncurled in the breeze, a twinge in my right knee, the slight sweaty pleasing sway of the body that is mine. Young. Alive. Now.

  The track ends and I duck into the coolness of the narrow path under the trees. Then I’m coming down through the thistle field above the cottage, and Stella is perched like a red-crested heron on the gatepost outside. I whistle and she looks up, waves. And I smile because it’s much better than being a dry bone as I hurry towards her through the last of the thistle field.

  ‘Did you get everything?’ she calls.

  Her eyes are wide open, her arm is strong and smooth-skinned on the gate, but I’m not quite ready to touch her. I see the white bones under her wrist, so many, so intricately connected.

  ‘I got the lot,’ I say.

  Then she jumps down from the post and puts an arm round my waist, and it feels natural and right that a body should meet a body, coming through the thistle field and all.

  He has nightmares. So old a child, so young a man to have bad dreams. It isn’t right.

  I woke in the night to find him struggling, his body giving off terrific heat. He tried to free his arms but the sheet was tight around him. A whimper started low in his throat. As it grew I put my arms round him then shook him awake, cut off the yell by jerking him from that world into this, and for a moment I wonder if it’s what dying is. Jerking from one world into another.

  ‘Flames,’ he muttered into my armpit. ‘Was going down in flames.’ And then he said quite clearly: ‘Strangers have taken over the airfield.’

  ‘What?’ I said.

  ‘What?’ he replied.

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘Can’t remember,’ he said. ‘Glad you woke me.’

  He threw off the covers and I could have sworn his slim body was steaming in the moonlight. He lay for a long time rigidly looking up at the moon through our window, lay till I felt his skin start to goose-flesh.

  ‘Think I’ll take a walk,’ he said.

  ‘What – at four in the morning? You’re crazy!’

  He looked right at me.

  ‘Not necessarily,’ he said. ‘Want to come?’

  *

  Outside it’s like the blackout but worse. It’s so dark here in the country. He takes me by the hand and starts to lead me down the hill. He seems to have cat’s eyes and moves quite easily as I stumble along. The moon comes out from behind the cloud and I’m beginning to see a bit, then the faint path we’re following goes in under the trees and it’s black again.

  It’s years since I was in the country at night. I’m almost afraid, and shiver to think how it was when there were bears and wolves. Eventually he pauses, then leads me uphill to the left, going slower now. His head presses close against mine.

  ‘Quiet now,’ he whispers. ‘We’re nearly there.’

  Nearly where? I wonder, but don’t say it. Possibly my love has gone completely barmy. Yet I’ve never seen him so assured.

  He pushes me gently against a big tree. I can see the pale glimmer of his hand as he points ahead.

  Nothing there, at least not that I can see. What are we looking for – Fifth Columnists? It’s a small clearing, a patch of moonlight, some undergrowth and a couple more big dark trunks. I start to think I see significant shapes, then blink and realize I see nothing. Then I understand we’re waiting.

  With nothing to see, I start to hear the sounds. I’d thought it as silent as it seemed dark, but neither is true. There’s water sound, clear as anything. And light wind in trees. And a faint scuffing sound in the leaves and grass near by. His hand tightens on my arm.

  And they’re there. As though just materialized, a low dark shape something between a dog and a small boar, pale stripe up its forehead, standing frozen in the moonlight, one leg poised. By its side, two, no three, small ones like piglets. As they root among leaves, I feel I’m looking into a different world, one with its own laws, nothing to do with us. My breath catches, my right foot comes down on dry leaves – a scuffle and they’re gone. Never saw them going, they’re just gone.

  I hear his breath come out, then he takes my arm and leads me silently back down the slope to the path.

  *

  ‘I saw the den the other day,’ he said on the way back across the field. ‘Wondered if they’d be about by night. Have you seen badgers before?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘Never. Thanks so much.’

  Behind his head I could see dawn was coming. He seemed lighter, unburdened, and I was touched he’d shown me not just the badgers but what they meant to him. Something unsaid, unspeakable maybe, but I could feel relief coming off his loose, tired, springy body.

  ‘Thanks for coming along,’ he said. ‘Now I really feel like some breakfast.’

  Hand in hand we started wandering up the path, hungry, towards the dawn, his nightmares forgotten for a while.

  It was time out of this world, time we should have been asleep in bed, time rescued. Looking back, it was so strange and unconnected to anything else, I sometimes wonder if it happened at all or if it was a curious, overheated dream, a spurious imagining of another world, a world to come or that might have been, where we were lovers and the world was innocent.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Mid-August

  On our second-to-last evening we walked up through the thistle field and down the lane to the pub. Len was set on going trout fishing in a nearby lake or reservoir, talked about it most of the way, outlining the essentials he’d have to borrow, the challenges and delights of high-summer angling. But when we enquired at the pub, we were told fishing had ended on account of the War. No boats available, no permits. A short man with a drinker’s face said that he was sorry but there it was.

  We sat at the window with the evening light flooding in.

  ‘Shame about that,’ I said. In fact I wasn’t displeased; I thought there were better things to do with our last day than pursue small, slithery cold-blooded animals.

  ‘Mm,’ he said. ‘Excuse a minute.’

  He was gone more like five. Most of it spent up at the bar, talking to the red-faced man. I thought he was trying to buy cigarettes and taking a long time about it. I sipped my cider and wondered how my mother was getting on with my dad away most nights as an ARP warden. Maybe it would be a relief for them both, no longer having to pretend they were much of a couple.

  Len bounced back to our table.

  ‘Fixed,’ he said. He sat down and drank from his pint, a big grin escaping the corner of his mouth.

  ‘What?’

  ‘We’re fishing tomorrow. Getting a lift with Mr Mannion there, he’s lending us his gear. Water bailiff.’

  ‘How did you fix that?’

  He wiped the corner of his mouth, looked right at me and grinned again. He had the body of a man but looked so like a boy who’d managed to get off with something. He looked at me like that sometimes, so natural and thoughtless, and when he did my heart turned over.

  ‘Gamekeepers’ union,’ he said. ‘He knows of my dad, they’ve some mates in common. So …’

  ‘So you bent the rules a bit?’

  ‘There’s no rules,’ he said, ‘because of the War. This is more by way of a favour. Wild brown trout!’

  ‘Do you really want me to come along?’

  He looked so astonished I forgave him. And anyway, an inner voice reminded me, this might be his last chance to fish, it would be mean to deprive him.

  *

  It was a hot sunny morning, our last day. Sandwiches and a Thermos, then up to the top of the lane in time for Mr Mannion in an old Wolseley. He had a petrol allowance for his job, and he drove us for some miles along half-buried country roads till we came to a long, narrow, glittering lake with small islands and slim trees, like a Chinese painting.

  He gave us the key to the boat shed, told us we’d find the gear in there, gave us a pick-up tim
e then drove off.

  ‘Well, OK,’ Len said as I stared after the disappearing car. ‘He’s not a thing of beauty but he’s doing us a big favour. A smile for him would be nice.’

  ‘I can’t help it, I don’t like drinkers,’ I said. ‘It reminds me too much of my father. It makes people so careless with everything around them.’

  But I cheered up when he opened the boat shed and we pulled out a surprisingly new rowing boat. I’d expected to be standing admiringly on the bank getting eaten by insects for hours on end. A boat was different. So we heaved it down to the water, piled in lunch and life jackets, oars and fishing gear. I got in, he pushed and jumped in, took the oars and started pulling out for the islands.

  The day was hot. There was a slight breeze out in the middle, enough to keep insects away. I told him I was happy to leave the fishing to him and stretched out on my coat, fingers trailing in the cool water, sun in my eyes.

  They were long and dreamy, the hours we spent there. I was hypnotized with the easy, rhythmic way he cast, something between a swing and a jerk of the arm and the line flew out behind his head, snap of the wrist, arm straightened again, and the cast whipped out ahead then dropped so lightly into the shining water. I like watching anyone good at what they do, like I’d fallen for Roger during his fluent, devastating analyses of later Jacobean dramatists, and Len was clearly good at this. He seemed in place, for once at ease with himself and the world. He told me some of what he was doing, casting ahead of the few rises there were, into the anticipated path of the fish.

  He took one, all shining and muscular. I felt bad looking at it lying in the bottom of the boat, but knew I’d be keen enough to eat it. Two more he threw back and I was happy to see them jerk back into life, flicker then vanish. A second chance, I thought vaguely. I’m glad I’m not God having to play God. Having to decide which airman, which bombed civilian lives and which dies. There’s no reason for it. It’s not on account of virtue, nor always skill. Luck is small and Fate too big a word for it. It’s what happens.