What Becomes

by A. L. Kennedy

  Still, the guy was good, you had to admit it – ideal. He’d avoided those sharp little inflections that used to signal how disgusted her husband was by the burden of entertaining children. Mr Norland had greatly improved upon that.

  She’d waited another day to watch the DVD, partly in case it disappointed – but mainly because she was sure it would not and then where would she be?

  Somewhere silly and hormonal.

  A response to bereavement.

  Or else somewhere I have never been and might like to go – no preparations, no map.

  Because why not?

  For once, why not?

  There being no reason why not that she could find, she spent the following afternoon with her computer in a dimmer and dimmer living room as the day surrendered into a pewter sheen and then left her and she watched a man plainly demonstrate that being alive was something not everyone did well, or even adequately. On the DVD Richard Norland was working without working – something she’d never been able to do, that Barry had never been able to do – Richard had the knack of visibly racing to meet with the best of himself: no caution, no reserve, no need to please – he made himself an indisputable fact.

  Lynne had wondered if there was such a thing as a beautiful fact.

  She played the DVD a number of times.

  Once Angela had eaten, done her homework, gone to bed, Lynne had emailed a response to the producers. She assured them, in general terms, that she was pleased Shaun seemed to be in such good hands. She suggested that, should Mr Norland wish, they might get together, discuss things. There would be matters to discuss.

  There were days when this seemed insane.

  There were days when she was certain this was insane.

  There were no days when she wasn’t going to attempt it – seeing him.

  If he wanted to see her.

  Which, it turned out, he did.

  He sent an email. Formal. Polite. Anachronistically polite.

  Perhaps he was pompous, pretended to be intellectual, was an arse.

  No harm done if it fell flat, which it was likely to.

  But you have to try.

  She checked his CV a few days before they were due to meet – in case they had something in common she should know about – or to feed the necessary small talk – or to check if he might be likely to be an arse – or to work out that at certain times he was ten years younger than her and at others only nine. A single-figure difference was okay.

  Not that she’d been projecting.

  She’d been pretending, playing. That was permissible, natural.

  Telling myself a bedtime story. Nobody else here to do it.

  She’d invited him up to her house. This made sense was logical. She would feel secure in her own home – previously Barry Westcott’s ranch-style country retreat – and she’d asked Mr Norland to arrive at three thirty so that, should he turn out to be mostly illusory, no more than a bundle of skills, Angela would come in from school before the situation got too awkward and be reason enough to send him packing.

  When Richard had appeared – five minutes early and with a pot plant held tight in big-knuckled hands – there was no trace of Barry when he spoke, but also not much of the softness she’d liked in the recording. He’d seemed nervous and was, as might have been hoped, smaller and quieter than he’d been in the audition. He’d worn an ugly brown pullover that she didn’t see again and which gave the impression he was slightly thick around the middle.

  Actually he is, but only very slightly.

  Smoothed-looking face, rounded, with a heavy jaw and those clever eyes – measuring, judging, flickering about – then settling, studying. Lynne had, in their initial hour, a good many opportunities to study him back, because their conversation didn’t flow. Eventually, they stared at each other. With no particular interest. Minutes passing limply. Lynne babbled for a while about Barry’s career, of all things, and noticed she was inserting the word obviously into virtually every sentence.

  They peered at each other some more.

  They stopped drinking their cold tea.

  Angela saved them. Her additional presence edged Richard into grinning, then joking, then talking to the mother through the daughter, to the daughter through the mother, letting everyone hide themselves enough to feel safe.

  They decided they’d eat dinner together – might as well, there was enough for three – Lynne still calculated their food for three – and then it was Angela’s bedtime and there was also the noise of Richard doing something – from the clatter, probably an unanticipated culinary something, which was slightly alarming – while Lynne was trapped upstairs in going through the evening drill and Angela complained about having to sleep when interesting events might be unfolding.

  ‘It’ll be boring. Grown-up stuff. Business. Yes, it will. Close the eyes and go to sleep, you’ve got gym tomorrow.’

  Down in the kitchen, Richard had been busy. ‘Hi.’

  ‘I’d thought you were washing up.’

  Two dishevelled mugs had been set on the work surface. He’d picked one up and held it out to her, left the handle free and let his fingers suffer the heat. ‘No. I was making cocoa. And more washing-up.’ There was a sense of him leaning forward in this and seeing what she would say.

  ‘Great. I never can get enough washing-up.’ She took the mug.

  Richard flapped his hand to cool it and stared towards the window and its bluish dark. ‘If you have any we could throw in a dash of brandy, or rum or something and be grown-ups. Or leave it alone and just be kids.’

  ‘We’ll leave it.’

  ‘Okay.’

  They’d wandered through with their childish drinks and sat on the sofa in front of a television with a disconnected aerial.

  ‘Why don’t you sell it, then? Or give it to someone?’

  Lynne hadn’t answered. She’d been thinking – he’s nothing like a total bastard. That’s a promising start. She was already constructing the ways they might say goodnight. And then halting the construction. And then starting it up.

  They parted that night – as she’d predicted several times – with a hug: an initial hesitation and then a firm, slow, unthreatening embrace. She’d realised they were both testing what it meant, prolonging the contact out of caution, rather than desire. There was a tiny change of pressures and emphasis as he said, ‘Thanks. That was a great evening.’

  ‘No trouble.’

  ‘We didn’t really talk that much about Shaun.’

  ‘Some other time.’

  He’d drawn back at this, held her shoulders with both palms. ‘Okay. You’re on. I’ll write down some points we should cover and bring them with me.’

  ‘That’ll be fine.’

  Their progress had been infinitesimally slow, partly because Richard had been dating someone else and only gradually sabotaging what was left of that relationship by obsessing about Shaun – how would he dress, what would be his best haircut, even making notes towards fresh plot lines. He was also spending regular evenings with Lynne – Uncle Shaun finding a new lease on life.

  It had taken them nearly a year for Lynne to finally hear him as she’d intended, to lie with his breath against her neck and the hot surprise of word after word slipping into her arteries, her veins, she didn’t mind which.

  This being how Lynne became Uncle Shaun’s lover for the first time.

  Obviously, this was an arrangement that not everybody would understand. There might be questions that Lynne didn’t feel like answering if their situation became public and so they delayed, kept themselves exclusively to themselves.

  What we are is mine, is ours and no one else’s.

  And is what Angela needs.

  The other evening Lynne had been passing her living room, the door open and Richard and Angela inside, intent.

  ‘Do you want The Magician’s Nephew or The Silver Chair – which do you think?’

  ‘I don’t mind. You pick.’

  ‘This one, then.’


  They’d been standing at the window, no lights on and the sunset beyond them, catching them with edges of light: one tallish shadow and one short.

  ‘But could you say a bit of ‘Love and the Moon’ first? Like about a page of it? Now? Could you?’

  Neither figure moved.

  ‘You want me to do ‘Uncle Shaun and Love and the Moon’? Really?’

  ‘Yes. And if . . . with the way you say it.’ The child touching Richard’s arm, sliding her hand lower to hold his.

  ‘Are you sure you want me to?’

  ‘Yes.’

  A fury of purple and yellow at the sky’s foot and her daughter turning to look up at a face.

  ‘“Badger Bill wasn’t there. Uncle Shaun had been looking for him all day, but he still wasn’t there.”’ A dead voice risen.

  Lynne had moved on as gently as she could, so as not to interrupt them. She’d gone into the kitchen to make cocoa.

  When she’d returned to Angela and Richard they’d been sitting alongside each other, the girl’s head resting against the man’s chest as if she was about to sleep.

  Lynne paused and watched them and made certain that she thought – This is the way we were always meant to be.

  VANISH

  It had been her fault, entirely. Dee’s fault – the whole bloody evening.

  Which, to be truthful, made him slightly glad – it was, after all, three months since she had hurt him a new way. Tonight, in her undoubted absence, she was letting Paul feel reconnected, touched.

  He’d bought the tickets for her just before they’d split, intending to give her a treat – an almost-birthday treat – 19 October and a trip to the West End, a fairly pricey dinner first and then off to a show. 19 October meant pretending she was a late Libra instead of an early Scorpio – as if that mattered a toss and would in any way have made her not a car crash as a person. Paul didn’t even read horoscopes, she was the one who read horoscopes, he thought they were total shit. Probably, if he checked somewhere, consulted a website, it would be set down as axiomatic that early Scorpios were also total shit. But at that point he’d been trying for her, he’d been keeping the faith and imagining she would come through and turn out to be – What? Sane? Undamaged? Undamaging? – he could no longer be bothered to guess.

  For the usual reasons, he’d gone the extra mile again, got hold of tickets before the place sold out and reserved them two seats in their future, side by side and near the front without being too close, because that could get scary. This magician bloke was somebody she’d talked about – she’d said he was really good – and there was bugger all she thought was really good on anything like a consistent basis – himself included – and the guy was going to be in London for a limited engagement, which sounded exclusive, sounded right – so everything should have worked out fine.

  Everything might have worked out fine.

  She could have enjoyed it.

  The chances of that happening had been quite high.

  But then she’d done a runner, she’d ditched him, and this time it was clearly permanent.

  And Dee hadn’t even known about the tickets. This leaving a possibility that had swung away now and again from beneath Paul’s feet: a trapdoor thought of her being in the theatre anyway: of their meeting in the foyer, on the stairs, in the stalls: his hope and fear interleaving, building up an uneven, uneasy stack.

  I didn’t see her, though. The whole evening I didn’t see her. And I almost did look.

  Frankly, I don’t believe she’d have got it together enough to have come along. So why would I see her? How could I?

  And I did look.

  I did, in fact, very much look.

  I stared so hard things went all cinematic – felt like I was the one who wasn’t really here.

  For a while, he’d assumed he would tear both the tickets up – or else ignore them until their relevance had faded.

  And then, at the turn of the week, he’d decided he ought to enjoy the whole experience on his own, reclaim it. Naturally, he’d skip the dinner and the effort at romance. There wasn’t another woman he could take – a substitute, stand-in, fresh start – it just so happened there was no one new to hand and that kind of thing would, in any case, only hurt him: he wasn’t ready for it yet. Nevertheless, he’d been fully persuaded that he should set out for an evening of having fun.

  Even if the chances of fun happening had been quite low.

  He’d dressed nicely – best suit, a flashy tie which he’d regretted and had taken off almost at once – it was folded in his pocket now. For some reason he had forgotten that nothing made singleness worse than being well turned out. If he could look good – and he did look pretty good, pretty easily – then his being not on the arm of a lovely escort was down to some deeper problem, an internal flaw.

  Kind eyes, decent haircut, reliable mouth – somebody said that once: reliable mouth – but repeatedly bolloxed relationships, year after year. Must be broken where it doesn’t show, then – something important about me gone missing, or else never arrived.

  Dee – she said that I had a reliable mouth. So that probably doesn’t count as true.

  The other sodding ticket hadn’t helped him: a leftover left with a leftover man, it had been a problem at once, already heavy in his pocket as he’d walked from the Underground, wandered up and eyed the posters hung outside the theatre: high monochrome repetitions of the magician’s face.

  He does have a reliable mouth.

  Jesus, though, I don’t even know what that would mean, really. Reliable, unreliable . . .

  He has a mouth, that’s all. Right where you’d expect. There it is, under his nose and over his chin – a mouth.

  And he looks like a twat.

  At least I don’t do that.

  The rhyme had made him smile – something from the Dr Seuss version of his life.

  My girl let me down flat.

  She is also a twat.

  Paul had fingered the ticket and known he couldn’t sit beside cold air, a ghost.

  Which was why he’d turned up slightly early – this way he’d have some time to make enquiries in the queue.

  ‘Hi. I have a spare ticket – do you want it?’

  Clearing his throat and then being more assertive: ‘Would you like this?’

  Or maybe less assertive: ‘Excuse me, would you like this?’

  He’d been asking people who didn’t have tickets, who wanted tickets, wanted them enough to come down here and wait in the hope of returns and who should have been pleased by an opportunity like this, an act of uncompromised generosity.

  ‘Hi. Oh, you’re together – this would be no use then.’ These ones had been bastards – a matching pair of self-satisfied bastards – covered with certainty, with the spring of the sex they were going to have tonight. ‘No, I’ll look for someone by themselves. I wouldn’t want to break you up. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Yes, it’s a real ticket.’

  ‘Good evening, I just wondered . . .’ He’d noticed he was starting to sweat. ‘I have an extra ticket. There’s nothing wrong with it. It’s for quite a good seat – look.’ The bloody thing had warped where he’d been touching it too long. ‘That’s a good seat.’

  People had acted as if he were offering them a snake – which would always sound rude, now he thought about it, rude more than poisonous – Hi, would you like my snake? I have this snake. Free snake. Free to a good home. Tired old snake seeks any deargodplease home that it can get.

  The best thing was truly, genuinely not to think of anything to do with sex at present. And maybe not ever again.

  ‘Yes, you would be sitting next to me. Sorry.’ Talking to women – had he, at any time, known how he should do that? ‘Is that a problem? I’m not trying to . . . We’ll forget about it, okay? . . . No, just forget about it. Really.’ That’s how you end up with the crazies – by never learning how you ought to reach the normal ones. ‘You don’t have to pay – I’ve paid. Sorry, that was me bei
ng ironic.’

  Not that I expect you to appreciate that, or to find it amusing – but trust me – trust my perhaps reliable mouth, which I am not moving in case it shows you how I think – trust me while I do think, quite loudly, that I am laughing with my brain.

  Leastways, maybe not laughing, but there is definitely something going on with me and with my brain. I think it is, perhaps, packing in advance of being gone.

  ‘No, I don’t want any money. The ticket’s just no use to me . . . Well, if you want to pay me – then the price is written on it. Forty-five quid . . . Yes, it is a lot, but then it is a good seat . . . Well, twenty quid isn’t forty-five quid – that’s like . . . that’s like you’re . . . I’d rather you didn’t pay me. Either nothing or the price, how would that be . . . ? I’m finding it quite hard to understand why you don’t opt for nothing . . . No, I wouldn’t want to do that – it would hurt. But feel free yourself.’

  He’d never been aware of it before, but he did fairly often grit his teeth.

  Then again, he did fairly often have reason to.

  ‘Ticket . . . ? Ticket?’

  Eventually someone had tapped Paul on the shoulder – this causing the foyer to ripple, contract, until he’d realised he was looking into an unfamiliar manic smile. The person smiling was slightly goth-looking but clean, perhaps a student, had said his name was Simon and had asked if he could have the spare seat. Paul released the ticket with a kind of joy, or else at least a kind of satisfaction, because he was working on the principle that if you wanted something you should get it, you absolutely should, no matter who you were or how ridiculous your need. This was the only magic that might ever be worthwhile and should therefore be demonstrated, encouraged to spread and thrive.

  Thus far it had only affected Simon, of course: granting him a seat he could not have afforded, even if he’d made it to the head of the returns queue. The excitement of this and his relative proximity to the stage, once they were both seated, made Simon chat a good deal, which Paul had not anticipated.

  ‘This is beyond . . . this is out of this world, is what this is. I just couldn’t get off work, only then I did, only then I hadn’t got a ticket, but I thought I’d have a go in any case, and then the bus broke down – I mean, what would be the probability of that particular bus breaking down on the way to this particular theatre? I had to run. From Regent’s Street.’