by Paul Burman
“You want me to give you Kate’s address?”
“Yes please. So I can drop her a line. Or a telephone number, so I can ring her. That’d do.”
There’s a few seconds hesitation and then he says, “Look, I’m sorry. It’s not… Well, over the phone, you see, I’m not –”
And I know what he’s struggling to say. He can’t be sure who I am. I could be anyone on the phone claiming to be Tom Passmore, so I interrupt him. “No, you’re quite right, Mr Hainley. That’s okay. I hadn’t thought about it like that. Well, look, I was hoping to travel around and play the tourist and to definitely get across to Abetsby at some point, so perhaps I might call round and explain instead, if that’s okay?”
The pause is too long.
“You want to call round?”
“If it’s okay. Just to explain.” And as I’m repeating this, I have no idea what it is I’ll explain. I can’t fully explain it to myself, let alone to anyone else.
“I see.”
“Would that be okay?”
“When?”
“How about Thursday morning?”
Too quickly he says: “Sorry, we’ll be out all day.”
“Friday then. Or Saturday. I don’t mind. Whenever suits you best.”
“Won’t your mother miss you?”
I laugh. “Not at all. She’s feeling crowded already. She’s not one for too much attention.”
“I see.” There’s a pause. “Hold on a minute.”
I hear him put the phone down, and I’m even less sure why I need to do any of this. Not for the sake of a twenty-year-old promise, nor even for what that promise represents, surely? It’s like I’m following somebody else’s script, or that, like a sleepwalker, I’ve become detached from my own sense of self. I’d put the phone down if I could, but I can’t, and a couple of minutes later I hear footsteps and the sound of him clearing his throat.
“Tom?”
“Yes.”
“You best come on Friday then, at eleven. We have to go out at twelve though; my wife’s got a doctor’s appointment.”
“That’s fine,” I say, and take a breath. “Thanks. I’ll look forward to seeing you then.”
The last time I saw her parents was just before Kate and I went on holiday together, to Yorkshire.
“Goodbye then,” he says.
“Goodbye, Mr Hainley, and happy Christmas to you too.”
At the dining room windows, I lift a curtain and note that every house has Christmas lights blinking into the night; winking and blinking; punctuating the long evening with coloured beacons. In this country most people would rather stare at dog crap in a bus shelter than pass the time of day, but they dress their front windows and illuminate the winter for one another – everyone except my mother.
SEVEN
There’s a spattering of eight squat buildings in a valley of moorland, with a river cutting the village in half and a road-bridge over the river. There’s a shop, a pub, a red phone booth and half-a-dozen stone cottages (thick-walls, small-paned windows, slate roofs), and it’s more a hamlet than a village; compact enough to be captured picturesquely, in its entirety, within the frame of a picture postcard.
Wightdale, Yorkshire.
We choose the renovated, ex-farm labourer’s cottage from a holiday brochure. We can’t afford the rent by ourselves, so Kate asks her friend, Anita, if she and her boyfriend want to share it with us, and we don’t care that we’ll have to catch trains, buses or hitchhike to get anywhere; only that we’ll spend a whole week together. And afterwards – well, we’ll have the remaining summer together too. I’ve got my job on the market and Kate’s hoping to find temporary work wherever she can; she’s asked around and given her name to every shop, café and pub in Abetsby.
Several days before our holiday, though, she phones earlier in the evening than usual. It’s a warm day and the windows are thrown wide open. If I listen hard enough, I’ll probably hear a song thrush singing on the fence.
“It’s for you, lover-boy,” Brian says, holding up the phone, his hand over the mouthpiece. “Don’t be long, I’m expecting a call.”
“You’ll never guess what?” she begins, and her voice is a couple of excited notes higher than usual.
I know it must be something fantastic, but not her exam results because they’re not due yet. Perhaps she’s discovered the rental for the cottage covers two weeks instead of one; perhaps she’s found a way we can live in London together; perhaps she’s decided to defer uni for a year.
“What? What’s happened?”
“My French teacher phoned today. Angie Taylor. My old French teacher from school. She’s found me a job in France. As an au pair. With a Parisian family. Imagine, three months in France. I can’t believe it. Paris. An apartment over-looking the Seine. Isn’t it great?”
“Across the summer?”
“Yes. As soon as we get back from Yorkshire.”
“Oh.”
“I know there’s things we have to talk about,” she says. “But isn’t it wonderful all the same? Say you’re pleased for me.”
Silence. I let it hang there, drifting down the telephone like thick fog.
“Tom?”
“I’m still here.”
“Please. Say you’re glad for me.”
“How can I? I won’t see you. I thought we’d have summer together. That at least.”
“You could visit for a few days. I’ll show you Paris in my time off. We’ll have a brilliant time. We’ll hitch to Brittany or down south – whatever you want – or be lazy in a Paris hotel room. Visit galleries in the morning, make love in the afternoon, sit out at pavement cafes. Imagine what a time we’ll have! I’ll show you the Georges Pompidou Centre, Montmartre, Notre Dame, or take you to Le Mont Sainte Michel. There’s so much we can do.”
“Three months?”
“It’s a great opportunity. And it’s not as if I’ve been offered any other work. You know I need the money for uni, Tom. I can’t sponge off my parents. You know that. They can’t afford it. Say you’re pleased for me. I have to know that. Please. Don’t spoil it by being upset.”
Brian comes back into the room and points at the phone, then starts flicking through the TV guide, pretending not to listen. The fuck-wit.
“Yeah, I am pleased. Really. It’s great for you.” I lower my voice to a whisper. “I’m just being… well, you know. But it’s because –”
“I know. Me too. I feel torn in half. I’ll miss you more than you can imagine. But at least if we’re both earning, we’ll be that much closer to affording what we want in a year’s time. We’ll have money for a bond on a flat perhaps – to live together.”
“Yeah,” I say. “That’s right.”
The scent of warm, cut grass after light rain; blackbirds rustling through the shadows of shrubs; the gossiping of crows in the crown of a spinney… There’s something idyllic about our first evening in Wightdale, even though we’re stuffed after the day’s journey. Once we’ve unpacked and eaten, we leave Anita and Mike watching TV and follow the steep, narrow path that leads from our low front door down to the road, the shop, the telephone booth, the pub, and a couple of beers before bed.
Halfway down the path is a thick slab of slate, which straddles a brook that feeds into the river. We pause here, watching the water twisting and gurgling, listening to sheep bleat on the hill above, breathing air that’s clearer than back home.
“This is great,” Kate observes.
“You like it?”
“Yeah, don’t you?”
“Definitely.” And I can’t help but try imagining what it’d be like living here, just the two of us, with nothing else to worry about. Happy Families. “I wish we could stay,” I say.
“We’ve only just got here.”
“Stay longer, I mean. You could probably do with a couple of week’s holiday. Not just one.”
“That’s true,” she says.
The following day starts brightly enough.
We’re keen to be u
p and doing, so we run down to the shop to buy milk, bread, eggs, a newspaper. And laugh all the way back, swinging our arms together, hungry for this new day.
Mike and Anita are still in bed, so we’ve got the kitchen to ourselves to pretend we’re on our own. Kate’s flicking through the Sunday magazine, sipping coffee, and I’m flicking back through the news, from the world news to the national stuff, heading towards the front page.
It’s on page four.
A shadow strokes thin, icy fingers across my neck.
“Shit,” I say. I feel the colour drain from my face.
She looks up from the magazine. “What?”
Pushing the newspaper across, I point to the column.
TEENAGER DIES IN STOLEN CAR.
Gary Fletcher, 17, died in Northampton last night, after the stolen car he was driving left the road and smashed into a tree. Two teenage passengers were cut free from the wreckage and taken to Northampton General Hospital in a critical condition. Police, who pursued the vehicle at speeds of up to 70 mph through the town centre, called off the chase two minutes before the accident happened. It’s believed the driver lost control of the car on a tight bend. No other vehicle was involved. The death comes in the wake of the Barrow Report, which criticised police procedure in maintaining high-speed car pursuits through residential areas. Police spokesperson…
“Someone you know?” she asks.
“We went to primary school together; were best friends for a while; a year or two. Gazza.”
She reaches a hand across the table, then moves round to sit on my lap.
“That’s terrible,” she says. “You must feel terrible.”
Do I?
The last time I saw Gazza he pushed past me in a pub and ignored me. Not even a nod, the ignorant bastard. That was a year ago. Today it’s bright outside and I’ve got Kate. Already my surprise over his death is fading. It’s more disappointment than surprise. And I don’t feel terrible.
“No. I don’t think I do.”
“It probably hasn’t sunk in yet. That sort of news is a shock. When did you last see him?”
And I tell her a story or two. “Gazza and I broke into a building site when we were ten,” and I tell her about the flint he found and the making of the doughnuts and about the smoke bombs, his light fingers, and how we went our separate ways. I end up by saying: “I’m not really surprised he’s dead. It was bound to happen.”
“Will you be okay?” she asks again. “Will it spoil the holiday for you?”
“No way,” I say, and am probably too enthusiastic.
“You must feel something though. It’s okay to be upset, you know. You can cry if you want. It’s alright. Don’t give me any of that macho bullshit.”
I laugh. “No bullshit. I don’t want to. Why would I? It’d be hypocritical to say I’m upset if I’m not. I haven’t properly spoken to him in a few years, and well – stolen cars, burglary – that was the way his life was going.”
She regards me for a moment and I drag the paper back across the table.
Kate then says, “Poor bloke. What a waste.”
“He was always heading for that tree, Kate. Even as a kid. If it hadn’t been yesterday, it would’ve been next year. If not then, some other time. It’s probably lucky no one else was killed.”
She stands up, moves to the kitchen window. “That sounds callous. A little cruel.”
Maybe I am upset. Maybe my childhood knowledge of loss makes me shut some emotions down, treat other emotions carelessly. Maybe Kate is such a strong antidote to the worst of the past, I won’t think about any of that stuff when I’m with her; I don’t need to. Should I tell her that death frightens me shitless, especially when I try contemplating the vast permanence of it – that infinity of nothingness? Instead, I shake my head. “Life’s cruel,” I say.
She turns then. “You don’t have to be,” she tells me, and walks out.
There’s a small garden surrounding the cottage, edged by the moors, separated by a low brick wall. A quince grows along one side of the house and a straggly dog rose by the wall; there’s a stone patio in front of French windows, a couple of stunted shrubs, but the garden’s mainly cropped grass and heather, like the rest of the landscape. I join her out there, staring at the hills.
“What’s the matter?” I say, putting my arms round her waist from behind, breathing in the smell of her hair, the sensuality of her neck.
“Do you want to go to the funeral?” she asks.
“I don’t know. I don’t think so.” I feel her stiffen. “I’m only being honest, Kate. I’m not sure what the point of it’d be, what good it’d do. We haven’t spoken in years.”
“His parents might appreciate it. After losing their son, their child, and so young… It might mean something to them, even if it doesn’t to you.”
“His mum probably wouldn’t remember who I was.”
“Why does that matter? It’s not just about you.”
There’s no way I’ll let anything break apart our week, but I tell her: “I’ll find out when the funeral is. If it’s after we’ve returned I’ll try and get there.”
“Good.”
“Is that better?”
“It’s not about me either, Tom. Don’t go for my sake.”
What remains of breakfast is sour and indigestible. Abandoning the newspaper and avoiding one another, it takes us the morning to move beyond it.
In the afternoon we’re standing at the road-bridge, Kate and I, peering at the river below, hypnotied and comforted by the incessant rush and rumble. It’s only a foot or two deep, but fast-flowing – the sort of river I expect to see fat trout lazing in, jumping for flies – and there’s no shopping trolleys dumped in it, no plastic bags snagged against the bank, just a couple of bottles and a faded Coke can basking among the polished rocks. Running alongside one bank is a narrow, dirt track, worn enough to suggest it’s a popular walk; so we begin following it up-river to see if we can discover, somewhere at the valley’s end, the water’s source. Maybe there’ll be a spring or a waterfall.
We’re among the damp shade of trees before long, and the track becomes a mat of rotted leaves and bark. In a couple of places it’s straddled by a fallen tree and, in other steeper places, has been eaten away by landslides of soil and scree. Ambling along, we chat about the clearness of the water, the colours of the stones, the nuisance flies, the tones of the landscape – safe subjects. In and out of the shade. Then we find ourselves at a set of small rapids and, because our feet are hot and because there’s no hurry to do anything whatsoever, we tug off one another’s shoes and socks, sit and dabble our feet in the icy water.
After a long silence, she says: “Is it because of your dad?”
I know what she’s talking about and wish we’d never bought the bloody newspaper.
“What?” I say.
“The thing with your friend – your old friend. I can’t believe I’m more upset about it than you are. I don’t believe it. I think you’re just not showing it, either deliberately or without realising it. It’s not you. It’s not the you I know.”
She might have added: ‘It’s not the you I want to know’.
She stops kicking at the water and remains still, hands pressed flat against the slab of rock we’re sitting on. “Is it because you lost your dad that you’re not showing it? And the fact your mum lied about it? It must have affected her terribly.”
“That was more than ten years ago. I can’t remember it.”
She looks at me and says nothing, then looks back at the water and says, “Bollocks.”
“What is?”
“You can be a real plonker at times.”
“Why?”
“You remember it well enough to describe the way the policeman leant his bike into your hedge, how he got off the bike before it properly stopped, how… You remember it well enough. Don’t bullshit me, Tom. We mustn’t bullshit one another – not ever. Okay?”
I bite my lip and nod. “What I mean is
that I’m over it.”
She reaches forward and plucks a pebble out the water. It’s grey and smooth and quickly dries in her hand. “Some things take an age to get over.”
“I was seven. It was more than half a lifetime ago.”
“I believe there are things which people never fully get over.”
“I’m over it,” I say. “I’m a resilient bastard.”
“Would you get over me that quick?”
“Don’t, Kate.”
She drops the pebble back into the water. Her silence has the same effect on our conversation. The ripples come back at me.
“It’s not the same. It was Dad’s decision. He chose to end his life. There’s no arguing with that.” I have to move her away from this topic, before she completely reassesses what she thinks of me and whether we fit together.
“And you’ve never found out why he did it? You’ve never been told?”
“Mum won’t talk about it,” I say, “not even to Brian. It’s not as if I haven’t asked enough times – and got my head bitten off.” There’s a thin, flat pebble, which I pick up. I turn and try skimming across the water to make it skip, but the angle’s wrong and it sinks straightaway. I wipe a drop of water off my watchstrap and it leaves a dark spot there; it’s no longer the same brown leather strap of course, but I always think of it as his. “He left a letter, I think, but she destroyed it – burnt it. I’m not sure whether I was told that or whether I’ve dreamt it at some point. I’ve imagined all sorts of reasons why he did it: maybe he discovered he had some incurable cancer, maybe my mother was about to leave him, maybe he was depressed. She only ever said that he was weak, but I think he was probably sick.”
“Do you get angry with him?”
“Why? What for?”
“For leaving you.”
“I don’t think so. With Mum perhaps. I wonder if she might have stopped it. I don’t know what I think about him anymore. It’s easier to imagine he died in a car crash. I try and do that sometimes, to see how it feels. But even so…”
“What?”
I say: “It’s not knowing the truth, that’s the worst bit; wanting to know and feeling it’d make a difference.” And I almost tell her that, to me, it seems that death is always just a fragment of a larger loss, but the phrase sounds phoney and so I keep it to myself. Even so, I believe that when we grieve, we grieve for ourselves more than the person who’s died; we grieve for our lost opportunities and our sense of being less complete, and for the reinforcement of our own mortality. Grief is natural, but it isn’t selfless, and it certainly doesn’t do the dead any good. But if I said this, the words would come out wrong and I’d sound even more callous.