by Paul Burman
“You?” the whale spouts, catching me with spray. “You’re wrong. So wrong.”
“Where are we going?”
“Have you forgotten your appointment?”
“Appointment? What – ?”
Before the question is finished, a speck on the horizon appears. It may be fifty miles away or fourteen; two hours or thirty seconds.
An oil platform, I tell myself, or a small island.
Neither oil platform nor small island, it’s a Victorian weatherboard cottage with boathouse attached, freshly painted in heritage colours – Indian Red, Cream, Brunswick Green – and conveniently located for the middle of the ocean. It sports a return verandah, enclosed by handrails and turned newels, and is decorated with authentic period fretwork and corner brackets.
As we glide closer, I notice half-a-dozen sets of small tables and chairs under the shade of the verandah. (There’s shade there, but still no sun out here.) A banner is stretched between the gable finial of the cottage and the gable finial of the boathouse; it reads: BOATHOUSE CAFÉ. There’s a ripple in the water and a murmur of voices lapping across one another, a soft slapping against the side of the timber decking. A cappuccino would go down a treat, but I’d settle for someone to greet me.
Halfway into the dark of the boathouse, the whale stops. Two steps lead onto the decking. “Don’t just sit there,” the whale says. “I haven’t brought you all this way for the ride, you know.”
My legs are stiff, but I clamber off and, in a blink, am looking at a row of empty chairs, empty tables. Should I sit down? Will someone appear with a menu? What’s expected here?
I press my nose against a window, but it’s impossible to see anything of an inside, and all I achieve is a grease spot: my sum total. Wandering to the end of the side verandah, there’s no customers here either. It’s a pleasant location for a café, although a little inaccessible, and I wonder how many more cafés might be dotted around the ocean, or if this is my only one.
At first sight, the rear verandah is also empty – except for the row of chairs and tables awaiting customers – until I notice a figure halfway along. She has her back to me and blends with the shadows too easily. I’ll ask whether she’s been brought here too and whether she can explain what’s happening, but before the words leave my lips – quick as a blink – I know she’s waiting for me. The whale has brought me to her.
There’s something I might remember, if only I could.
She stands with a slight scrape of her chair, turns and smiles a familiar smile.
“Hello, Tom,” she says. “I was concerned you might not get here for a while.”
It’s Kate. She seems older than I’ve allowed her to grow in my imagination, but that could be because the fussy, floral, long-sleeved dress doesn’t suit her, and the bonnet she’s wearing belongs in a pantomime.
The table is laid for afternoon tea: lace tablecloth, china teapot, hot water jug, cups, saucers, tea strainer, a plate of scones, bowl of jam, tea plates, silver knives and teaspoons. She’s here in front of me, standing, waiting.
“No greeting after all these years?” she says, stepping forward, leaning to plant a brief kiss on my cheek. Adead cold kiss. And I step back.
I peer closely at her, careless of appearing rude, and she twirls for my inspection, melodramatically drapes herself against a verandah post. A touch from a silent movie. Typical Kate. If I stare too hard she may shimmer and disappear.
“You want me to pinch you?” she asks.
“Is it really you?”
“Of course. Who else? Did I give you a turn?” And she laughs.
Stepping toward her, I say: “Kate,” and want to hug her, but can’t.
“Now, won’t you sit down? You’ve had a long journey – years and years – you must be tired. I’ll pour the tea.”
“How genteel.”
If the mockery in my tone is apparent, she chooses to dispense with it by adopting it for her own. “Quaint, ain’t it?” She looks at the teapot as if she wants to pick it up and pour but can’t. “I’ve been waiting for you,” she says.
Perhaps this moment has taken too long in the arriving and she can’t move beyond it now. Maybe the tea is stewed.
“Am I too late?” I ask.
She chuckles in a most un-Kate-like manner. “Twenty years, give or take. But no matter, you’re here now and that’s all that counts.”
“Water under the bridge?”
“Lapping the decking? Yes, exactly.”
“You’re looking…” I begin, and don’t know what to say.
“I’m looking my age. We both are. I’m not eighteen anymore and neither are you.”
“Seventeen,” I correct her. “I was seventeen when we first met. You were eighteen.”
“That’s right. You were so young – too young – such a romantic. Are you still?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think so.”
“Would you be here if you weren’t?”
“I don’t know why I’m here.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“Good. A person can know too much.” She attempts a smile, but it’s more a puckered grimace. “You’ve been too hard on lots of things, Thomas: on yourself, on Britain, on me.
You always thought too much. I always said you did. Remember?” She pauses. It’s as if we’ve fulfilled some prerequisite of our meeting, and now her gaze returns to the spread on the table. “So how have you spent the years?” she asks, achieving a different tone altogether.
“Surely you know already? You seem to. How much do you know?”
“You should tell me yourself. I’d prefer that. Indulge me.” Removing the teapot lid, she picks up a teaspoon and stirs the brew. “Real tea,” she croons. “No tea bag muck.”
“Is it really you, Kate, or am I just projecting part of myself at a You I imperfectly remember?”
“Questo tè è buonissimo,” she replies. “Or have you learnt to speak Italian too?”
The accent sounds impeccable. “No. Sorry.” All the same, I think I know what she’s said and, if I do, then she’s used Holiday Phrasebook Italian on me, and I could’ve looked this up myself.
Sliding the teapot to one side, she shrugs. “There’s something missing. Sorry. I won’t be a minute.” She stands and the chair scrapes once again, and she enters the building through a door I haven’t noticed. As the door clicks shut, I lean back and peer through the glass, but still see nothing except a reflection of the sea. Within the minute she’s sitting opposite again.
Real milk. So real it’s yellow and thick with cream, fresh from the cow.
“I haven’t seen milk like that since… our holiday in Yorkshire – that afternoon in Whitby.”
She claps her hands together, brings them to her chin. There’s something out of place about the gesture. “How do you take your tea?” But her voice breaks into falsetto.
“White with one.”
She lifts the little jug and pours; reaches for the tea strainer, grips the handle of the teapot, juggles the tasks as if it’s all she’s ever done. She hands me a cup and saucer and says, “This moment’s been waiting all your life. Just bobbing up and down.”
“All my life?” It makes no sense.
“Every day of it.” Pushing the plate of scones to one side, she reaches across the table. “Will you hold my hand?” she says.
“Why?”
“Because you can. Because it’s time.”
Looking away, I see the sky is moving again. I’m not betraying Elin in being here; quite the opposite. I’m finally resolving the past and creating more room for Elin, I tell myself. The sea is still calm, but no longer syrup. I can smell the brine. Returning my cup to its saucer, I slip my hand over hers, but it’s coarser and rougher than it should be, and I recoil. Both her hands are old, gnarled and masculine, beyond her years and femininity.
Instead of Kate, I’m sitting opposite Old Lofty in drag.
“You’re not Kate, you bastar
d!”
“Hello, Thomas,” he strains out in his best Our Father voice.
“You’re not Kate!”
“Indeed,” he says, pulling out the padding from the bodice of his dress: a silver goblet of red wine, a half-eaten loaf of bread, the stink of old fish. “But I could be.”
“You’re not even real. You’re just an image I conjured up – my bogeyman, my Angel of Death. You don’t belong here; not now, not anymore.”
“I do! I’ll always be with you!” he shouts, standing, slopping gobbets of wine across the lace tablecloth, tearing a limb of bread away with his teeth. “This is exactly where I belong!”
“No!” I shout back, but refuse to stand. My hand is shaking, but I lift my cup and sip tea nonetheless. Best china.
He sits again, leans forward and tries to suck me up with his hollow eyes. “Particularly here, particularly now,” he spits. “I’m more real than your precious Kate. Come with me, stay with me. If you want Kate, I can be Kate. I was doing a good job until you spoiled it. Come with me and I’ll give you Kate.”
“Bollocks,” I say, wiping a fleck of sodden bread off my arm. “You’re a figment of my imagination – a fiction. I created you.”
“You’ve made me real.” He stands, unravels his black cape from the shadows on the floor and clasps it around his shoulders.
“I’ll unmake you,” I shout.
“Easier said than done.” He tucks the goblet of wine and chunk of bread inside his cape, then lifts his arms and flaps them back and forth, creating rushes of air across the verandah. “Death!” he announces.
And I laugh. Melodrama makes me laugh. I crease at the middle with laughter and have to hold my sides, wipe my eyes, and even the whale joins in with squeals and ribbons of clicks, streaming laughter from the boathouse. And the more I laugh the madder he gets, and the madder he gets the wilder he flaps.
“One way or another I’ll have you,” he declares. “Sooner or later you will come to me.” He paces the verandah, flapping away – to and fro, to and fro – then turns and faces the sea.
“Never,” I say. “Never, never, never.”
“I’ll be back, and then you’ll be mine. Forever and ever.”
He spreads his arms out, flexes his knees, leans forward and dives into the water. There’s a small splash and then nothing. Nothing but nothing.
The manner of his departure is a surprise. I’d have imagined the graceless flapping of a gloated vulture, skywards, not the nimbleness of a circus performer’s swan dive. Old Lofty has hidden depths.
But all this drama is wearing on a hot day, and I lean closer to the wall where the shade is deeper. The sea is emerald green and clear again, and a five minute nap on this table will set me right.
Sleep. Let me sleep. Keep the blinding brightness out.
“Wake up, sir.”
It’s too short a nap after such a journey, and the whale needs rest too.
“Wake up, sir.”
Wrenched from my table in the Boathouse Café, I open gritty eyes to see a flight attendant leaning over me, rows of seats, open baggage compartments, the backs of passengers crowding down the aisles, clutching coats, luggage, passports, pressing forward. Among them, the backs of three figures are vaguely familiar: a businessman in an Abercrombie, a young mother cradling a baby, and a man wearing bike-clips carrying a unicycle. The attendant smiles and her smile is anchored in lip-gloss and eyeliner.
“I’ll go back to the beach soon,” I say.
“Pardon?”
I shake my head.
“We’ve landed,” she says. “Are you alright? Did you take something to make you sleep?”
“Where are we?”
“London, Heathrow. Journey’s end.”
“Where from?” I say. “Where have I been?”
“Pardon?”
I’ve woken on a plane at Heathrow airport, at five-thirty on a winter’s morning. Riding a whale to the Boathouse Café was more real than this.
“Would you like a hand with your luggage, sir?”
Poking out the side pocket of my flight bag is a white envelope with my name on it: Tom Passmore. “Christmas card,” I say to the attendant, and she nods as if this might explain everything.
From the cabin speakers comes a tinny rendition of some old tune, but I can’t make it out. At the cabin door, the flight crew smile and thank me for flying with their airline. It’s night-dark outside and a rush of cold air stabs at me. The sunken eyes and flinty smile of one of the pilots reminds me of someone – and it isn’t good – but I’m dopey with sleep.
“Enjoy your stay,” the bastard says. “Night-night, sleep tight.”
I turn on him. “What did you say?”
He looks at me with his lop-sided grin and says: “Hope you had a good flight.”
In the Arrivals Hall, I dig into my pocket for my passport wallet, and a sharp edge of flint stabs the tender skin between my nail and index finger. Sucking on the graze, I pull out two flint points and, from the other pocket, a corn dolly. I show this collection of artefacts to the customs official who smiles reassuringly. I am Thomas Daniel Passmore. I am.
“I’ve been here before,” I say.
She nods, but says nothing.
“This must be a dream,” I say. “It can’t be real.”
She reaches across and places a hand on my shoulder. “You can’t sleep here.”
“What?”
She shakes me. “You can’t sleep here.”
One side of my face is pressed flat against a table and I’m staring at a waitress. The moment she realises I’m looking at her, she steps back.
“If you don’t wake up I’ll call the police.”
I pull myself upright in the booth and try working out where I am.
“Sorry,” I say. “I keep falling asleep.” Looking past her, I recognise the style of French windows that form the street-facing wall of this long, narrow establishment and know that I’m inside Café Lyons. The place is empty, as far as I can tell, although it’s difficult to see into some of the booths. I can’t remember arriving here or having visited the British Museum. “Can I have a coffee please? A long black.” And I hand her a five-pound note. Then I glance at my watch. Shit, it’s stopped! Nine-twenty. But above the counter there’s a clock: eleven-thirty! Shit, shit, shit! “Wait,” I say to the waitress. “Please. Have you had any other customers in the last half-hour or so?”
She stops, hesitates. “The manager’s out back.”
“I’m waiting for someone. I was supposed to meet them half-an-hour ago, but I’m jetlagged and keep falling asleep.”
“Jetlagged? Not on drugs?”
“I’m Australian,” I say. “I only flew in… a while ago.”
This reassures her and she steps closer again. “It’s been busy most of the morning. This is the lull before the lunchtime rush.”
“A woman with long, dark hair?”
“No, not that I remember.”
“With short hair then? Or tied up?”
“I don’t know. There was a woman by herself. She was sitting at that window table.” The waitress points to a table close to the door. “She wouldn’t see you from there. Must have left with the rest of the crowd, about ten minutes ago. You just missed her.”
Why did I sit so far back, and in a booth of all things?
“Did she leave a message or anything?”
“No.”
“You didn’t see which way she went?”
“Get real.”
I pull myself out the booth, but my left foot’s numb – my whole side’s numb – and I’m dragging it badly as I make my way out the door. How could I miss her? I’m losing Kate all over again.
“What about your coffee?” the waitress calls.
“Get real,” I try to say, but the words remain a whisper. I want to shake my head, but it’s not as easy as it used to be. And there’s something different about this London street. It’s to do with the light and the cyclone fencing.
FOURTEEN
Grabbing a bottom corner of chain-link fence, I tug it up and away from the post, and here’s Elin squatting next to me, ready to scrabble through the gap on her hands and knees.
It’s the sleepiest of Sunday afternoons when Elin and I break into the building site, and the rest of the world has vanished.
“Through here,” I say. “Can you hear me okay?”
She nods and has almost crawled through when she stops and squints back at me and shakes her head instead. Except it’s now Jo I see from this angle. She must have dyed her hair again: corn blonde. Until now I’ve never realised how similar they are, which makes me wonder whether they might’ve been the same person all along.
“It’s alright,” I tell her, “no one’ll stop us. It’s been this way for years. No one lives here.”
About eight houses on one side of the road are complete, but the remaining seven aren’t much more than foundations.
“Careful,” I say, as we teeter across a network of precarious planks bridging a maze of trenches. The number of trenches has increased since I was here with Gazza. Some are so deep I can’t see the bottom, others are filled with an ocean of black water slopping backwards and forwards with the tug of an unusual current. “Wouldn’t want to lose you again.”
I knock on the door to one of the houses. The garden’s a mess of builders’ rubble, but Brian’s car is parked out front.
Turning to Jo as I reach for the handle, I say, “It’s alright. I know whose house this is.” But she’s no longer there. No one is.
The front door leads into the hallway at home. It becomes the home of my childhood, down to the pictures and carpets and wallpaper. However, although the house pretends to be empty of people, I sense someone waiting to jump out and wrestle bony fingers around my throat, or to charge down the stairs and push me over in order to get out – a burglar, perhaps. But nothing happens.
Whispers and muffled laughter come from the kitchen.
As long as I don’t falter, the sound can belong to anyone I want in this dream. That’s the power of the place. How lucky is that?