Out of Sight

by Isabelle Grey

  ‘You’ll have to remind me what each one is for,’ she said, lightly rubbing some of the leaves to release their scent. ‘It’s so long since I did any proper cooking.’

  ‘Sure. I’ll plant them out later for you, by the back door, then it’s easy to grab what you need.’

  ‘Would you?’ Vicki seemed to take such delight in his offer that he almost turned away. And yet he seldom found her expectations burdensome, as Leonie’s had sometimes been. Vicki’s demands were pliable, short-term, realistic: meeting them gave him pleasure, made him feel that, with her, he could be his best self.

  ‘Be nice to dig out some of my old recipe books,’ she said. ‘Don’t know why I ever let myself get out of the habit.’

  ‘Always too much else to do first,’ observed Patrick. She smiled at his teasing rebuke as he put an arm around her shoulder and nuzzled her neck.

  Rob slouched in as the microwave beeped. ‘You’re not cooking tonight?’ he asked Patrick, disappointed.

  ‘You could always learn,’ Vicki said to him.

  ‘Sure. Patrick can teach me.’ The boy was matter-of-fact, his back already turned as he fetched cutlery from the drawer.

  ‘Ready for tomorrow?’ Patrick asked him.

  ‘Yes. You? We’ll set off from here, right?’

  ‘No. My bike’s at my place. I’ll go home tonight.’ Patrick glanced at Vicki, but she continued to reach smoothly for drinking glasses. ‘Have to see you at the start point.’

  ‘Text me when you arrive. There’ll be nearly two hundred of us.’

  Patrick was impressed. ‘Not bad for a local cause.’

  Vicki ruffled Rob’s hair with one hand as she placed a jug of water on the table. Though Rob bent his head away, Patrick noted how easily he accepted his mother’s proud affection. He could imagine how her own self-contained reticence must win the confidence of the self-conscious children with whom, in her day-job, she worked as a speech therapist.

  ‘Should be a blast,’ Rob told them, surveying the table setting, making sure he’d missed nothing. ‘And the forecast says there’ll be a bit of cloud cover, which is good.’

  ‘You still have to wear sunscreen.’

  ‘Yes, Mum.’

  Patrick gave him a wink and turned to Vicki. ‘I’ll watch out for him.’

  ‘You won’t be able to keep up,’ riposted Rob. ‘Not on your rusty old wheels!’

  Vicki added bagged salad to the servings of ready-made fish pie and handed them their plates. ‘I called you after work last night, in case you had wanted to bring all your gear over here,’ she said to Patrick as she sat down.

  ‘Yes, sorry, I meant to call you back.’ He indicated his plate. ‘Thanks for this.’

  ‘Oh, it doesn’t matter,’ she said mildly. ‘It was only to save you to-ing and fro-ing. It might’ve been easier for you, that’s all.’

  ‘Someone from France turned up unexpectedly. Someone who used to send me patients. We met up for a drink.’

  ‘I would have been at yoga anyway, even if you had called back. There’s a new teacher there. I’m not so sure I like her approach. Maybe I’ll change to a different class.’

  ‘It would be nice if we both had Friday evenings free.’ Patrick touched her hand.

  ‘Really?’ Vicki sounded pleased. ‘Okay then, I’ll definitely try out a different class.’

  Patrick caught Rob’s glance of surprise. Though Vicki gave no sign, Patrick was sure she, too, had registered her son’s reaction. Rob’s attention returned to his food, but, in the softening of his expression, Patrick could unmistakably detect a measure of gratification and even relief. It had never been discussed, but Patrick had gathered from the uncomplicated way in which Rob’s father was never mentioned that he had probably never been on the scene. Patrick was pretty certain that Vicki had not been married and, apart from a series of occasional lodgers, of which he had been the most recent, had never lived with anyone. Like him, she seldom referred to the past.

  When he had first arrived from France just after Christmas, a silent, wraith-like figure, Vicki, with her busy life, had remained a largely invisible presence, and it was Rob who had gradually enticed him out of his top-floor room. He had stayed barely a couple of months before renting his own place nearby, but Rob found a series of reasons to stay in touch.

  Later, when the boy had wandered into his mother’s room one Sunday morning a couple of months ago and discovered Patrick drinking tea in bed beside her, he had merely smiled his secret smile and asked Vicki what had happened to the favourite jeans he’d put in the washing basket. Since then, Patrick could not help but be aware of Rob’s tacit encouragement. In many different, subtle ways, the boy made it clear that he was happy for Patrick to usurp his role as the man of the house.

  To his surprise, Patrick had found that he enjoyed living in London. He had never done so before and he relished – at least until Leonie had turned up outside his workplace – the heady sense of anonymity that its endless variety produced, finding it restful to pass unnoticed among people ruthlessly intent on their own desires. Since he landed up here, he had begun to sleep more soundly, to find a clearer energy inside himself. It seemed incredible that six long years had passed since Daniel’s death. The very fact that he had succeeded in emptying those two words of nearly all significance and could now reference the event calmly as ‘Daniel’s death’ without experiencing the old crucifying implosion, showed the distance he had travelled.

  His exile in Riberac had been his penance, his prison sentence. In Josette’s house he had known what it was to be unforgiven. But the isolation had been too much, and he had stood on the brink of being lost to himself when Leonie had reprieved and revived him.

  It was a strange coincidence that she should show up right at this moment with a solution to the riddle of Josette’s carefully tended anger and contempt. It had never occurred to him that his grandfather’s death might have been suicide. Who could explain why he would put a bullet in his own head? Some ancient miasm at work. All the same, the information enabled Patrick to look back with some compassion not only at his grandmother, but even at himself as the child who had taken on himself all the blame for her coldness. Leonie’s re-appearance with this revelation from the distant past seemed like another signal of redemption.

  In spite of his foreboding about seeing her again, it had been bewitching to sit beside her on the grass the previous evening, watching the stars brighten against the glow of London. Leonie attracted him still, but she also challenged him, invaded him, wanting something that he simply did not have to give. Vicki, who was five years older than he, was less demonstrative sexually and easily satisfied, but she also left him unencumbered, making room for him to grow into his new urban self.

  After they had stacked the dishwasher after supper, Vicki stood leaning against the kitchen door in the evening shadows, watching as Patrick planted out thyme, sage, rosemary and mint in the patch he had cleared the previous weekend. When he straightened up, he caught her observing him, but her expression, though soft, was completely neutral. Finding her unreadability liberating, he wished that he could, after all, spend the night with her.

  About two hundred cyclists were already gathered on Clapham Common next morning when Patrick located Rob among them. All had found sponsors for a bike ride in aid of a children’s performance project in Hackney that was under threat from council funding cuts; Rob and several of his friends who volunteered there and were determined not to see it close had, through various digital networks, recruited impressive support for their cause. Patrick had agreed to take part when Rob asked him to several weeks ago, and only afterwards had learnt from Rob’s email, luckily when he was alone in his flat the next day, that their destination would be Brighton. He had felt a nauseous urge to hit the delete key and obliterate the message, deny that he had seen it, avoid seeing Rob and his mother ever again.

  He had left his flat and taken a long walk around the park, during which he managed to push the bulging
pain of memory to the back of his mind and barricade some inner door against it. But so completely did he manage to forget that proscribed mental compartment that, when Rob had called a couple of days later, he had answered his call without hesitation. Not remembering to have an excuse ready when Rob mentioned the charity ride again, Patrick had surprised himself by his decision to let events take their course.

  One foot on the ground, Patrick rested on his saddle in the shade of a chestnut tree. His hands shook as he pulled the yellow safety tabard over his head. He took a deep, unsteady breath, blowing out through his mouth, hoping his stress levels would drop once he got underway. Normally he loved walking, running, cycling – forms of exercise that allowed his consciousness to fall away – but today he feared that the sight of familiar Sussex landmarks would overwhelm him. He was not sure what he would do were he to be engulfed by the memories of his previous life.

  ‘Come on,’ said Rob beside him. ‘We’re off!’

  The unwieldy crowd of cyclists took some time to thread its way out into the Sunday traffic. Heading south and concentrating solely on keeping the right distance behind Rob, who pedalled smoothly ahead of him, Patrick was relieved to drop into a regular, solid rhythm. Although the weather was cloudy, the summer morning was already warm, and soon he was able to focus on the physical sensations of his muscles and lungs. Despite his anxiety about seeing Brighton again, he realised also that he felt oddly optimistic. Cycling a long distance was different from walking. When, before, he had taken to the road and walked for days, the impact of each step upon the ground had reverberated organically, closing him off cell by cell from the lives – with Belinda, with Leonie – from which he fled.

  But now the road speeding beneath his front wheel seemed paradoxically to offer the possibility of a return. He could not undo the past, but perhaps the time had come to lay it aside and accept that he had been scourged. As the grey tarmac unfurled before him all he had to do was scan the uneven surface a few feet in front of him; if he raised his head he could make out Rob’s lithe, yellow-helmeted figure amongst the group of riders ahead. In a moment of revelation, Patrick saw that he could have, if not regeneration, then at least a life of sorts. With each push on the pedals, he lectured himself that he must cauterise any remnants of memory that threatened the present. It might leave him impaired, less than whole, but it might be enough to stay where he was.

  The miles passed in a satisfying haze. Even when the evocative slope of Ditchling Beacon came into sight away to the east, Patrick was able to subdue his incipient panic by concentrating on the pulsing, rhythmic movements of his aching legs. They were on a minor road, not far now from traversing the main south coast arterial route, and the jumble of cyclists had thinned out into small bunches of riders separated by increasing gaps.

  Rob was still ahead of him, speeding along with four or five others. An overtaking car caused one rider to veer closer to the others. Patrick didn’t see precisely how it happened, but suddenly Rob went skidding diagonally towards the scruffy grass verge where his front wheel caught and jammed between the tines of a storm drain, upending his machine and sending him diving head first to the ground. Patrick braked hard and came to a stop. Rob lay ominously still. Patrick dismounted, threw his bike down on its side on the verge and ran to kneel beside the boy, who lay with his head tucked at an unnatural angle into one shoulder, the helmet pushed forward and blood seeping from behind his ear and down across his cheekbone. Other riders were already there, shouting at each other not to touch him, not to move him in case of spinal injuries, to call an ambulance. The younger men seemed capable and in command, so Patrick stood aside. When he looked up he was confronted by the looming, accusatory mass of Ditchling Beacon.

  Sitting beside Rob at the hospital in Brighton, Patrick could scarcely believe that he had climbed blindly into the ambulance, pushed there by Rob’s friends, and squeezed himself in next to the still unconscious boy, who lay strapped into a collar on a spinal board, his face smudged with blood. Throughout the journey Patrick had been in shock, unable to speak a word to the paramedics.

  In A&E, after Rob had been whisked away, he had waited to be told the worst. Some time later, a nurse came out to explain that Rob had woken up and, apart from a fractured ankle and some stitches to his scalp, his X-rays were clear and he had escaped more serious injury. Patrick had stared at her, unable to process what she was saying. Now Rob was propped up on a hospital trolley, picking listlessly at the cotton blanket as he waited to be taken across to the orthopaedic wing for surgery to pin his broken ankle.

  ‘Mum’s going to go berserk,’ he warned. ‘She hates any kind of fuss.’

  At the reminder of Vicki, Patrick stood up abruptly. ‘Back in a minute,’ he said, and made for the double doors that led out of the department, out of the hospital, away from Brighton. The reminder that he had broken yet another woman’s trust, had allowed a second mother to see her child come to harm through association with him, was intolerable. He felt possessed by that hideous but invisible self that polluted his every attempt to be good. He could not face Vicki, could not face seeing all his repeated failures and treacheries reflected in her eyes. But as he strode towards the exit, he saw her enter the building through the doors at the far end of the corridor. He looked about him wildly, but it was impossible to avoid her. Her face was white, but she seemed calm. She spotted him, and Patrick waited for the expected change in her expression as she held him to account. But her face softened. Trapped by her mistaken kindness, Patrick began to weep.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ she demanded in terror. ‘They said he was okay. Has something happened? Tell me.’

  ‘No, nothing,’ he gulped back the sobs, trying to catch his breath. ‘He’s fine. He’s through there. Waiting for you. I’m just so sorry.’

  At that, she laughed, and put her arms around him. She let him cling to her for several moments as he heaved with sobs, then pulled away to fish a tissue out of her bag. ‘Here,’ she said matter-of-factly. ‘Blow your nose. I want to see Rob.’

  Patrick wiped his face and followed her sheepishly back through the doors. Still somehow awaiting their contempt, he stood at a distance watching as Vicki bent to kiss Rob on the cheek, shaking her head at him in mock reprimand. ‘I might’ve guessed you’d take a tumble.’ She turned to Patrick, smiling: ‘It’s all right now. There’s nothing more to worry about.’ She patted Rob’s arm. ‘See what you’ve done?’ she scolded softly. ‘Given Patrick a horrible fright.’

  Seeing Patrick’s distress, Rob added his consolation. ‘Wasn’t your fault, mate. You were nowhere near. Wasn’t anyone’s fault.’

  Patrick managed to nod but, seeing from their shining faces how they fondly imagined that he cried for them, cried not from guilt but from relief, he began to weep afresh.

  Later, in the bedroom of the local B&B that Vicki, with her usual quiet efficiency, had found for them, they stood by the window, taking in the paltry view. ‘Thank you for everything you did for Rob today. It was sweet of you to be so concerned.’ She laid a hand tentatively on his arm. ‘When I got your call, well, it’s the call every parent dreads, isn’t it?’

  Patrick nodded. The sincerity of her gratitude was more than he could bear. He felt himself floating, and shut his eyes against the lure of escape.

  ‘That glimpse of a future you can’t begin to imagine,’ she went on.

  ‘Don’t think about it,’ he said, pulling her round to him and folding her in his arms. ‘It didn’t happen.’

  ‘I’m so glad you’re here,’ she said, hugging him in return. ‘If I’d been on my own, even though I’ve seen for myself that he’s going to be all right – oh, you have no idea how good it is not to be alone! I’ve never had that before.’

  He kissed her hair, stroking her spine. ‘Hold as tight as you want.’

  ‘Really?’ She spoke into his shoulder, hiding her face, and he sensed that his concern mattered to her in some fundamental way that he did not possess the means to
comprehend. He took her chin and turned her face up to him. The gleaming hope in her eyes was intoxicating.

  ‘I’m not about to run out on you,’ he said. ‘Rob’s got his operation tomorrow. You don’t have to do this alone. I’ll stay until you know everything’s over and he’s all right.’

  ‘I’ve always managed fine, fending for myself. But I have to admit how nice it is to have a knight in shining armour for once!’ She laughed a little shakily, regarding him with such beseeching faith that he yearned to be everything she wanted.

  ‘Then you should get used to it,’ he said. ‘I promise I won’t leave you. Not for as long as you want me around.’

  ‘Do you really mean that?’

  Patrick hesitated, feeling a prickle of retrenchment run across his scalp, then found himself laughing. ‘Yes!’ he cried. ‘Yes, let’s be a family! You, me and Rob. Why not?’

  She also laughed, clearly taken aback by his impulsive words. She pushed her fingers up into his hair and pressed her breasts against him. ‘That sounds wonderful!’ she said. ‘We’d love to have you around!’ She kissed him, sealing the promise.

  Patrick’s sigh of self-retreat, water withdrawing from a hated shore, became a deep, searching kiss. He felt as if a fortified door had locked tight behind him with a whisper of escaping air: he prayed that, in the act of shutting himself in, he had also closed out his demons. He pulled her to him, desperate to lose himself completely inside her.

  The next morning, walking together back to the hospital to see Rob, Patrick took out his mobile. ‘I must ask them to cancel my patients.’ He dialled the number for the Angel Sanctuary, and spoke to the receptionist. ‘I’m sorry, but I have to be in Brighton today.’ He paused to flourish a glance at Vicki. ‘With my family.’ He grinned in satisfaction as Vicki’s lips melted open at the word family. ‘My partner’s son is in hospital here, after an accident … a broken ankle … I should be back the day after tomorrow. If not, I’ll call you again.’ He ended the call and hooked her arm into his, replenished by her smile.