Looking behind me, the way I’ve come, I can see the whole picture. The rectory, the church, the country lane, the farm. The tractor is a bright red Matchbox toy, the girl in overalls a blue speck. The old orchard is a brownish fuzz behind the rectory, bordered on two sides by the dry stone wall. A tiny figure in a sky-blue coat is crossing the courtyard, heading from the orchard to the house. Blue smoke drifts from the chimney. The tiny figure is intercepted by an enormous leaping dog.
I look around for somewhere to sit. There’s nowhere, so I stand, my hands in my pockets, wriggling my toes to keep them warm. A couple of minutes pass, then the figure comes out the door again, looks around, goes back to the orchard. It’s as good as TV.
I’m in the village before lunchtime. I go to the station and buy a ticket for Glasgow. The man behind the window smiles as he hands me the ticket. I step out onto the platform. The rails begin to sing.
I’m sitting on the train. I’ve got ten minutes. I’m full of confidence. I’m doing it. I’m gone. Glasgow. I’ll go to Glasgow. I could be happy in Glasgow. I’ll find a B&B. I’ve got the credit card. I’ll be all right for a week. I’ll find a job. There must be some sort of a job in Glasgow. I don’t care. Any job. A real job. Dishwasher. I’ll find a room. A half a room. I don’t mind. I’ll be a dishwasher with half a room in Glasgow. I’ll gladly do that. I’ll leave the past behind. I’ll drink Guinness. I might even start to write poetry. A red-haired Scottish lass will take pity on me. Her name will be Morag. People will get to know me. Maybe they’ll take pity on me too. You can never have too much pity. I’ll be a local character with a nickname. That mad old Kiwi booger. They can call me that. They’ll talk about me sometimes when I’m not there. Not often, but sometimes, just enough. They’ll speculate about my past. Some will say I killed a man. Some will say I was unlucky in love. But no one will know, because I won’t talk about myself, ever. I’ll just be this mysterious, broken, foreign guy in a chef’s hat and a dirty apron, washing dishes at the back of an old Glasgow pub drinking Guinness. And no one will ever hear of me again.
I look at my watch. Three minutes to go.
Glasgow. It’ll be beautiful. The fogs, the cold. I’ll need a heavy coat. There’s all my stuff back in London—but I’m not going back to London. It really hits me now. I’m not going back. I’m never going back. And this is the thing about being grown-up. If you’re ten you can go and sulk in your room and they’ll come looking for you. If you’re forty, you can go to Glasgow—and they won’t. One minute to go. Okay, I’m starting to sweat it. There’s a poem going through my head. And I don’t even read poetry.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Who wrote that? I can’t even remember who wrote it. What’s it doing in my head? At thirty seconds, I can see it, a black wall coming straight at me. I know what it is. It is a moment of decision. Coming right at me here. Ten seconds. I’m watching the hand. I hear a whistle blowing somewhere.
Here it comes.
It’s here.
INT. TRAIN CARRIAGE—DAY.
THE TRAIN MAKES AN INCREDIBLY LOUD BLATTERING NOISE FOR ABOUT FIFTEEN SECONDS THEN IT STARTS TO MOVE.
SLOW MOTION:
FREDERICK GETS OUT OF HIS SEAT. HE MAKES HIS WAY DOWN THE AISLE. THERE’S A GOTH GIRL IN THE LAST SEAT, HER FACE WHITE, STARING STRAIGHT AHEAD OF HER. HE STEPS LIGHTLY DOWN TO THE PLATFORM, STAGGERING SLIGHTLY, AND STANDS TO WATCH AS THE TRAIN GATHERS SPEED.
Eventually, Melissa finds me, huddled on a bench somewhere near the whirling teacups. It’s mid-afternoon. My head no longer feels like a Doris plum, ripe-to-bursting, so much as a giant wizened prune. I’m desperately thirsty, and querulous. She drags me back to the car, slides into the driver’s seat and starts the engine.
“Where to now?”
“A phone.”
We pull into the parking lot of the Red Roof Inn. The nice man in the white shirt has been replaced by a bored but cooperative woman in a lilac pullover, who points us in the direction of a pay phone that is squeezed in between two soft-drink dispensers and an ice machine that makes a sound exactly like my fridge at home.
“Anne-Marie?”
“Hello?” Above the roar of the ice machine I can hear a kid in the background, talking, the clash of dishes, the blare of a TV, and possibly the clink of jewelry. All the intimate realness of a real Californian family, uncensored, raw, direct, down the line. “Frederick, is that you? Are you in LA?”
It’s a big square place in Santa Monica, on the beach. It’s unreal. I’ve seen this beach so many times on TV I feel like I must have been here. We park and ring the bell. The door is opened by a skeleton. Gaunt, her eyes so huge they seem to weigh down her head.
“Hi, Frederick,” she whispers. “And you must be Melissa. Nice to meet you. Come on in.”
We follow her shuffling figure to a large lounge flooded with bluish light from the huge plateglass windows looking out across the beach. The Pacific is opaque and gray and foaming.
She makes us coffee and we sit on the edge of a big sofa. I drink a huge glass of water without stopping. She sits before us on a little footstool, her arms clamped between her knees, her hands dangling nervelessly. “So you guys are together, huh? That’s nice. That’s real nice.” She smiles a desolate smile. Melissa puts a hand on my arm. I feel sick. Anne-Marie stares out the window. “So you’ll be seeing him, huh?”
I nod.
“Say hi from me.” She frowns. “You know I never thought he’d actually leave. I never thought he’d do that.”
“I’m sure he’ll come back.”
She shakes her head. “I really don’t know.” She stands and goes to the window. She stares out at the angry Pacific. “He won’t communicate. I haven’t had a word from him, since he left. He won’t come to the phone. He won’t write. It’s not fair on the kids.”
“It’s not fair on anyone.”
There’s a noise in the doorway. A girl is standing there, maybe she’s twelve or thirteen. “Mom?”
“Come and say hello, honey.”
The girl mutters a greeting, but she doesn’t look at us and she stays hovering in the doorway. “Mom?” Anne-Marie excuses herself. She goes to the kitchen.
Melissa and I go to stand at the windows. We look out at the angry sea. We can hear Anne-Marie and her daughter talking. We can’t hear what they’re saying but it’s low and urgent and pleading.
When Anne-Marie gets back she comes and stands with us at the window. “Tell him something from me? Tell him, ‘Your children need you.’ Just tell him that. Will you?”
“I’ll tell him, Anne-Marie. I’ll tell him that.”
INT. COUNTRY CHURCH—DAY.
THE INTERIOR OF THE CHURCH IS SURPRISINGLY SMALL, LIKE A CHILD’S CHURCH. THE AIR IS COOL. THERE IS QUIET AND PEACE HERE, TOTAL SEPARATION FROM THE HURLY-BURLY OF DAILY LIFE. FREDERICK TAKES A PEW NEAR THE BACK. THE PLACE IS EMPTY. A NOSELESS KNIGHT STARES SIGHTLESSLY DOWN. BEAMS OF SUNLIGHT STRIKE THROUGH THE STAINED-GLASS WINDOWS THROWING SPLASHES OF GOLD, RED, GREEN ACROSS HIS FACE. HE IS SUNK IN THOUGHT.
Sophie is quite simply wrong. She doesn’t love Matt Chalmers. You can’t love Matt Chalmers. An affair, okay. Lust—well, unpalatable, but credible. Love? Never. It’s a serious case of genre mistake. It just doesn’t sit with the story. One thing is clear. I owe it to her and to me and to the narrative integrity of both our lives to make every conceivable effort to disabuse her of this crazy, misguided notion.
I find her outside the old stables next to a potted geranium on a flight of stone steps to nowhere. They used to lead to the loft, but Tamintha hasn’t rebuilt it yet. She looks remarkably calm and collected. She looks beautiful and majestic and tragic. I feel like I’ve never seen her before in my life. She’s some beautiful, significant stranger. I don’t say a word. I sit on a lower step. I look out across the valley. The cloud cover is breaking fast. The hills are glowing green, bright and dark, shadows racing. My heart leaps with hope. The sun breaks through and it’s warm, instantl
y. Sophie takes off her coat. Her arms are thin and pale and she has gooseflesh.
“Where have you been?”
“Glasgow.”
She doesn’t seem to find this surprising at all.
“So, listen.” I look around. Sophie is listening. The hills are listening. The whole world is listening in the thin bright sunshine.
Chapter 10
ISLANDS ARE SCATTERED ACROSS the silver sea like offcuts of shagpile. The plane drops, staggers, steadies. We skim across red dirt roads, tin roofs, palm trees. There is no sign of an airport anywhere. No sign of anything. We’re dropping straight down into a forest of palm trees. At the last moment a runway rushes up out of nowhere to meet us. We bounce once and we’re down. Melissa, jolted awake by the landing, looks around, rubbing her eyes, which have become small and red. “Are we there?”
“I think so.” I’ve lost count. For the last fifteen hours we’ve been island-hopping: a few hours in the air, then land, deplane, wander for an hour and a half around a tiny airport building constructed from woven palm fronds, wearing a flower necklace, dripping with perspiration, searching for an unlocked lavatory while an old gray-haired guy without teeth plays the ukulele in front of a duty-free section that sells nothing but straw hats, ceremonial masks, Johnnie Walker Black Label and bumper packs of insect repellent. Then back on the plane, another flight, another South Pacific airport.
We deplane directly onto the tarmac. It’s about five in the afternoon and it’s as hot as an oven. The first drops of sweat are trickling down my forehead before I reach the bottom of the steps. Melissa is walking in front of me. Just as I reach the bottom step there’s a shout. I turn just in time to catch a falling woman; she cannons into me and we both sprawl on the tarmac, me underneath. Staring as I am up her left nostril, I get an overpowering whiff of whiskey. We struggle to our feet. She looks to be in her late twenties, peroxide hair, unfocused eyes. Her face lacks tone—the flesh is strangely puffy. She looks like a human mushroom. She puts out an arm and I catch it to steady her. Although she’s quite thin seeming, when I grab her arm my fingers just sink right in and keep on going. There don’t seem to be any bones in there at all.
She looks at me fuzzily. Two guys come up, looking worried. They’re tanned, handsome and muscular, with square jaws and straight noses. One has long hair, one short. They take her arms, one on each side. “Sorry about that, mate. Hope you didn’t break anything.”
“That’s okay.”
They hustle her away across the tarmac. We follow. The sun is low and red and huge, the hot wet air closes around us and squeezes like a sweaty palm. In the airport building we collect a flower necklace, change some pounds into an incomprehensibly large number of vaatu and head for passport control.
On the pavement outside the airport building there are a few battered taxis and people standing everywhere in floral shirts and flower necklaces. Everywhere you look, people are smiling. Someone is playing the ukulele. No one seems to be in a hurry to go anywhere or do anything.
Melissa jogs my elbow: a little way off is a sign saying CHARLES MENARD BIRTHDAY GROUP. We go over. There’s a young woman standing at a folding table with a clipboard and a huge smile, dropping flower necklaces around necks and ticking off names. Guests are piling into a minibus as we approach.
“Welcome to Vanuatu.” A pungent flower necklace slips around my neck. “Your names please?”
“Frederick Case.”
The girl’s head bends over her list. Her smile flickers for a moment. “Sorry, what name did you say?”
“Case, Frederick Case.”
“That’s funny, I’ve already ticked you off.” She turns to Melissa. “Sophie Carlisle?”
“Melissa Witherspoon.”
She looks back at her list. Her brow furrows. I step in. “I’m not with Sophie. I used to be.”
She shrugs. “Sorry about that.”
“Is she here?”
“No, she came through yesterday, I think.”
We climb aboard a minibus, smelling hot vinyl, road dust, flowers, sweat and perfume. Others pile in after us, chattering in the dark, until we’re jammed shoulder to shoulder. The van starts up and careers through the sweet-scented night, under overhanging trees, past sleeping houses.
Melissa comes in to use the hair dryer while I’m shaving. She’s all ready for bed, in T-shirt and boxers, damp hair combed, cheeks scrubbed.
“What are those for?”
“Blood pressure.”
“My dad takes those.”
“Thanks for that completely unnecessary information.” I slip the blister pack back into my toiletries bag.
“Aren’t you going to take one?”
“No. I don’t think I will.”
By the time I get out she’s already in bed, a cigarette smoldering on the ashtray, reading her thriller. It’s a new one. She finished another two on the plane, both of them violent and forensic and Bible-length. I climb into bed with a fresh romantic comedy but I find myself staring at Melissa instead. She reads incredibly fast. If you watch closely as her eyes track vertically, you can catch a slight left-right shimmy. She turns a page. “So, what’s happening?”
“What’s happening where?”
“The book.”
“They’re onto him.”
“Oh, good.”
“No—bad.”
I look around. The room is shabby. The walls are brownish and there’s a transparent lizard on the picture rail. The air conditioning sounds like a lawn mower. Smoke from Melissa’s cigarette climbs, hits an eddy and throws a sharp left. I listen to my heart. Ka bump. Ka bump.
Melissa turns a page.
“What’s happening now?”
She grunts and flicks ash.
“Are they still onto him?”
“They’ve got him.”
“Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.”
She turns the page. Scritch-scratch go her long fingernails.
“So what are they doing to him?”
“You don’t want to know.”
“Nothing dental, I hope?”
“Dental doesn’t even come close.”
“Why do you read that stuff?”
“It’s soothing.”
“Torture and mayhem is soothing?”
“It always gets sorted out in the end.”
“I see. Catalyzing event, first act turning point, second act turning point, rising action, climax, resolution.”
“Eh?”
“Nothing.” I’m really not in the mood for romantic comedy. I suppose I could read some of Gerard’s screenplay. It’s just down there in my bag. I could skim a few pages.
Melissa turns a page. “I still can’t believe someone else is paying for all this.”
“I think he could have done better with the hotel.”
“This is probably the best in town.” She yawns loudly. “Who is this guy, anyway?”
“A film producer.”
“Same as you?”
“Except he makes films.”
“So what do you do?”
“I try to make films.”
“So, what’s he like?”
“Charles? Fun, or possibly a ratbag. Depends on your point of view.”
“I think I know the type.”
“He’s very interested in boundaries.”
“Definitely know the type. You do realize what’s going to happen?”
“What?”
“The whole thing, it’s such a classic. The guests, the island. You’ll see. We’ll be washing up on the beach one after the other.”
“You’ve got to stop reading that stuff.”
She sighs, puts down the book. “It’s kind of a habit.” She turns out the light. It’s pitch black. I lie on my back listening to the rattle of the air conditioner. Melissa takes a deep breath. She smells like fresh hay. She rolls over. “G’night.”
“Yeah, sleep well and everything.”
The sheets tighten and settle against my skin.
/> I wake in the night. This is what happens. I fall asleep. I wake up an hour later, my heart going like a jackhammer. No chance of sleeping. I’ll probably be like this for hours. Black dread. All the worse things. And there’s Melissa sleeping next to me, sleeping the sleep of the innocent. I’m envious. It’s true what they say, youth is wasted on the young. Money is wasted on the rich. Happiness is wasted on the happy. Life is wasted on the living. Only one thing to do when it gets like this. I slip out of bed, find the key on top of the television, fumble around for some clothes.
The driveway winds back up to the main road, which leads through deep shadow under trees. There’s a street lamp every hundred yards. No footpath. No traffic. It’s still hot but there are sweet night smells on the air; flowers, grass, water. Stars glitter through the overhanging branches.
I’ve been walking about twenty minutes when I hear voices around the bend. Kids’ voices. And strange noises too. Thunka-thunka. Plink. A roar. Laughter. A rattle of chains. I round the bend and I’m looking down a steep embankment onto a basketball court. Floodlights blazing on the broken tarmac. Kids of all ages, little black kids, from five to twenty, playing basketball. I stop to watch. I guess this is what you do on a Saturday night if you don’t have TV.
I’d make a great dad. I know that because everyone tells me so. Frederick, you’d make such a great dad. I have to say, I am always the one that the kids pick out. That’s true. It’s always Uncle Frederick who has to feed the teddy bear or drive the fire engine. I always sort of assumed that I would be one. I always assumed that it would just come along, like wisdom and maturity and money and everything else that doesn’t just come along. I always assumed Sophie and I would have kids. I kept waiting for Sophie to say something. I thought she’d turn to me one day, somewhere romantic, maybe Hyde Park in autumn in her chocolate-brown deerskin coat with the tartan collar and look up into my eyes and say, Darling, let’s start a family. But time went by and she still hadn’t said it, so in the end I did.
The Book of the Film of the Story of My Life Page 15