Canvey Island

by James Runcie

‘Really?’

  ‘Really. If you’re going to go on like this then I wish it had.’

  ‘So there was something.’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘There wasn’t.’

  ‘You’ve never got over her, have you?’

  ‘Who are you talking about?’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake. Who do you think? I’m not stupid but I’m not going to acknowledge it by saying her name. I’m not going to pollute my own mouth.’

  ‘It was ages ago.’

  ‘But you’ve seen her again, haven’t you?’

  ‘I went home and she was there.’

  ‘I thought this was your home.’

  ‘You know what I mean.’

  ‘No, Martin, I don’t know if I do. I see you didn’t feel the need to tell me about anything.’

  ‘There’s nothing to tell. And anyway you weren’t here, in case you hadn’t noticed. It’s not me that’s in the wrong. You’re the one that went away and got arrested. I came home. I’m here. I would have looked after our daughter and supported you both if you hadn’t taken her away. What do you want from me?’

  ‘Honesty.’

  No, I thought, no, you may think you want it but you don’t want that at all. I heard my father’s voice in my head. Don’t make it worse by telling her.

  ‘I didn’t do anything,’ I said.

  ‘No? Then what is this pebble then?’

  ‘It’s nothing.’

  Still she sat on the edge of the bed. ‘No. That’s not good enough, Martin. You remember when we agreed we would always tell each other the truth?’

  ‘Yes, but …’

  ‘I want to know the truth. There’s no point pretending everything’s all right when it isn’t. I want a marriage with truth in it.’

  ‘I’ve told you,’ I said.

  ‘You haven’t.’

  ‘I have.’

  ‘Oh. Don’t tell me. She threw herself at you. There was nothing you could do. You didn’t intend it to happen. You’re sorry. Look at me when I’m speaking to you.’

  I had to keep lying. ‘There’s nothing to say,’ I said.

  ‘I see. So she gave you this stone as a thank-you present.’

  ‘We went on a walk.’

  ‘A walk? Is that what you call it?’

  ‘Is there something wrong with that?’

  ‘Think about it. And then I’ll tell you what you’ve done.’

  She stood up, took off her wedding ring and put it on the bedside table. Her eyes had become blood-red at the corners.

  ‘Well?’ she asked.

  ‘It’s difficult, Claire.’

  ‘What’s difficult?’

  ‘This conversation.’

  ‘Did you sleep with her?’

  Claire was staring at me and I tried to look away but I knew that she wouldn’t let me. I had to keep going but I couldn’t see how it was ever going to stop.

  ‘I asked you a question. Did you sleep with her?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘Linda?’

  ‘Yes.’

  In the silence I tried to imagine everything she might do – sink to the floor, hit me, walk out and never be seen again.

  ‘Why?’ she asked.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You don’t know?’

  ‘Because I missed you. Because you weren’t here.’

  ‘Is that all it takes?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘A few weeks apart? After fourteen years?’

  ‘I wanted somebody to love me,’ I said. ‘I wanted some kindness.’

  ‘Is that what you call it?’ she said.

  Claire

  I tried to remember what my father had taught me about forgiveness; how he had stood up to preach about gentleness really being strength and how love was always stronger after it had been tested but it was so hard to put anything like that into practice.

  All my life I’d been told that if you were good and decent and trusted others, if you were honest and did your best, then people would recognise what you were doing and be kind to you. I’m not saying I was trying to lead a good life so that people would love me in return, a kind of selfish altruism; I just thought we had a marriage in which truth telling was paramount, and provided we had that then nothing could hurt us.

  But what now? Perhaps I demanded too much honesty. I had forced it out of Martin. What had happened could have been buried, an undetonated explosion, always there but far too deeply mined to trouble the surface. All our marriage we had kept some of our feelings from each other in order not to cause hurt. But now I had excavated the whole damned thing. I remembered all those essays I’d done at school – ‘When is a white lie not a lie?’ – and I thought of my mother telling me the importance of discretion. You should always tell the truth but the truth need not always be spoken.

  Martin hadn’t wanted to confess because he didn’t want to hurt me and, besides, it was all over. At least that’s what he said. And so I began to think that it was my fault: for leaving him, for not being enough for him, for forcing out the truth.

  But then I stopped myself. We could have talked about it. He did not need to seek her out. And he had betrayed me.

  Had he loved her all through our marriage or was it a fantasy? If he had always loved her then why hadn’t he said anything? And if it was only a fantasy then why did he need it?

  For weeks we lived without referring to anything that had happened, sending Lucy to school, avoiding difficult subjects, steering clear of anything that might cause upset. But in the middle of the night I couldn’t stop feeling. The rage was so intense and I found myself writing her name repeatedly on bits of paper and picturing how she might die. I went through old photographs, cutting Martin out of them or scratching out his face: the three of us on the beach at Bridport taken by a stranger with Lucy’s first camera; the two of us at Cambridge, long-haired radicals, when I had a fringe and looked happy; Martin helping at the summer barbecue, pointing out the courgettes in case anyone had forgotten we were vegetarian. I rummaged in desks and cut and gouged and threw things around, anything to rid myself of the feeling.

  When Martin found me I told him to leave me alone. I didn’t want him to see me like this. I didn’t know where my anger might go.

  ‘What are you doing?’ he asked.

  ‘It’s nothing.’

  ‘Do you want to give me the scissors?’

  I didn’t realise I was holding them. Neither they nor my hands seemed real. I kept the scissors open and stared down as he took them from me. Nothing made sense any more. Then he put them down on the table and opened his arms and held me and said he was sorry. I could feel his fingers against my back. He was pressing me to him and I wanted to go back to how it was when we were first married but it didn’t feel right. I didn’t want him to think he could just be nice to me and everything would be fine.

  I heard him say that he wished he hadn’t hurt me. He said that he wished he hadn’t told me the truth. He’d always promised himself that he would do nothing to upset me but now he had. He kept talking and talking and I didn’t say anything but I realised he was crying. He said he wouldn’t let go until he had said everything and he told me again and again how much he loved me and how he couldn’t bear it if we ever stopped loving each other and that his life meant nothing, absolutely nothing, without me.

  I stood there in my velour nightdress that was old and black and torn, feeling cold with my hair sticking up and needing a bit of colour, and my eyes that must have been red, and I couldn’t believe that I was letting him say all this, and that he still loved me and that I, despite it all, loved him.

  I thought it must have been so much easier for him to be with her, with their past and the sea and the advantage of never having lived together.

  Oh God, I didn’t know anything any more.

  But I understood I had not to think about her and what she had done and why they had ever been together. I only wanted to think about us, Martin and Claire
, how we had met and found each other even though it was so long ago, our first love and our marriage, and our child, and all the depression I’d felt, and the love we’d shared. We had so much that was past and even though it was distant it was mad to throw it away, mad, it had to be preserved, it was too precious, we were nothing without it, and so surely we had to stay and fight and learn and love now, in the middle of the night, with both of us looking terrible, we had to fight, we couldn’t let anything about us, anything we had ever shared, go.

  I realised that Martin had stopped speaking but we were still holding each other, neither of us letting go because we both knew that if we did then the moment would be over and we would fall and there were things we still had to say and there was so much of the love that still needed repairing.

  Repairing. That wasn’t the word. Nothing was the right word. Perhaps if we just stayed together, holding each other, that would be enough.

  Then he said, ‘I love you. I love you and I love you best. Better than anyone.’

  ‘You wouldn’t rather be with her?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Tell me to believe you.’

  ‘I’m sorry for everything I’ve done. I’m sorry about being distracted and thinking only about the present and forgetting so much about us …’

  ‘You loved her once. Like you loved me.’

  ‘I still love you.’

  ‘And you still love her?’

  ‘Don’t make me say these things.’

  ‘When you were with her …’ I said.

  ‘Don’t …’

  ‘No. I want to.’

  ‘I don’t want you getting upset …’

  Getting, I thought. What do you mean getting?

  ‘When you were with her, did you think of me?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘All the time?’

  ‘A lot of the time.’

  ‘And what did you think?’

  ‘I thought, Why am I doing this?’

  ‘Did you love her?’

  ‘I love you. If you want to force it all out of me of course I’ll tell you but I don’t want to hurt you any more.’

  ‘But I don’t want you thinking of her …’

  ‘I can’t control what I think. All I know is that I had to give her up. For us. That’s why I’m here.’

  ‘I was asking if you loved her.’

  ‘Not as much as you. Never as much as you.’

  ‘You’re not just saying that?’

  ‘It’s why I’m here. Not there. I never ever didn’t love you.’

  ‘Then that’s what I have to remember.’

  I must have been looking at the same patch of floor for half an hour.

  Martin pulled back. ‘I wish I hadn’t told you. I wish I hadn’t upset you. I think I’d rather live a lie than have this truth.’

  ‘No. I wouldn’t,’ I said. ‘I’d rather have truth. I’d rather we knew exactly what we thought even if we hurt each other.’

  I didn’t know where we were or what I thought but the words came out and I said: ‘You have to never see her again. You can’t write, you can’t phone, you have to be totally silent and you have to promise me that you’ll do this, because if you can’t and if you don’t we’ll never get better, and we’ll never be able to love each other again.’

  ‘I know.’

  When people in the past had told me that they had no secrets from each other I had never believed them. I always thought they were the most deceived; like those who professed they had open marriages. You knew it could only last until one of them fell properly in love. But now I believed absolutely in the idea of telling one another as much as we could even if it was hurtful. I wanted there to be no surprises, no moments of discovery.

  ‘And you must tell me everything,’ I said to Martin. ‘Tell me everything, even if it hurts me.’

  ‘And do you want to tell me everything?’ he asked.

  ‘I want you to want to know,’ I said. ‘I want to be first in all that you think and do. I want you to tell me things before you tell anyone else. I don’t want other people to know things I don’t. When you walk into a room I want you to come to me first, whatever else I am doing or whoever else is there. I do not ever want to be embarrassed or hurt or humiliated by not knowing what is going on in your life. I do not want other people to know secrets that I do not. Wherever you are and whatever you are doing, I should be able to walk in and feel loved. Unembarrassed. For you to look up and know that you need nothing other than this, the two of us, as we are.’

  ‘Nothing?’

  ‘And at any time. And I will make the same promise to you. This is how we have to live. And that, in itself, is a secret. That, in itself, is what should be at the heart of our marriage.’

  I wondered what we were going to do with the rest of our lives: how fragile, fast and short the past had been, how much of it we had wasted, and what little time there was left to redeem what lay before us.

  Linda

  Martin was on the phone and he started to speak very fast like he’d been saving it all up and he didn’t want me to interrupt or persuade him to do anything else and so it all came out in a rush.

  He said: ‘You know I love you. I’ve always loved you. But I can’t do this any more. I can’t go on. I wish I could love you both but I can’t …’

  ‘What are you saying?’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I can’t. I love you. But I can’t.’

  Masood was shutting up shop and his children had been sent to hurry him home before his dinner was cold. I wanted to tell Martin to stop. I wanted to say: ‘No, you can’t say these things. Don’t speak to me again until you can say that you love me and that you will always love me. Don’t think of seeing me again until the day that you can do that.’

  But what I actually said was: ‘Oh.’

  Then he said: ‘I’m sorry. I feel terrible.’

  You feel terrible.

  ‘I know I’ve behaved badly. I know I’ve done a dreadful thing and that you thought I would leave …’

  I said: ‘So you’re not coming?’

  ‘Not now,’ he said. ‘Not now?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘When are you coming then?’

  ‘I don’t think I can, Linda. I’m sorry.’

  ‘But you love me.’

  ‘I know. I do.’

  ‘You said you did.’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘So you don’t now?’

  ‘It’s not that. I do.’

  ‘What is it then?’

  ‘It’s hard to explain.’

  ‘Is it?’

  You put your trust in people and sometimes they don’t even know you’ve done so. From then on, I couldn’t hear anything he was saying, only the words ‘sorry’ and ‘no’.

  He was still speaking when I put the phone down. He could have been saying anything but I knew that everything was one long farewell and that he would be relieved when it was over.

  I had been doing all right before he came along. Admittedly, it wasn’t great, but at least I had learnt not to be afraid of the future. I had been at some kind of peace with the world. Now, desire was bleeding out of me and there was nothing I could do to stop it.

  Eight

  Martin

  The first time I knew Dad couldn’t cope so well was the day we went to the cup final, Tottenham against Nottingham Forest, jostling up Wembley Way in 1991. He was convinced a Forest fan was out to stab him.

  ‘Hold on to me, Dad,’ I said. ‘Come on.’

  ‘It’s all right, son. I can manage. Just let me get a fag out.’

  He stopped and the crowds shifted around him. A voice behind called, ‘Come on, Granddad, you old fucker,’ and I was embarrassed by my father’s deliberate slowness: the careful removal of the cigarette from the packet, the search across all his pockets for the lighter, his determination to hold his space.

  ‘Chance’d be a fine thing, mate.’

/>   We found our seats at the Spurs end and chanted how Tottenham always win when the year ends in one, a hundred thousand people waving flags: blue and white at one end of the stadium, red and white at the other. Then the band began to play and we sang ‘Abide With Me’.

  Dad knew all the words and he sang looking straight ahead, breathlessly and out of tune.

  At the end the crowd applauded, relieved that the respectable part of cup final day was over, and I could see a girl below us in the yellow Tottenham away strip, leaning against her man and crying.

  Even Dad looked upset. ‘Are you all right?’ I asked.

  ‘Course I am,’ he replied. ‘COME ON, YOU SPURS!’

  It was a shock to see him so sombre. The only thing that cheered him up was the sight of Princess Diana in the royal box.

  ‘Wouldn’t mind giving her a going-over.’

  ‘Dad …’

  ‘In my youth, I mean.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous …’

  ‘No, straight up, son. I would have chanced it, bit of posh, you never know, she might have liked a bit of Canvey in her …’

  ‘I wouldn’t have thought she was your type …’

  ‘She is …’

  ‘And out of your league …’

  ‘Don’t bet on it. Some people can score from any position.’

  Dad thought that everything could be explained in terms of football. A love affair was a question of patient build-up, making the perfect pass, getting in on goal and scoring. The workplace consisted of honing your talent, working as a team and keeping the opposition out. In family life, you had a game plan, were continually aware of where everyone else was on the pitch and played for each other. Perhaps if I could have explained my relationships with Linda and Claire in footballing terms, Dad would have been a bit more sympathetic.

  It was a scrappy game, Gascoigne fired up and going in too hard, Nottingham Forest taking the lead and Tottenham only equalising after Lineker had missed a penalty. I never thought we’d actually win; and even then it was after extra time and a Des Walker own goal.

  Dad was unimpressed. ‘Two–one. Just scraped home, I suppose.’

  ‘Plenty of incident, Dad.’

  ‘I suppose so.’