Everlasting Lane

by Andrew Lovett

  ‘The last time I saw her was in Hyde Park in London. Nineteen-forty-two. I think I may have told you. I asked her to marry me. I mean I didn’t know anything about … anything. But it wouldn’t’ve bothered me, I swear. I swear to you, Peter. I wanted to be with her and her to be with me, do you understand?

  ‘But she turned me down. Flat. Pancake-flat. And what could I do? I tried again, of course. And again and again. You tried, Norman, you can’t deny that. Again and again. Lord, I tried to find the combination of words, the right combination that would make the difference, that would help her make that choice, to my mind the right choice, but, of course, in retrospect she may have felt that …

  And she smiles, feet planted firmly on spring’s fertile ground,

  Whilst I have one foot in winter all the year round.

  ‘Because what I haven’t told you yet and what I didn’t know at the time was that Lois was pregnant. With all due respect, Peter, I will leave the birds and bees to others more qualified and move swiftly on. Suffice to say, when the butcher’s family found out, the mother, the fearsome matriarch, appropriately bacon-faced, stepped in. There’s this thing called … called an abortion. It means that if a lady gets, well, pregnant and doesn’t want to be the doctors can take the baby away.’

  ‘Didn’t she want a baby?’

  ‘Oh, Peter, it was a different world then. You can’t imagine. It was a terrible thing to have a baby without being married. Sometimes the lady’s parents might throw her out on the street. Sometimes they’d send her away to get rid of it.’

  ‘Get rid of it?’

  ‘Well, the butchers were scandalised. They couldn’t abide any kind of scandal, so they insisted Lois have an abortion. And Lois, bless her, was only too willing to please which, I suppose, was pretty much her problem in the first place. The problem was, Peter, that abortions were, well, illegal. You know what ‘illegal’ means, don’t you?’

  ‘It means you can go to prison.’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Norman. ‘Any doctor who performed an abortion could go to prison. But there was something called a backstreet abortionist … Certain men or, indeed, women who circumvented the … But not all of them knew what they were doing. When Lois had her abortion, the man—the man in Leeds, of all places—well, anyway, the man who did it made such a mess that she … Well, she …’ He made a funny noise like a sob. He pulled a scraggy old hanky from his pocket, buried his nose in it and blew. ‘I’m sorry, Peter,’ he said. ‘Her mother, Lois’ mother, collected her from the train. Her coat, Lois’ coat, was soaked with blood. Swimming in blood. She was in such pain … I …’

  Norman was shaking, his hands squeezing the handkerchief dry. He took a deep breath, almost a gasp, almost a cry, and thumped his chest. I thought he might be about to faint but instead he fiercely gripped the edge of the counter and looked at me, his eyes sticking to me like beach tar.

  ‘Because it’s love, Peter. It’s love and it doesn’t matter what the person you love has done. You should forgive. No!’ he barked. ‘Not ‘should’. You will forgive because you have no choice. If it’s love, Peter, then you have no choice. The good Lord in all his infinite generosity denies you that.’

  ‘But I thought … Don’t you have to choose?’

  ‘Yes!’ he cried. ‘Yes, of course you have to choose. But you have to choose when a choice is presented and sometimes … Well, there isn’t always a choice to be made. Sometimes there’s a choice and sometimes, well, the choice is out of your hands. The trick, you tell him, Norman, yes, the real trick, is to know the difference. What I’m trying to say, in my round-about way, ha, my merry-go-round way, is that it’s not just the consequences of your own choices which you have to endure.’

  I wanted to go. I needed to go. Mr Gale would be reading the register and scowling when I didn’t answer my name but then maybe Norman was right and, sometimes, like he said, you don’t really have a choice even when you think you do.

  ‘Well, in the end I gave up, of course,’ said Norman. ‘We’re back in Hyde Park now by the way. That was the choice I made: to give up. That was my failure. How noble I was. “So, marry your butcher,” I said. “Marry the sausage-man.” What else could I say? I don’t know, but I should have … I should have persisted. I didn’t know … I should have slung her over my shoulder and carried her off, caveman-style, shouldn’t I?’ He shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘No, of course I shouldn’t. You’re right. Such an act would’ve been philistine but, in retrospect, maybe …’ He blew his nose again, a big raspberry blow. ‘When one has a choice one shouldn’t be … timid.’

  Norman sighed. He pressed down on the till and—cha-ching!—rung up fifty pence. He scooped my money across the counter into his other hand and dropped them in. I smiled with relief, seized the little bag and shoved it down deep into my pocket. Now all I needed was to the right moment to—

  But, ‘Remember, Peter,’ said Norman, ‘it’s not just the things you do. Sometimes it’s the things you don’t do, the things you know you should’ve done. When you get to my age, Peter, when you reach this lofty summit, you’ll regret the things you didn’t do, not the things you did.’

  28

  ‘A brilliant pass by Lambert.’ I pumped the ball goalwards. ‘Straight to Lambert’s feet. He’s only got the goalie to beat.’ A cheer rose in the crowd’s throat but, as I prepared to shoot, I was battered from behind by a concrete bollard called Tommie. ‘A shocking tackle by Chopper Winslow!’ I fell to the ground crippled, clutching my leg.

  Team-mates rushed to my assistance, the commentator raged and the referee reached for his reddest card. Meanwhile, United’s burly centre back stood with his hands on his hips. ‘Peter,’ he spat, ‘you’re such a poof. I hardly touched you,’ as I attempted to rub his footprint from my shin. He offered his arm and I hauled myself to my feet.

  And retaliated.

  ‘And Lambert’s hit Winslow!’ gasped the commentator, shocked at the mayhem unfolding on the pitch. The crowd squealed like apes. ‘They’re wrestling now. What will the referee do?’

  The whistle blew like a banshee and the referee yelled, ‘Hello, Mungo. Hello, Midge. What are you two bozos up to?’

  We sat up, startled. Wembley, the twin towers and a hundred thousand screaming fans blurred and faded. It took me a moment to remember where I was and another to locate—

  ‘Anna-Marie!’ exclaimed Tommie.

  She was free at last but the expression on her face was grim. She pointed at me. ‘You!’ she said. ‘Kitchen!’ she said. ‘Now!’

  At the kitchen table, Anna-Marie cradled her orange squash, wiping condensation from the rim. Her hair was loose and dry; her skin even paler than usual; the tinny necklace Tommie had bought her at the fair hanging around her neck.

  ‘So,’ she said, placing her glass on the table, ‘are you ready for your trip to the Lodge, then.’

  It wasn’t a question.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I told you, mutton-head,’ she said. ‘I think there’s someone there you might want to see.’

  ‘But who?’

  Anna-Marie’s face rippled with annoyance. ‘Honestly, Peter, don’t you remember Mrs Finch’s ghost story?’

  Ghost story? I couldn’t remember … What was that supposed to mean?

  ‘Didn’t you even listen to what you were telling me?’ she went on.

  ‘But ghosts aren’t real,’ protested Tommie.

  ‘Well, we’ll just see about that, won’t we,’ she said, emptying her glass with a confident slurp, ‘at the Lodge.’

  ‘But we’re always going to the Lodge.’

  ‘You’ve not been inside before.’

  Inside? I shook my head. I wasn’t sure it was such a—

  ‘Good idea,’ said Tommie.

  Typical.

  Leaving Everlasting Lane we crossed the main Nancarrow Road and turned down towards the Lodge. This side road was all gravel and dust and fell with a steep curve towards the river. Very quickly I lost sens
e of the road behind us. Here the thick trees and bushes muffled everything but the birds and our own stony footsteps. It was calm and peaceful.

  ‘What if someone catches us?’

  ‘We’re just visiting.’

  That reminded me of that thing you have to say in Monopoly when you drive past the jail but you’re not actually in jail.

  ‘You haven’t even told us who we’re going to see.’ I had this funny jittery feeling in my tummy. Not ha-ha funny but like I was going to be sick.

  ‘Shut up!’ said Anna-Marie. ‘It’s for your own good.’

  She sounded just like Kat when she said that and that reminded me of how Kat had said that that was exactly why I shouldn’t go to the Lodge. I hoped I was wrong but I had a horrible feeling that whatever it was Kat wanted me to stay away from and whatever it was Anna-Marie wanted me to go and see might be the same thing. Then I wondered why their advice was so different.

  And then I wondered who was right.

  The trees grew deeper and darker as we approached the back of the Lodge. I mean the front of course. Its red brick and haphazardy walls were so familiar and I felt a shiver of pleasure when I remembered that first time I’d seen it with Anna-Marie when Tommie had been at his dad’s. On this side of the river though we were blocked by thick bushes.

  Peering through the leaves, I saw Miss Pevensie, that teacher from school who was pretending to be the fortune-teller. Her frizzy blonde hair was tied back in a bunch and she was pushing at the handlebars of a bicycle in a pink T-shirt and long skirt. Standing upright in the basket on the front of her bike were some thick books and about thirty thin ones like exercise books.

  As she approached, a rustling passed through the bushes and trees like a breeze you couldn’t feel. Branches cracked and twisted, and trunks seemed to shift in the earth. Leaves, that a moment earlier had seemed too thick and thorny, faded until they were just shades of light revealing a road, a driveway, leading right to the front door of the Lodge. We gasped in wonder. Miss Pevensie mounted her bicycle and passed through the gap. Once through the sole of her sandal scraped her to a halt. We ducked under cover whilst she glanced around as if looking for someone. She didn’t see us and after a moment she pushed down hard on her pedal and went on her squeaky way.

  Once she’d gone we quickly shuffled through as the leaves and branches started to creak back into shape behind us.

  Having admired it so often from afar, we approached the Lodge like it was a church. It was like seeing the page of a storybook made real. The red brick though was older, less shiny than it appeared from the other side of the river. The ivy that clung to the walls made it look older still. Anna-Marie was right after all: there were ghosts here. I could tell. I could see how time had left its footprint in the air like a boot in wet cement.

  Anna-Marie approached the big front door and tugged at the handle like it was her own. But it wasn’t fooled.

  ‘No, no,’ muttered Anna-Marie. ‘That’s not the one. Come on, there’s another one at the side,’ which was funny because I didn’t remember her ever saying she’d been this close to the Lodge before. She marched off with Tommie and me following to another door, smaller and perhaps more easily tricked. We had to go down some steps to reach it and, again, Anna-Marie pulled at the brass knob. Again it remained unmoved. Maybe it was like a jail after all. This time, however, like a master thief, stretching on tiptoes, she ran her nimble fingers over the door-frame, and then lifted the mat and then looked under various plant pots. But there was no key.

  ‘Oh well,’ said Tommie.

  ‘No,’ hissed Anna-Marie seizing his arm. He winced. ‘I will not be defeated.’ She studied the wall that framed the door, tapping the bricks, head cocked to one side, listening. Eventually, ‘Aha,’ she cried, grinning. She seized the most recently tapped brick and dug her fingers deep into the clay that surrounded it. Her thin fingers wiggled the brick from side to side, slowly prising it from the wall until it came free with a sudden pop leaving a brick-shaped hole. I couldn’t help noticing that it wasn’t the only one.

  Anna-Marie tipped the brick from one hand to the other, testing its weight, before gripping it firmly, shielding her eyes and propelling it against the pane of glass nearest the door handle. The glass shattered and with a few follow-up thrusts the remaining jagged edges were removed. Anna-Marie reached through the hole muttering, ‘I will not be defeated.’ And then she turned to face us. ‘Aha,’ she said, ‘a key!’

  We found ourselves in a kitchen with dark wooden surfaces and a huge white sink. Apart from a few ancient kettles and toasters it appeared abandoned but, at least until Anna-Marie peered into the trembling old fridge—‘Yuk!’—clean. Buckets of sun poured through the sealed windows. The air was warm, cosy and curled up like Kitty asleep on my lap.

  At least it had been.

  ‘Come on,’ said Anna-Marie, taking the handle of the inside door.

  ‘Where to?’

  ‘Well, we didn’t come to look at the kitchen.’

  ‘What did we come to look at?’

  ‘It’s not a what,’ she said with a smile. ‘I told you: it’s a who.’

  ‘We’re going to get in trouble,’ I said, ‘aren’t we?’

  Tommie did that clucking like a chicken thing and Anna-Marie’s eyes widened. ‘Don’t worry, poppet,’ she said pinching my cheek. ‘Listen.’ I listened. ‘It’s as quiet as a graveyard.’

  I laughed. A bit. You see, I knew she was trying to be scary.

  She led us down a narrow corridor. To one side, high windows welcomed in warm sunlight, to the other we passed three or four doors and pale pictures of fields or oceans. There was dust, deep and crisp and even, on every surface and the air seemed as if it had been undisturbed for so long that the smells of damp didn’t know what to do with themselves, cowering beneath the woodwork as we passed. For all her braveness even Anna-Marie flinched at the slightest sound of a gurgled pipe or a squeaked floorboard, and shushed Tommie and me as we tiptoed in silence.

  At the far end of the corridor was a wide double door, almost like it was too big for the corridor itself. Anna-Marie grabbed both handles and, with a silent ‘Ta-dah,’ flung them open. We stepped into a large, and thankfully deserted, room. It was a lounge, I suppose, with a polished floor, chairs and a telly and, to Tommie’s delight, a big piano like a grand piano. He went straight to it, lifted the lid and, before Anna-Marie could stop him, hit as many keys as he could.

  ‘Tommie!’ she hissed as the deafening, mishmash of notes echoed and faded away. ‘We don’t want to get thrown out until we’re done.’

  Now, this was the big room that we could see from the other side of the river. From here, I could look back through the French doors across the lawn, across the river to the point on the opposite bank where, on other days, I might have seen myself squinting with curiosity, wondering if the ghostly face at the window was my reflection or something else. Looking through from this angle, I could see where people had left their fingerprints smudged upon the window. It was odd to be there, on the other side of the mirror, face pressed against the glass.

  ‘Come on,’ said Anna-Marie, ‘let’s look upstairs.’

  ‘What stairs?’

  ‘These stairs.’

  To my surprise, although we’d gone back through the same door by which we’d entered we hadn’t returned to the narrow corridor but into what seemed to be the entrance hall lurking behind the front door. And there, as Anna-Marie had said, was a flight of stairs. It didn’t seem quite right but Anna-Marie was already half way up before Tommie called, ‘This isn’t right.’

  ‘What’s your problem, Tommie?’ she snapped. ‘You need to relax. Some buildings do move about, don’t they, Peter?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Some buildings do. I think so.’

  I didn’t really think that at all but there was no point trying to reason with her when she was in that kind of mood. Besides, I was beginning to relax. The Lodge seemed so pure and peaceful. Any ripples I co
uld feel in the air didn’t necessarily mean there was someone else in the building. They were only toes wriggling in a stream.

  It was a strange place, the Lodge. Walking around it, exploring, was like waking from a dream in the middle of the night. You know the moment when you’re not quite sure where you are or who you are, when you still think your dreams are real? When you’re lying there wondering where the monsters went? Well, not that moment. But you know the next moment when everything falls back into place like the pieces of a jigsaw and you remember who you are and that the monsters are all in your head and that your mum’s asleep just across the landing? That moment. It was like falling into a warm bath of yourself.

  But, it’s like, if you have a moment, an instant, any moment, how are you supposed to capture it? It’s a bit like trying to catch a butterfly. You can run and cup your hands all you like but when it’s gone, it’s gone. Your best hope of capturing it, of making that moment last, is to capture it in words, like Norman said or—what’s his name?—Craig, not a jar or a net. If you capture it in just the right words, then you can keep it forever. It’s better than … What’s it called? That yellow stuff they use? Anyway, if not, if you can’t capture it, well, it’s all pointless anyway and the moment flutters away over the cornfield and into the distance.

  Because life is really just a collection of moments. Isn’t it? A crowd, a fluttering rabble of butterflies.

  29

  At the top of the stairs, Anna-Marie, who seemed to know exactly where she was going, turned down another corridor. This one was dark, lit only by cracks of light that sneaked out from behind the edges of the three or four doors that it contained. Anna-Marie was checking the door numbers. She stopped outside the door which had a big silver number four on it. She reached out and turned the handle. The door opened.