Less Than Three

by Jess Whitecroft

  There was a hush. A hitch of breath. A sharp sniff. He was crying, and I wished I could sprout wings and fly to his side. “Don’t cry, darling,” I said. “Please don’t cry.”

  He stifled a sob. “I can’t help it. It hurts. I’ve been such an idiot.”

  “No, you haven’t. You’ve been going through so much. I can’t even imagine. I wanted to call you every day, every hour, every minute, but I had no right to pressure you…”

  Rob made a wet, unromantic honking noise down the phone. “Stop it,” he said. “Stop being so perfect.”

  “I’m not,” I said, joining him in tears. “That’s one thing I’m definitely not.”

  “I don’t care. Oh God, Nathan – I’ve made such a stupid mistake.”

  “You haven’t. You can unmake it whenever you want. Just say the words.”

  He sniffled and I heard him breathing. There was a long pause and then he said it, like an incantation that could fix the world. “I want to see you.”

  “I want that, too. I want that more than anything in the world right now.”

  15

  I went to Coleraine.

  He was still staying with his parents, in a downstairs back room they’d converted to make it easier for him to get around. “He’s just through here,” said Sharon, his mother. “He’ll be so thrilled to see you. Will I bring you some tea, or should I give you both a minute?”

  “Uh…a minute might be a good idea,” I said.

  “All right.” She squeezed my elbow and then knocked on the door. “Rob, look who’s here at last.”

  The door opened. It was a small room with a single bed. The first thing I saw was the trapeze thing hanging over it, then I saw the laptop on the table in the corner. The wall plastered with notes. Misery, I thought. He’s had nothing else to do but sit and write, only in his case it wasn’t a psycho fan named Annie Wilkes, but a narcissist in a four-by-four who couldn’t stop Instagramming long enough to pay attention to her driving.

  He sat by the window in an armchair, and didn’t get up. There was an enormous orange cat on his lap. The first word out of his mouth was ‘sorry.’ “I can’t…” he said, gesturing to the cat. “That is to say I can, but there’s a cat in the way.”

  “I don’t mind,” I said, and came in close. He let me kiss him, politely on the cheek. No beard. He’d had all his hair cut off, too, so that the curls were that much tighter against his scalp. Darker, too, because he hadn’t been out in the sun to bleach them. His face looked very young, but there was a solidity to his shoulders that hadn’t been there before.

  “It’s so good to see you,” I said.

  “And you.”

  The cat stirred his lap, and stood to butt me on the chin with its head, its banded marmalade tail tickling both of our noses. “This is Big Ginge, by the way,” he said. “Don’t be fooled by his dopey face. He’s actually a lot stupider than he looks. Have a seat.”

  I sat down opposite him on the laptop chair. His dark blue eyes shone. The winter sun caught the light stubble on his cheek. Without the beard his mouth was even more beautiful than I remembered – the upper lip had a soft flare to it that lent a Puckish tilt to his upturned nose. I hadn’t been prepared for this. Knowing I still loved him was one thing at a distance, but seeing him in person felt like he held my heart squeezed in his fist all over again.

  “I brought your other cat,” I said, setting the tiny haematite statue on the window sill.

  “Thank you. How was the boat?”

  It was on the tip of my tongue to say I’d taken a plane to Belfast, but then I remembered. His boat. “It looks good,” I said. “They’re obviously looking after it.”

  “Oh, that’s a relief.”

  “Yeah. It’s fine. They haven’t sunk it. All your herbs have died, though.”

  He waved a wrist. The cat jumped off his lap and hit the floor with a solid thwump. “Ah, it’s winter,” he said. “Basil turns its toes up at the first frost, and sage soon after. The only thing I can ever keep alive through the winter is rosemary.”

  There was a gap, then, and it was frightening, because our whole affair had been so full of conversation. It was only when he was lying broken in a hospital bed that I’d run out of things to say to him, and that was when I’d known he was pulling away from me.

  But he smiled. A new smile, softer and more hesitant than his old grin, but no less charming.

  “It’s so good to see you,” I said.

  “You’ve said that twice.”

  “I meant it twice,” I said. “And more besides. How are you? How do you feel?”

  Rob sighed. “I have good days,” he said. “And bad days. And days when all I want to do is pout and stay in bed. Don’t get to indulge those very often. My physio’s kind of a slave driver.”

  “How are you doing with it?”

  “Here,” he said, with a little nod of his head. “Stand up. Come here.”

  I stood in front of him. He reached out, I took his hands, and then – like a miracle – he pulled himself up. He seemed shorter than I remembered, but there he was, on his own two feet, and my eyes were suddenly swimming, my sinuses stinging. “You’re amazing,” I said, when I could speak. I had my arms around him, his head against my chest. “Amazing.”

  “I’m a mess,” he said. “I’m full of pins and screws and all kinds of hardware.”

  “And you’re standing.”

  He inclined his head to a crutch leaning against the wall. “Walking,” he said. “A bit. I can’t wait until I’m steadier on my feet and I can trade that old NHS looking thing for something a bit more nifty.”

  “What are you thinking?”

  “When I was about thirteen,” he said. “I had a crush on Orla’s boyfriend. He was seventeen and he had this classic Ford Escort that he’d customised. Stupid looking thing, but I thought it was just grand. It had like big wheels on the back and it was all red with flames painted up the sides. The exhaust sounded like a blue whale farting – it was that loud.” He paused and looked over at the crutch again. “I’m thinking something that’s the cane version of that.”

  I was laughing and crying all at once. After all the horrors and hurt he’d been through, he was still him. Still the absolute lunatic I’d fallen in love with. I don’t know what would have happened if Sharon hadn’t come in with the tea tray at that moment.

  “Listen, how about we go for a wander after tea?” he said.

  “A wander?”

  “Ay. Just to the park.”

  “Ay?” I laughed. “Your accent has come back full force.”

  “I know. It always happens when I’m home. I don’t have an accent in England.”

  “Oh, you do.”

  “I do?”

  “You do,” I said. “That first time when you led me through the bookshop you said one word – now – and there isn’t another accent in the whole world that can make that word sound the way it does coming from the lips of someone from Northern Ireland.”

  “Now?” he said, but it came out ‘nyio’ but not quite. Softer than that. Deeper in the back of the throat. And so beautiful.

  “What do you bake a cake with?” I asked, and he frowned, puzzled.

  “Eggs? Sugar?”

  “And?”

  “Butter? Flour?” He pronounced it ‘floo-or,’ and I cracked up.

  “That’s nice,” he said. “You cross the sea for me and the first thing you do is take the piss out of my accent.”

  “I’m not taking the piss,” I said. “I think it’s irresistible.”

  And just like that I was flirting with him, like nothing had happened. He blushed and I told myself to stop, because he needed to be handled with care. Simon had warned me not to rush in. “He’s been through a lot, Nathan. People who’ve been through that degree of injury sometimes have a very complicated relationship with their bodies. You can’t just scoop him up and carry him to bed, no matter how much you want to. Let him set the pace.”

  I knew that
. I’d told myself that, all the way to Coleraine. Over the months we’d been apart I’d even convinced myself that one day I might get over him, or that one day we might be friends, but after less than an hour in his company I knew neither of those things were possible. I was still in love with him, and I could barely remember a time when I wasn’t in love with him.

  “How’s Simon?” he said, seeking refuge in politeness.

  “Oh, you know. Simon. Actually he’s coming along with the violin.”

  “That so?”

  “Mmhm. He’s playing tunes now. There’s like a little sarabande he can play, and it doesn’t even set every cat south of the Thames off yowling. It’s quite impressive.”

  He giggled. “You know, I never got to thank him,” he said. “For being so honest with me.”

  “That’s what he does.”

  “I know, but so many other people would have lied to me under those circumstances. It meant something, being treated like an intelligent human being, rather than a smashed up lump of meat.”

  “Rob…”

  He swallowed down tears. “He’s a fucking good doctor. Tell him I said that, won’t you?”

  “I will. Verbatim.”

  “Good. Do that. The swearing part is very important.”

  Slowly, he rose from the chair. “Let me get my coat,” he said. “I haven’t walked much today, and I could do with it.”

  He moved stiffly, making me shudder at the thought of all the pins and cages and other bits of medical hardware inside him. “Are you going to be okay?” I asked.

  Rob glanced at the wheelchair neatly folded against the wall by the door. He blew out a long breath, like he was sick of the sight of the thing, but then he said, “We’ll take it. Just in case. Are you okay with pushing?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Okay. Back in a minute.”

  He disappeared for a moment. While he was gone I peered at the notes all over the wall, looking for the names of the people from his novel. Paolo. Hekla. Lan-anh.

  They weren’t there. Instead there were other names – Margaret, Alice, Major Richardson. Fewer characters. Situations I didn’t recognise. Margaret gets cut off by the tide. Alice withdraws deeper into herself. Mice in the pantry causing late night bell ringing.

  What on earth was he working on?

  When he came back in he caught me looking, but he didn’t ask what I thought. Just asked if we were good to go.

  The park was just at the end of the maze of little cul-de-sacs where he lived. It ran alongside the bank of the Bann, the river wide and grey-blue in the low winter sun. Almost all the leaves were gone now, but the grass was still very green, and the air unseasonably mild. I pushed the wheelchair while he walked alongside. He had a limp now, where once he’d moved with a light footed ease. I remembered him moving through the rooms of the National Gallery, nimbly darting out of the way of school parties, or rushing towards the Caravaggios. And me, pretending to be someone I wasn’t, following him from room to room. It felt like something from a parallel universe, one where I had no idea what it meant to be in love with him.

  Everything had changed. His gait, the season, the setting, but being with him – that felt the same.

  “So, go on,” he said, when we sat down for a break on a park bench. “I know you’re gonna say it, so spit it out.”

  “Say what?”

  He smiled and shook his head. “I saw you looking at my notes. So come on, let’s have it, Stewie Griffin. I know you’re dying to ask.”

  “Ah,” I said, catching on. “The novel.”

  “Yes. The novel.”

  “So did you finish it?”

  “I did.”

  “Can I read it?”

  Rob laughed. “Abso-fucking-lutely not.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because it’s shite,” he said, still laughing. “It’s so bad I can’t stand to look at it. It’s pretentious and up-itself and far too bloody long. It’s over two hundred thousand words of complete drivel, and I hate it.”

  “I’m sure it’s not that bad,” I said, thinking of my lounge lizard take on Laclos. I’d thought that was a disaster, and look where it had got me. The Royal Shakespeare Company. “You probably spent too much time with it. Lost perspective.”

  “Maybe,” he said. “But I finished it.” He looked out at the river for a moment and took a breath through parted lips. Without the beard his profile was almost girlishly pretty. “And I think that was what I was supposed to do.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Good or bad, I had to finish the bastard. So’s I could move along to something else.”

  “And the notes in your room,” I said. “Are they something else?”

  He nodded. “They are. I just finished it. Eighty two thousand words. Much smaller.”

  “And do you hate that one, too?”

  He thought for a minute. “No,” he said. “I might even like it. I had a great time writing it.”

  “That’s usually a good sign.”

  Rob frowned and pulled his coat tighter around himself. “Is it? Like Arthur Conan Doyle hated writing Sherlock Holmes. He wanted to write serious historical fiction, but have you ever tried to read The White Company? It’s…um…well. You know. He tried.”

  “Not a patch on The Hound Of The Baskervilles, then?”

  He laughed. “What is? You know, he wrote to his mother and said that he thought that story wasn’t as good as it could be? Writers are the worst judges of their own work.”

  “Then how do you know you haven’t written a masterpiece?” I said. “You might be sitting on the seminal novel about globalisation.”

  “I might,” he said. “But I might be sitting on a bloated mess written by someone who had never finished a novel before. I think the best thing to do is stuff it in a drawer somewhere and forget about it for a while. Let it sit. That’s what Stephen King says you should do.”

  “Oh, well. Okay. There’s a man who knows about writing while recovering from nasty road accidents.”

  “Exactly.”

  The sun – watery and pale – slid out from behind a cloud. He lifted his face to it and closed his eyes, and all I wanted to do was touch him. Trace the shape of his bare face, because it was new to me, and because I remembered how soft his skin was beyond the shaved edge of his beard.

  I thought of everything he must have been through to be here, to do something as simple as walk down to the park and feel the sun on his face. He’d been through all that hurt and horror, and yet somehow found the time to not only finish one novel but also turn out another, purely because the first hadn’t satisfied him.

  “Do you know how special you are?”

  For a moment I wasn’t sure if I’d said that out loud, but then he blinked into the sun. Exhaled. “I’m not.”

  “You are. You’re special and precious and perfect and…” I ran out of breath, and maybe it was just as well. He moved closer, so that our hips touched, and he tilted his head to rest on my shoulder. I leaned my cheek against his chopped off curls, barely daring to breathe. My heart felt like it was four times too big for my chest, and made the inside of my ribs ache.

  “We should go back,” he said, and his voice trembled a bit.

  “Yeah.”

  If I said it now, would I wreck everything? He was still putting his life back together. I couldn’t put that on him, especially since I was overwhelmed right now. I hadn’t been prepared for how much he would make me feel. This was big. This was serious. I had to be sure.

  He got up slowly. I could tell he was trying not to let it show, but he caught his breath in a wincing hiss as he took his weight on his bad leg.

  “You okay?”

  “Fine,” he said, but his face had drained of colour.

  “You can take it easy once in a while, you know.”

  He shook his head. “I hate that fucking wheelchair,” he said, but he hopped over and sat down all the same, resting the crutch on his lap. “I feel like
a baby in this thing, and not in a good way.”

  It was strange, talking to him like this, both of us facing in the same direction, unable to look one another in the eye. I thought of young mothers, strolling along trying to aim words in the general direction of the forward facing kid in the pushchair. “Is there any good way to feel like a baby?” I said. Adulthood had its definite downsides, but there were perks – like autonomy, alcohol and being able to wipe your own bottom.

  “I suppose there must be,” he said, his voice floating downwind to me. “Otherwise you wouldn’t get those people who like to dress up in big nappies and bibs and shit themselves for fun.”

  “People who…?”

  Rob turned his head to look up at me. “Look, I was laid up, okay?” he said. “I fell down a lot of weird YouTube holes some days. People who get plastic surgery to make them look like lizards, or this one American woman who ate nothing but cheese and potatoes, for every single meal.”

  “Oh, I think I’ve seen her. Was that the one who had a meltdown over half a Brussels sprout?”

  “That’s the one. Or this woman who was in love with an amusement park ride. There are a lot of strange people in the world, but I remember the adult babies because they really pissed me off.”

  “As opposed to just grossing you out?” I said.

  “Well, yeah. That, too. But mainly the idea of an able bodied person pretending to be helpless on purpose made me want to smack them.”

  “Yeah. I can understand that.

  “I was still weeing into a bag at the time,” he said. “That was a fucking party, let me tell you.”

  That night he emailed me his new book. I could hardly believe it. He’d never let me read the other one, so I texted him.

  —Just to be clear, you did MEAN to send that email?

  There was a pause, then three dots. A reply. If I said I sent it by accident, would you still read it?

  —Yes, I texted back. You’re not wriggling out of this one now. I’m dying to read it.

  —Oh God. I’m bricking it. You’re the first person to see it.

  I was touched. And strangely nervous, too. What if it was bad? The file was simply named NORFOLKEDIT1 – no title page, either. It had the look of a rough draft and I was afraid of what he might ask me about it, or how I was going to respond if it wasn’t good. If I was honest with myself, his big anti-globalisation epic – the two thirds of War And Peace – had sounded a bit impenetrable.