‘Yeah, the house . . .’ he said, but he didn’t pursue it, turning instead to look at the water. ‘Grebes still there?’
‘Oh yes,’ I said. ‘Still hanging in there.’ We set off without a word, as though we had met by arrangement, had planned to do this, to walk together round the edges of the lake. We were close, side by side, but not touching. I had his jacket still, over my arm, he had his hands thrust into his pockets, his head down, watching our feet as they trod the rain-softened path. ‘I was thinking the best thing is just to sell it. Put it on the market soon. Then we can split the proceeds, if that’s all right by you.’
‘Yeah, fine.’ He seemed to realize that more was required of him, shook himself a little. ‘Yes, good idea, selling in the spring. Better price. But I didn’t really come about the house.’
‘No?’
We walked on some more in silence again. There had been so many silences between us, so many different kinds, that I had become an expert in them. This was a companionable one. I waited for him to tell me more, letting him take his own time.
‘I didn’t want you to hear it from anyone else,’ he said finally, stopping and looking at me.
‘You’re getting married,’ I said, jumping immediately to the worst news I could think of, to get it over with.
‘No,’ he said, ‘although, well, that will come too, I suppose. No, it’s Ruth. She’s pregnant.’
I searched for the words I was supposed to say, but I was struck dumb, wrenched by the news as though by a physical force. He was still looking at me but he was abstracted, lost in his own thoughts, speaking slowly as though dragging the words out from some depth. He didn’t seem to notice that I had said nothing.
‘We’re – she’s – very pleased. Excited.’ We resumed walking for a while. ‘I also came down here to think. About things.’
‘It’s a good place for it,’ I managed to say. He nodded, and we fell silent again, walking onwards. Glancing sidelong at him, I could see that he was smiling a little to himself as he went. I had never wanted children, never wanted to inflict myself, my genes, on an innocent baby. It had never occurred to me to ask what Gareth had wanted, and we had never discussed it. Watching him now, I could see that he would be the sort of father who becomes besotted, especially with a daughter – taking her with him on trips, letting her trot along behind him already carrying her own pair of binoculars. I could see them together – Gareth and a tiny female Gareth, with his dark blond hair and dark-ringed blue eyes, bossing him about with a toss of the head. I turned my head away and looked out over the water until the urge to cry had gone.
Halfway round the lake our thoughts were interrupted by a faint call, the buoyant double note of the cuckoo. I don’t know which of us heard it first, but we both stopped and turned to look at each other simultaneously, unsure of whether to believe our ears. Then we heard it again, plaintive in its cry, just audible over the sound of the traffic.
‘In the trees,’ Gareth said. ‘There, low down.’ I had no binoculars with me but he had his, as ever, ready to hand, and he passed them to me. The bird was perched low in the branches, framed in the green of the spring leaves, his whole chest bobbing with the effort of his call. As we watched all the other birds around us began to set up a racket of alarm, unrelenting, driving him off from his post. When he left, the cries died down into a steady and resentful chucking as the birds settled back to their nests. Gareth and I moved on after him, following the direction he took. We could hear him call again, heard a renewed army rise up to disturb his courtship – the many different mobbing calls of the woods and fields: crows and jays, warblers and thrushes, all united against him. Over and over again he perched, called, and then he was forced on, ever onwards. Silently, we followed his restless, hounded progress, never once hearing the bubbling answering call of the female. We watched him until he gave up, stopped calling, and flew straight off and out, over the motorway, disappearing without a sound.
They would wreak havoc of course, the cuckoo and his mate, if they were left to breed in peace. The birds that drove him onwards were fuelled by an atavistic dread of him and his kind, protecting their own broods, guarding their nests. The cuckoo chick is a creature of pure murderous instinct, levering any other eggs and chicks it finds out of the nest the moment it hatches, driving its adoptive parents ragged with demands for food, even after it has grown to twice their size. I knew all this but still as I watched the lonely cuckoo fly off I felt a pang of pity for him, hounded wherever he went, unable to rest anywhere, condemned to be alone.
I handed Gareth’s binoculars back to him, apologizing for hogging them. His fingers brushed mine as he took them and I jumped, jolted by the shock I felt at his touch. I crossed my arms and shivered, trying to mask the movement, and he offered me his jacket again, but I couldn’t take it. It would be too much to bear now, the instant sensation of nearness to him that wearing it had given me. Instead we started back, and as we trudged along the path I couldn’t resist asking him what he’d come to this spot to think about.
Gareth didn’t answer at first. He stopped, and caught my hand to stop me too. Our fingers laced together automatically through force of habit. I met his eyes, his blue eyes, so unchanged, so utterly unchanged.
‘Whether I’d made a mistake. Before it’s too late.’
I caught my breath. I had dreamed of this happening, had longed for it, exact in all its details, even down to the way his fingers felt, the way his face inclined towards me. He looked at me and I looked at him. It would have been so easy just to succumb. I allowed myself a brief second to dream, and then I shook my head, pulling away, dragging my fingers clear of his. You can’t go back. You can never go back. I felt my anger rise at him for even suggesting it, for tantalizing me with the thought.
‘It’s already too late.’ I remembered the little girl I’d conjured up in my head.
‘Hey, hey, Dunnock,’ he said, and he tried to grab my shoulder as I twisted away. ‘Don’t say you don’t miss me.’
‘Don’t call me that,’ I said, and I couldn’t control the rising flush of blood to my cheeks, a hundred unwilling memories summoned up by the words.
He considered my face for a moment, as though he had sensed my hesitation, and then he shrugged, smiled a little rueful smile, and seemed to square his shoulders, as though steeling himself for a battle ahead.
‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘It’s too late.’
He walked on and I let out a breath I didn’t even know I was holding and followed after him. We resumed our walk around the lake, pausing for a moment here and there to look at a bird, to follow the activities of the grebes as they went about their lives.
‘Your sister was right about you, you know,’ he said as we both stared out at the lake. ‘You don’t give out second chances. One mistake and you walk away.’
‘Zannah?’ I asked, furious at the thought of being discussed like that. ‘When did you talk to her about me?’
‘She didn’t tell you?’ He smiled a rueful smile. ‘I rang her up round Christmas time. To see if she thought you’d have me back. She told me where to get off.’
I had tracked Ruth down once, back when Gareth still thought I didn’t know about her. I had only her email address to go on, and her telephone number. But I knew where she worked, and the type of car that she drove. It was simple enough to watch her company car park as people emerged from the office, narrowing down the possibilities. I sat in my car, daring to use the binoculars only sparingly until I was sure I had her. She was blonde, of course, flashily dressed, a pointed little face with widely spaced eyes, her mobile phone clutched to her ear. I wished I could lip read, and then as she giggled and blushed, was glad that I couldn’t. I called Gareth’s mobile and went straight to voicemail. As she ended the call, I tried Gareth again and this time I got through.
‘I know who you’ve just spoken to,’ I said as he answered, and I wondered if it was guilt I could hear in his voice, or just indifference. ‘I’m
watching her now.’ I ended the call and sat running the engine, letting it idle in neutral, watching her juggle her phone and her bag and a folder, looking for her keys. She was barely a hundred yards away. Whatever resolve I’d had, whatever I’d planned to do, ebbed away. I drove off in silence, before she had noticed I was there.
Zannah was right, of course; she always was. Our relationship was dead, had broken beyond repair long before Christmas, long before he left. And I’d known it from the moment I’d seen her, laughing in the sunlight, as though she belonged to him. It had just taken me until now to work it out.
‘Are you going to be OK?’ Gareth asked as we reached the road where he’d parked his car. ‘You don’t, frankly, look OK.’
I paused, toying with telling him everything, what had gone on these last few weeks in his absence. But he was caught in the slanting afternoon light, lit up by it as though it shone for him alone, his face tinged with the warmth of the sun. This was the way I always thought of him, a creature bright as day. I didn’t belong in his world, not now, not the way I felt, not ever. The gap between us was as wide as it had ever been. I had been a fool to think it could ever be bridged.
He swung his keys restlessly in his hands and I could see he was anxious to be off now, his mind already turning homewards.
‘I’m fine,’ I said, feeling anyway that it was almost true. Simply talking, having someone there, thinking about practical things, had been a relief. I’d been so bound up in my fears, I realized, I’d let them feed off each other, strengthening as they grew. For the first time in weeks I began to feel there might be a way out of this, that I would be able to rebuild a life for myself. He paused for a moment and I waited for him to go, wondering what I would do when he’d gone. Then, decisively, he strode forward and gathered me up, hugging me hard with an old and easy familiarity, shoving something into my hand.
‘Take this,’ he said. ‘Take it and go, escape, get out of here, have a break. I mean it.’ He smiled and then was serious for a moment, his gaze boring into me. ‘But do me a favour, Dunnock. Promise me this. Keep away from Tom.’
He was gone before I could react. I looked down at the keys he had thrust into my hand, puzzled at first and then remembering. The van.
The lockup smelt of damp and dead leaves and oil. The garage door was stiff and clanked open with a groan. I had to brace myself and stretch to lift it high enough, shoving it over my head. Inside the van sat disconsolate on its sagging suspension, canted off gently to the left with a rakish air. It didn’t look like the subject of anyone’s dream. It looked a wreck, hopelessly unroadworthy, fit only for the scrap heap. But the tax disk was valid, I noticed, quite recently renewed, and the tyres were pumped up. And when I turned the key in the ignition it started after a couple of tries and the engine ran sweet and true. I wondered when Gareth had last been down here, how often he came and sat in the fraying front seat, dreaming of freedom.
The back was still half-empty, a wilderness of torn and sagging upholstery, barely fit to be called a camper van at all. I climbed in and sat on a piece of loose foam and looked around in the dim light. It had been Gareth’s dream, really, not mine, to escape in the van and make our lives on the road for a while. Something we were going to do, someday, when we had the time, when our schedules allowed it, when we had the money. It was his van, too. He had bought it; he had made it roadworthy. He had even started mapping out a route once, a tour round all the high and wild and lonely places of Britain, the places where the birds are. The route intrigued me, caught my interest in the way the van hadn’t, and for a month or two we had seriously thought about it and how we could make it happen. But we had already grown to be strangers to each other by then, and even a month alone on the road together would have driven us mad and we knew it. We had let our lives roll on and overtake us. Gareth found another means to escape. But the van had sat on, waiting, ready, and now it was mine.
I was soon snapped back to reality. Dusk was beginning to fall as I walked towards the house and I stopped as I approached the street before I turned the corner, checking first for familiar cars. There was no sign of one that I recognized, but there was something about the house that made me pause and approach with more caution. I had left the curtains open and the house unlit, and the windows were still dark and empty at the front. But there had been a brief flash of movement, a faint light appearing and disappearing, as though someone had opened and closed a door into a lighted room. I froze, watching, the van keys clutched in the palm of my hand, wondering if I’d imagined it. But the faint light appeared again, brightening, and the hall light came on, and then the one on the stairs. Not a burglar, or else a very confident one. I shivered. Without my coat, I was also without my mobile, my car keys, even my wallet. The lights went off again, and the house went back to darkness.
I think I must have stood there for a while, simply waiting for something to happen. I knew I couldn’t go back into the house again, back into what might be an ambush. The house sat and stared back at me, keeping its secrets, no longer a refuge, repellent in its bland familiarity, exuding an air of expectant menace. There were no further signs of movement. Whoever was in there was waiting and patient. I walked back down the street and sat on a wall for a while to think. Then I turned and walked back to the lockup.
This time the van started easily, first try, its lights blazing on with barely a flicker. The fuel gauge needle slid up slowly to a quarter tank – enough to get me to Tom’s. I said a silent apology to Gareth as I backed it out of the garage, slammed the creaking door shut and pulled away. I couldn’t run to him. I couldn’t trust Zannah, not now, couldn’t trust her to believe I wasn’t suffering delusions. I didn’t have anywhere else to go.
It was still not quite dark as I turned off the road and into the forest where Tom lived, but the trees soon saw to that, closing over my head as I drove, cutting off the last light from the sky. My passage lit up each tree, one after the other, so they seemed to jump out at me in sudden brightness, but beyond them there was nothing to see, nothing but the swift passing shadows cast by the beam of the headlights. The road twisted more than I remembered and seemed endless in the darkness, but the cottage appeared just as the van itself was threatening to give out, the engine jumping and juddering on some obstruction. It coughed and died with a hundred yards to go and I killed the lights, getting out to check that there was room for others to pass, and then set off on foot. My eyes searched the gloom, barely able now to make out the surface of the track, or the deeper blackness where the ditch beside it lay. Tom’s gate was just a guessed shape in the darkness, and I had to open it by touch, clattering the latch before I found it. Once in the small garden, the kitchen spilled the same cheerful yellow light I remembered from before through wide-open curtains. But Tom wasn’t there. The kitchen stood spare and empty, the rest of the house was in darkness. I knocked but got no answer. All around me there was nothing but trees. I stood on his doorstep and let my eyes grow used to the darkness that seemed now absolute. The moon was yet to rise. The forest was hushed and stilled, the night birds not yet up, the rest settling down to roost. I was alone.
I settled down to wait. The step had been in the sun and the warmth seeped in through my thin clothes. The light from the kitchen window spilled out over the garden and would light up any intruder. I felt I had come to rest at last. For days, for weeks, I had been hounded, driven ever onwards as the cuckoo was, never able to settle, harried by fear. But I was safe here, surrounded by the trees, cut off from the world. Nobody knew I was here and nobody could find me. Tom would be back soon. All I had to do was wait.
I woke with him leaning over me, shaking my shoulder, calling my name.
‘I’ve been out looking for you. Your sister rang. She’s worried.’
‘I know.’
‘You came here,’ he said.
‘I was frightened.’
He bent down so his face was level with mine. It was still dark, but his eyes caught the light a little a
nd I could see the strong bones of his face, outlined by the rising moon. He was smiling, unable to conceal his happiness. He reached a hand up and touched my face as though to verify that I was real.
‘You’re safe now,’ he said. The van keys were hard and sharp against my palm, still clenched in my hand.
PART THREE
SWIFTS
Apus apus, family Apodidae’
The first night I slept in the van, I woke at dawn and walked out to catch the first light of the day. The hide was a chill refuge as I sat on the hard bench and watched the mist rise from mirror-calm water. The sky had a pearly sheen of pink that tinged the vapour as it rose. All around me the woods were loud with the challenges and counter-challenges of the summer warblers. It was too early for traffic to be heard, too early for the dog walkers and the sailors and fishermen that used the waters of this reserve. I revelled in the knowledge that I was the only person there, awake and alert in all my senses. Seeing and unseen, crouched in the dark cavern of the hide watching the world wake up. This was how I had hoped it would be.
I sat as long as I could, until the sun was fully up and I had grown numb with cold. A brisk walk around the lake restored my circulation and I returned to the van glad in the knowledge that there was food there and tea; no need to face the drive home or the fruitless hunt for an open cafe. Everything was tucked into its appointed corner, neatly stowed, in the place that Tom had made for it. I took out the gas canister and set up the ring, filled the kettle from the large water container and ate my breakfast as I waited for the tea to brew. Above me swifts hawked the air for insects, chasing and screaming, faster than thought. I sat on my camping stool among the white frothing flowers of the cow parsley and felt I was the monarch of all I surveyed. It had taken me longer than I’d wanted to get away and it was May, almost summer now. The spring migration was over, and I was playing catch up, chasing the birds north. But none of that mattered to me now. I was on the road, and I was free.
Out of a Clear Sky Page 17