by Alyson Rudd
‘Why you do that?’ Mr Yee said.
‘I have no idea,’ she said.
* * *
Luke was thinner when Lauren returned to London and Kat and Amy fussed all the more over him.
‘Christmas is a terrible time of year for him,’ they said in unison and for a minute or two Lauren saw past how tragically handsome he was and understood that his job was quite possibly indescribable. She joined in the platonic fussing and helped her housemates prepare a post-Christmas Christmassy supper while feeding him smoked salmon on triangles of sliced brown bread. Jeffers opened a bottle of Fino which he said would go well with the salmon and the five of them slowly sank into a warm and gentle alcoholic stupor as they swapped festive tales and Luke, at last, became serious and told them about an artificial tree under which was a box containing a dead puppy and a five-year-old boy made to sleep in a baby’s cot. Amy burst into tears and Kat glared at her, then softened as she pulled her gently upstairs. Jeffers ambled off to find brandy and Lauren was left alone with Luke.
She so wanted to say the right thing but she hardly knew him really.
‘Do you get… I mean, do they teach you how to handle the sad things?’
‘Not really,’ he said quietly. ‘If you need that sort of help then you’re in the wrong job. You can’t get sentimental. I cope, I suppose, because I know that by being hard I help more people. You don’t save kids by crying. Or hurting.’
It was the most grown-up thing she had ever heard. She touched his hand lightly and he did not flinch. She sighed and tried to sound upbeat.
‘In that case, do you ever get a holiday?’
He smiled.
‘Oh, you bet,’ he said. ‘Cheapest skiing I can find.’
To her dismay the first thing that occurred to Lauren was not how glad she was that this saint of a man would get a break but that her knee would not let her ski.
‘I take it from that face that you hate skiing,’ he said.
‘I’ll never find out,’ she said, pointing to her leg.
‘Well, you can go for walks and drink lots of glühwein,’ he smiled as Jeffers walked back in peering at a label on an expensive-looking bottle.
The next morning she woke with the same thoughts she had fallen asleep repeating.
Was that an invitation or a casual, meaningless, throwaway remark? Should she say something? She decided she couldn’t. He would find his bargain break and either mention it again or not. It did not stop her from buying a new dressing gown so that she could be presentable at weekend breakfasts. It did not stop her pretending she had made too much toast, would he like some? Too much bacon, would he like some?
Meanwhile, Luke trundled around in an old stained T-shirt and crumpled pyjama bottoms in a daze, and Lauren knew he ought to smell bad but he didn’t, and she wanted to ask him to go for a walk to Kensington Gardens but she couldn’t, so she went alone and gave herself a strict talking-to about how having a crush was a waste of energy, but it made not a jot of difference.
Bob
The hail had ceased and the sky had turned silvery so Bob placed a paperweight, a gift from Suki in which floated the seed head of a dandelion, one of his daughter’s favourite flowers to draw, on his spreadsheets and left the house. He had recently bought himself a bike, so depressing did he find the need to drive to the beach. Short drives were an irritating if inevitable element to life in the countryside, but it felt somehow grubby to drive past the pines and their squirrels to the dunes. It was what old people did or those with toddlers. Or perverts, perhaps. The bike was much better.
Andrea was not there and he realised he had no idea what pattern she kept. He had no regular time slots for the beach. Sometimes she was there and sometimes she wasn’t. Maybe she was there on the days even when he sat for hours on end which could imply she visited the coastline every day with her dog and that to see her all he had to do was hang around long enough.
But I’m not here for her, he told himself as he walked out towards the water’s edge. The wind hurt his ears and made his eyes sting but he liked that. He imagined the salt in the air cleansing his skin, killing germs, scrubbing away at the dark thoughts he rarely had but knew were inside, ready to consume him, to punish him for his second chance at life. Vera had not wanted a second chance and he respected her for that but Lauren had not been given the choice. She was so young, he sighed, too young to really know what life could be. He turned around to ease his right ear and give the other one the opportunity to be attacked. The girl with the whippet was walking towards him.
‘I know why you wear that hat so often,’ Bob said, his hands cupped over his ears.
She was pink-cheeked and smiley.
‘It’s useful,’ she said, ‘for keeping my hair out of the way when kissing.’
Bob wanted to say something witty but was stumped and she filled the silence by lifting her heels and pressing her lips against his. It lasted about three salty seconds and then she called out ‘Walter!’ and she and the dog raced back inland, leaving Bob with whistling in his ears, a headache and a surge of elation.
He cycled home feeling a weight had been lifted and partially grasped that it ought to be the other way around.
‘I’ll run you a bath, birthday boy,’ Rachel said, and she laughed at how startled he was.
‘I bet you didn’t even notice the gifts on the table, did you?’ she said but she was not cross.
‘Sorry,’ he said.
‘You will be if you’re not dressed for a night out by seven,’ she smiled.
He lay in the bath he needed if did not want and wondered at his wife’s serene confidence that she knew how to celebrate a birthday he had no interest in celebrating. He let his mind drift back to the day Lauren, aged six, had burst into the bedroom with a card she had made that was huge and unsubtle but also incredible. It was covered in all manner of tiny pieces of material, a mini-collage that had, said Vera, taken her a week of painstaking effort to make.
‘My angel, you are the cleverest little girl in the world,’ he had said. And he remembered the proud look on Vera’s face, the look that said, ‘We made this angel, Bob, you and me.’
He had been drifting ever since their deaths, he knew that. He also grasped that he was fortunate to have found such a palatable way to drift, that he could have been broken and lonely. He was grateful to Rachel. She was so calming. He knew most women would have thrown a plate to the floor if told their new husband would not wear a wedding ring, but Rachel had understood. She still understood. Instead of giving him the silent treatment he had anticipated, she had smiled and told him her own father had never worn a wedding ring because it was ‘not manly’. He was grateful, almost as much to Suki for her steadfast humour and loyalty; but this girl had made him feel real. Andrea had no knowledge of his past but had been nice to him anyway. There was a freedom in being anonymous, in being flirtatious, in being flirted with. In kissing. Kissing in a vacuum.
The bath was cold. As he climbed out he mulled over the way time would slip from his grasp, that he could look at his watch and find that he had lost an hour, maybe several, and that this was wasteful or at least it would be if there was not part of him that willed away the hours until he too could die. His admiration for the route Vera had taken would never diminish. Bob, he said to himself, you are a coward. Bob, you seem to be continually handsomely rewarded for being so.
* * *
He did not want to rush back to the dunes. He had a sense it could be no better than this, knowing she was there, prepared to kiss him again perhaps, the sea spray trapped in her eyelashes sparkling, teasing. But it was a day of clear skies and brisk sunshine and he longed for the gulps of air that would taste of driftwood and salt.
He reached her well before the sea came into view. Andrea was on her way home, the whippet on a lead. He braked sharply and then stood before her, which startled her but she seemed pleased.
‘Walter the whippet?’ he said.
She stroked Walter’s
head.
‘Is it a weird coincidence? Is your middle name Walter?’
He laughed. ‘I think I would have hated to be a Walter when a kid, but it’s a fine name.’
They were framed by tall pines which kept them in shadow and Walter, Bob noticed, was shivering.
‘I’ll walk with you for a bit,’ he said.
‘OK,’ she said.
It was not OK. All she could think to say was to ask him if he was married, which irritated her because she was not the least bothered when he said that he was. That was his business, not hers. Meanwhile all Bob could think about was the way Walter appeared to be some sort of chaperone, ruining the mood, making them walk.
‘Let’s time it better,’ she said at last. ‘I’ll be on the sand by two tomorrow.’
And with that she walked more quickly and he hung back for a moment, then cycled towards the beach, glad to be alone, glad to slouch and laze and wonder at the straight simplicity of the horizon.
He shared a late supper with Rachel and Suki, who had spent the day with Beryl. They chattered about their visit as if it was the most natural thing in the world for his second wife to visit her own second husband’s mother-in-law from his first marriage. Was it natural? They had not even told him they were going.
‘You might have mentioned it,’ he said.
‘We did mention it,’ Rachel said breezily but she must have noted the sulky tone because she changed the topic to nurses’ pay, mainly because Beryl had been singing their praises. She knew Bob had backed their industrial action and she knew too that Suki would launch one of her pseudo-Communist attacks on the system which would shake the walls and make Bob forget all about the perceived treachery.
He did not quite forget and lay in bed grumpily considering how his life was being lived for him by his sister and his spouse. He felt as if the only decisions he had made completely independently in years were to visit the beach and buy a bike. I’ll shag Andrea, he thought, although he did not mean it. It was the thought that was defiant. That will be my decision; to contemplate being with her. Christ, I didn’t even have a say on this being our bedroom, and why the hell is there a toy snow leopard at the end of the bed? He dreamed of Andrea walking a leopard instead of a whippet, of thin bones washing up onto the shore, and of Andrea wailing that Walter had been eaten but not realising that the culprit was obvious.
The next day he was sat on the highest dune by one o’clock. Walter found him first, then Andrea sat down next to him.
‘No hat,’ he said.
She stared at him, a faint smile in her eyes. He still felt defiant. He was surprised.
‘No hat, so I’ll have to do this,’ Bob said as he pushed back her hair for their second kiss.
In his head he did much more but he dared not spoil everything by being crass.
‘One-all, as my dad would say,’ she said.
He looked about them and an image from a music video featuring Stevie Nicks being sexy on the beach popped into his head. If they were to have sex on the sand he would need props. A huge blanket, some beers, warmer weather.
‘Oh. You. Are. Transparent,’ she said but she was laughing. ‘Ask me out. I do own a dress and I might have some nail varnish somewhere.’
He sat up straight.
‘Andrea, I’d like to take you dinner, if you’d let me.’
She looked at where his wedding ring should be. She had not meant to but it stalled the mood.
‘Would lunch be easier?’ she said.
‘Yes,’ he said softly, ‘it probably would.’
He cycled home feeling as close to a cad as he had in his entire life. To think he had thought driving to the beach was a grubby, dirty-old-man thing to do. This was worse. Had he really said that? If Andrea had any sense at all she would back out of their crappy date, ignore him at the beach and train Walter to bite a chunk out of his backside.
But he did not yet know Andrea. She was not a dreamy romantic. She was bored, in need of a few dates and if those dates came with the backdrop of subterfuge then so be it. She counted herself fortunate that the only man to regularly frequent the beach on weekdays out of season was reasonably attractive and intriguing. Still, she was no sap and she made sure she and Walter changed their routine to baffle Robert and make sure he did not take her for granted. To have ducked the beach entirely even for a day would have been out of the question. Her father, to whom Walter truly belonged, thrived on her stories of the trek to the dunes. He would pat his dog and seek veracity.
‘Did you really, boy?’ he would say.
‘An old tennis ball?’
‘Did you stop for a drink from your bowl?’
Andrea bore it all with no ill will. Her dad was recovering from a stroke, unable to walk much at all, and she knew his greatest wish was to be with them on the sand, throwing sticks, poking at dead jellyfish. If she was not prepared to walk Walter for him he would have been desperately distressed.
She liked that her and Robert’s only point of contact was the beach. It gave their budding romance an ethereal quality. It was not bound by normal rules. She wondered if having lunch would kill it dead or liberate it further. She made herself just one pledge. She would not have sex in his car.
* * *
The following week they stood at the water’s edge, having what Andrea’s young cousin would call a massive snogathon.
‘Let’s make a vow to kiss only in beautiful places,’ she said.
‘In that case, let’s fly to Paris,’ he said, and she laughed but he was almost serious.
‘Or Blackpool Pier,’ he added, nodding to the tower in the distance.
‘I love funfairs,’ she said. ‘So shall we?’
They did. They whistled through the air on the rollercoaster, ate fish and chips, kissed on the pier and then checked into a large garish hotel where they were given a spacious, draughty room with peeling wallpaper and a creaking bed covered in a deep pink eiderdown – but it had a sea view from huge windows which allowed them to kiss in a knowing, ironic sort of way. This amused Bob because they hardly knew each other at all but there were tiny slivers of his persona he believed only Andrea had ever seen and hoped the same was true for her.
An hour later and Andrea was asleep. She had woken very early to ensure Walter could have his daily escapade before they set off. Bob was plunged into loneliness the minute she dozed off. The room became chilly and ludicrous. He wanted to snuggle close to her but did not think they knew each other well enough for that so he ran himself a bath he knew in advance would be either shallow or tepid but he had not brought a newspaper or a book and he had to do something.
It was almost dark when he dropped her home. They had not exchanged numbers and they both liked that the beach, or perhaps Walter, would decide their fate. As he drove away Bob wondered at how he could feel both elated and troubled at exactly the same time. The car radio suffered a static attack in the middle of a news item about British soldiers killed by the IRA so he drove in silence, the taste of candy floss on his lips, the sound of a half-full rollercoaster’s screams reverberating in his head.
Lauren
She watched him haul his bags into the taxi.
‘You not coming, then?’ he said. This seemed to Lauren to be a cruel thing to say. Had he invited her properly of course she would have joined him. Was she supposed to have nagged him for flight and hotel details?
‘I think I’m booked on a different package,’ she said. ‘You are going to Andorra, aren’t you?’
Luke laughed.
‘Next time,’ he said. This, too, was cruel unless he had no idea how she felt. Emboldened by her own stupidity, she tapped him on the arm and leaned up to kiss him. He did not offer his cheek. Instead they enjoyed a proper smackeroo, as her Aunt Suki would say.
‘Now that is a nice farewell,’ he said, and then he was gone.
She joined Kat and Amy a few hours later at the kitchen table. They warmed their hands on mugs of tea or instant coffee as if they were
taking a break from the ski slopes themselves.
‘He really is remarkable, isn’t he?’ Kat said. ‘He was in an avalanche a few years ago and still he goes skiing.’
‘It wasn’t an avalanche, Kat,’ Amy said. ‘He went the wrong way and got buried in snow.’
‘But he nearly died. I’d never go near the bloody stuff if that happened to me.’
‘He’s just being rational, I guess,’ Lauren said. ‘I was in a car crash but I don’t avoid cars.’
Kat and Amy both turned to her, their eyes wide. They knew Lauren had been in ‘an incident’ and that was why she limped sometimes but she had never introduced the topic before.
‘Were you very young?’ Amy asked, trying to sound both nonchalant and sympathetic.
‘I was thirteen. A funny age really. I think the age bit matters because in many ways it feels like a dream and in others it feels like a giant life-changing moment. My parents, for example, they were changed by it. I think they thought I had died or would die and they’ve been sort of uptight ever since. Sometimes I think of them as pre- and post-crash parents and I want the pre-crash ones back.’
Lauren smiled self-consciously and Amy tried not to look disappointed. She had been hoping for the violent detail not the psychological impact.
‘But yes,’ Lauren added, ‘Luke is very brave. We already knew that.’
At work she was accused of looking dreamy and she confided in Patti, the friendliest of the girls in her team, that she was possibly in love.
‘Yeah, I tried that last summer. Waste of time,’ Patti said, but she smiled and added that Luke sounded interesting.
At the other end of the room, Gregory, her boss, watched the two women nattering and he allowed himself an indulgent couple of minutes imagining the topic of their conversation. Perhaps, he thought, one of them has a crush on me – and then he noticed a piece of fluff on his jacket, hung on a hanger on the wall next to his desk, and stood up quickly to pluck it off.