Homecoming (16 page)

I miss you

How did this happen?

Where is the love train? Are there leaves on the line?

But she never receives a reply. He might as well have died.

‘I have to move,’ she says. She wipes her eyes with a tea towel. She can feel how puffy her face is beneath the fabric. A bruised thing. ‘I’ve got to get out of Theobald Road. It’s doing my head in.’

‘Actually, I’ve got a place – it’s coming onto the books next week,’ says Dave. ‘Landlord wants it tenanted because it’s falling to pieces. Old lady died there apparently. Any road, he told me he’d rent it for next-to-nothing if someone was willing to clean the place up a bit. You’d have to see if you think it’s too grim.’

‘No, no,’ she says, ‘I’m in. My lease on the flat comes to an end this month and they’re asking if I’m staying and I just can’t sign for another six months. There’s no way.’

She puts both palms over her face and throws her head back. ‘Urgh. I hate this. Please get it for me, Dave. I’ve got to get out of Theobald Road. Anyway,’ she looks at him, ‘I’ve always fancied doing a place up.’

‘Slow down. You need to take a look. I’m telling you, the place really stinks. But it’s enormous – much bigger than your flat. Think this old bird used to piss her pants while she watched telly.’

‘Urgh, more information than I needed,’ she says.

‘Right, well,’ he says, ‘you get out that walnut cake and I’ll make a few calls.’

She gets out the cake and cuts a complimentary slice for Dave but none for herself. It is as if food’s gravitational pull – its position as the planet around which she orbited – has been switched off. She looks down at the cake as an inanimate object, dirty almost. She resents handling it. She has become irritated by the need to eat in order to function – those times when she must force something down because a dizzying weakness is getting in the way of working or sleeping. ‘Hold the fort will you, Dave?’ she says, feeling in her apron pocket. ‘I’m just going out back for a ciggie.’

Joe stands holding the petrol-pump nozzle into the tank, scanning across the garage shop, its frontage set with buckets of pink and white flowers and trays of tabloids. He looks out through the sheltered forecourt to the car park beyond, where the rain bounces off car roofs – one of the cars red, like the cheerful red and white awning of the Little Chef. It is then that he sees them.

They are talking over the roof of Ann’s car, cowed a little by the rain. Eric is holding a newspaper over his head. Ann holds a bunch of the garage flowers. Joe watches them talk, then they both get into Ann’s car. Eric’s red Nissan Micra, which had drawn his eye, is parked in the adjacent bay. They sit in the front seats of Ann’s car. Every now and then he sees Eric turn his head to look at Ann. Why are they together? A coincidence, probably. No, he shakes his head. Looks again. Something about the intimacy of sitting together in those front seats – like a couple . . . He starts to quiver. Why would she want me, when there’s men like Eric in the world? There’s so much to admire in him – his good humour, his largesse, his big house and posh carpets. She’ll come home and say, ‘He’s done well for himself, has Eric, getting out when he did.’

Gusts of wind blow the spray even to where Joe is standing in the sheltered forecourt. The pump’s nozzle has clicked a while ago, and he shakes off the drips and returns it to the pump. He sees Eric climb out of the car, stoop to say something through the open door, then return to his Micra.

The flowers stand awkwardly in Ann’s lap. The stems poke into her knees while the stinking blooms are too close to her chin, radiating upwards. Chrysanthemums. Garish pink. Nothing natural, that would flower at this time of year. But it’s not a time of year for flowers at all. Everything is hunkered down or frozen solid. Waiting it out. The cellophane around the flowers is wet and it’s soaking her trousers. She turns and lays them on the back seat.

‘They’re for Lauren,’ she says. ‘I’m going to see her later.’

Eric nods.

‘How are you holding up?’ she says.

‘Ahhh,’ he sighs and closes his eyes. His face, usually garrulous and tight, has gone slack. ‘Difficult day.’

She lays a hand on his hand, which rests on his leg. ‘I know love,’ she says. ‘He was a smashing lad.’ And she immediately
regrets
trotting out this cliché, so insufficient.

‘How’s Joe doing?’ Eric asks.

‘His usual ray of sunshine,’ Ann says. ‘We wouldn’t be able to carry on without, what you did, with Granville.’

‘Nasty little man, that,’ says Eric. ‘Don’t tell Joe it were me. He’s got enough to deal with.’

‘You’ve noticed – how sensitive he is, all of a sudden.’

‘Ah,’ says Eric. ‘It’s not easy for ’im, with prices so bad and the fire. Under a lot of pressure.’

‘Any road, he doesn’t have a clue,’ she says. And she is brought up short by an image of herself, sitting in the car with Eric, deceiving Joe even though they’d only bumped into each other by chance and she’d wanted to take her time with Eric, talking gentle to him on this of all days. But she thinks of how it would seem to Joe and she looks down at her lap.

Eric says, ‘You look after him. He needs lookin’ after, and bring those lambs out with the daffodils and I’ll be happy.’ He pats her hand. ‘I’m going back to my car. Lauren’s best not left alone today.’

‘I’ll see you later, chuck,’ she says through the open car door. He slams it shut and she starts the engine.

A couple of hours and some errands later, Ann stands under the thin shelter of the door lintel and rings the bell. While she waits, she looks in through Lauren’s gleaming front window, past the doily and the rearing porcelain horse to the sitting room. The cream carpet is immaculate. The ivory leather sofas (three-
seater
, two-seater and matching armchair – what you’d call a proper three-piece suite) have a soft shell-like sheen, good as new. On a small coffee table is the
Radio Times
. It is precisely aligned with the table’s edge, and on it a remote control (at an angle but not, Ann thinks, a random one). There’s no mud or dust. She always finds Lauren’s house almost excessive in its comfort. Like a pale marshmallow, big enough to envelop the whole body in its spongy embrace.

Lauren appears behind the rippled glass of the front door. When she opens it, Ann notices she has dispensed with her usual care about her appearance. Her hair is flattened as if she’s just woken up, rather than in its rigid, highlighted waves. She has a balled tissue in her hand which she pushes up into one nostril. She is wearing a purple velour tracksuit and slippers.

‘Difficult day?’ says Ann, pushing forward her flowers.

‘The worst. Thanks for remembering, love.’

‘I’ve been thinking of you.’

‘Come through,’ says Lauren and she leads the way, pushing her feet forwards in her slippers and throwing the balled tissue in the hallway bin as she passes it.

Ann follows her into the kitchen.

‘Here,’ Ann says, ‘this looks well.’

It’s all been finished off since she last saw it. The pinkish light glitters down and bounces off the impossibly white stone worktops. Ann runs a hand over it. Cold and smooth. Lauren is at the sink (a sink which sparkles as if straight from Hollywood, set with a very tall swan-like tap). She is running water into a vase for the chrysanthemums. Ghastly things, Ann thinks, ashamed. Should have taken the time, driven to Helmsley and that posh place where they have proper lilies and things. Not been so mean.

‘I can’t believe it’s thirty years ago,’ Lauren says, sniffing, pushing back the (is that porcelain?) lever of the tap. ‘When I think of it,’ Lauren shuffles over to a box of tissues, ‘honest to god, Ann, it hurts as if it happened yesterday.’

Ann goes over to her friend and hugs her. Over her shoulder she takes in the under-cupboard lighting which makes the white tiles shine like river stones under the surface of water. Give anything for tiling like that.

‘It’s always a difficult day, this,’ says Ann. ‘You’ve got to expect it.’

‘Cup of tea?’ says Lauren, pulling away.

‘Smashing,’ says Ann and she takes off her coat. She walks out to the hallway and hangs it on the stair banister. When she returns to the kitchen, she pulls out one of the high stools (cream leather with stainless-steel legs) from under the central island. Lauren sets her tea down in front of her.

‘Come on then, what’s your news? Take my mind off it,’ Lauren says.

‘Well,’ says Ann, ‘The really big news – and I don’t want to sock you with too much excitement, not today of all days – but Ivy Dawson’s had a caution.’

Lauren’s eyes bulge. ‘What, from the coppers? Has she lost her licence?’

‘Don’t think you need a licence for a mobility scooter. But when I drove past yesterday she was pulled over on the side of the road – this was just outside the village on the Lipton Road – both hands gripping the handlebars with Plod stood next to her writing in a pad.’

‘Oh that is too good.’

‘I know, and then I talked to Dennis Lunn and he said the police had pulled her over and warned her about driving without due care and attention.’

‘Oh please,’ says Lauren. ‘Is it driving? Really? Only in the loosest sense of the word. I’d say it’s more pressing forward with hope in her heart.’

‘My guess,’ says Ann sipping her tea, ‘is that the woman can’t see two yards ahead of her.’

Lauren nods. She dabs at her eyes with her tissue. Ann pats her arm, then rubs it a little.

‘How’s Joe?’ asks Lauren.

‘At what point can you get your spouse locked up under the Mental Health Act?’

‘Still the video entryphone? I’m amazed you allowed Primrose to fit that thing.’

‘I didn’t. Joe did.’

‘Is he still on it every hour of the day?’

‘Morning noon and night. It’s so boring, Lauren. He’s just staring and staring and there’s nothing there to see. And when he looks up, it’s like he doesn’t know how to live in the world.’

‘Marriage,’ says Lauren.

Ann nods. They sit for a minute, sipping.

‘How’s the snoring?’ asks Ann. ‘Have you tried those foam earplugs I told you about? I’ve not looked back.’

‘Didn’t even make a dent,’ says Lauren. ‘Sweet Jesus, Ann, you’d think he had workmen up there, breaking up the tarmac.’

‘What’s so funny?’ says Eric, over their laugher. He is padding in, also in his slippers and setting down his newspaper.

‘Nothing, dear,’ says Lauren.

‘I’d best get back,’ says Ann. ‘I’ve a stew to make.’

‘I’ve got to take Sandy out,’ says Eric. ‘Give me a minute to get my shoes on and I’ll walk you across the green.’

‘Alright,’ says Ann. Eric pads out. She hears his slippers
schlumping
on the thick stair carpet. Everything in this house is insulated.

‘We’re so grateful, Lauren. Well,’ Ann looks down, ‘
I’m
so grateful. What you did, it were above and beyond.’

‘No it weren’t,’ says Lauren. ‘We talked about it, me and Eric. We wanted to do it. You’re our friends, Ann. My best friend. Anyway, life’s too short. Our Jack taught us that.’

Ann looks at the garish chrysanthemums, arranged in Lauren’s white vase. ‘Right, well. Bye, love,’ she says. ‘Well done for getting through it. Today I mean.’

Eric is standing by the door holding Sandy’s lead. The brown springer spaniel – as glossy as everything else in the house – leaps and springs at his feet. It pants, while Ann puts her coat on.

As they find the path, and with Sandy crossing their legs this way and that, Eric says, ‘It’s not that bad, you know.’

‘What’s not?’ says Ann.

‘Getting out. Selling. The sky doesn’t fall in.’

‘God, Eric,’ she says, ‘d’you not think I’d get out tomorrow? It’s not that easy. It were different for you – you owned your land. We’d have nowhere to live.’

‘P’raps. But the longer you prop him up, keep balancing the books, the longer he’ll hold on,’ he says. She feels annoyed, that he’s glossing over the numbers involved. Only the rich do that.

She loops her arm through his. ‘I’m not the only one propping him up, am I?’ she says.

‘Ahhh,’ he says, at the base of his throat, ‘No, you’ve got a point there. Maybe we’re all a bit terrified. He would come to terms though – eventually. And I’d happen you’d both feel relieved.’

He sits on his hard little seat. It is 2 a.m. and he can hear Ann’s faint snoring from the bedroom. He looks at the video entryphone’s monitor and the handset squared up alongside it, lifts it and the screen blinks on. Its green is over-bright at first, then the grains form themselves into images. It takes a few seconds to make out the grass of the village green and its bisecting path. It has a wet sheen under the lights from the Fox. The black mound of a bench. Alan Tench’s white van. The picture itself seems to throb, as if Marpleton has a pulse or the same shallow breathing as a sleeping body. Joe’s lungs fill up. For all his exhaustion, it’s a relief, this little picture. He can face it, live in it, this domestic view to the front. It offers him relief from the farm, where the pressure is becoming unbearable and why was that, when the barn was tidied up and the replacement feed was in? Was it age, making his feelings so unbridled?

When he thinks of the flock out there on the fell, the wind so cold and blowing their fleeces into rosettes on their backs, he almost can’t stand it. They seem so dependent on him. But they always were, so why does it hurt him to think on it now? Losses were to be expected, of course. They were part of the farmer’s lot. It was a business – they weren’t pets. He tells himself this over and over. Some sheep drown in the burn, some die of exposure or old age. Foot rot is common, after all. Sometimes they get caught in snowdrifts or stuck on their backs. He can feel a tear rising, pricking the back of his eye. Ordinary losses, man. There’s no avoiding it. But the flock, for him – it’s not just a
business
. You care for them like they’re family. It was your duty to look after them right and when you didn’t, well you didn’t feel good in yourself. More and more these days, Joe feels the task might be beyond him. He thinks of Bartholomew’s teenage face all those years ago, full of righteousness. ‘You know them. You know who they are and you won’t stop it.’