Remember Me This Way (11 page)

It was chilly crouching there, ears full of noise from the main road. As each car passed, the orange glow of its headlamps raked the underside of the branch nearest to me; what I had thought was moss was a fur of pollution. The ground was too wet, too dirty, to sit down and the muscles in my thighs twitched. None of it bothered me. I was fired by the plan, by the excitement of what might happen, but also by the execution itself. Like that time, most recently, I followed the psychologist home, it was as if my whole being had been subject to an electrical charge. I throbbed with it. What am I trying to say? I just felt alive.

When she turned the corner, she was chewing a nail, her teeth pulling at the cuticle, her brow gently furrowed. Even though I’d been waiting, her actual appearance came as an agreeable surprise. My heart actually stopped for a second. But then the pleasure soured. Here she was, walking down her own street, having made the decision to do it
without me
. She looked contemplative, too. What was going through her mind? I hate not knowing. If I could have drilled into her head and rummaged in her brains with my hands I would have done so.

She walked a little way down the street and turned into number 30. Neatly trimmed evergreens in the front garden, tatty paintwork, an enormous rubber plant taking up the entire front bay window. She let herself in. The hall light went on – one of those cheap paper balloons – and then she closed the front door behind her.

I stood up. My thighs were about to give out. I hadn’t quite decided what to do – whether to head off back to Brighton or kill an hour or two in a local bar – when the door opened and she re-emerged, this time with the dog tugging at her from the end of a lead. She set off back towards the pub, her chin up now, spare hand thrust in pocket, her expression more cheerful than before. I waited until I heard the beep of the pedestrian crossing and watched her heading down the road that leads to the main part of the common.

Perhaps if she hadn’t looked so optimistic, so
unbereft
of my company, I might have gone on my way, as planned. But I felt a need, I don’t know, to wrest something back, to possess her in a way I couldn’t put my finger on.

The front door was firm. The window solid, too, jammed with paint. Quick look under the mat. You never know. Some people have shit for brains. Nothing. A jog round the block, though, and interesting possibilities began to open out. Lizzie’s row of houses backed on to a small 1980s estate – all gables, exposed brickwork and twee arches – and I found a high wall that provided indirect access to the fence along the bottom of Lizzie’s garden. With the help of some bins, a little ingenuity and a considerable amount of upper-body strength, it wasn’t long before I was standing in a worn hollow behind some shrubs at the bottom of her garden.

A narrow strip of grass, edged with beds, led to the house about sixty feet away. What I believe estate agents describe as a ‘mature’ plot. Not a bad size for London. South-facing, too. The kitchen light glowed on to a small garden table, two chairs and a raggedy collection of pots – tomatoes or herbs or what the fuck ever.

Rustling behind my head. A black-and-white cat hovering at the top of the fence, staring. It opened its mouth, pink tongue, sharp teeth. A miaow so quiet it was like a silent scream. I gestured with my arm and it scarpered, claws scraping, a thud. Adrenalin pumped as I ran across the lawn. I didn’t have long.

Back door shut. Damn. A flickering of pique. I’d been so sure. How dare she?

I scanned the rear of the house. A first-floor window was open a few inches at the top. By standing on the garden table, I could reach the sill with my hands and swing my legs up to a small ridge above the kitchen door. With that as leverage I could free a hand to push up at the window and it gave.

I wriggled through on my stomach, collapsing on to the floor head first and tearing my shirt, thankfully not a Paul Smith. I used the facilities, then washed my hands – a nasty rust stain running from the tap to the plughole. Decided against drying them. None of the towels slung across the radiator was sufficiently clean. A weird contraption rested over the blue plastic bath, the sort of thing you might use for sit-ups, and a non-slip mat lay along the bottom. On the floor sat a large brown box, too big for the cupboard, containing what looked like packets of cotton wool. The smell, too, wasn’t nice: sweet and cloying, the tang of acid. No lock on the door.

Two rooms opened out at the top of a small flight of stairs. The walls were covered in pink-and-yellow wallpaper depicting garlands of miniature flowers, and on the floor was an old-fashioned green carpet, like moss. Doubts began to grow. She had said she lived alone, hadn’t she? The first room I went into was obviously Lizzie’s – the trousers she had worn to the cinema had been thrown, inside out, onto the floor. Her best trousers. Too good for a dog walk. She must have put them on specially for me. I felt a stir of tenderness at the sight. The room itself was small and messy with clothes hanging untidily on an open metal rail. Worn shoes in tragic heaps. A Victorian fireplace housed a trailing spider plant, and books were piled on either side. A small desk with a diary and an address book neatly piled. I found details for Fred Laws, tore out the page and stuffed it in my pocket.

By her bed, bookmarked with a kid’s drawing,
The White Tiger
by Aravind Adiga. In one alcove, a cheap white plywood chest of drawers splattered with photographs in mismatched frames. Several of the same infant – in a paddling pool, on a swing, in a highchair – her beloved nephew, I assumed. One photo of Lizzie as a teenager with another girl – her sister, by the physical resemblance. They had their rangy arms around each other, close enough for their cheeks to touch. Such ease, such love. It fascinated me. I couldn’t draw my eyes away. I almost slipped it out of its frame and stole it.

I switched the socket off at the wall. A small trespass, but I couldn’t restrain myself.

Her underwear was in the top drawer. Plain knickers probably bought in multipacks and a spare bra – only one – that seemed far too large for her slight frame. This was underwear that had never seen active combat. Home Guard
undies.

I was easing the drawer closed when I sensed a shift in the air. I froze – a click, the shuffle of footsteps. Downstairs. The noises were indefinite, indecisive. I hadn’t heard the door. Was Lizzie back? Or had she just let the dog in, while she did something outside? I thought about that cat on the fence, though these noises had too much weight behind them for that.

The bedroom window was stuck fast; the drop, looking down, alarming. I moved back to the doorway and stood, listening, my eye on the bathroom door, calculating how many paces I needed to reach it, whether I could jump the short flight of stairs in one, get through the window and back across the garden without being seen.

A creak and then another. The person, or whatever it was, was just below. If I took a step forward and looked over the bannister, I would be able to see who or what it was.

I was aware that my teeth were gritted. I was breathing more slowly. Quiet anger. A psychiatrist, or even that CBT psychologist the other night, would have a field day. I felt a current through my veins, as if this were my house, and this interruption was trespassing on my time. Before I knew it, I had walked out on to the landing and I was taking those three, four steps down to the bathroom in large strides.

I turned when I reached the door. A figure was in the hall, looking up at me. A blank expression in her eyes, her mouth half open. Old. Stark naked.

She said, ‘Where’s Elizabeth?’

‘She’s out,’ I said conversationally. So much flesh.

‘Is it time for my tea now?’

I thought for a moment and said, ‘I expect Elizabeth will make it for you when she gets back.’

‘What am I going to have? I want something hot.’

‘Well, hot is what you shall have.’

‘I might go down for the OAP menu at the Fox and Hounds. I can get a bus.’

‘What? You’re going to go out dressed like that?’ I said. ‘As my mother used to say.’

‘She was a decent woman, your mother. Don’t you go giving her lip.’

I stared down at her and she stared up at me. I swallowed a laugh and said, ‘Well, cheerio,’ and opened the door to the bathroom. I closed it behind me and leaned against it. It all fell into place. The box of cotton wool: incontinence pads. The contraption over the bath: a disability aid. The smell: urine, old age, decaying skin. I clambered out on to the sill, easing the window closed behind me. I didn’t bother with the table – leaped out into the middle of the lawn. I took my time walking to the end of the garden, ambling as if the whole place belonged to me.

The poignancy of Lizzie’s abandoned best trousers keeps coming into my head. I found Fred Laws’ details scrunched into a ball in my pocket earlier today and felt a sense of loss.

Her number has just come up on my phone. She’s never rung me before. She’s always waited timidly for me.I wondered for a minute if she’d found me out. But I don’t see how – there’s no way of connecting me to the intruder. Not unless I return to the house and meet the mother legitimately, which I can’t do now. I’ve blown it.

I forced myself to switch my phone to silent.

I should let it lie, chalk it up to experience. What’s the matter with me? My mind keeps turning. I keep remembering the look on her face when she talked about the damaged children at school, how hard she tries to save them.

I must be getting soft in my old age.

She rang again today, and I couldn’t stop myself. I answered.

She came straight out with it. ‘Have I done something to offend you?’

I was taken aback, spluttered about having been busy. I felt like closing my eyes and lying down, letting her voice slip into my ears, over my body, giving myself up to it.

‘It’s just that until last weekend you were ringing every evening. We seemed to be getting on so well. But since the day we went to the cinema, you haven’t rung at all. And then . . . my friend Jane said she saw your profile was back up on Encounters and . . .’ She paused and then the rest came out in a rush. ‘I’ve been thinking about it and wondered if you were cross about what happened.’

‘What did happen?’

‘Me not inviting you to mine.’

She didn’t do that thing women do when they are upset, which is pretend to be upset about something completely different, so your subsequent row is surreal and pointless. Disarmed, I said, ‘Yes, maybe I was. Hurt perhaps. I’d been longing to, I don’t know, get to know you better.’

‘Longing?’ There was laughter in her voice, and something sexy too.

‘Longing,’ I repeated. I couldn’t stop myself from smiling. ‘I got the impression you didn’t want to take it any further and, being the gentleman I am, I thought I’d give you an out.’

A short silence and then she cried: ‘I do want to take it further. I don’t want an out. I want an in . . . I just . . .’

I tried to detach myself. ‘What?’

‘I’ve kept something from you.’

And then an outpouring: how she lived with her mother, who had advanced dementia, and how she hadn’t told me because she thought it would put me off, and that was why she was often distracted and didn’t invite me back. Her mother had been confused and incontinent for a while now, but she had also started hallucinating. She claimed there were men wandering around the house. She had abused the neighbours, shouted obscenities at them over the fence, accused the carer of destroying garden pots and spat in her face. The other day, the police had found her up at the bus stop on Trinity Road with no clothes on, fixated on the OAP menu at the Fox and Hounds. Lizzie wasn’t sure if she could carry on.

‘Meeting you . . .’ she said. ‘It’s just . . .’

‘What?’ I said again.

A silence and then, ‘I was always the stupid one, and the not very attractive one. I never . . . I never imagined something like this might happen to me.’

‘Like what?’

‘A life of my own,’ she cried. ‘You’re everything that . . . and that you’re interested in me . . . I mean, bloody hell.’ She laughed again; this time I wondered if it might not be through tears.

‘What?’ I repeated.

‘What I’m trying to say is that the thought of “taking it further” makes me weak at the knees.’

I listened to the silence that followed. For a long time, I listened.

And then I managed to control myself. ‘Poor Lizzie.’

I could hear her breathing hard.

‘I’m not surprised you aren’t coping.’

A small gulp her end.

I felt an enormous welling of relief. A new life could be opening, a rescue, for both of us: an end to her humdrum existence and for me, perhaps, a safe haven, a chance to start again. I was so stirred I could hardly speak. I managed to croak out the necessary. ‘Have you . . .’ I moved from tender to tentative. ‘Have you thought about a home?’

Chapter Seven

Lizzie

I wrap the dead bird in newspaper and sweep up the broken glass. In the
Yellow Pages
I find a glazier, who is at the house within the hour. The broken pane was the original Victorian, he says, as he replaces it; rolled plate, you could tell from the imperfections. It was thin and unreinforced, would have smashed easily.

As soon as he leaves, I sit at the kitchen table and think hard. What does Zach expect me to do now? I need to second-guess him. He had this thing about how ‘nice’ I was to other people, how passive. Does he assume I will sit back and wait? Maybe he expects me to fall apart, maybe he
wants
me to. Is he waiting for me to prove my love for him that way? Surely I have done enough for him over this past year. He must have seen me, out in the street, eyes red-rimmed, hair unwashed. He could have put his ear to the walls of the house and heard me wailing late at night. No, this is something different. This feels more like one of his tests.

In the early stages of our marriage, he would ring me at work with small entreaties – a tube of particular oil paint he wanted, could I go to the art-supply shop and buy it for him? Or there was a cheque on the kitchen table that urgently needed to be banked. He’d do it himself but he was down at the studio and for once he was inspired, he didn’t want to lose his flow. Usually, these requests would come in the morning so I would sort them out in my lunch hour. But then, early one afternoon, he rang in a state. He was locked out. He’d lost his key. A painting had gone wrong. He was a useless human being. He didn’t know what to do, where to go.