The Moment You Were Gone (31 page)

Ethan left his tutorial and unlocked his bike. It was half past three and he hadn't had much sleep the night before – his habit of binge-working was continuing. Yet he didn't feel tired any more: rather, he was full of a restless, churning energy. At six o'clock he had arranged to meet friends in the pub, and he didn't know what to do with himself until then. In other circumstances, he would have tracked down Harry and persuaded him into a game of squash – but he didn't feel like seeing Harry and, besides, he was very likely with Lorna, and he most certainly didn't want to see Lorna, not when she was with Harry, anyway, and not after their last meeting. His cheeks burnt when he thought of it, and his heart pounded uncomfortably hard.

He had to get away. He got on to his bike, and started to pedal, although he had no idea where he was headed, and he didn't care. All he knew was that the wind blew into his face and his legs ached from the effort. Before long, he found that he had left Exeter behind him and was headed into open countryside. If he looked back, he could see the city in the distance, with its soaring cathedral and its widening river, and he found it strange to think of himself there, pacing its narrow streets, feverish with unrequited love. The light was thickening and he could feel that soon dusk would fall. Already, the vivid greens
of the fields and the rich golds and browns of the trees had become muted in the fading day. He was wearing a light jacket and no gloves and was starting to feel cold, although his face glowed with effort.

He took lefts and rights at random, cycling at full speed down narrow lanes with hedges high on either side, bending over his handlebars, seeing only the road in front of him. Fields and farms flashed past. Woolly sheep and cattle with long horns. Cars passing in the other direction. Signposts signalling the way to villages with unfamiliar names. Crossroads where he stopped, then turned in whichever direction looked emptiest, wildest, most full of promise.

At last he came to a halt and dismounted. His eyes were watering in the wind and he could no longer ignore how dark it was, or how cold he felt. His fingers were white claws from where they had clenched the handlebars and he blew on them to warm them, stamping his feet. He had absolutely no idea of where he was, not even of the direction in which he was going or of how many miles he had come. His watch told him it was nearly six o'clock: at this moment, he should be walking along a well-lit, populated street towards the pub to meet his friends. There were already pale stars low in the sky and the sun had sunk below the horizon. Cursing, he fumbled in his pannier, brought out his mobile and tried to turn it on, but he had failed to recharge it and the battery had run out.

It seemed to him that he was in the middle of nowhere. The lane was sunken, the hedges high and obscuring, so he could get no sense of where it came from or led to, or remember how many lefts and rights he had taken to
lead him to this remote spot. He pushed his bike along the road until he reached a gate, which revealed only a patchwork of fields that rolled away to the horizon.

He remounted his bike and cycled in the direction from which he had come, but the network of lanes was like a maze and after several minutes he felt almost sure that he had looped back on himself and was as far away from the main road to Exeter as he had ever been. What was more, it was becoming increasingly difficult to see. The landscape around him had lost all colour and was a dark grey; trees were massed shapes in the hedgerow; the road twisted away from him.

‘I'm lost,' he said out loud, and felt unaccountably contented. He biked fast up a small hill and at the top propped his bike against a stump and climbed on to the gate beside it. He eased his cigarette packet out of his jeans pocket and, after several failed attempts, lit one. He took a deep drag, then let the smoke curl out into the twilight and dissolve. As he sat there, cold and tired, he was filled all of a sudden with a piercing happiness that was, at the same time, a deep melancholy. He felt that he was at the heart of life's meaning, where happiness and sadness met, and where the sense of one's self blurs – and yet he knew he was being ridiculous, infantile and was overwrought.

From where he was perched on the cold bar of the gate, he realized he could see lights twinkling in the shallow valley below. He threw his cigarette on to the damp grass, jumped off the gate, and set off once more to ask for help and directions. It was oddly hard to find the source of the lights, for they disappeared as he descended the hill,
and it was only after a couple of wrong turns up muddy tracks that led nowhere that he found himself cycling up a driveway towards a building with lights glowing from the ground floor. There was a tractor with vast wheels and several pieces of farm machinery in the muddy stretch of land in front of the house and to one side a shelter with a corrugated-iron roof, so Ethan assumed it was a farm, but if so it was small and run-down. A dog barked ferociously as he approached, then came belting out, a large shape with white teeth and shining eyes.

‘Good dog,' he said nervously, braking to a halt and dismounting.

The shape lunged towards him and stood a few inches off, growling and giving intermittent, sinister barks of warning. Ethan did not move.

‘Who's there?' called a voice.

‘Sorry to bother you,' Ethan said, though he could still see no one, ‘but I got a bit –'

‘What's that? Come on out of the shadows and let me see you.'

Ethan took a small step towards the house. The dog bared its teeth and let out a truly menacing snarl. ‘Your dog. Do you think you could call him off?'

‘Him? He wouldn't hurt a baby.'

Ethan took another step. The dog half squatted as if to spring. ‘Good dog,' he said again, in a high, scared coo. ‘Good dog.'

‘Oh, for God's sake. Come here, Tyson.'

‘Tyson? As in –'

‘Don't worry, he's a softie at heart.' The man who came loping out of the yard was tall and thin with long
white hair that blew back from his face and sunken, pitted cheeks. ‘Here, Tyson,' he said sharply, and yanked the dog by its collar.

‘Thanks. Sorry. I'm not used to dogs.'

‘What can I do for you?'

‘I've lost my way,' said Ethan. ‘I need to get back to Exeter, but there don't seem to be any signposts – or not to anywhere I've ever heard of, anyway.'

‘You've come a fair way.'

‘I know.'

‘And it's dark.'

‘Yes. I didn't realize how late it was.'

‘Come in,' said the man, and swung round, letting go of the dog, which scuttled towards the yard.

‘But I just wanted to know the way back.'

The man didn't respond, simply led Ethan through the yard, still wheeling his bike.

‘Really,' said Ethan, ‘it's very kind of you, but if you'd just tell me …'

‘Now then,' said the farmer, as he opened the front door on to a small utility room full of old jackets, muddy boots and several torches ranged along a shelf. ‘Lean your bike there and step inside.'

‘I don't think …' began Ethan, wondering if he'd stumbled into some spooky fairy story ‘… I don't think I really have the time to …'

But he was inside and the door was shut behind him.

‘Look at the state of you,' said the farmer. ‘In you come.'

The kitchen looked as if it had been last decorated in the fifties and not touched since. It had a low ceiling. The
walls were brownish-yellow and Ethan couldn't tell if that was the way they had been painted, or if it was the result of years of smoke and grease. A small, antiquated Aga was against one wall; a clatter of pans hung above it and several pairs of socks were arranged along its drying pole. A small fire burnt in the grate.

‘I'll put the kettle on, shall I? You take the weight off your feet and sit by that fire now. Put some warmth back into you.'

‘Really, I don't want anything to drink,' said Ethan, hovering by the kitchen door, with the dog eyeing him suspiciously from across the room. ‘And I don't want to sit down. I just want directions back to the main Exeter road.'

‘Reginald,' said the white-haired man. ‘And you are?'

‘Ethan.'

‘You're not from round here, then, Ethan?'

‘No, I –'

‘You'll be from London, I reckon.'

‘Yes, that's right.'

‘My wife was from London. Enfield.'

‘Oh,' said Ethan.

‘She died five years ago. Cancer. She never took any notice of the pains and by the time she went to the doctor it was too late to do anything. Don't look so anxious. I'm going to make you something to warm you up, then give you a lift to Exeter in my truck. How's that?'

‘No! You don't need to do that. Honestly, I just need directions. I certainly don't want to put you to any bother.'

‘Bother?'

‘Yes.'

‘What do you think I'm going to do with my evening?'

‘Well, I –'

‘Wait for it to go by until it's bedtime, that's what. To have a young body like you in my kitchen adds a bit of life, even if you do look like something the cat brought in.'

‘It's very kind of you,' said Ethan, weakly. He moved across to the fire and sat before it, holding his hands out to the warmth of the flame. The dog slunk over and settled by his feet. ‘I really am grateful.'

‘Do as you would be done by, that's what I say. If I was wandering round like a lost soul I hope someone would do the same for me.'

‘The kindness of strangers,' said Ethan. As clearly as if she was in the room with him, he could hear his mother's voice as he uttered the words.

Reginald looked at him. ‘That's it,' he said. ‘That's the thing.'

‘Thank you,' said Ethan. He stroked the dog's flank cautiously and Tyson lifted his head blearily, then laid it on his paws once more.

The heat was licking one cheek and his fireside leg felt hot under his jeans. Reginald put a mug of strong tea on the arm of his chair and he took it between both hands. Tiredness settled over him.

‘Now then, bacon and eggs or scrambled eggs – or I've got a bit of ham in the fridge?'

‘No, really …' He saw Reginald's worn face. ‘Scrambled eggs, then. Just a bit, though.'

‘I never cooked while my wife was alive. Now I like it. It gives a shape to the end of the day, cooking. Especially
when you're on your own. I can do all sorts. I made steak pie the other day. I had to give most of it to Tyson, though. You don't need much for one.'

He pulled a pan on to the hob and put in a pat of butter, which sizzled briefly.

‘Do you have children?' Ethan heard himself say, out of the muggy tiredness that was wrapped round him.

‘A son in America.' Reginald cracked two eggs into the pan and stirred them briskly. ‘The trick is to cook them slowly. I read that in a colour supplement. Imagine, me reading recipes in a colour supplement! He's in something to do with advertising. I don't understand it at all. He calls me once a week and sometimes he comes over and I've been there a few times, though I prefer him coming to me. He's got two children and a stepson. They're good kids, but they grow up so fast nowadays, don't they? And they have so many things. Computers and bicycles and TVs in their bedrooms and drum kits and – toast with your eggs?'

‘Just eggs, thanks.'

‘They don't taste right unless they're on hot buttered toast.'

‘Toast, then.'

‘I never knew I was happy until I wasn't any more.'

‘I'm sorry,' said Ethan, awkwardly. If Gaby were here, she would know what to say and do in this room that was thick with loneliness.

‘You just take it for granted. People think it doesn't matter when old people die. Not that she was that old, only sixty-eight. That's not old these days, is it?'

‘No, I guess not.'

‘We had a good-enough marriage. Ups and downs. Now I think of all the things I didn't tell her.'

‘I'm sure that she –'

‘I haven't cut my hair since the day she died.'

‘Really? But why?'

‘I don't know. I used to get it cut once a month, without fail. My son keeps telling me I ought to get it cut. He thinks I look – what does he say? Disreputable. Unkempt, like an old tramp. It makes him worry about me.'

‘I like it,' said Ethan, on surer ground now.

‘You do?'

‘You look cool.'

Reginald gave a wheezing little laugh.

‘Nobody's ever called me cool before.'

‘Like a rock star,' said Ethan. ‘Or the Ancient Mariner.'

‘Well. I'll have to tell my son that. Here, your eggs are ready.'

‘You could tie it back in a ponytail sometimes, if it gets in the way.'

‘A ponytail?'

‘Yes.'

‘Hmm.'

‘Or you could grow a little goatee.'

‘What, like a beard?'