The Snowing and Greening of Thomas Passmore (23 page)

It's then I see the dead swan.

Several metres up-river, its neck and most of its body is submerged, but part of one leg is on the surface with its head and bill, and a few feathers ruffle in the breeze.

How could anyone do this?

It's drifting with the current, and as I draw closer I watch its feathers ruffle again, except this time I hear them rustle. The rustle of plastic. It's not a swan, but a white, plastic carrier bag, partly submerged, with air trapped inside, caught in the fork of a branch. What I thought was part of a leg is a lollipop stick trailing next to it, and as I look at the markings on the swan's bill I realise there's a printed banner in orange:
FRESH FOOD
.

I watch it drift.

Déjà vu
.

Returning to the house, for an alfresco meal, the mood's become celebratory, almost apologetic, and I can't bring myself to break it. Not at first.

“Red or white?” Brian says, pointing to two wine casks sitting by the back step. “Grab a glass from the kitchen.”

“Nice walk?” Mum asks.

I nod.

“See anyone?”

“No.”

There's little breeze here; just a calm summer's evening. The smell of a barbecue wafts from one side of the neighbours' fence and the sound of a TV washes in from the other. Bees and hoverflies drift around the flowers, even though the sun's dropping, and a couple of wasps drone around the border of rocks, exploring crevices. It's the calm before the storm, but I've shouldered her bitterness for too many years.

After dinner, when the twins have been sent to do the dishes and Brian's checking out the Saturday Night Movie, Mum says: “We are pleased, you know, love. About you and Elin. She seemed a nice girl.”

“Hmm,” I say. “She is.”

“A pity she couldn't have come back with you this weekend. It would have been nice to get to know her better.”

I watch an ant struggle to carry a crumb through the grass.

“There'll be other times.”

She takes a sip of wine. “We don't see you that often.”

I take a sip of wine. “Yeah, well.”

“What?”

I empty my glass. “Nothing.”

She gets to her feet, holds a hand out for my empty glass. “Well, this won't get my knitting finished, will it? I can't sit here all evening.”

“Why not?”

“I've got jobs to do, that's why.”

Pulling in a deep breath, I hold it, then exhale. “Tell me one thing,” I say.

“What?”

“Tell me about Dad. Now. I want to know. I need to know.”

She doesn't wince or flinch, but turns away, then turns back; her eyes angry darts and her mouth pinched tight. “Don't. Don't you do that. Why would you… why spoil a perfect evening?”

“Nothing's that perfect. I need to know.”

She walks inside, leaving me empty and outside. Two minutes later, she's shouting at Annette for teasing Andrew.

The evening midges start to swarm, and I slap at a couple. It takes two commercial breaks in the movie before Brian comes out. He looks down at me, his arms crossed.

“Why do you always go out your way to upset your mother?” he says. He doesn't exactly whisper, but his voice is hushed; he doesn't want the neighbours to hear.

“I thought it was the other way round.”

“You're a self-centred bugger, aren't you?”

“If you say I'm a self-centred bugger then I must be, Brian. You're the expert.” I refuse to lower my voice.

He steps towards me and I'm ready to duck.

“Grow up,” he hisses. “Stop acting like a schoolboy. Try thinking about other people's feelings for a change. It's always the same; after you've been home a few hours you can't help but stir things up.”

“Well you needn't worry about that anymore, Brian. It'll be a long while before I set foot in this house again.”

He laughs and begins heading back inside. “Don't be so bloody dramatic.”

“It's a fact, that's all. If you and Mum won't accept there are things I need to know about my past – about my dad – then there's no point me being here. We've got nothing in common. What else is left?”

“Childish,” he snorts, and returns to his programme.

In the morning, when I go downstairs, Brian calls me as I pass the lounge door. Mum's still in bed.

“Come here a minute, will you.” He mutes the TV and nods at the settee. “Sit down.”

I sit. “What's this about?”

“Your dad. Your mum wants me to tell you.”

“Really?”

“On one condition.” He stands, shuts the door into the hallway, then sits on the edge of his chair.

“What's that?”

“That you don't mention anything to Annette or Andrew, and that you never raise the subject with her again – not ever. You have to promise that.”

I look across the room and realise he's missing his weather report. “And if what you tell me doesn't answer my questions, what then?”

“I think it will. I'm sure it will.”

“But what if it doesn't?”

“Then you can ask me about it if you must. But not in anybody else's ear-shot.”

“Why? Why the big secret?”

“Some things are best forgotten.”

“Buried.”

“That's right.”

“Buried alive?” I mutter.

“What?”

I shake my head. “Doesn't matter.” I wish he'd turn the television off.

“Well then?”

“Yeah. I suppose. What choice have I got?”

He sits back in his chair and it's my turn to lean forward.

“Your father hanged himself,” he begins.

“I know.”

“He worked for Elfords Glass.”

“Yeah, I know that too.”

“Apparently, for a number of months before your dad – before he died – they were looking at down-sizing the company, laying off some of the workforce. That stuff makes everyone fed up. From what I gather, he got a bit depressed.”

Brian pauses, as if he's finished.

“He killed himself because he lost his job? You're joking?”

“Just listen, will you. I'm trying to make this make sense. He didn't get laid off. In fact, a few days before – you know – he found out that he was one of the lucky ones. Even if there was a bit of a question mark hanging over the company, he still had a job.”

I twist on the chair, can feel sweat running down the inside of my arm, goosebumps on the back of my neck.

“But he did go and celebrate,” Brian continues. “From what I gather, it seems he drank a bit too much with a few workmates at a Christmas party and, when he was driving home, had an accident.” He pauses, sighs, picks up the remote and turns off the TV. “What you've got to remember is that the drink-driving laws weren't the same back then.”

I work my way through Brian's statement and realise he's understating a bigger truth. “He had an accident? He killed someone? Is that what you're telling me?”

He nods. “A child. A five-year-old girl. The daughter of someone your mum had gone to school with, except he didn't know that at the time. In a side street in Northampton.”

“Shit. But if it was an accident…”

“He'd been depressed for a while and things were looking up again, but he'd also been drinking.”

He's trying to tell me something else, but I can't catch it.

“I don't understand,” I say.

“He didn't stop. He could have helped the girl, got her to hospital, but he didn't stop. I suppose he panicked, wasn't thinking straight. It was a hit-and-run. The media was screaming blue murder. The police had an idea of the car they were looking for. It would've only been a matter of time.”

I say nothing. Try to focus on the blank TV screen. Hear myself swallow air.

“It's what you wanted to know,” Brian says.

I nod.

“Two days later he went to work, clocked off, and well…”

“Clocked off,” I say.

“And hanged himself,” Brian says.

I nod.

“That's it,” he says.

I'm still nodding, and I sit in silence a while and Brian says nothing.

“A letter – did he write a letter? Didn't he leave some kind of… something?”

He raises his eyebrows and shakes his head. “I don't know. I don't think so. There are things your mum won't even talk about with me.”

“Can't you ask her? There must have been a note. People don't just…”

“No. She won't. There are some things we never get all the answers to. I suspect he wrote something but she destroyed it. She won't talk about it. I doubt she ever will. You have to accept that. Forget it. You'll have to.”

I remember the words she uttered at the time, after the policeman called: ‘Weak, so weak.'

I look up at Brian, who's looking at me and waiting.

“Are you alright?” he asks.

I nod again. I just have to get out of here, away from them.

I need to get in the car and drive back to the flat. “Thanks,” I say. “Thanks for that.”

FIFTEEN

There's no two ways about it, I must see Kate's parents again. All I'm asking for is her address or a telephone number, to fix up another meeting. I shouldn't have fallen asleep, or sat so far back in the café. On the passenger seat next to me is a poinsettia loaded with red and green leaves, tied with a large Christmas ribbon, and in my coat pocket is Kate's Christmas card, to prove she'd invited me to meet her in London.

“Happy Christmas,” I'll tell them. “It's no big deal; I'm happily married with a beautiful family. This is just for old time's sake. The last thing I want is to upset her life.”

Who knows, I might even find her in Abetsby on a pre-Christmas visit. Stranger things have happened. And then, over coffee or a meal somewhere, we'll talk and I'll tell her how I needed to make sure she was okay. Maybe I'll explain how things were all those years ago when I lost her, and redeem that part of the past, but we'll also renew our connection with one another.

A matter of letting go what's dead, embracing something new.

Turn, turn, turn.

At a T-junction in Abetsby, I watch a young mother struggle to carry a Christmas tree. She's steering a pushchair across the road with one hand while gripping her tree with the other, which is okay until she tries manoeuvring the pushchair back onto the pavement and it begins tipping and her baby starts screaming. The pavements are crowded with the busy rush of Christmas shoppers, but an elderly man with a walking-stick stops to help.

Pulling out from the junction, I don't see the bus overtaking a parked delivery van until it's almost collected me. I brake hard and the driver swerves, slams on his brakes and slides a window open. “Happy Christmas, moron!” he shouts. Everyone on the bus stares and a kid on the backseat presses his nose against the window and gives me the finger.

Two minutes later, I turn into Kate's street and… and can do nothing but drift to a halt in the middle of the road. I sit, stare… stop. It's too big to comprehend.

Half the houses in the street have plywood panels nailed across their ground-floor windows and against the front doors. Not only this, but the unboarded houses are empty. There's no curtains, no furniture; even the Christmas decorations have gone. It's a street awaiting demolition. Impossible.

Standing in front of Kate's house, surely there's something that'll half-convince me I've turned into the wrong road, but over the porch is a corbel stone with a motif carved in relief: a face with leaves growing out the eyes, mouth, nostrils, ears, scalp. And it's only now I register that every tree in the street has gone; they've all been felled. All this in the space of a few days.

Kate would be distraught. The Kate I knew would be distraught.

The house is an empty shell. All the same, I knock twice on the front door and wait as both knocks echo back, the way abrupt noises will bounce around such hollowness. I knock again, then peer through the letterbox: the hallway and stairs have been stripped of carpets.

The door swings open to reveal several letters scattered on the floor.

“Hello! Anybody home? Mr Hainley? Mrs Hainley? It's Tom Passmore.” My voice runs upstairs and down again, and I shut the door behind me. The house smells cold and my breath fogs. “Hello! Hello!”

The door to the lounge and the back of the house is shut, and maybe there's a murmur of conversation coming from beyond it.

But there's no one. Nothing. Even the gas fire's gone. The kitchen's empty, the bathroom too. Tugging open the back door, there's only winter weeds dead in the frozen soil. A hundred white swans once filled this garden.

Upstairs, it's the same story. Almost. The front two bedrooms are empty, and my feet make too much clatter on the floorboards as I steal from one room to the other, but Kate's bedroom door is closed. And softly, I place a hand flat against it, as if I might trace some lingering whisper of life from it. Then I turn the handle and enter.

Her calico curtains are still hanging and, although there's no other furniture in the house, her bed is against one wall of the small room, where it always stood. I try tracing the pattern of the wallpaper, but the tangle of briar roses has faded to a bleak nothing.

This is the end of it.

“Kate.”

Positioning the poinsettia on the windowsill, I dig a finger into the potting mix to check it's not too dry and then close her curtains. There's no sheet or blanket, but the bed is more inviting than any bed I can remember, and I'm about to stretch out and claim the sleep I've been dying for when a loud bang echoes from downstairs.

Someone's there.

My heart's racing.

I mustn't be caught trespassing and am tempted to charge downstairs and out the front door, but what if I've conjured Kate's return simply by being here? I tiptoe to the top of the stairs, lean my head against the wall, place a hand on the banister, and wait and listen. But whoever's down there is playing the same game: waiting, listening.

“Hello! Anybody home? Mr Hainley? Mrs Hainley? Hello!”

Nothing. Silence.

Downstairs, I push the lounge door ajar and brace myself for an intruder to rush out – or to run myself. All quiet. Shoving the door fully open, though, sparks a flurry of movement under the window and I jump back. A starling flutters around the room, panics away from me and crashes into the window with another loud bang. I'm the only intruder. Dazed, it stands on the sill and regards me with one eye, and when I head over to open the window it panics again. From the muck by the chimney place, where the gas fire once stood, I can guess how it found its way in.

There's really nothing wrong with opening the scatter of post. It's an abandoned house. There might be some reference to where the Hainleys have moved, or even to Kate, but there's nothing. No suggestion at all. Two mail order circulars advertise Christmas Specials, there's a letter from
Reader's Digest
advising Mr Hainley that he's successfully completed the first two stages towards becoming a millionaire and might like to consider how he'd prefer receiving his prize, and three Christmas cards, but none contain the clues I need.

It's while I'm slipping the cards back into their envelopes I realise that, although no return address appeared on Kate's Express envelope, there should be a postmark to identify where she mailed it; something to narrow my search. Shit, I'm stupid. Why didn't I think of this before? Because I didn't know I'd miss her in London. Because I didn't know her parents' street was about to be demolished. But it's dustbin day in Nenford, with the envelope among the rubbish, and Annette asked me to put Mum's bin out that morning.

There's no time to call at the hospital, and even less time once I get snagged in the congestion surrounding Northampton's town centre. However, the road to Nenford's almost deserted, while heaps of nose-to-tail traffic heads in the opposite direction. It's like one of those disaster movies where the entire population is fleeing the site of impending doom, while the hero races against time and tide. Even so, I count three dustbin lorries during this short journey, each heading out towards the municipal tip, and my foot presses harder on the accelerator.

Turning off the main road and into one of the side streets that leads to Mum's house, several things happen one after the other. Firstly, the car loses traction as I turn the corner (the temperature has dropped and there's ice on the road); secondly, I notice all the dustbins lining this street have been emptied; thirdly, yet another dustbin lorry pulls out of another side street, and seems to be heading where I'm heading. I accelerate slightly to catch up, but as I'm negotiating a row of vehicles parked either side of the narrow road, a pale child in a nightdress steps in front of me.

Slamming down the brake, the car swerves, hits ice and skids sideways towards the girl and a parked car. I hold my breath, which is about all that's between us when I stop: a breath. She stares past me as though I might be invisible, then floats back towards a house with an open front door.

It's enough to sit still and breathe and be thankful I haven't turned into my dad, and then I drive slowly round to the house. The dustbin lorry isn't in sight and the bins haven't been emptied.

Dropping the lid to the ground, I drag out the topmost bag of rubbish and rip into it. The Express envelope is tucked down the side, next to an empty can of beans and a soggy teabag, and the dustbin lorry enters the street as I uncrumple it.

By now, I expect it to be date-stamped with a useless London postmark or illegibly smudged, but it reads quite clearly: AVEBURY WILTS.

Letting myself into the house, I sink into a chair and the day stops.

It starts again in late-afternoon when the village sign for Avebury comes into focus fifty-odd metres ahead. Snow clouds have been hanging low over the landscape ever since I cut out of Swindon, adding a broodiness to the winter downs, and there's only the weakest suggestion of daylight left when I pull into the glare of the pub's car park spotlight. Throughout the journey, I've noticed a jittery insularity growing, with people rushing from place-to-place, and families in thick coats scurrying down driveways, laden with bags and boxes, into houses pulsing with the glow of coloured Christmas lights. It's obviously a day to abandon the bleak outside and be barricaded against the siege of a long night, to enjoy an open fire, mulled wine and mince pies and the company of loved ones.

Surely, it's not Christmas Eve already? It can't be. Time isn't flowing the way I'm used to. Has one day passed since I was in London, or none? I might've been in the UK for months, or even years. Anything seems possible at the moment. Maybe Australia was only a vivid, beautiful dream, along with my family and being the person I thought I'd become. I've always needed someone to anchor me steady to who I am. Perhaps I should phone Elin, so she can tell me about her day and how she walked along the beach and paddled in warm waters and felt the sand between her toes, and so I can hear my kids chattering in the background… except it's the middle of the night in their world and I'd only frighten them.

“G'day,” I say to the landlord.

I'm leaning on the bar with my overnight bag by my feet. There's an open fire crackling in the hearth; flames dancing, logs spitting and singing. The bar is a quarter full at most. It's a room of stone and oak, warm and dry, and stout against the winter. It'll do.

He smiles, nods. “Australian?” he asks.

“Yeah.”

“Jeez, you're a long way from home.”

It's my turn to nod. Then I remember why I'm here and glance round at the other patrons, but there's no one who could be Kate sipping on a beer or a brandy.

“What can I do for you?”

“Accommodation,” I say. “I saw the sign out front. Have you got a spare room for the night?”

“They're all spare. We don't usually get visitors this close to Christmas. We weren't planning on taking guests.”

“It's a long way home,” I say.

“Give me a minute; I'll ask the missus. She's in charge of that stuff.”

The room I'm given is so similar to the one Kate and I shared in Whitby that I go to the window, half-expecting to see the onset of night in an east-coast fishing town. Instead, the view encompasses a sweep of huge sarsen stones glistening with frost: a parade of watchful ghosts.

Pint in hand, I lean on the bar and chat with Mick the landlord. He asks about Australia and why I'm in Britain at this time of year, and I answer him. In return, I say: “So, how long have you run The Red Lion, Mick?” and “What's the population of Avebury, Mick. It can't be very big, can it?” But it's harder than I imagined to ask the questions I need to ask, and a relief when he jumps into the subject himself.

“So, if your mother's sick in Northampton, what brings you down here just before Christmas?”

There's a tree dressed in silver standing in one corner, and thick garlands of tinsel tracing the beams and outlining the windows, and coloured fairy-lights behind the bar. The open fire has grown and now fills its grate; a stew of flames licking and laughing, feeding warmth into the room. More people are sitting at the tables than when I arrived; a few have left, but more have arrived. Their voices have the rich Wiltshire burr that reminds me of when Elin and I rented the flat in Great Shentonbury.

“I'm looking for someone, Mick,” I say, and take a gulp of ale.

“In Avebury?”

“Yeah. Or close by.”

“A relative?”

“An old friend. Someone I lost touch with years ago, who I'd like to catch up with before returning to Australia.”

“And he used to live in the area?”

“No. But she wrote to me recently. We were supposed to meet in London, but something happened. We missed each other. When she wrote she forgot to include her address – probably because we were going to meet – but the envelope was postmarked Avebury.”

Mick picks up a towel and begins drying a tray of glasses. “Bit of a long shot,” he observes.

“Yeah, but the only one I've got.” I sip my beer, pluck a crisp from the packet – stop myself from rushing into the moment. I will him to ask and will him to know.

“What's her name then?”

“Kate.”

He shrugs. “Kate what?”

“Kate Hainley. But she may have changed her surname.”

“You don't know whether she's married or what she does?”

“We lost touch. It's been a few years.”

He shakes his head, picks up another wet glass. “I'd remember a name like Hainley. And I don't know any Kate either. But you might ask at the Post Office in the morning. Have you looked in the telephone directory?”

“Yeah. And the electoral rolls.”

“She'd be about your age?”

“That's right.”

“Sorry.”

And the front door swings open to admit two couples. They're laughing and loud; their faces are rosy, their eyes bright. No Kate. They bring with them a blast of icy air that makes the fire gutter for a moment before flaring and burning brighter than before. I almost expect to hear a glass being dropped.