Cliff’s mind is occupied performing a cost benefit analysis, wondering how many of these dissimulations he should now own up to. He’s wondering if James will help him out, whether he can get to him first and ask him to keep at least part of this story under wraps. He hardly has any reason to. He owes Cliff nothing. But perhaps he’ll do it for them. Perhaps he’ll do it for Hannah.
Hannah is realising that, in his own twisted way, Cliff is right. That James’ “death” did mark the point when she gave up imagining parallel lives, did mark the point when she gave in, did, indeed, mark the moment in time when she abandoned herself to a certain kind of happiness – a rather ordinary, passion-less contentment, but a certain kind of happiness all the same.
“Australia,” she says again, that single word somehow encapsulating the one thing that she had always sensed. That James’ life would be exciting.
“I loved you. I still love you Hannah,” Cliff says. “And I didn’t want to lose you. You do understand that, don’t you? You do get why I had to...?”
Rather absurdly, a song pops into Hannah’s head. It’s ‘If you love somebody, set them free.’
“I couldn’t let James just, steal you from me,” Cliff says.
“Yes,” she says. “Yes, I see your logic.” It’s the best she can manage.
Lunch passes in an ambiance of uneasy truce. Hannah’s and Cliff’s acting isn’t fooling anyone of course, but they have had arguments before and they know how to do this – no one gets to be married for thirteen years without getting good at playing happy families in front of the kids.
So though everyone, including Luke, can tell that something’s not right, everyone is reassured that they’re at least behaving in a known, if incomprehensible manner.
By the time they have finished lunch – prawn and jerusalem artichoke salad with rice-and-tuna stuffed peppers – the pool, now in full sunshine, has reached twenty-six degrees. As the day is the hottest yet, the pool becomes the centre of attention pulling not only Luke and Aïsha from the front of the house, but Tristan and Jill too. This leaves enough room for Hannah and Cliff to perfectly avoid each other.
Hannah nabs the hammock before the table has even been cleared. It’s the one place in the garden where – unless you’re prepared to share the hammock itself, which she isn’t – no one is likely to disturb you.
Cliff is on the far side of the porch pretending to read his novel. He can’t concentrate. His eyes keep skimming the page, and after a few failed attempts at starting a new chapter he gives in and does the same thing as Hannah. He remembers the past.
EIGHTEEN
James II
I didn’t speak much over lunch. I made cheddar sandwiches and mugs of tea and watched my paint-splattered husband struggle to be civil to his brother. I watched the two men interact and tried to work out what it was about James that annoyed Cliff so. And what it was about him that I found so appealing.
He was very quick-witted. That is the first thing that anyone would have noticed about James. He was daft and silly but fast enough to run semantic circles around most people, including Cliff.
That’s not to say that Cliff is, or was, stupid – far from it. But intelligence takes many forms, and Cliff simply never had the fast-footed sarcasm that James so excelled at. In a bear-baiting kind of way it was pretty entertaining to watch.
Because there appeared to be a lull in the rain, and because we were all a little stir-crazy – Cliff and I from being trapped indoors, and James due to the drive from Edinburgh – we decided to go for a walk. Cliff drove us to Puttenham and we walked to Hog’s Back. It was cool and misty, but lovely to be outside again.
The rain didn’t start again until we were on the ridge, at the farthest point from the car.
As Cliff was wearing his walking anorak, he was the only person with a hood. And so it was that James and I were forced to huddle underneath my umbrella.
The drizzle soon turned to rain proper, and so as Cliff strode ahead – he had generously volunteered to bring the car as close as possible – James and I sheltered ourselves beneath a tree and then, as the rain intensified, underneath my umbrella, beneath the tree. When it became clear that the rain wasn’t going to fade, that it was, in fact, getting worse, we relaunched ourselves into the downpour.
In the interests of reducing our exposure at the edges of the umbrella, James and I linked arms, and then as the downpour intensified we started to run, and James started to laugh.
I remember intentionally splashing through a puddle – we were so wet it didn’t seem to make much difference – and as we ran, James turned to glance at me. His face was shiny from the rain, but lit up with mirth – glowing with joy. It was fun; I couldn’t help but laugh too, and it struck me that it had been a while since I had laughed like that. I was only twenty-three but already it had been a while since I had felt that light-footed, that carefree. And that was the first time I wanted to kiss him, the first time that desire had crossed my mind.
By the time we got home, reason had prevailed, and I was steering well clear. I didn’t know quite what these feelings were, but I sensed that they were dangerous. And so I stayed as far from James as I could, busying myself with as many unlikely tasks as possible to avoid having to share the sofa with him. Cliff, as ever, had taken the armchair.
On Sunday I launched myself, with exceptional enthusiasm, at the task of producing a full Sunday roast. The idea was to be busy. The idea was, again, to stay out of James’ way.
Cliff decided to apply a second coat of gloss paint upstairs, and James volunteered to help me peel the potatoes for lunch so we ended up in the kitchen together. I was hyper aware the whole time, of his body there beside me, of his arm occasionally brushing against me as we worked at the sink. And though I tried to be stern and unamused, I couldn’t help it. James knew how to make me laugh, and he took relish in doing so.
I can’t remember the exact conversations, but I remember he regaled me with funny, self deprecating stories of student life. I had been a student too of course, but I had been living at home. I had been living at home with Jill – who was already a handful – and our sick father: my college years had been far from effervescent.
James, on the other hand, had spent four years in a shared house in Edinburgh. He had taken drugs and gone to rave parties and had protested against the poll tax. There really was no comparison. Even then I could see how exciting he was, how much more exciting he was. James was like my ex-boyfriend Ben, only without the crazed ego. It was a combination I hadn’t known could exist.
“You two are having fun.” It was Cliff, standing in the doorway. His tone was condescending, and like naughty schoolchildren who had been caught out, we did our best to wipe the smirks from our faces.
Once Cliff had finished washing his brushes and left the kitchen we looked at each other. James pulled a face and said, in a silly, stern, mocking voice, “You two seem to be having fun,” and we both cracked up laughing all over again. Cooking Sunday lunch had never been so much fun.
NINETEEN
Bombay – 10th December 1999.
Dear H.
I’m sorry I haven’t written for so long. I mentioned you yesterday to my new friend and confidant Suga. He thought me literally wicked for not writing, so here we are: I’m writing.
How are you? How is your kid? What did you have, a boy or a girl?
I have been living in this weird country for nearly two years now. I think I was wanting to lose myself somewhere. India seemed perfect. It is full of lost hippies, lost businessmen, just about every European you meet seems somehow lost here.
I am living in a very strange little cottage which used to be the guard house to a rich Englishman’s estate way back. Now it is an out of place, draughty cottage surrounded by half finished concrete hi-rises.
I am working as a satellite dish installer. Whoever would have thought it? In India!
This is an amazing country, so many people, so many extremes. The streets are
teeming with the poor and the rich. The strange thing in India is that the poor are mostly happy whilst the rich seem mostly unhappy - a strange state of affairs. Suga, my very close friend here, who is part-time teacher, part-time philosopher, considers this to be perfectly normal. In fact he doesn’t believe my view that in England the rich are happier than the poor. I wonder if it is true after all.
Bombay is a very shocking place. Even after all this time, I see at least one sight a day which takes my breath away. The colours, the people, the mix of religions and cultures, the smells and the tastes, it’s really quite indescribable.
I work most days, installing these satellite dishes on schools and community centers and banks so that all of the categories of people who go to these places can see images, beamed in from space, of other parts of the world which mean nothing to them.
In the evenings Suga and I sit beneath the stars and play chess, and sometimes as we play he tells me about some philosophy or religion he’s been reading about. Last night it was Taoism which apparently comes from China. The only thing I understood about it was that it was unexplainable, like India perhaps.
Sometimes, now, as I talk to Suga, as I tell him about my adventures they seem like different lives, unrelated to each other. I think, am I the same person who grew up with Cliff in Farnham? Do you really exist or did I just read about you in a book somewhere ? I sometimes wonder.
God I wish you were here to see all this.
HAPPY CHRISTMAS!
J.
TWENTY
That night Hannah returns to the bedroom. She waits until she thinks Cliff is asleep before she does this, and Cliff obliges by fabricating vague snoring noises. Though he has never heard himself sleep he’s surprisingly accurate – accurate enough, in fact, to fool Hannah.
Hannah herself, lies awake again. She can’t sleep either. She needs to sleep but her mind won’t stop churning. She can’t stop wondering when James will come, if James will come, what will happen if he does, how she will feel seeing him again. It’s utterly ridiculous to be this upset, this obsessive, this excited about someone she last saw when she was twenty-three. Isn’t it?
She glances at the clock. It’s almost half-past one and still sleep evades her. She’s not sure she can cope with another sleepless night. She’s a wreck as it is. She should have asked Jill for a sleeping pill. Jill always has sleeping pills.
Hannah slides silently from the bed and creeps through the sleeping house to the bathroom. She rummages in Jill’s wash-bag and finds a pack of Introvate – which she knows are birth control pills – and a blister pack of Triazolam which for some reason sounds like a sleeping tablet. But she isn’t sure, and she doesn’t know the dosage, so she decides to wake Jill. She’ll forgive her, just this once.
Her hand barely caresses the handle to Jill’s room before she snatches it back. Beyond the door she can hear voices. She stands there a moment in silence. It doesn’t sound so much like conversation in fact. It sounds more like two people making out.
In shock, she heads back to the kitchen where, with a fatalistic shrug she downs one of the pills with a glass of water.
She sits at the small kitchen table until she starts to feel drowsy – that special kind of heavy-headedness washing over her in waves – and then reassured that it was, indeed, a sleeping pill, she makes her way back to bed.
She is just drifting off when a voice says, “He wouldn’t have been any good for you, you know.” The voice sounds like Cliff, but at the same time not-like-Cliff. Hannah wonders if she is dreaming.
“No?” she asks, unsure if she is talking to Cliff or her own subconscious or perhaps some angel of truth.
“James was always all sparkle and no substance,” the voice says.
Hannah forces her drugged head to turn so that she can look at Cliff. He has his back turned to her. His breath sounds slow and steady. There is nothing to demonstrate that he is awake.
***
It’s gone ten by the time Hannah wakes up from her drug-induced slumber, and it’s gone eleven by the time she manages to roll from the bed.
There is no one on the patio, so she pours a cold cup of coffee from the pot (breakfast things still strewn across the table, wasps buzzing around the empty orange-juice carton) and then walks, intrigued by the silence, to the corner of the house.
Tristan and Jill are sunbathing on towels next to the pool. Cliff is reading in a pink deckchair she has never seen before with his back to her and Luke is draped sideways over an air-bed with his head underwater. Were it not for the hollow rasp of his breathing through the snorkel, one could think that he had drowned.
“Where’s Aïsha?” Hannah asks, and Luke surfaces with a splash, Tristan looks up at her, Jill props herself up on her elbows, and Cliff leans around the side of his deckchair and slips off his sunglasses. It’s as if a pause button has been released.
“Morning, drug thief,” Jill says.
“Sorry Jill. I just really needed to sleep. You know how it is sometimes.”
“Yes, I guessed,” Jill says. “I found the packet in the kitchen. Did you take a whole one? They’re really strong, those are.”
Hannah nods. “Yes,” she says. “I noticed. You don’t mind do you?”
Jill blinks, pushes her lips out, and shakes her head.
“Can I make you some breakfast?” Cliff asks.
“No,” Hannah says. “No, I’m fine. So where is Aïsha?”
“She went down to the river,” Jill says.
“On her own?”
Jill shrugs. “Apparently so.”
“And is that OK?” Hannah asks.
Jill shrugs again. “Apparently so,” she says. “She is thirteen Han’.”
At the sound of a car coming along the track, everyone pauses. Hannah, the only person in a position to see, turns to watch as a yellow postal van comes into view beyond the gate.
“Just the post,” she says, realising as she returns her attention to the others, that she sounded disappointed.
“S’il vous plaît ?”
Hannah looks back to see the post-lady leaning over the gate waving a letter. “Tris’, can you come talk to her?” she asks. “I can’t... you know... speak the lingo.”
“Sure,” Tristan says, jumping up.
Hannah returns to the patio where she swipes at wasps and picks at the breakfast leftovers. The shock of James’ potential visit is in danger of ruining her whole holiday, she realises. It’s in the process, in fact, of ruining everybody’s holiday. She needs to get a grip. “If he comes, he’ll come,” she murmurs. “If he doesn’t, he doesn’t.”
She looks up to see Tristan standing on the far side of the table, waving an envelope, and realises, with embarrassment, that he has heard her talking to herself. She nods at the letter, a mimed question mark.
“Recorded delivery. I signed for it,” Tristan says.
Hannah sits up straight. Maybe James has written. She didn’t even think of that possibility. “Is it from...? I mean, who’s it for?” she asks.
“A Monsieur Hoff,” Tristan says.
“Oh. That’s the owner,” Hannah says, slumping back into her chair.
“That’s what I thought; I’ll just...” Tristan steps inside the doorway and then returns. “I just left it on the table next to the phone,” he says with a shrug.
Hannah nods.
“Are you OK?” he asks, sliding into a seat opposite her.
Hannah laughs sourly.
“I’ll take that as a ‘no’ then.”
Hannah gestures vaguely with her open hand. “Look, I’m fine Tris’,” she says. “I just need to pull myself together.”
“You must try to have a good holiday all the same,” Tristan says. “I know it’s difficult, but...”
What do you know? Hannah thinks, and as if to answer that thought, Tristan continues, “Jill told me, you know... a bit about what happened.”
Hannah takes a deep breath and blinks slowly. “Yes, I know she did,” sh
e says.
“I had a thing a bit like that once,” Tristan says.
“A thing?”
Tristan glances over his shoulder to check that they are alone before continuing, “A guy I was in love with. From way back,” he says. “Tom. He became a real obsession. I bumped into him in the gym. In Bath of all places. It was such a shock.”
Hannah nods. Her brain is a little sozzled still from the drug. She can’t for the life of her work out what this has to do with her and James.
“I had really, you know, idealised him over the years,” Tristan continues. “But he was pretty ordinary when it came to it. It was quite a disappointment”
Hannah frowns. “I don’t really...” she says.
“I guess I just mean, you know, don’t get your hopes up,” Tristan says. “He may not be much as you remember. It may not be such a big deal after all.”
Hannah laughs unconvincingly. “I don’t know what Jill told you,” she says, “But I was never in love with James.”
“Oh,” says Tristan. “Oh, sorry... I must have got the wrong end of the stick.”
“It’s OK,” Hannah says. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I really need to shower if I’m ever going to wake up properly.”
She collects fresh clothes from the bedroom and takes a long hot shower. The water pressure in the villa is amazing and by the time she has finished, the bathroom is full of steam and she feels as if she has taken a sauna – she feels revitalised. She feels ready to pick up the holiday where she left off.
She opens the tiny bathroom window to let out the steam and as she does so she hears a snatch of conversation between Luke and Aïsha who are walking around the back of the house. “... being so weird?” Luke is saying.
“It’s ‘cos of that James bloke,” Aïsha replies.
The Half-Life Of Hannah (Hannah series Book 1) Page 10
