A Very Persistent Illusion

by L. C. Tyler

  We pause in my flight while Virginia collects a few things from her flat. Then we go on to my flat, above a gym in Essex Road, and collect a few of mine. I also (while Virginia is in the kitchen making coffee) pull out an old file misleadingly marked ‘Shakespeare’s Sonnets’ and verify the contents. I now know why the name Biggenhalgh was vaguely familiar – of course, how could I forget? – but I also know that the man in the file cannot possibly be the one we are going to meet.

  ‘Don’t you have any clean mugs?’ calls a voice from the kitchen.

  I push the file quietly back into the obscure place from which it has come and shout: ‘They’ve only had coffee in them.’

  In reply, I hear the kitchen tap splashing furiously into the sink. I double-check that the file is invisible to the casual snooper and then wander slowly towards the kitchen and the smell of newly made coffee in spotless mugs.

  * * *

  We leave Virginia’s car in my parking space and take the MG. This trip has to be done properly and that means a classic sports car with a leather gearstick, leaking roof, one good wing mirror and no heating.

  We stop for a late lunch at the first service station on the M1 – a quick sandwich amongst the holidaymakers, the lorry drivers, the bikers and the businessmen driving north. Now we are on our way it seems important to be there as soon as possible At Birmingham we join the M6 and I start nervously counting the junctions. I am starting to feel sick. This is worse than I was expecting.

  ‘Could you take over at the next service station?’ I ask suddenly.

  ‘You know I can’t stand driving this stupid thing,’ she says. ‘If you wanted me to drive, why didn’t we take my car?’

  I explain the importance of having a leather gearstick, but she doesn’t seem impressed.

  ‘Just for a few miles,’ I say.

  We swap at the service station. She is not happy. She abruptly turns down my suggestion of coffee as some sort of justification for the stop. She even says that she does not need the loo, which (since she’s a girl) cannot possibly be true. I sheepishly relinquish the driver’s seat and she sweeps round and takes my place.

  ‘I haven’t even got the right shoes on,’ she mutters. A Number Fourteen is descending on us – a brooding and well-justified background resentment with flashes of unrelated irritation.

  ‘Sorry,’ I mutter, hunching myself up in the passenger seat.

  ‘What have you got your eyes closed for?’ she demands as we rejoin the traffic. ‘If you don’t like the way I drive, then I have to point out that I did not ask to have to steer this rust heap along one of the busiest motorways in the country.’

  I open my eyes. ‘Your driving is fine. It’s just . . .’

  ‘Just what?’

  I realize that a short explanation at this point would clear everything up and avoid what seems likely to become a major source of resentment for months to come.

  ‘It’s just . . .’ I say again. Then I lapse into silence. When I am sure she’s not looking, I close my eyes tightly. I wonder if I can hunch myself into a ball and moan gently to myself without Virginia noticing I am doing anything out of the ordinary. Though she is used to my doing odd things, this might be just a shade too much off the wall. Still, in the deepest recesses of my mind where no girlfriend can ever go, I picture myself hunched into a ball and screaming at the top of my voice, as I would rather like to do right now.

  14

  Heading North

  I have had my eyes screwed shut for ten minutes now. Virginia must be deliberately looking elsewhere because she has fired no sarcasm in my direction since just after we left the service station. This is unusual. At some point, obviously, I shall have to open my eyes because:

  It’s getting uncomfortable.

  I’ll look stupid getting out of the car with my eyes closed.

  But is it safe yet?

  I half-open them, but that’s enough to discover exactly where I am. I think: Oh, shit, no.

  ‘What?’ asks Virginia.

  OK. So I didn’t just think it. Try to focus, Christian (three syllables). In spite of appearances, there may be an easy way out of this. I wonder whether I can say that I’ve just realized I’ve left my toothbrush behind, or something equally trivial, but I know that if I am going to tell her anything then it has to be the truth. Even if she could be persuaded I care that much about my toothbrush, I am on holy ground (or at least, we’ve just flashed past holy ground doing seventy-five in the fast lane) and I therefore cannot tell a lie.

  I take a deep breath, but my voice is still not really under my own control. ‘It was just back there that it happened,’ I say. I pause for a second and then jab my finger towards a fast-disappearing junction. ‘Exactly there.’

  Virginia, driving and perhaps not focusing too much on my finger, looks to her left at an innocent stretch of hard shoulder, bounded by a steep green bank. For her, I have as yet explained nothing.

  ‘What?’ she says.

  ‘The red mini came on to the motorway back there,’ I say. ‘Almost immediately it pulled out to overtake an old Land Rover towing a trailer. The driver didn’t see the lorry coming up behind it. The lorry braked and everything else piled into it, including my parents’ car. That’s where they died.’ I realize that I’ve had this speech prepared for years; the phrase: ‘an old Land Rover towing a trailer’ is comfortingly rounded and familiar. So is: ‘the lorry braked and everything else piled into it’. But I’ve never actually spoken these precise words to anyone. ‘Yes,’ I’ve said to people, in the version I tell, ‘that’s right. My parents died in an accident. No, it was a long time ago.’ So that’s OK then: no details needed. My audience tries not to actually sigh with relief. No need to worry about good old Chris. At this point somebody usually offers to buy me a beer.

  ‘You said they died in a car accident,’ Virginia begins, ‘but you didn’t say where . . .’

  ‘Well, the accident had to be somewhere,’ I say, ‘and it happens to have been here. Is that OK with you? Is it? Because if it’s not . . .’ My voice tails off in its turn. In the ensuing silence I punch the dashboard hard with my fist. The fact that Virginia does not comment on the stupidity of this last act speaks volumes for how stupid it actually was. I realize that I’ve just done the first two stages of grief in the Kübler-Ross model (Denial, Anger) in approximately a minute and a half. I try to remember what the third is. If it’s an embarrassing display of emotion, then I’m about to hit the nail right on the head again, because a sort of cough rises up from somewhere deep inside me and I’m sobbing and I can’t work out how to stop.

  Virginia carefully brings the car to a standstill on the hard shoulder, and now she is hugging me and I’m crying, and she’s still hugging me and so on and so on. ‘Poor Puppy,’ she says, stroking my hair. ‘You poor Puppy. But it was a long time ago.’ I want to tell her that that is exactly why I’m crying, but I can’t stop crying long enough to tell her.

  Still, all good things come to an end. Eventually the cough seems to go in reverse, back down inside me, and I am left feeling exhausted and in a strange way cleansed, as if I have just been pummelled and scrubbed within a inch of my life in a Turkish bath in Marrakesh (as indeed I once was – remind me and I’ll tell you about it some time). My right hand aches where I hit the dashboard, an act that is beginning to strike even me as inadvisable.

  ‘We’d better get off the hard shoulder and get moving,’ says Virginia, ‘or there . . .’ She doesn’t finish the sentence, the last part of which is clearly: ‘. . . could be a nasty accident.’ I appreciate her tact in this matter.

  She skilfully rejoins the traffic, in spite of unsuitable footwear and a wonky wing mirror. Everything is drifting calmly up the motorway in the late-afternoon sun – the holidaymakers, the bikers, the lorry drivers, the businessman – all travelling north, all blissfully unaware that they have just passed the site of one of the worst smashes ever on the M6. They pass us, or we pass them, silently, as though we are very
far away from each other. My ears seem to have disconnected from my brain. As far as I can tell, I am also saying nothing. Virginia looks across at me, concerned, but maintains a respectful silence.

  The sun is already beginning to set when she finally says: ‘God, it’s been a tough day for you.’

  ‘It could have been worse,’ I say, ‘but thank you for addressing me as God.’

  She turns and laughs. ‘Welcome back, Chris,’ she says. ‘I thought we’d lost you there for a moment.’

  * * *

  We drive on, with the darkening outline of the Lakeland hills now forming a broad purple band to our left.

  Virginia is looking straight ahead. I can read nothing in her expression. I watch the hills fading slowly into a sooty sky and wonder a bit about this grief thing. Virginia and Daphne seem to be handling theirs pretty well, all things considered. On the other hand, so have I for a number of years. Did Daphne really love Hugh, or did she just resent spending the best thirty years of her life with somebody whose favourite book was Swinson’s Register of the Regiments and Corps of the British Army? Does she still love Malcolm? Does she know the answers herself? Grief, love . . . what do any of us know?

  ‘I’m glad you told me about your parents at last,’ says Virginia. ‘I know how hard it was for you, but it helps to talk about these things.’

  I nod. It helps to talk about these things. But I still haven’t told her about Niels. I know that I shall never be able to tell her about Niels.

  * * *

  We have passed though Ambleside and are now following a road running along the shore of Rydal Water. I am driving again on the grounds that I am no longer, for the time being anyway, a gibbering wreck of a human being. Virginia is trying to read the map book in the rapidly fading light.

  ‘It looks as if we’re almost there,’ she says. ‘We should be able to find somewhere to stay in Grasmere. Then let’s get a bite to eat, my little Puppy, and plan for tomorrow.’

  ‘I’ve already got plans for where we’re going to stay,’ I tell her.

  You have to know how to spot it – you come round the bend with the high rocks and overhanging trees masking everything, and suddenly the lake is there to your left and the guesthouse is on the right. I just have time to note the sign saying: ‘Vacancies’. I indicate, slow and pull onto the gravel in front of the house. ‘Here?’ asks Virginia, looking up at the grey, rectangular, solidly built structure in front of us. It looks a sound choice but, apart from its location right on the water, it is to all appearances no better and no worse than many others we have passed.

  We get out and the cold evening air strikes us – a breeze from the bobbing lake that is out there somewhere in the gloom and from the wet slate hills rising mistily beyond. We listen and can hear the water slapping against the reedy shore and the wind in the trees.

  I take the bags and we hurry into the well-heated hallway with its Laura Ashley wallpaper and vase full of flowers. Muddy boots are neatly lined up along the wall. The landlady is young – she looks a year or two younger than I am anyway. I don’t recognize her.

  ‘If you stayed here before we took over,’ she says, in answer to my question, ‘then that must be some years ago.’

  ‘We stayed here quite often,’ I say vaguely, not quite focusing on anything. ‘But, yes, it was a long time ago.’

  ‘You’ll see we’ve made a few changes,’ she says brightly. ‘We don’t do evening meals now though.’

  ‘Have you kept the same room names?’

  ‘There are some completely new rooms in the annexe, but the old ones have the same names as they did.’

  ‘Is Skidaw free?’

  ‘We’re not too crowded at the moment.’ She checks a book on the desk. ‘Yes, that looks fine. It’s a nice room with good views of the lake.’

  ‘I know,’ I say.

  Once we are in the room, Virginia says: ‘Are you sure this is a good idea?’

  ‘It’s only about ten minutes’ walk into Grasmere,’ I say.

  ‘That’s not what I mean. You always stayed here with your parents, right?’

  ‘That’s how I know it.’

  ‘And this is where they were coming – the day of the accident?’

  ‘They never got here, of course.’

  ‘But I take it this was the room they had booked?’

  ‘Possibly,’ I say, looking round it as if there might still be clues. Pyjamas. Walking boots. Blood. ‘I can’t be sure. They used to book this one if they could. It’s a nice room with good views of the lake and the hills. That’s the sort of thing they liked.’

  ‘Well, it’s your emotional rollercoaster, I suppose, and you seem to be tall enough to be permitted to ride, but don’t you think you’ve had enough reminders for one day? Maybe we should just stay here tonight and then find somewhere else tomorrow . . .’

  ‘Maybe.’

  I stare out of the window into the blackness. A car’s headlights briefly flare up, dazzling rather than illuminating, and vanish. Until we turned off the motorway I had no plans to come here at all. I don’t know why we’re here rather than more conveniently located (from the point of view of tomorrow’s search) in the centre of the village. I don’t know what I shall feel when I wake up in this room tomorrow.

  ‘I’m absolutely fine,’ I say. ‘Let’s unpack and then go into the village to find somewhere to eat.’

  ‘It’s a strange coincidence,’ says Virginia, ‘Malcolm showing up in a place where you used to go with your parents.’

  ‘We went to all sorts of places,’ I say. What I don’t add is that I thought I had an even stranger coincidence on my hands. But if Malcolm is alive then it’s just a regular sort of coincidence.

  ‘Are you sure you’re OK, Puppy?’ asks Virginia.

  I tear myself away from thoughts of coincidences.

  ‘I’m fine,’ I repeat. ‘No need to worry about good old Chris.’

  * * *

  That evening we drive back into Ambleside for dinner rather than take a short walk into Grasmere. Virginia says she noticed a nice restaurant as we were passing through an hour or so before. There are several nice restaurants, though it is not clear exactly which one attracted Virginia’s attention. We choose one that seems as good as any of the others.

  As we wait for our food to arrive, we do not talk about Malcolm Biggenhalgh. We do not talk about my work. We do not talk about Virginia’s work. We do not talk about my family. We do not talk about love. We do not talk about grief. We agree there’s a lot of rubbish on television. We wonder about global warming. We are not sure which is more important. All evening we skirt around the issues, then drive back towards Grasmere and an early night in a familiar room.

  For a long time I lie in the bed my parents didn’t get to sleep in and listen to Virginia breathing. From time to time, I hear a car pass on the road outside. Then there is nothing.

  * * *

  It is a particularly fine early morning in Grasmere. We have parked the car opposite Malcolm Biggenhalgh’s house. It calls itself a cottage, and if that is how it thinks of itself, fine. It is, however, a fairly substantial late-Victorian house that would, in a better and kinder world, have roses flowering above the door and lavender growing in the garden. The walls are slate, like much else around here. The door is bright red and newly painted. The (also red) garden gate looks as if it will swing noiselessly on its well-oiled hinges. There are lace curtains. It’s not what I was expecting. But even dashing drivers of MGs settle down eventually, I guess.

  We have been here for fifteen minutes now, just sitting and watching. Soon he’s going to think it’s odd.

  ‘He’s going to think it’s odd,’ I say.

  ‘What?’ says Virginia.

  ‘Us, just sitting here and watching his house.’

  ‘Only if he comes out,’ says Virginia. ‘Then we can get a good look at him, and we’ll have found out what we need to know.’

  I think I see the lace curtain of the left-hand downsta
irs window twitch. But it is a brief movement and I am not sure. Nothing happens for a bit. Then a woman in her fifties, wearing the sort of wraparound apron that I’m sure you can no longer buy, briefly emerges on the doorstep and slowly deposits an empty milk bottle. She straightens up, looks a little too briefly in our direction, then goes back in.

  ‘That’s odd,’ says Virginia. ‘The milkman was delivering just as we arrived, so why put out milk bottles now?’

  ‘We’ve been rumbled,’ I say.

  The lace curtain moves slightly again. This time I am certain. There are two vague shadows behind it. I’d put good money on one being Malcolm’s.

  ‘We can’t stay here much longer,’ I add. ‘They’ll call the police in a moment.’

  ‘We’ve every right to be here. We could be checking the map or . . . or . . .’

  ‘Quite,’ I say.

  Fortunately there is a cafe a few yards down the road, with a large bow window, apparently designed to give a passable view of the Biggenhalgh place, if you crane your neck a bit. We get slowly out of the car, ostentatiously consulting a map as we do so, and walk even more slowly towards the cafe, which advertises breakfast. Seated in the bow window, Virginia orders a cappuccino. I order a second breakfast to augment the large one that was provided, just half an hour before, by a guesthouse that thought we were the sort of people who ate only one breakfast a day. We sit and wait. One of us eats.

  ‘Shit!’ I say suddenly.

  Virginia looks up from her coffee, spoon poised in the frothy mess at the bottom of the cup. ‘What?’

  ‘Nothing,’ I say.

  It’s a tricky one to explain, but I have been playing the Ten People Game and have just lost. The Ten People Game works like this. You are waiting for your girlfriend, say, at the entrance to a tube station (one of the best places to play, as it happens) and are very bored. So, you assume you are obliged to sleep with one of the next ten people to come off the escalator or you will Die a Horrible Death. You are allowed to make up your own Horrible Death but it has to be pretty gruesome. The first person comes off the escalator. It is a girl in her early twenties – not entirely unattractive but not exactly your type. You say ‘no’. Having said ‘no’, of course, you cannot subsequently go back and say ‘yes’. Having said ‘yes’, you can’t change your mind if something better turns up and you have to check out the remaining nine people to see how much of a mistake you have made. Now you have nine choices left – that’s OK. The next four to arrive, however, consist of a group of Spurs supporters on their way to the match. They are ugly even by Spurs standards. Now you are down to five choices and getting a bit worried. Next is an attractive middle-aged woman, smartly dressed. Possible? No? Yes? No. OK then, that’s four left. Then two more Spurs supporters, racing to catch up with their mates. Two to go. The ninth is another girl in her twenties, the identical twin perhaps of the first one. So do you now opt for her, or do you wait for number ten – be it man, woman or dog? What to do?