Love in a Mist

by Sarah Harrison

  When she heard the knock on her door, she got up and opened it herself.

  ‘Nick, come in.’ She tweaked the chair by the desk and went round to her own on the far side. ‘Sit down.’

  He was a delightful-looking boy, with the added charm of not knowing that he was. Not quite filled out yet, and not one of those strutting playground show-offs, all swank and mouth. Now he perched on the edge of the seat, hands hanging between his knees, fingers linked, a study in awkwardness. She reminded herself not to ask him a closed question.

  ‘How are things?’

  ‘Not bad, Miss.’

  Jackie had long since stopped trying to make them lose the ‘Miss’. Even if they agreed, they couldn’t stop themselves. She accepted the need for some sort of handle, if only in the opening of an exchange, and had tried for ‘Ma’am’ but that had never taken off and the staff didn’t like it either.

  ‘I hear you’re thinking of leaving us.’

  ‘Yes, Miss.’

  ‘May I ask why? When you’re doing so well?’

  ‘I want to work. I’ve got a job at Dawson’s.’ He named a hardware and electrical shop in the high street.

  ‘Well done you,’ said Jackie. ‘But I’m just going to ask you to think for a moment. If you get your A Levels, and with the grades expected, you could get a better job. And just think, if you went on to university, an even better one. That may seem a long way off now, but believe me it isn’t.’

  ‘But if I work hard I could get a managerial job in that same amount of time.’ He was well-spoken too, and articulate. ‘And be earning.’

  Jackie knew she must tread carefully. ‘May I ask – is this all your idea?’

  ‘Yes.’

  The hesitation had been so slight it was barely there, but she was alert to it. ‘Please don’t be too hasty. Everyone’s so positive about you, you’re doing really good work.’

  ‘Oh, well …’ He shifted on the chair and swiped his fingers through his hair. ‘I just need to, you know, get on with my life.’

  Get on with his life. As if education weren’t the best way to do that! Sometimes Jackie despaired.

  ‘There’s no rush. Why not think some more, discuss it with your teachers. Come and see me again if you want to—’

  ‘That’s alright, Miss. I’ve decided. I’d like to leave now. There’s no point my hanging around pretending to be making my mind up when I already have.’

  In dismay, she realized she seemed to have accelerated the process she’d hoped to halt.

  ‘What about your parents?’

  ‘They’re all for it.’ No surprises there.

  ‘Would it help if I had a word with them?’

  ‘No!’ He coloured up and shook his head vigorously. ‘No, Miss, it’s all fine.’

  ‘Just so long as you know that it’s never too late to change your mind.’

  He let this pass, and after a polite pause, said, ‘May I go, Miss?’

  Jackie didn’t bother to conceal a sigh as she got up and opened the door. He wouldn’t meet her eye.

  ‘You know where I am, Nick.’

  ‘Thanks.’ And he was gone.

  Jackie closed the door behind him and stood there, picturing him walking away, out of school, beyond her influence, away from opportunity, and for what? She’d had her chance, as they say, and blown it. As she returned to her desk she swore under her breath, a word she would have taken immediate issue with if she’d heard it elsewhere in the school.

  So utterly maddening, and such a criminal waste.

  Nicholas walked faster and faster, along one corridor, left down another, then right again into the college’s main concourse. The area was crowded with kids buying snacks from the machines, sitting at tables eating, horsing around, jostling and jockeying. He thought he heard his name – ‘Hey, Nick!’ – but he didn’t bother looking round, seeing who was calling. Now that the sticky interview with the Head was over he just wanted to keep his head down and keep walking, to get out of there and never look back.

  By the time he burst through the swing doors into the car park he was sweating. He’d left his rucksack in his classroom, but that was too bad. School had once been a sanctuary of sorts, but that was then. Not long and he’d be eighteen and no-one could make him do anything. In a final gesture of defiance he removed his blazer and tossed it into the litter bin on the corner.

  Once he was off the school premises there was nowhere to go but back home, so he slowed down. This, after all, was only the first escape. He came out on to the road where his way led past the parade of shops, the statue of a sea captain, obscenely defaced, the locked church of blackened brick and the war-zone pubs that were for the home fans and away fans, and the scruffy park with the tramps where the shrubbery was full of bottles and dirty needles and plastic bags and French letters … The tramps, winos and junkies were men and women, but you couldn’t tell the difference under the layers of dirty clothing. Poverty and addiction neutralized people. They were just creatures. He couldn’t feel sorry for them because he was afraid of what they represented – the black hole on the edge of which his own life teetered.

  He turned into the newsagent’s, for no particular reason except that Mr Raj could be relied upon for a friendly and civil welcome.

  ‘Hello, young man, and how are you today? Do you have an afternoon off school?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That’s nice, all right for some!’ Mr Raj was unfailingly cheerful. He was one of the nicest people Nick knew, and he hated himself for the small deception he was about to practise on him.

  ‘I forgot my rucksack. Can I have some crisps and pay you back?’

  ‘Honestly, you can have some and not worry about it,’ said Mr Raj, who was well-disposed to lads in school uniform – his own son was studying dentistry in London. ‘Choose, choose.’

  Nick studied the crisps, as another man came in and went to the counter. He took a packet of salt and vinegar and stood near the other customer. When the man had paid and was leaving, Mr Raj said, ‘No need to hang about, that’s perfectly fine.’

  ‘And I forgot, can I have some Number Six for my dad?’

  Mr Raj peered at him. ‘For your father? Or for you?’

  ‘For him. I’ll bring the money tomorrow.’

  ‘Yes if you please.’ Mr Raj took down a packet of ten from the display behind him, and waggled them in front of Nick’s face. ‘These I shall write down. If you smoke them, my lad, I shall know, and that will be that.’

  He was the softest touch in the world. Nick took the cigarettes and left.

  In the churchyard he went round to the far side of the church and sat on the big stone box that housed the remains of someone called Horace Barton and his wife Sarah. He pulled off his tie and stuffed it in his pocket, rolled back his cuffs and lit a fag. Horace and Sarah and their three children (two dead in infancy, another at three years old), all unawares, had afforded him safe harbour on many occasions. From here you could look across the scrubby marshes, littered with caravans and discarded household furniture and neglected horses, towards the estuary. That, at least, was shiny and (at this distance) unspoilt, sliding out into the North Sea between the gleaming mud flats.

  The angry energy that had propelled him out of the school building drained away. He had jettisoned the one place where he was safe, in exchange for a job he had been railroaded into and where he’d be the lowest form of life. All for a moment’s peace – well, you couldn’t call it peace; a moment’s reprieve. He had just to keep going, moving forward to freedom.

  As he watched, one of the horses, a brown and white one with a long mane, lifted its head and began suddenly to gallop, the others joining in until they were all racing away, kicking their heels and tossing their heads, manes and tails streaming, mud and water spraying up from under their hooves. It looked for a moment as if they might run straight into the estuary, but there was a spindly wire fence before that, scarcely visible to the naked eye but enough to make them career o
ff to the west, rocking, stretching their necks and kicking as they almost ricocheted off one another. Now, instead of the open water, the forbidding tower of the giant gasometer loomed up in front of the horses, dwarfing them like the fortification of a hostile army. One at a time they slowed, then stopped, heads nodding, steam jetting from their nostrils and rising in soft clouds from their flanks.

  Nick squashed out his cigarette on the top of the Bartons’ tomb, and then brushed it off. The galloping horses had momentarily lifted his spirits; now his apprehension returned.

  ‘Nick!’ The voice came from behind him, from the road he’d been walking along. Someone on the corner would just be able to see him sitting here. ‘Nick, is that you?’

  He stood up, his heart stumbling nervously, his skin prickling, a schoolboy reflex kicking in. The fag, the place, the time of day – none of it looked good. He saw a figure moving out of sight beyond the church wall, and heard the clank of the gate. Whoever it was, they were coming in. He decided to brazen it out. But she was walking much quicker than him, and had cut across the churchyard so that she effectively cut him off at the pass, near the tower with its leprous, licheny gargoyles.

  ‘Hello there. I thought it was you.’

  It was her, Mrs Mayfield, the woman from across the road. Regarded by most people with suspicion. In spite of being tall, thin and posh she was a redhead and a knock-out. His father can’t have failed to notice those things, but that didn’t mean he liked her. His attitude to women was complicated. Nick was a beginner in the field, but it seemed the more Billy Sanders fancied someone the less he liked her.

  Nick was always rather tongue-tied in her presence. He hoped she didn’t think he was thick.

  ‘Hi.’

  ‘Having a quick gasper?’

  She wasn’t ticking him off, but she wasn’t smiling or joking either. This was just the way she talked. God, he loved it! And the way she dressed, it wasn’t exactly fashionable, but it was stylish. In the late sixties even women of a certain age were raising their hemlines, but Mrs Mayfield’s remained elegantly on the knee. Sheer stockings, shoes with a small, fine heel. A silky shirt loosely tucked in. A look Nick found almost intolerably sexy.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ she said, ‘I might have one myself.’

  She opened her brown crocodile-skin handbag and took out a silver cigarette case and a green leather lighter with a silver trim. ‘Want to join me?’

  ‘Oh thanks, no, that’s all right …’

  ‘Go on.’ She gave the case a little shake. ‘There’s a seat, why don’t we …’

  The black cast-iron bench stood in the right-angle of the church porch, facing the road. He felt horribly conspicuous sitting there with her, but she was composed, lighting his Benson and Hedges (King Size!) and then her own, and crossing her long, languid legs with a whisper of nylon. Nick leaned forward, arms on knees to relieve the tension.

  ‘Not in school?’ she asked, gazing around as though the topic were of only passing interest.

  ‘I’ve left school.’ This was the first time he’d said as much, and it felt pretty good. He hoped he made it sound as though he’d left some time ago, but that didn’t work.

  ‘Did you? What, this very day? I saw you trudging off this morning.’

  Because he knew instinctively that she wasn’t going to either criticize or tell on him, he said, ‘I left an hour ago. And I’m not going back.’

  ‘Well!’ She took a drag, two long, elegant fingers holding the filter-tip to her lips for a moment, then wafted away, as if blowing a kiss. ‘That’s fighting talk.’

  ‘I want to be earning,’ he explained.

  ‘Is that your idea?’

  He hesitated. ‘Partly.’

  ‘Mostly?’

  Suddenly, he desperately didn’t want to lie to her. ‘I wouldn’t say that.’

  She didn’t comment on this, but said musingly, ‘Mind you, I had an expensive education and it never got me anywhere. I might have been better off leaving school at sixteen and working somewhere like Jordan’s.’ She referred to the grand, old-fashioned department store in the centre of town. ‘I always thought I would be good at selling, especially clothes.’

  ‘I’m sure you would have been,’ said Nick enthusiastically. She laughed, a proper laugh, warm and happy. He was overjoyed to have been the cause of that laugh.

  ‘It would have involved lots of stroking people’s egos and I’m good at that. Flattery’s nine-tenths of the job.’ She tapped ash on to the grass next to her, turning her wrist so that he could see the blue veins under the thin white skin beneath the wide, mannish leather watch strap. She glanced at him. ‘What do you reckon?’

  ‘Maybe. Yes, that might be difficult.’

  ‘What I do now is something similar,’ she said.

  ‘What do you do?’ he asked, because it would have been rude not to.

  ‘I’m a wardrobe consultant to women with time to fill and money to fill it with.’ She glanced at him mischievously. ‘I made it up! All word of mouth and it keeps me very comfortable.’

  She could see from his face that he couldn’t begin to imagine this job, and rescued him. ‘So anyway, what’s your plan? Where will you work?’

  ‘Dawson’s.’

  ‘The electrical place, near Boots?’

  ‘That’s it. Behind the counter to start, but they’ve got a training scheme.’

  ‘He always seems a nice man. I bought my little bedroom radio from him.’ Nick shifted again, his mind shifting as well in response to the ‘bedroom’ reference, so the next question took him by surprise.

  ‘What do your parents think of all this?’

  ‘They’re OK.’

  ‘They’d like you to be earning too?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He had the distinct feeling, rather as he had in the Head’s office, that Mrs Mayfield had a pretty good understanding of the situation without it needing to be spelled out. Though of course there were some things she could – must never know because they were too horrible and too humiliating. If he’d thought for a single second that she had even an inkling of how things really were he could never have looked her in the eye again. It was pretty hard as it was.

  ‘One thing’s for sure, Nico,’ she said, ‘ten years from now you’ll wonder what all the fuss was about.’

  Nico!

  He swallowed, cleared his throat. ‘I hope so.’

  ‘Take my word for it. If you decide you want more education, you can go and get it. That’s what people do nowadays, they reinvent themselves all the time. Why not you?’

  ‘Exactly!’ All his explosive joy over that ‘Nico’ – sweeter and more intimate than any term of endearment – was in the exclamation. ‘Why not?’

  ‘That’s the spirit!’ She laughed again, her eyes on his face, before bending to stub out her cigarette beneath the bench. ‘Look at us, puffing away on holy ground. I should go home and bake a pie.’ She saw his expression. ‘I am joking. I’m going to put my feet up and look at a magazine. Want to keep me company as we’re both going in the same direction?’

  He didn’t know how that would work, but it worked fine. Her stride and his matched perfectly. When they needed to cross the road by the bookie’s she tucked her hand lightly into the crook of his arm, and he could feel the smooth convex wall of her breast through the silk blouse. Under that shiny carapace of sophistication there was a delicious softness. When they reached the far side she kept her hand there for a moment, as though it were the most natural thing in the world, only letting it fall when her heel caught momentarily between paving stones. Even the way she dealt with this small accident was – well – cool was the only word for it. She laughed. ‘Damn! Drunk again …’ And she stood quite composedly on one leg, her hand on a lamp post, allowing him to retrieve the shoe and put it in front of her so she could slip it back on. There was something personal and chivalrous in doing her this service, and he couldn’t fail to notice the admiring gleam from a passing bloke.

&n
bsp; Palatine Road was a road with an identity crisis, a mixture of pre-war villas and turn of the century terraces, the former mostly run-down, the latter on the up. A terraced cottage with a tiny garden front and back represented a practical purchase and a good investment for the rising class of smart young professionals whose weekends were spent hunting the junk shops and salvage yards for tiles, fireplaces, newel posts and Edwardian light fittings.

  Mrs Mayfield had moved into one of these about a year ago. Despite handle and wedding ring (the tiniest, thinnest one Nick had ever seen) she was on her own, a woman of mystery. There wasn’t much of a local community in Palatine Road and what there was the Sanders were not part of, but it was impossible not to be aware of the frisson of suspicion and interest generated by an attractive single woman. She did her shopping, occasionally worked in the garden, was always well turned out and charming without giving anything away. She had been seen in the library, the Italian deli and in Jordan’s. Her little black car was always pristine, and she went out in it a lot, daytimes and evenings. With a flash of pleasure, Nick realized that as of now he was one of the few people who knew what Mrs Mayfield did.

  They were on her side of the road, the Sanders’ house was just before hers but on the other side. They stopped opposite their gap-toothed wall with its pointless broken gate.

  ‘I shall let you go,’ she said confidingly. ‘We don’t want people talking.’ She must have noticed his reluctance, because she added, ‘I do hope everything goes well for you. Will you let me know?’ He nodded. ‘Feel free to drop in, number twenty-three, the one with the peacock over the door. If I’m there I’d love to see you; if I’m not, try another time.’