I reached inside my jacket and produced my own 'phone, my own palmtop. "Snap," I said.
Her computer had an infra red communications port, as did mine. At a glance, I knew the two devices could exchange messages and I imagined fingering a button on mine in order to send a stream of consciousness into hers. What would it have said? I love you. Hardly a day has gone by when I haven't thought of you?
I felt it then, looking down at our trinkets, the distance between that time and now. "Life seemed so certain, didn't it?" I said. "Things would change slowly - maybe it's because we were children, I don't know. But now life just seems to be about coping with change itself. There's nothing sure, nothing certain to hold onto any more and sometimes it seems we have to run even to stand still."
She smiled, perhaps embarrassed by my sudden gloom. Then she looked at my hands. "You're married?"
It was a matter of fact sort of question, not an accusation. I gazed down at the ring. The feel of it had grown so natural over the years, I had forgotten it was there, perhaps in the same way as I had sometimes forgotten Annie was there. I turned it slowly on my finger and pulled it two thirds of the way clear before sliding it back in response to the chill I felt shooting up my arm.
"Separated," I said. "And you?"
"Divorced. A long time ago." She pushed the picture back. "Have you kept in touch with any of the others?"
"No. I bumped into Carol Conner a while ago."
Rachel blinked and drew back a fraction. "I remember Carol," she said. "I don't think she cared for me very much. I remember a skiing holiday, once. We went with the school. Were you there? Do you remember?" She sighed, then checked herself. "Well, it was a long time ago."
"I didn't go," I said, wondering if perhaps Rachel hadn't been so outrageously wanton as Carol had tried to make out. Had Carol guessed the truth, that it was me who'd had the crush on Rachel and not my fictitious friend? Had she set out deliberately to disillusion me?
"So, anyway," I said. "I'm surprised you recognised me. I had a bit more hair in those days."
"Does that bother you?" she asked. "The hair?"
I was taken aback by her openness and smiled in defence. "I suppose it does, if I'm honest - not that I try to disguise it or anything. It's just a sign that something else is changing. That the body I'm wearing is getting older, when inside I feel the same, the same as when we were at school together."
"Well," she said. "I wouldn't worry about the hair. There are worse things that can happen to a man. And you look in good shape to me." She gave a sigh. "I've been thinking about you, Tom,… since we met. I do remember your face quite clearly now. You were always very quiet, very reserved. I know we shared some classes, didn't we?"
The fact she remembered so little meant of course that it was true, what I had always known, that she had not secretly longed for me in the way I had longed for her. But there was no sense of release in knowing it, not now. I had to push for more. Push harder.
"We shared chemistry, and physics," I said. "You were good at physics and you were in my form in the last year."
"Was I?"
She smiled then, causing her cheeks to dimple. And the dimpling of those cheeks triggered more memories of stolen glances from across the classroom. I had torn away the overlying dross of the intervening decades and was experiencing anew every subtle emotion she had once so innocently sparked in me.
She blushed suddenly. "You must think me very brazen. Us just meeting up like that and then me inviting you here."
"I don't remember you as the brazen type."
"I'm surprised you remembered me at all."
"I could never have forgotten you," I said.
Of course she was intrigued by that. "Oh?"
I had not meant to say it and realised at once I had driven myself into a corner. There was only one way out. I gathered a long, slow lung-full of air, then exhaled through pursed lips as I summoned my nerve. "I had a bit of a crush on you actually." There! It was out. Simple! I had taken even myself by surprise.
She became very still, her eyes wide but unreadable. "You did?"
It pained me then to make light of it, but I did not want to frighten her. "We were just kids. It was a long time ago."
She sucked in her lips and turned away for a moment as if unable to meet my gaze. "Tom, I'm so sorry," she said and her genuine distress was alarming to see.
"Don't," I said. "If I'd had anything about me at the time, I should have just asked you out."
"Why didn't you?"
"Shyness, I suppose. Like you said, I was quiet. And I've always been hopeless with girls."
She tightened her face into the gentlest of smiles while I burned with a mixture of embarrassment and regret and I was glad when at last the waitress stepped up with her pad.
We ordered dinner. Rachel chose the wine, an expensive and informed choice that unnerved me a little because I've always been clueless in matters of taste and fashion. And later, while we ate, a companionable silence settled between us, allowing me time to breathe, time to think ahead.
She had matured into a very beautiful woman, the fullest bloom of her being. The girl I had known so long ago had been but the first bud, the first hint at the magnificence that might follow. It seemed I could talk to her and indeed the real Rachel was undoubtedly charming and winning and all those things good men desire in a woman, but the old goddess remained on her shoulder, watching my every move. Not one scrap of Her power had been diminished with time.
Eventually, the silence dissolved into tame conversation. She told me how she had worked her way up from the bottle line at Bexley's to become the production supervisor. It was well paid, and in talking about it, she seemed to pull the job over her like a coat and she became, for a while, the voice of Bexley's Bottles.
"Have you considered it yet?" she asked. "I mean the job. I'm serious. Why don't you apply? I can't say for sure of course, but I reckon it's yours if you want it."
"That wasn't the impression I came away with."
"Oh, you mustn't worry about that. Jefferson - he's the GM, the one with the pony tail, do you remember? Well, he's all right really. He's a bit young, that's all. Frank and me - Frank's the chief engineer - we had a word with him when you'd gone - more coffee? Anyway, I realised I didn't have your number or anything - no way to get in touch, so you can imagine my relief when you called."
And slowly then, a little of the truth began to dawn. Not only had I been blinded by my feelings for her, but also by the fact that she was a woman. Had she been a man, then I would have recognised this for what it was - the room, the meal: it was a seduction of sorts, but I was not sitting there with Rachel Standish. I was being wined and dined by the Production Supervisor of Bexley's Bottles. The whole thing would be charged to the company. I was being head-hunted.
I felt a chill as all of this dawned on me. I felt the romance of it become rigid and brittle and finally it fell into little jagged pieces at my feet. I looked at her while my insides collapsed with disappointment. Had she really remembered me, I wondered, or had that been no more than a clever device, because Bexley's were desperate for a safe pair of hands to guide them with a technology they knew nothing about?
She was near enough for me to reach out and stroke her cheek. We had shared a meal, we had spoken of old times, I had even told her that I had once loved her - for a crush is just another word for love - and still she could not see me. The goddess upon her shoulder was laughing.
"So, Tom. What do you say?"
I almost hated her then and I felt a great darkness consuming me. The goddess had grown ugly and cold and I scrabbled in the darkness, among the shards of obliterated romance, for the sharpest weapon I could find. And then I thrust it at her without a care.
"Rachel, this is all very nice, very flattering. But I don't think so."
She looked down, subdued for a moment. "No need to make a decision right away. But please, you must think about it."
I had already thought a
bout it. I had fantasised every day about sliding into that job, so I might see her again, as I had once seen her. And at this rate it would not have taken long for our old roles to have been restored: me the silent worshipper and she the love I could never have. But that would have been a return to the past and not much of a reckoning.
I knew by now that even if I were out of work for the rest of my life and with Bexley's banging on my door every day, offering me my weight in gold, I could never have sunk myself again into her careless proximity.
"Okay, I'll think about it," I said.
"Good. Do you fancy a night cap?"
I was tired, my disappointment weighing upon me, and what I really wanted was to go home, to seek comfort in the melancholy of a night drive, but I agreed. I'd feel better in the morning and perhaps there was still a chance of bringing things back onto a more personal footing, still a chance of nurturing a meaningful rejection.
Rachel called the waitress over with little more than a twinkle of her eye. And then she turned to me again. "So," she said. "Have you thought what you'll do tomorrow?"
"Could we share breakfast?" I asked, tempting just such a rejection.
She smiled in faint surprise. "Well, naturally."
"And lunch? Can I buy you lunch?"
"Okay. I was thinking we might take a walk to see Goredale Scar. What do you think?"
This wasn't working. She was supposed to become evasive, but she kept drawing me closer, kept drawing me in, but she was so matter of fact about it there was no hint that she meant it in anything other than a friendly way - no romance, no recognition of how I had once felt about her, except…
Suddenly I caught her looking at me. It was a particular look, an obvious though involuntary dilation of her pupils and a faint tightening of the lines around her eyes. It had the effect of triggering in me an image of her laid upon a bed. Incredibly, she was naked, her legs spread wide for me and she was very beautiful. I saw her breasts, I saw her mound rising in invitation. But this was not merely a prurient interlude, a crude undressing of a woman with my eyes. Indeed her nudity, stunning though it appeared, at least in my mind, filled me with a sudden and quite terrible dread. I was confused at first and then realised what it was: I could not think of penetrating her; I could not think of running my hands over her, nor savouring the imagined heat and taste of her body. For that she would have to become merely a woman. Merely human!
"Tom?"
"I'm sorry. I've just remembered something. It's not important." I decided then it was all pointless, unless I could leave her in no doubt that penetration, so to speak, was exactly what I wanted, just so she could leave me in no doubt where I stood. "Shall we have that night cap?"
"Of course. Let's go to the lounge."
She moved well, I thought. And she fitted her dress perfectly, a lovely shape moving ahead, her aura washing through me in long luxurious waves. The lounge was deserted, everyone having been sucked into the bar. She chose a quiet corner and we ordered whiskies from the waiter.
"It's really good seeing you," I said. "I know we've both been through so much. Everything I've worked for seems to have been swept aside suddenly. I don't mind telling you, I was feeling a bit lost, not knowing what to do, unable to just let it all go and start again. But now, meeting up with you again like this, it sort of draws a line under things."
"You have to move on," she said. "Come and work with me. It's perfect. Don't you believe in fate? You just turning up like that, when we were interviewing, looking for someone to do what you've been doing for years?"
"Fate? No. I'm not sure I believe in fate any more."
"Well, a fortunate coincidence then."
I swallowed back a feeling of guilt. How would she have felt if she'd known the truth, that I'd been hunting her down for weeks?
"I don't know," I said.
"Look, Tom, I understand. You've been at Derby's since you left school and it's hard to think of things changing. But they do. And good jobs are hard to come by, especially when you get to - well - to our age. Your only alternative would be some low paid job stocking shelves in a supermarket or something, and that would be such a waste of your experience."
"But everything's telling me the old ways are going, that my experience is irrelevant now. How soon before Bexleys switches bottle production to Taiwan? Then all you'll have is a posh head office in Norwich and another derelict shed up north, a bunch of managers and salesmen running about and a load of redundant engineers and operators."
She seemed surprised. "We've always managed to remain competitive" she said.
"I'm sorry. I was just thinking out loud. I'm sure you'll be okay." But we were drifting away from the subject closest to my heart, so I took a deep breath and dived in. "I was wondering," I said. "Please don't think me rude, but are you seeing anyone at the moment?"
She smiled defensively, wrong footed and more than a little dazed by my directness.
"It's none of my business, I know,… "
"I'm not seeing anyone," she said and then, perhaps more significantly. "But I don't date much. It's just not my thing these days."
My heart, already erratic enough, skipped in anticipation. This was good, I thought! She did not date. It was not her thing. "Ah, right."
Again the smile and a quizzical shake of the head. "And you?"
"Er, well, not really. I've not thought about it much." And it seemed I was not lying, for in the blaze of her presence, I had forgotten about Carol, something I was not proud of. "I'm still getting used to the idea of being separated. But I was just wondering, would you consider… "
It had been rashly done, blurted out like the ramblings of a drunkard, but she was not fazed. She was too calm, too experienced perhaps. How many men must have asked her this? She took a moment to absorb my words, while I squirmed in embarrassment. "What is Tom?"
I backed off as if I'd been scalded. "It's okay," I said. "I'm sorry. I don't know what I was thinking… "
"Do you want us to go upstairs or something?"
I felt a white heat sear my face. It was so intense I was sure it would singe my eyebrows. "What? God no, Rachel! Nothing like that!"
So much for making her believe I wanted only sex.
She was puzzled. "Then what?"
"Just - well - I was wondering if you'd go out with me."
She looked at me as if I had spoken in a foreign language. "Go out with you?"
"Yes."
"You mean like to the movies and walks on the beach and holding hands and that sort of thing?"
"I'm sorry." I held up my hands in defeat, but put them down again when I realised how much they were still shaking. "You're supposed to tell me I'm a nice bloke but that you can't think of me in that way, that you don't date."
"Well, I think you are a nice bloke, Tom."
"Thanks. I asked for that."
So there it was. I actually felt the earth move as if a great slow wave had passed beneath us. And how was it for me? I felt stupid. She was still looking at me and I pretended that the look she was giving me didn't matter any more, that I was free, that I could breathe again, that I had pushed her into rejecting me, pushed her into releasing me from a bond that was entirely of my own making. But as the room steadied, I realised that nothing significant had changed, and all I had really learned, after twenty five years, after the passing of a generation, was that the slightest gesture of her head, of her hands, still moved me. She could flex her fingers and my heart would ache. She could smile and I would feel my insides twisting.
"But actually," she went on. "What I said was that I don't date much. That's all."
"Erm… "
"And we're already having a sort of date, aren't we?"
"But this is different."
"What about tomorrow, then?"
"Tomorrow?"
"Is that not a date?"
"I suppose so."
She leaned closer and chinked her glass against mine. "How can I spell it out? Yes, Tom. I think it wo
uld be nice to go out with you. Movies? Holding hands on the beach? It sounds lovely."
I'd been tense all evening, scrunching up my shoulders, slowing down the supply of blood to my head. Now, it seemed to stop altogether and I had the impression of losing my peripheral vision, being aware only of her face. This was more than just a trick of my mind and suddenly I sensed there was a very real danger of losing consciousness: I was going to faint. "Would you excuse me for a moment?"
I found my way out with a reasonable level of dignity, but the walls were bright with flashing lights and they were closing in as my vision became more erratic and my brain switched off in shock. I made it outside where a ferocious blast of moorland air made a brief attempt at reviving me. Then I sat upon the step and placed my head between my knees. I think in fact I did black out for a moment, or at best I barely hung on, not daring to move while my head swam and my vision blurred out completely. When I came to my senses I was sweating and shivering in the biting cold.
I thought about Carol then, something she'd said about teenagers and not being ready at such a tender age for the rigours of adulthood. But the opposite is also true. The vessel we become as adults has too weak a lining to bear the undiluted acid of a teenager's emotion. There's nothing sophisticated about growing up, about becoming an adult. The trick of the adult is simply that we learn to cope by shutting down the parts of us most sensitive to damage. But that evening as I shivered in a thin film of sweat outside the Dunnet Arms, it was impossible to ignore the searing heat that had burst the walls of its prison inside of me and was now flooding every fibre of my being.
She had pinned me at a point in my life where I had not intended staying for very long, and in so doing had made me realise what should have been obvious every day of these past twenty five years: that the boy I'd once been had loved Rachel Standish with all his heart and all his soul, but more that that, there had been no process of healing at all.
I had never stopped loving her.
The Road From Langholm Avenue Page 16
