Eleven Lines to Somewhere

by Alyson Rudd

  ‘You look ready to toast Grandpa, Naomi,’ she said loudly, if shakily, ‘and I think that’s a wonderful idea.’

  Ryan grasped the moment and almost shouted, ‘Yes, a toast to Grandpa,’ and they all stared at the empty chair except for Naomi, who wore the expression of someone who had woken up in the wrong house.

  ‘I wasn’t sure about the toast,’ Grace said later, when everyone had left and she and Hana were washing and drying the glasses.

  ‘It was that Naomi,’ Hana said. ‘Unpleasant woman, can’t seem to handle her drink.’

  ‘Very tall, though,’ Grace said and Hana sighed.

  ‘I thought only Paul knew,’ she said as they turned into Cotton Lane. She had vowed not to say anything, not on the day he had buried his grandfather, but she blurted it out anyway.

  Ryan felt the buzzing in his ears. He always did, it seemed, when panicked or upset. Or caught out. He had told Sylvie the palatable truth. He had told her that Paul knew about the suicide and how she was stuck on the Underground. He had not told her that Paul had once followed her all the way to Paddington. He had not told her that the man she lived with, her new, understanding boyfriend, had stalked her several times before that. He had not told her that Naomi had suggested he do so.

  ‘I mentioned to Naomi that there was a woman on my train in the mornings who was very attractive, that’s all. I guess it is unusual to see a stranger and then end up living with them.’

  ‘Oh,’ Sylvie said. ‘I forgot that part. You did recognize me, didn’t you, when you saw me at Waterloo?’

  There was a silence. Ryan would not have described it as companionable.

  ‘I never asked,’ she said, ‘but why were you at Waterloo that day? You never take a train out of London.’

  ‘I do sometimes,’ he said defensively. ‘Not sure now, but I think I had to visit Southampton Uni.’

  ‘Had you been or were you about to go?’

  ‘About to go, but not that bothered when I saw you,’ he said and he wondered at how easily he lied and how real the lie felt. If he truly had been expected at a meeting on the south coast he would have happily been late in order to speak to the woman who used to be Millie. That, he decided, meant it wasn’t a lie at all and he could picture himself looking at his watch, realizing he would miss the meeting and not minding much at all.

  They had reached the house but were loitering outside, enjoying the way the evening was warmer than the day had been, that the light was clinging on with small charges of energy as each cloud shrunk.

  She pressed her forehead into his neck.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘This is your grandfather’s day and it’s not your fault I am a mess. I’m just so embarrassed sometimes to think how others see me.’

  ‘But you’re getting there,’ he said. ‘We’re weaning you off it, aren’t we?’

  She stiffened and, like Ryan, opted for a half-truth, for a lie that felt like it should be real, could be real.

  ‘A bit more slowly than I’d like,’ she said, ‘but definitely getting there.’

  She was ashamed of her lack of progress but she was also avoiding full disclosure because she could not bear for him to be disappointed. He deserved better than the little she had achieved and so she convinced herself that as long as she intended to leave the Tube eventually it was not an out-and-out lie to tell him she was reducing her hours on it.

  Ryan was putting his key in the door when Theo appeared in the half-light.

  ‘I’m doing what?’ Theo said, staring at Sylvie in a startled manner.

  ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘you got my email? Well, I did a lot of research and this is an effective way to get your name out there.’

  Theo turned to Ryan.

  ‘I’m sponsoring a band,’ he said incredulously. ‘I’ve never sponsored a band before.’

  ‘Most people have never sponsored a band before,’ Ryan said, amused. ‘It sounds more relevant than you sponsoring a biscuit.’

  Theo scratched his head.

  ‘I’ve got a Half Man Half Biscuit album in the shop,’ he said and Sylvie and Ryan both looked at him as if he were a child.

  ‘That’s nice,’ Ryan said.

  ‘Trouble Over Bridgwater, it’s called,’ Theo said. ‘Get it?’

  ‘Yes, Theo,’ they said in unison.

  The Mizwa family appeared. They had heard that Paul and perhaps Ryan and Sylvie were clever and had taken to blurting out questions about whether they would be allowed to stay in Britain.

  In the end Paul had – in the hope of stopping their cycle of confusion – declared that he would personally fight for them to stay should it ever come to that but that simply resulted in them deliberately bumping into the occupants of Number 4 to smile and comment on the weather so that they would never be far from their neighbours’ thoughts.

  When the Mizwas had gone back indoors Theo looked at Ryan and Sylvie’s clothes suspiciously and then he groaned.

  ‘Sorry, sorry,’ he said. ‘It was the funeral today, wasn’t it, and there’s me making daft puns.’

  ‘Not your pun really though, is it?’ Ryan said.

  ‘True,’ he said. ‘Anyway, I’ll leave you in peace. Er, was it a good turn-out?’

  Ryan had no idea what constituted a good turn-out for an old man’s funeral but he knew Grace had been pleased.

  ‘Yes, thank you,’ he said.

  Theo returned to his house jauntily, walking in time to music playing in his head.

  ‘Surprisingly likeable bloke,’ Ryan said.

  ‘You don’t have to work with him,’ Sylvie said, laughing, and they entered Number 4 with hardly any trace of guilt from the fibs they had told each other.

  The doorbell rang almost immediately. It was Theo, looking sheepish.

  ‘Clean forgot there was a parcel for you in my living room.’

  ‘Must be for Paul,’ Ryan said but the label had his name on it.

  He and Sylvie stood side by side gazing at its contents; an eight-piece microfibre dusting kit. It had been bought for them by Grandpa a few hours before he died. It was his first and last purchase of anything from the shopping channel.

  It was not Grandpa’s last act of generosity towards Ryan. He had left both him and Hana almost £12,000 each and Grace had been bequeathed double that. None of them had any idea he had any savings at all. Aware that Sylvie had spent all her pay-off from the consultancy that had unceremoniously made her redundant, Ryan’s first thought was to give her the money. His second thought was that to do so might serve to prolong the Underground agony. Even so, the small inheritance brought him no joy. He did not want to slowly fritter it away on bills and booze and nor did he want to blow it all in one go on a big holiday. He opened a savings account which offered a beyond mediocre level of interest and felt queasy about having done something he believed to be middle-aged.

  He could not bring himself to throw away the dusting kit but knew he was unlikely to ever use it. He hid it at the back of a cupboard. Seeing it made him maudlin. He wanted there to be a hidden joke, something only he and his Grandpa would understand, or a message, but all it told him was that Grandpa had come to really, really love the shopping channel.

  When Ryan was in the middle of a particularly gloomy mood, Paul told him he was moving out and Ryan suffered a pang of lost adolescence. He wanted in that moment not to have to worry about Sylvie, not to have a set of dusters. He almost wanted, he realized, to be back in that state of wondering if he would ever speak to her, and it scared him that he had, without keeping tabs on it, grown up and entered a world that was complicated and ever-changing. It was a world in which people died, where people fell in love only to be hurt, where people were lonely and turned to drink, where all the exciting things happened to others.

  ‘And where do stars of stage and screen live these days?’ he asked Paul.

  ‘It seems I have a weakness for balconies,’ he said, ‘and I’ve found a flat in Barons Court with, wait for it, a balcony.’
/>   Ryan smiled.

  ‘You know, when my mum finds out the first thing she’ll think of is that you must not get drunk on your balcony, and that means the first thing I thought of was that you must not get drunk on your balcony and fall off it.’

  ‘I refuse to let you ruin my excitement,’ Paul said and Ryan noted how his friend was indeed in such good spirits he would no doubt smile even if he did find himself falling from a great height.

  ‘But tell Grace there is a big bush underneath to break my fall. In the meantime, I have a hot date with my producer.’ And with that Paul returned to his room to change into a crisp new shirt, leaving Ryan to wonder if he could eat pizza and beer and do nothing much at all now that he lived with what he had at least constructed to be the woman of his dreams.

  She was also, in a different sort of way, the woman of Theo’s dreams. What had started as a vanity project was beginning to resemble a viable business. People were talking about Vinyl Vibes. Theo would be in the local café and spot a classy flyer. He had even overheard a couple in the queue talking about it. He’d seen someone wearing a VV T-shirt. And now he was an impresario. He was sponsoring a band; he was giving musicians the means to play to a live audience. The remarkable part was that Sylvie appeared to have little interest and certainly no passion for music. She was motivated by the project, by the tying of loose ends, by the smell of success, by the act of making something out of nothing but an idea.

  The room at the back of the pub was pretty basic but acoustically acceptable and, as Sylvie pointed out, it was three doors down from Theo’s shop. Theo covered the room rental, paid a small fee to the band and bought their drinks. Entrance was free but everyone was given a glossy card advertising Vinyl Vibes which gave them £2 off their first album purchase. Sylvie said it was all about joined-up thinking, that the public were already predisposed towards VV because of the free music and the £2 would be the tipping point to entice them to the store. Once inside they would be welcome to browse and end up thinking of the place not as a shop but as a sweet break in the day, a comforting spot to listen to music played the old-fashioned way, to investigate new bands and relive favourite sounds. Sylvie guaranteed that those who did not actually buy a record would buy a branded mug or T-shirt and return, soon, to buy something more substantial.

  As the weeks passed, Theo noted she was spot on. He was slowly growing a loyal customer base and his greatest joy was that it comprised all ages. Mainly male, admittedly, but all ages, which prompted Sylvie to introduce seductively packaged gift tokens so that women could buy difficult-to-buy-for men a birthday present they actually wanted. Come Christmas, she said, he would struggle to keep up with demand. Except, she added, that she would anticipate that demand and ensure he never ran out. Theo stared at her in adoration, this angel with a flair for the right direction, the efficient email.

  Come Christmas, she thought, I should be free of the Underground, but she did not really believe it. She was reducing her hours on the Tube but not by much. It tugged at her as if it were part of her veins and ligaments and she was reminded of sci-fi films in which humans become part machine. She was part of the network of tunnels now. They sucked her down and kept her there and she knew the tunnels were waiting for something just as she was waiting for something but she did not know what it was. As she cleansed her skin each evening and looked at the dark grey dirt on the cotton-wool pads it was a bedtime reminder of her failings. When the breeze of the oncoming Tube trains caught her hair it was not a refreshing moment at all but a further pollution of her weak soul.

  The producer laughed at Paul’s jokes.

  ‘You’re funny,’ she said, ‘we need to get that across on the screen.’

  The producer kissed him and Paul sighed the sigh of a man who was being proven right at every turn. Love was better with a shared sense of humour. Love was better in London. Love was better on a balcony even without the scent of oranges.

  They were interrupted – as they both caught the whiff of a nearby balcony barbecue – by the estate agent, who told him he was a buyer’s dream and the place could be his in six weeks. Paul looked down and thought of Grace. There was no bush, just a white pavement, four floors down.

  ‘Would I die if you threw me over?’ the producer asked.

  ‘Paralysed,’ he replied confidently. ‘Which would be far worse. So don’t make me angry.’

  She clung to him in mock panic while wondering how long they would remain a couple once he was a household name and regularly being offered unfettered sex by eighteen-year-olds studying biology and eighteen-year-olds not studying anything at all.

  ‘Back to mine?’ she said as the agent looked at his watch.

  Chapter 22

  Hana had always assumed her mother needed her to help with Grandpa and that once Grandpa and his reluctant shuffling to the bathroom were no more, she would move out. On the other hand, it would be cruel to leave Grace alone in the house of memories and so the two women continued to live together. Just for a little while longer, thought Hana, but she made no real effort to look for somewhere else to live. The end of the romance with Ed had left her fragile, defensive and insecure. When she received a round-robin email about another walking holiday she deleted it immediately as if walking holidays had nothing to do with her. The woman who had been caught short in sight of the sea and been able to laugh about it with the best-looking-by-far man in the group had vanished. In her place was the divorcee who found little in the world funny and was mistrustful of men no matter how handsome, no matter how friendly, no matter how they both liked hiking and the way the first sight of the sea after a slow fifteen-mile slog was as refreshing as a glass of cool lemonade.

  Grace thought it was time she tested to see if she could live alone but could sense her daughter was not ready to do the same. It began to worry her, though, that the day would come when she was sat in an armchair, needing help to reach the toilet, and it would be Hana who was holding her arm, wiping her chin, phoning the doctor. By that point no one would want Hana, she would not meet another Ed, she would never again grab a rucksack and head to the hills.

  Her Ryan prompted sweeter thoughts; or rather, bittersweet ones. His girlfriend was so pretty, Grace was sure she had featured on a set of coasters she had bought her mother many years ago. Grace had noted how self-contained Sylvie was, unlikely to be the sort that would natter to her, and just her, over a cup of tea, but most women of that generation and education were neither the chattering nor confiding kind. They were distant and clever and hid their emotions but Grace did not mind as long as Sylvie was loyal to her son and made him happy and she was almost sure she did. Except Grace had caught him gazing at Sylvie with what she could only describe as confusion. There was a complication there, she was sure of it, but she had no idea how significant it was. She pinched her hand as she wondered if perhaps the relationship would start to falter and to cheer him up she and Hana would whisk him away on holiday, just the three of them together; it was all she had left.

  In her daydreams she tried to plan Ryan’s wedding, all the while knowing that if Ryan was to marry she would not be part of the co-ordination committee. In any case, she would invariably end up fantasizing about Hana having a second wedding day; a quiet, classy affair that Grace would take charge of and execute beautifully. She looked at the empty chair and stifled a potential sob. For the first time she acknowledged that Grandpa had been like a child to her, fulfilling her need to nurture, and it was nurturing that had always taken her mind off Tom. If only she had been the one to pop out that day. He would have held her hand as they splashed in puddles. She wondered, too often, if she had pieced it together as it truly had unfolded.

  The double doors of the block of flats were already open and there was a small ramp in place so that Glenn, the man from the department store, could take away the big old heavy broken chest freezer. She never forgot that his name was Glenn. Just as Tom reached his top speed, the fastest he had ever, ever run in his life, out came G
lenn and the freezer. Glenn did not see Tom, not that it mattered. Glenn did not deliberately allow the freezer to slide and topple from the too-flimsy ramp.

  Tom did not see the freezer, why would he? He had eyes only for his dad, checking that he could see how fast he was today. Joe did not see the freezer in freefall. His view was momentarily blocked by a vibrant forsythia. An elderly man, puffing on his tenth fag of the day, had been on the path, had seen the young boy running towards him, had smiled at his joy in life, and the elderly man had shouted ‘Hey’ in a gulping, frantic way to Glenn, and Glenn had turned towards him just as Tom collided with the freezer, or rather, the freezer collided with him.

  When he passed the forsythia, Joe experienced that jolt every parent feels at least once in their life. The jolt of ‘Where are they?’ Tom was not there. There were two blokes and an old freezer. Where was Tom? He hurdled the flower bed.

  ‘Have you seen a—’ and then he saw. Collapsed on the paving slabs. Collapsed and not crying. A younger man and a much older one and now a passing fourteen-year-old boy heaving a massive chest to one side of a tiny body.

  ‘Don’t move him!’ someone shouted. So he kissed him instead and whispered, ‘Hang on in there, son.’

  How did she know Joe said that? It had become part of her, by now, as she felt her way through the narrative. Joe must have told her on one of the many occasions she had completely ignored him.

  In the aftermath – when Hana and Ryan were being fed and put to bed, or soothed when poorly, or nervous over homework – there was no space in her head for Tom. She had a purpose, a reason to live; there were people who needed her. Now it was just Hana and she did not want Hana to need her. She wanted Hana to go walking again, go loving again, but she had closed up, just as she had after the nasty piece of work she married showed his true colours. Grace leaned on the armchair. There was a dark patch on the headrest which had been stained by Grandpa’s Brylcreem and she bent down to smell it and closed her eyes. She could almost hear his voice and was surprised that it reminded her of Joe, who would call out to her whenever the children squabbled or stumbled or said they were hungry. He was quite useless really, she thought. Why on earth did she think he was capable of taking young Tom to the shops?