My Name Is Echo

by Marguerite Valentine

  Looking back, I must have been crazy but people do all kinds of weird stuff when someone disappears. First, I planned to walk to the den and then go to the river. I switched on my torch. Listened. The woods were silent. I couldn’t hear a thing. I didn’t feel scared. Not until I saw the headlights of a car.

  It was being driven slowly along the road, as if the driver wasn’t sure of the way. It stopped where there was a gap between the trees, then turned off the road, and bumped along the track. I could see the headlights coming towards me through the trees and that was kind of scary so I moved further into the woods and hid behind a large tree. I was curious and wanted to see who it was. Eventually it stopped and the driver switched off the engine.

  No one got out. I could hear music drifting out from the car. It was the type of music my mother plays when she gets involved with someone in what she thinks is a love affair. She had a thing going for Frank Sinatra, but this wasn’t Frank Sinatra, it was some drippy female singer playing the piano at the same time. The windows were steaming up, so I guessed the couple inside had the hots for each other and were about to have sex.

  I was about to leave when the car side door opened. To my amazement Gareth stepped out from the passenger side. He was followed by a woman I’d never seen before. She’d been the one driving. I had to stay now. I could see her clearly as she stood in front of the car’s head lights, smiling up at Gareth. I didn’t recognise her or the car, which looked a bit of a wreck.

  I took a good look at her. She was sort of bohemian. She was pretty with dark straight hair cut in a short bob with a long fringe. She’d made her eyes up so by comparison her mouth was pale, either because she was wearing very pale lipstick or none at all. I thought she was stylish in an offbeat kind of way. She was wearing the type of thing my mate Maddy liked, like you see on the women working at the book shop in the South Bank. She had on a flowered cotton dress with a calf-length skirt, and a lacy cropped cardigan in a vibrant pink. Although I thought of flowered fabric as usually passé, the design of her dress was modern with colours of burnt orange and fuchsia. The flowers could have been nasturtiums. I liked her outfit. It was kind of vintage looking. I wondered where she’d got her dress from.

  I tuned my attention then to Gareth. Unusually for him, he’d made an effort with his clothes. He looked very attractive. I fancied him. Maybe that was because I knew a little more about being turned on after my sexual experience with Ifan. Plus he was a poet. In fact, he suddenly seemed very appealing to me. He was no longer wearing baggy cords but some well-fitting black jeans with a denim shirt and I noticed for the first time that he had a nice body. His clothes showed how well proportioned he was. I stared. After all, he wasn’t to know I was staring.

  I watched Gareth and the woman move closer to each other. When they were about as close as it was possible to be, they stopped and stood facing each other. They looked serious. Neither of them smiled. Gareth, who was taller, looked down into her eyes, cupped her chin in his hand, gently pulled her towards him and slowly kissed her. It was sure to be a French kiss because it was the kind of kiss you see late at night on television which makes you feel you shouldn’t be watching. It was long, smouldering, and it put me in mind of Ifan’s kiss and how I’d stood naked in front of Ifan as he watched me. I dragged myself back to the present. I was fascinated. I couldn’t tear myself away.

  I saw him whisper to her, take a step back before walking back to the car. He switched off the headlights, left on the sidelights, and replaced the female singer with Frank Sinatra. He was singing with the full backing of his orchestra. The silence of the forest broke as ‘Let’s Face the Music and Dance’ flooded through the night air.

  They stood opposite each other, moved a little apart. She raised her arms, put her left hand on his shoulder, her right in his hand, and pulled away from him slightly. I watched closely. It was as if they’d danced together forever, they knew each other’s rhythm, their timing, how the other moved. They moved as one. They were dancing the quickstep. I knew this because sometimes I’d watch dance programmes with my mum. But this wasn’t something you’d expect to see in a forest clearing at midnight. He spun her round, she leaned back, her skirt billowing out. She seemed to fly. After my experience with Ifan I knew what was going on. It was obvious. They had the hots for each other and it was just like watching a film, or having a dream about sex.

  A line from the song burnt into my consciousness. It was ‘There May be Trouble Ahead’ and when I heard that I understood what was going on and why Gareth was absent so much from the farm and why Philomena was upset. She knew Gareth was having an affair and she was jealous. But I was jealous too. I was stirred up, almost tearful, but there was more to come. They hadn’t finished with each other yet, they had another song to dance to.

  It was Frank Sinatra again, this time ‘I’ve Got You Under My Skin’ and like the lyrics of the other song it was about the difficulties of an affair. Compared with the first, this dance was slow and sultry, but even I could tell by the way they looked into each other’s eyes and held each other, they were desperate to get it together.

  The message was loud and clear and although neither had spoken since they’d got out of the car, they didn’t need to, because it was obvious why they were there. When the song came to the end, Gareth tore himself away from her, went to the car, brought out a rug, and laid it on the grass. The woman kicked off her sandals and stood on her toes while he kissed her. It was another kiss that seemed to go on for ever. Then she lay on the rug, put her arms up to Gareth and with a slight smile on her face, beckoned to him. He stood over her and watched as she hitched her skirt up. She had nothing on underneath.

  I felt myself blush. I was embarrassed. I was an intruder. I shouldn’t be watching. It was time to go. As I left, I glanced over my shoulder. I wanted to see how Gareth made love to her. I was fascinated by them, their situation, their passion for each other and curious about how they’d make love. But if I stayed it would be weird and since I didn’t want to be a ‘perv’ I left. I felt sad as I walked away further into the woods.

  I’d have to wait now for them to do whatever they were going to do before I could go back and retrieve my bike, so I walked along the track to the river. When I was far enough away, I switched on my torch. What I’d seen unsettled me. I felt angry. The tide was coming in and I stood watching the water race past, wondering how long it takes the average couple to have sex. Five seconds, five minutes, five hours or what? I began imagining what they might be doing, but I stopped myself. What would be the point? I’d get more jealous. My mind returned to Ifan, how he’d asked me to undress and how excited he’d been seeing me naked. Would Gareth desire me in the same way if he saw me naked? I wasn’t even sure how I looked without clothes on although Ifan must have thought I looked alright. Even so I still felt ugly, boring and unattractive.

  I wanted to be desired like the woman with Gareth and, I thought, if I could have sex with someone like him, I’d feel attractive and worldly. I wanted to become the kind of woman she was. Interesting, sexual, sensual and so beautiful that she could dance with poets at midnight in the forest.

  As I thought of Gareth, the woman, her dress, it came to me, like a flash of lightening, who she was. She had to be the woman in Gareth’s love poem; the one I’d read about on our first visit to the farmhouse, the poem he’d left by mistake on the kitchen table, the one he’d called ‘The Girl in the Flowered Dress’. The woman I’d seen tonight, had been wearing a flowery dress. It was too much of a coincidence. But why did they meet late at night in the forest to have sex? Was she, like Gareth, betraying someone? Anything seemed possible.

  I’d seen Gareth as steady and reliable. Now I saw him as wildly passionate, and I began to think in a crazy way that I wanted to be part of his life or with someone like him. If Ifan hadn’t gone, maybe we’d have been just like them, so I walked back to the den and stood outside thinking about

 
Ifan.

  I missed him, and his loss came upon with me with such an intensity it was physical, like a sharp pain. I’d been so taken with watching Gareth and his lover, for the moment I’d forgotten about him. My friendship with Ifan had been about playing – until the river. That had changed everything. I pushed my way past the bushes and into his den and sat down on a tree trunk. I remembered how pleased he’d been with his find in the woods and how he’d pulled it along the path and said it was a chair we could both use. That made me tearful. We’d sat on it together and shared my mother’s Florentines. But now he’d gone.

  I tried imagining him in the hope he’d come back but nothing happened. I was alone. He wasn’t coming back, and probably never would. Before long, the bushes and brambles would hide the entrance to his den and be engulfed by the forest.

  Had I made up everything? It felt as if I no longer knew what was real and what was imagined. Before Ifan disappeared, I’d thought the only difference between the dreams of the day and the night was time, but now I questioned myself. Gaby’s comments to Philomena had put doubts in my mind and I was becoming more uncertain. Had Ifan really existed? Perhaps she’d been right, he had been created by my imagination because if he’d been real, surely after almost drowning, he’d want to know how I was.

  I began the walk back to retrieve my bike. I hoped Gareth and his lover had gone. I couldn’t bear seeing them. I got to the end of the track. Their car had gone. I picked up my bike and began the walk to the road. Going back to the farmhouse, I found I couldn’t cycle fast, my legs felt as if they were shackled and I wobbled all over the road. I was exhausted.

  It was 3am when I dragged myself up the stairs to bed. I lay in bed, obsessively going over what I’d seen. I wished I could talk it over with someone but as long as I was at the farm, I couldn’t. I liked Gareth and Philomena but I didn’t want to betray Gareth, disrupt his love affair, and upset Philomena. If I told my mother, she’d call me mad and accuse me of seeing things. I suddenly felt angry with the lot of them. I didn’t want to stay at the farm any more. I wanted to go back to London and see my mates, especially Maddy.

  I wasn’t ready for what I’d seen. Maybe it was because of the loss of Ifan so soon after my first experience with him of sex. In the space of a few hours, I’d seen the illicit sexual world of the adult and been confronted with Gareth’s betrayal of Philomena and his desire for another woman. I was confused. I knew that Gareth and Philomena had an open marriage, but seeing it in operation was something else. I liked Philomena and I knew something had been bothering her and I didn’t like to see her hurt. I also liked Gareth. I’d never forget he saved me from drowning. He’d become a father figure but what I’d seen shocked me. ‘Up close and personal.’ It disturbed and unsettled me. I didn’t get to sleep until dawn.

  My mother was shaking me, trying to wake me up. I’d slept so heavily, I felt drugged. I glanced at her to check her mood, she looked deadpan but when she saw I was awake she walked over to the windows and noisily dragged the curtains back. Light streamed in. It felt like an assault. I sat up, rubbed my eyes and said, ‘And a good morning to you too.’ I knew I was being sarcastic but I didn’t care.

  She turned round and said, ‘It’s almost midday, time to get up. You’ve been asleep for hours.’

  I mumbled, ‘I’ll get up when you’ve left the room.’

  She glowered and swept out, banging the door behind her. I’d managed to annoy her in three minutes flat. A record for me.

  I was half-dead from the lack of sleep. I hadn’t been able to stop thinking about Gareth and his lover, the woman in the flowered dress, and how they fancied each other. But I felt sorry for Philomena. She knew something was up but how much, I didn’t know. I could tell her what I’d seen, but that would be mean and besides she might say I was making it up, like they had about Ifan.

  Then an idea came to me. I’d find out more about her, the woman in the flowery dress. There were still two weeks to go before we returned to London and with the disappearance of Ifan, I had time on my hands. Becoming an amateur sleuth would take my mind off him and I was interested in what I might discover. Now I had something to do, I felt loads better, so I sprang out of bed, got dressed and ran downstairs to the kitchen.

  There was no sign of anyone so I made myself breakfast and ate it quickly. I planned to cycle to the estuary and look for clues in the clearing where I’d seen them dancing. I’d visit Ifan’s den and leave a few biscuits in the tin. If I checked every time I went, I could tell if he’d been, because he’d eat them. I’d leave another note with the biscuits sending him my love and ask him to ring me either on the farm number or, if it was later than two weeks, my London number.

  But before I left, I had to contact the hospital where Ifan might have been taken after I’d almost drowned. Gareth had found the number for me. I tried ringing off and on for half an hour, but no one answered for ages, and when they did, I was told it was the wrong number, and got passed from one person to another. After fifteen minutes, finally I got through. I was told if I didn’t have his full name and date of birth, he couldn’t be traced and as they were so busy, I felt bad for asking. I gave up. I wept. It was final. I’d never see him again.

  A feeling of boredom came over me. I didn’t know what to do with myself. I drifted into the living room, stared vacantly out of the window, sat down, and fell asleep. When I woke up, I felt better. I made a coffee for myself, returned to my chair and looked round for something to read. My eye was caught by a pile of Gareth’s poetry books on the floor by one of the settees.

  After last night, I was filled with curiosity. I wanted to know more about him and seeing what he read would help. I sat down and began flicking through them. At first I was looking for the poetry he’d written, to see whether there were more references to his lover, but if he had had any published, I couldn’t see one. Some of the books were old with yellowing pages stained with brown spots and smelt musty, but Gareth must have liked them because they were marked in the margins with his scribbled handwriting.

  There was one book bound in dark green and gold-tooled leather. It looked old but well cared for. I picked it up and opened it. It was full of love poems but one caught my imagination. The poet wrote that he wanted to spread the ‘cloths of heaven’ at his lover’s feet but he had only his dreams. The final line said: ‘tread softly because you tread on my dreams’. I was very taken with that and read it several times. It made me think of Ifan and his dreams and of last night, when Gareth had put the rug on the grass and she’d pulled her skirt up for him to make love to her. No dreams there, I thought, only naked lust.

  But this was a beautiful poem. I glanced at the author’s name, Yeats. I held the book in my hands and started day dreaming about him and wondered what he was like and what his lover had been like, and how she might have responded to a poem like that. Having a poem written for you. That had to be better than your usual present.

  I put the book down and picked up another. It was called Poems of Love and was by someone by the name of John Donne. Gareth had marked several of his poems and the more I read them, the more interested I became. John Donne was well into lusting after women. It seemed he had the permanent hots and turned all his experiences, which were many, into love poetry. I found him so fascinating that when I got back to London, I decided to ask the English teacher to see if we could study him.

  I liked the way he wrote and even though he was writing hundreds of years ago, if his language was updated he could have been writing now. He intrigued me, especially when he wrote lines like:

  Full nakedness, all joyes are due to thee

  As soules unbodied, bodies uncloth’d must bee

  To taste whole joyes.

  I wondered if Gareth and his lover felt like that and did the kind of things he wrote about. No wonder Gareth was a poet. Lust and love seemed to be part of the territory of the poet. Had he once wanted Philomen
a like he did the flowery dress woman? Somehow I thought not. I couldn’t imagine Philomena dancing like that and hitching her skirt up for ‘full nakedness’ for Gareth. She was too down-to-earth and her favourite Birkenstocks would be real passion-killers.

  But reading Gareth’s poetry books had made me even more curious. Sex was on my mind. What would it feel like to have sex with Gareth? Would he find me a turn on? Well, I thought there was only one way to find out and that would be to come on to him and see what happened. I might be too young now, but next year I’d be a year older.

  It was then I came to my big decision. The following year I was going to make love with Gareth. I was determined. I’d be nearly fifteen then. I knew from my mates in London that loads of them already had had sex, even if it was with boys near their own age. They’d said the first time was painful. That’s why I wanted it with an older man, and that man had to be Gareth. He’d know what to do and would make sure not to hurt me. He was sensitive, he liked me and perhaps he’d even write a poem for me.

  Just then I heard Gareth’s car pulling up outside. I jumped up. I didn’t want him to know I’d been reading his books but before I could leave, he walked in. He flung his car keys on the side table, smiled and looked straight at me. It was too late. I felt my face colour up. Embarrassment wasn’t in it. It was the first time I’d seen him since last night. Had he returned to Philomena’s bed and what if she’d wanted him? Then what? I found it difficult to look him in the eye.

  ‘Morning, young lady. What have you been up to?’

  ‘Nothing, nothing much. Just kind of hanging round, and uh…looking at some of the books, your poetry books.’