by E. M. Brown
Digby had been a tall, big-boned, good-looking youth at university, with debonair pretensions and an appalling taste in cravats. In recent years he’d grown bigger, rounder, and his consumption of alcohol had, improbably, increased even from the mammoth feats of inebriation of his student days. And he still sported garishly loud silk cravats.
He was borderline alcoholic now, and somehow managed to keep his sanity together despite hacking out sub-standard soaps for an opiated TV audience. Richie hoped the new series would give him a well-needed dose of self-respect.
“Anyway,” Digby said, “how’re you and Anna?”
“I’m fine. Anna’s buggered off.”
Digby halted his drink halfway to his mouth. “Come again?”
“We had a showdown an hour ago. She threw a few things at me and walked out.”
“You’re joking.”
“I jest not.” He pointed to Digby’s almost empty glass. “Drink up.”
He took their empties to the bar, dragged Cindy’s attention away from a craggy young farmer, and ordered two more pints and some dry roasted peanuts.
“So,” Digby said when he returned, “how are you feeling? Want to talk about it?”
“Cheers.” Richie wiped foam from his top lip. “I’m fine. Not much to talk about. It’s been going downhill for ages. We’re best shot of each other.”
“What happened? Excuse my prurience. Research for the next series. One of the characters is a serial philanderer.”
Richie lowered his pint. “You don’t have me down as a – ?”
“I was joking, Ed. Anyway, what happened? I know things between you two’d been a bit rocky of late.”
“Rocky is an interesting euphemism, Digby. You know how it is: the glow wears off, the sex becomes routine, then non-existent… and you wonder what you first saw in the woman.”
“I don’t know how it is, though you’ve told me often enough.” Digby regarded his pint. “You know, there have been times when I look at you, contrast my life with what you have… and I wonder if I’m missing something. I’ve been with Caroline for twenty-five years, now. Twenty-five bloody years, and I’ve never so much as bloody looked at another woman.”
Richie smiled. “And I sometimes look at you and Caroline and wonder what I’m missing. Of course, you always covet what you don’t have.”
They sat in companionable silence for a time, warmed by the flames of the fire, tossing peanuts into their mouths and washing them down with beer. Did life, Richie wondered at one point, get any better, with good company and alcohol to take the sharp edge off reality?
Digby said, “Sometimes you amaze me, Ed.”
“How’s that?”
“All those women. The emotional freight… And yet it doesn’t seem to upset you. I mean, Anna walking out. Okay, okay… I know you two had issues in the” – he hiccupped – “in the bedroom, but then there was Sam, and Hilary, and Pamela, and before her… what’s her name?”
“What was her name? I’ve no idea.” He could see the woman, small, pixie-like… an American solicitor at a big firm in Leeds.
“Susan,” Digby said. “And before her…” He waved. “God knows. Dozens of them, ever since…”
“What’s your point?”
“My point is… when they walk out, you affect this nonchalance, water off a duck’s back. Even with Sam. Okay… a few tears in your beer for a day or so, and then what did you say, ‘Good bloody riddance’? The thing is, Ed, are you kidding yourself? Are you kidding the world? Brave front, kind of thing? Macho defence mechanism? Is that what you’re hiding behind, or are you really an unfeeling bloody bastard?”
Richie laughed, when he would rather have winced. “My round. Whisky chaser?”
“Why the hell not?”
At the bar he ordered two pints and a couple of whiskies, downed his Glenfiddich straight off, and signalled for another. He returned to the table and hoped that Digby had lost the thread of his argument.
But he should have known better. Old Diggers was like a terrier worrying a bone when in pursuit of a notion.
“Well?” Digby said, consigning the scotch to oblivion. “Which one is it?”
“Neither,” Richie said. “Or both.” He downed his whisky. “You want the honest truth?”
“Please.”
“Then I’ll tell it. It’s both. I alternate. I swing between regret and euphoria, melancholy and joy.” He took a long swallow of Ram Tam. “And the bloody stupid thing is, I don’t know which feeling is the… the genuine one. So maybe I am an unfeeling bloody bastard. Am I making sense?”
Digby blinked. “I think so.”
“Tonight… tonight I’m on a high. Anna walked out on me and I feel liberated. Tomorrow… tomorrow there’ll be moments when I’ll miss the bloody woman, followed by the realisation that I’m better off without her. And it was the shame… the same with all the others.”
“Even Sam?”
He ignored that. “So who knows what I really feel, Digby? I swing between poles. Maybe I don’t cope as well as I seem to. Maybe I’m schizoid.” He laughed without humour at the idea. “So maybe sometimes I feel the pain but I’m too weak to show it, and at other times I’m a bloody unfeeling bastard.”
Digby raised his glass. “That’ll do me, Ed.”
For the next hour or so they wandered back and forth over the agreeable no-man’s-land of business gossip, punctuating character assassination with further rounds, plus chasers, then wending their way back to the topic of the little shits in charge of the production companies that ran things these days. Richie became steadily and remorselessly more inebriated. The pub filled up with familiar faces. The publican, Cindy’s portly father Bob, threw a couple of logs on the fire and stopped to chat with Richie and Digby. Someone put The Cure on the jukebox… except they weren’t calledjukeboxes any more… and the ’eighties tune, Boys Don’t Cry, reminded Richie of a girl he knew in ’88, and a woman standing across the room put him in mind of someone else, a woman he’d worked with in a bookshop in London.
Digby was saying, “Christ, you know what’ll happen to the next project?”
Richie sighed. “Don’t be so pessimistic.”
“Down the fucking toilet like all the others.”
“Oh… I don’t know. If… if you stick to your guns.”
“Down the fucking toilet!”
“… stick to your guns.”
They stared into the flames and downed their pints, and then Digby was back from the bar with another two pints and chasers.
Richie tried to focus on his friend. He had three or four chins, which Richie only really saw when he was drunk. The rest of the time he didn’t notice how absurd those chins were. They were just Digby Lincoln, part of the great, dishevelled man that Diggers had become. But he noticed the wobbling soufflés of flesh now, and the greying straggle of his moustache, and Digby’s bulbous red nose, his poor dental work…
“How the hell did it all end up like this, Ed?”
Richie blinked. “Like what?”
“Like us two, writing complete and utter shite for the god in the corner?”
“But the new commission…?” Richie began.
Digby swept on, “Prostituting what little talent we possess for oodles of cash. Ed, tell me truthfully. How many TV pieces can you tell me, hand on heart… hand on heart, man… how many pieces are you proud of? How many?”
Richie thought about it, cast his mind back over the years, over the dozens of TV credits to his name – though of course he recalled nothing like that number, just the crap. He tried to think of one series, one episode even, he could claim was excellent, a finished product that lived up to his original conception.
“Well… there were a few radio plays.”
“No! No, TV… I’m talking about TV, Ed.”
“Very well. You win. Nothing. Not a thing.”
“Touché.”
“But… but I never heard you or Caroline complain about the money, Diggers.�
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Digby stared into the flames. “I’m complaining about it now, Ed. You know what I wish?”
“I know… I know. You’ve told me before. You wish you’d kept at writing novels.”
“Too bloody right. I had talent, you know? Okay, so I wasn’t getting anywhere, but I should have stuck at it. Written for radio and TV alongside the novels.”
Richie looked away. “Never too late…” he began, lamely.
“Of course it is! I’m old, over the hill. Worn out. Jaded. Fucking cynical. And…”
To Richie’s amazement, then, Digby began weeping.
He stared at Diggers, quite at a loss to know how to respond. He half reached out, meaning to tap his friend’s meaty, corduroy-clad thigh in a consolation – but the gesture died, half-completed, inappropriate.
His friend hung his head, his shoulders shaking, and tears fell onto the rumpled shirt that swelled over his belly.
“Digby, what the – ?”
Digby said, “Caroline’s having an affair.” It came out in a rush, and Digby looked up and smiled at Richie through his tears.
The pronouncement came as a profound shock to Richie, almost sobering him. Digby and Caroline were fixtures in his life, inseparable; they carped and complained about each other from time to time, but behind the words abided a deep affection. Richie knew that Diggers had found, in the solid, dependable, homely Caroline, something that he, Richie, had never managed to find in anyone.
He found himself wishing that Digby had never mentioned Caroline’s unfaithfulness, for it upset him, set his world off-kilter. Then he realised how selfish the thought was, and said inadequately, “An affair?”
“Thought there was something wrong. Or rather I suspected. But I told myself I was being paranoid.”
“How do you know?”
“Found a letter. A note in her handbag when I was looking for change. You know she takes pottery courses in Gargrave? Well, she met someone there. Arty type. Bohemian. And he’s younger than her. Thirty-sodding-five.”
“She told you this, admitted…?”
“I confronted her. She admitted it.”
“So… what’ll happen?”
His friend took a long, juddering breath. “I asked her… asked her if she was leaving me. She said…” He stopped suddenly, shook his head and murmured, “She said she didn’t know. She said she loved him, this Jonathan character. I never did like the fucking name… Said she loved him but that she still felt something for me.” Digby looked up at Richie and tried to smile. “The hell of it is, Ed, the terrible thing is: not knowing, the uncertainty. Not knowing what the bloody hell she’ll do. And the fact that I still love her, and yet hate her for what she’s done.”
Now Richie did reach out and pat Digby’s ham-like thigh. “The thing not to do, Digby, is… is act rashly. Take it easy. Don’t push her. My guess is it’s just a fling, an infatuation. It’ll blow over.”
Digby gave a gusty laugh. “That’s what I keep telling myself. It’s a fling. She’s become jaded with me, the routine. Christ, I admit it, Ed, I’m no Adonis. I mean, look at me, just look for fuck’s sake. A fat, fucking alcoholic wreck…” He sighed. “Another round?”
“I don’t see why not, Diggers.”
Later, still reeling from Digby’s bombshell, Richie recalled looking at the clock behind the bar and working out that it was not eleven o’clock, but after one… And he was blasted, shit-faced, and he’d have one hell of a sore head in the morning.
The next thing he recalled, Digby was on his mobile phone, calling for a taxi, and then Richie lurched to his feet. He staggered, felt himself falling, reached out and knocked something from a shelf to uproarious comment from a knot of regulars… and he saw a globe hit the floor and shatter. He stood swaying over the broken world, apologising to Bob who was picking up the pieces and telling him not to worry…
Then he felt Digby’s hand on his arm and they stumbled from the pub, and the cold wind hit him in an icy, sobering blast.
They stood swaying in the street, beneath the packed stars, waiting for the taxi.
Diggers was saying, “But you, Ed… about Anna. I’m sorry.”
“’Sokay. Don’t worry. I’m fine.”
“Fine?” Diggers stood before him, rocking back and forth. “You’re just saying that, Ed. You’re not fine. Not really… How can anyone be fine when… when their woman’s just walked out?”
Snow began to fall again, spangling his friend’s long hair and balding pate.
“You know what it’s all about, Ed? Your women…? Why you move from one to the next, all the same…” He reached out, gripped Richie’s shoulders. “It’s… it’s because of… of what’s her name, back then. It’s all about what happened back then.”
“No.”
“It is, Ed. You can’t deny it.”
A car swept around the corner, bathing them in the glare of its headlights, and braked beside the pavement.
Digby said, “Come back to my place. A nightcap.”
“I… I’ve really had enough… Going home.”
“C’mon. A little nightcap. I have a bottle of… of something.”
“No, really, Diggers.”
Richie eased his friend into the taxi. “I’ll see you later… give you a call.”
And then the taxi was driving away through the falling snow, and Richie was left with his friend’s words ringing in his ears.
It’s all about what happened back then…
He turned up his collar, out of habit, against a cold wind he no longer felt, and turned this way and that to orient himself.
He trudged home, along the main street and then left, up the steep lane towards the moors – stopping once to relieve himself in the ditch – then onward through the packed, squeaking snow. Ahead, on the crest of the hill, he saw the apex of his barn conversion, like the prow of a ship against the stars, and then the hall light came into view, guiding him. He made his way up the sloping drive and saw that the tyre tracks from Anna’s Range Rover had been filled in by the evening’s fresh snow, obliterating her retreat.
At the door he turned and stared down the valley to the glinting lights of the village, crudely mirroring the constellations overhead. It’s all about what happened back then.
Annabelle.
No…
He found his key, managed to unlock the door, and pushed his way inside.
He stopped dead, staring. He tried to cry out, but the sound died in his throat. At the far end of the hall, standing at the foot of the stairs, was a slim, fair woman smiling sadly at him.
Richie pitched forward, engulfed in a sudden white light, and fell to the floor unconscious.
From Ed Richie’s journal, 9th January, 2017
THIS IS A verbatim account of the dialogue I had with Anna when she came to visit me in hospital a few days ago.
Anna: How are you feeling?
Me: I’m fine
Anna: You don’t look fine. What did the doctor say?
Me: That I suffered an idiopathic cerebral episode…
Anna: And what does that mean?
Me: It’s medicspeak for ‘they don’t have a bloody clue.’
Anna: You need to cut down on the booze, Ed. You’re not the man I met…
Me: I’m certainly not the man you met. I’m older, wiser, and more jaded.
Anna: And what’s that supposed to mean?
Me: It means, my sweet, that I’m older, wiser, and more jaded.
Anna: And apathetic.
Me: I’ve always been apathetic, but I didn’t let you see that when we first met.
Anna: You admit as much?
Me: I admit everything. I’m an imposter.
She just stared at me, hatred in her eyes.
Anna: Fuck you, Ed!
And she stormed out.
Is it any wonder that our relationship is on the rocks?
CHAPTER TWO
January, 2030
ELLA SHAW STOOD in the observation lounge of Edin
burgh International Airport with a dozen other reporters and three TV crews and watched the first plane of Operation Rainbow Airlift touch down. As the Scottish Airway’s strato-liner, its fuselage emblazoned with rainbow insignia especially for this flight, taxied along the runway and approached the terminal building, Ella hurried from the lounge and took the lift to the arrivals area, seriously conflicted. It was a tragedy that the airlift was necessary at all, yet gratifying that the Scottish government had offered a safe haven for the refugees. Even on a personal level, Ella didn’t know quite how she felt about being reunited with an old lover who, seven years ago, she had walked out on.
She moved to a window overlooking the freezing tarmac. She’d already written a preliminary story and squirted it to her editor at ScotFreeMedia, backgrounding the airlift and describing the landing and the emotions it aroused. Later, after interviewing Kit, she’d write a piece for release first thing in the morning. It would be something of a scoop for her newsfeed; she hoped Douglas would be suitably impressed.
She watched as ground staff drove the step-vehicles to the front and rear of the plane. It was freezing out there – her wrist-com reported temperatures in the capital of minus five – and the workers’ breaths billowed in the air. Frost scintillated on the tarmac like pulverised diamond. The sickly pale sky over the Forth promised the first snowfall of the year. What a welcome for the refugees, Ella thought, many of whom had made the long trek across the US from California to JFK.
To her right, a young woman with a Glasgow accent talked to camera; other reporters murmured into microphones or wrist-coms. Ella was glad she’d got all that out of the way and had to do neither; she was too nervous about the imminent meeting to compose an objective report.
The door in the aircraft’s bulbous nose cracked open and pivoted back, and the first of the refugees appeared at the top of the steps. Ella watched them file down the staircase and hurry across the glittering apron towards the terminal building, choking up at the thought that it had come to this. In stark contrast to the last time she’d seen a number of her LGBTQ brothers and sisters en masse – last summer at the Gay Pride festival in Stirling – there was nothing joyous or celebratory about the sorry gaggle of men, women and children filing from the plane. Some of them were draped in rainbow flags, but they resembled the bedraggled plumage of storm-battered birds, once gaudy, now defeated. A few of the refugees smiled and waved, but for the most part the atmosphere was sombre.
