by Alison Moore
His father, perhaps having seen the contents of the bathroom bin or perhaps just noticing the state of the back of his son’s head, made Futh tell him what had happened. ‘You need to learn how to take care of yourself,’ he said.
Futh picked up a few leaflets, considering jujitsu or something like that, but it was not really his thing.
Futh did not see Kenny again until they met at the university open day. And they did not really keep in touch even after that, but Gloria talked about him. Futh learnt that, after school, Kenny got a job at a petrol station, and later at a bicycle repair shop, that he got married, had children, and completed a training course at a local college, becoming a mechanic.
When Kenny was taken on at a second-hand car dealership, Gloria said to Futh, ‘When you need a car you should go there. He can get you a discount.’ Futh sometimes thought about going and looking at second-hand cars, seeing Kenny, but he couldn’t drive and he put it off until he was in his forties, and then when he did buy a second-hand car, he went elsewhere.
Packing away his first-aid kit and going on his way, picking blackberry seeds out of his teeth, Futh thinks about the grubs he has just eaten, and Carl saying, ‘Do you ever get a bad feeling about something and then it happens?’
He rather liked Carl. He considers ending his walking tour a day early and going to Utrecht, to Carl’s mother’s clean, sparse apartment, spending some time with them and sleeping over, giving Carl a lift to the ferry on the Saturday. But he does not know Carl’s telephone number or his last name and he has not noted Carl’s mother’s address. As much as he likes the idea, he puts it aside, expecting instead to see him on the return ferry.
As he walks, the dressing he applied to the palm of his hand catches repeatedly on the zip on the side pocket of his trousers. By the time he reaches that night’s stop, the dressing is gone and his wound is bleeding again, onto his trousers.
In his hotel room, he puts more disinfectant on his wound, and a clean dressing. He changes his trousers, taking the silver lighthouse out of his pocket and putting it away in his suitcase.
He opens the window and stands there for a while, taking in the view and watching the people, mostly couples, who are walking and stopping to look at menus and displays in the windows. He is directly above the gently sloping, ivy-covered roof of the hotel’s porch. The window is small, perhaps too small to fit through, but there is a larger window further along the same wall. As he heads for the door, he peers through this larger window and sees spike-topped railings underneath.
He wanders downstairs and goes outside, stopping to look at a nearby shop’s postcard stand. He chooses a picture of a flower market for Angela, a picture of an apple stall for his father, a view of the Rhine for Aunt Frieda. He buys stamps and a pen. He eats alone at a table for two in a big, windy square and writes his postcards while he drinks his coffee. When he has finished, he puts away his pen, and touches, out of habit, his empty trouser pocket, and then he lifts his hand, with its new dressing, its whiff of disinfectant, to his nose.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Romance
Ester sits on her stool at the bar with a gin and tonic. Her hand keeps straying to her hair, which now seems very short and white and makes her look, she has begun to think, like her father.
She is wearing old clothes and her flats because she can’t do the rooms in a nice frock and heels. But after her drink she will go upstairs, take a nap and then change, putting on the pink satin dress and her heels and a little perfume. She has resolved to make an effort every day now. She will do it today even though Bernard is not there to notice. It makes her feel good, and there is always someone who looks, who appreciates her effort.
Bernard is out of town for two nights. He has gone to his mother’s and he always goes alone.
Ester goes upstairs, slips off her shoes and lies down on her side of the bed. She picks up the book on her bedside table – a romance. She collects Mills and Boons, has hundreds of them. She finds her place and begins to read. Turning onto her side, facing Bernard’s half of the bed, moving closer to his pillow, she breathes deeply, inhaling the faint scent of him. Reaching behind her for the small bottle of camphor oil she has moved from the side of the bath to her bedside table, Ester puts a few drops on the corner of his pillowcase.
This is something she does when Bernard is away from home, keeping the smell of him in her bed. Some people do not like the smell of camphor; for others it is addictive. It is used, amongst other things, as a moth repellent and as an aphrodisiac.
She settles down again, lying with her face on the edge of his pillow, one arm stretched out across the empty bed.
She has tried to write a romance. She has several drafts of a novel in the drawer by her bed, but none of them, she thinks, is any good. She has never shown them to Bernard. Ester does not like her heroine, and her ending is not right. She takes these attempts out of the drawer from time to time and looks at them, changes something or starts a new draft. She did begin a different story but she did not even change the woman’s name – it was really just another abortive draft of the same story to put away in her drawer.
She wakes with her face buried in Bernard’s pillow, the corner of her Mills and Boon poking into her. She is famished.
She takes off her work clothes and sits down at her dressing table to redo her make-up before putting on her new dress. Then, stepping into her heels, Ester heads down to the bar.
She is expecting a guest – single room, one night, bed and breakfast – at the end of the afternoon. In the meantime, it is quiet. The new girl is behind the bar. Other than her and Ester, the place is empty except for an elderly couple sitting in the bay window reading guidebooks and leaflets. Ester, parking herself on her stool, asks the girl to fetch her a drink and a couple of bags of peanuts.
Bernard hired her almost a year ago but he still calls her ‘the new girl’, and Ester does too. The girl is about twenty, slim, long-limbed. She has her hair in a ponytail and wears no make-up. She has lovely skin. Ester watches her, mesmerised by her youth. She wonders if Bernard has ever looked at the girl this way. She has never seen him do so. Ester straightens her back and crosses her legs. She feels heavy. Her make-up feels thick on her skin. She feels overdressed. Looking down at her magnificent shoes, she sees the veins bulging in her feet, the broken capillaries in her calves.
The elderly couple finish their drinks, gather their things and leave. Ester watches them walking past the window holding hands and laughing about something. She drinks her gin and the hands of the huge clock on the wall move silently round.
The guest arrives at five. When he opens the door, the late afternoon sunshine streams in with him. He has come a long way with a heavy rucksack but he is fit and strong. He is young, younger than Ester but not as young as the new girl. As he approaches the bar he takes a piece of paper out of his pocket and offers it to the girl. ‘I have a room booked,’ he says. He speaks in English and the girl does not understand but she smiles at him.
‘It’s me you want,’ says Ester.
He looks at her doubtfully and then back at the girl, who smiles again and tucks a stray strand of hair behind her ear.
Ester climbs carefully down from her stool and walks over to her guest, her shocking-pink heels banging loudly against the bare floorboards in the quiet room. She stands close to him, and leans closer to read the paper which he still holds out to the girl. She can feel the warmth in his skin, and the hairs on his arm against her own. ‘Yes,’ she says. ‘Come and sit down. Have your meal and then I will show you to your room.’
She takes the boy to a table for two and sits him down, then she goes to the kitchen to fetch his plate of cold meats from the fridge. Returning to the bar, she removes the cling film, slides the plate onto the table in front of the boy and sits down opposite him. ‘Go ahead and eat,’ she says. When he hesitates, she reaches over, takes a piece of sausage from his plate and holds it up to his mouth, saying, ‘Try some of this.’ When h
e does not open his mouth for her, she brings her hand back and puts the morsel in her own mouth. ‘It’s very good,’ she says.
She has the girl bring drinks. When the girl puts them down on the table, Ester sees her glancing at the boy and catches a flicker of a smile before she goes back to the bar. Ester leans forward and picks a strip of ham off the boy’s plate. ‘Oh, the ham is good,’ she says, not offering it this time but putting it directly into the boy’s mouth, poking it between his lips. She feels his teeth against her fingertip.
The boy eats then, quickly and silently, before pushing back his chair, his meal only half-finished, saying, ‘I’d like to go to my room now.’
‘Yes,’ says Ester, sucking a greasy fingertip. ‘Come with me.’ She walks to her desk, puts a tick in her ledger and takes his key down from its hook. ‘You’re in number ten,’ she says, and then adds, ‘right next to my room.’ She takes the rucksack from between his feet and carries it to the lift. While he insists that there is really no need, she stands inside the lift with his bag, waiting until he joins her. When he does, she presses the button and the doors close.
Now it is just the two of them in the quietly rising lift. ‘If there’s anything you need,’ she says, ‘just let me know.’
She carries his rucksack down the corridor to the end room and waits while he fumbles the key into the lock and opens the door. She takes his rucksack inside and puts it down on the bed. Knocking on the wall just above his headboard, she says, ‘If you need anything at all.’
‘I won’t bother you,’ he says. He has not yet come into the room. He is standing by the door, holding it open.
‘You wouldn’t be bothering anyone,’ she says. ‘My husband’s away.’
He nods, and when still she remains with one hand on his rucksack, he says, ‘Oh, right,’ and puts his hand in his trouser pocket. Finding a note of the lowest denomination, he holds it out.
She moves away from the bed then and comes towards him. Passing him in the doorway, she says, ‘Goodnight,’ and leaves him with the money still in his hand.
Back downstairs, she eats the boy’s leftovers for her supper. She usually goes to bed before the bar closes. If there are no customers and Bernard is away she sometimes tells the new girl to call it a night and get off home. The place is empty tonight, but when the girl suggests closing early, Ester says no, they should stay open, someone might still come in. She stays perched on her bar stool, watching the girl, who has nothing to do. Not until the big clock says it is closing time does Ester say, ‘All right then. Go home.’ The girl lifts the stools up onto the tables and fetches her coat and bag, and Ester, on her way to bed now, says to the girl, ‘Lock the door on your way out.’
Ester has a quick bubble bath before getting into bed. She drops off quickly before being woken by a gentle tapping sound which builds to frenetic hammering against the partition wall.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Cigarette Smoke
It looks as if it is going to be a warm day. Futh is wearing his sandals again but without the socks, and his naked feet glow white between the straps. Even at nine o’clock in the morning the sun is quite strong. He feels it warming the back of his neck above his collar, and the backs of his knees beneath his shorts, as he walks to the outskirts of the town.
Passing a postbox, he drops in the cards he wrote the evening before. He will, he thinks, be seeing his father and Aunt Frieda and Angela before their postcards reach them, but still, this is the sort of thing one does on holiday. He has included Gloria on his father’s card but he has not written to Kenny.
Even after Futh’s father moved in with Gloria, Futh did not see much of Kenny, who generally avoided their family get-togethers, never attending his mother’s soirées or coming for the Sunday dinners Futh’s father cooked. But then Kenny, even in his twenties, had his own family, children, and Futh, as it was pointed out, did not.
But when Futh was visiting his father, he always found an excuse to get out of the house for an hour, and seeing as Gloria lived near Kenny, Futh did see him from time to time.
On one occasion, Futh was in the supermarket buying meat and potatoes and bottles of wine for his father’s Sunday lunch. Following the piped fresh bread smell to the bakery section, he came across Kenny selecting bread rolls, squeezing them and then putting them back.
‘How are you?’ asked Futh.
‘Hungry,’ said Kenny, picking up an iced bun with his oil-stained hand and replacing it with his thumbprint in the icing. ‘You?’
‘I’m seeing someone,’ said Futh. ‘In fact, you’ve met her. She was at that university open day – the girl I knew from school.’
Kenny investigated a cake, put his finger in the buttercream and licked it off. ‘The girl who didn’t remember you,’ he said. ‘You’re seeing her?’
‘I bumped into her again,’ said Futh.
While Kenny was picking through the gingerbread men, Futh asked after his wife and children and Kenny pointed out a woman in the biscuit aisle with twin boys who looked just like Kenny.
Futh, meanwhile, had put three iced buns in a bag and it was only as he was walking away that he realised he had got the one on which Kenny had left his thumbprint. He felt awkward about going back and swapping it in front of Kenny, so he just carried on to the checkout, knowing that he would have to eat that one.
He saw Kenny again on a nearby industrial estate where there was a store selling camping and outdoor equipment. Futh liked to browse in this sort of place and think about taking up climbing or kayaking, imagining trekking alone in the mountains or riding the rapids in a one-man canoe. This was before he was married to Angela. He looked at the tents, and sometimes he bought something small – gloves or a torch. He also bought all kinds of guidebooks and manuals. On this particular day, he had, amongst his purchases, a five hundred page hardback on ice climbing and a last-minute addition of a guide to self rescue, some big batteries and a spork. Walking away from the store, he passed a parked car and saw Kenny in the passenger seat. He went closer to the side window to catch Kenny’s attention but paused before knocking. There was a woman in the driver’s seat, but he couldn’t tell whether it was Kenny’s wife. She had her hands over her face and was partially obscured by Kenny who had his arm around her. She was upset but Kenny was saying something which seemed to help. The window was open a crack and Futh caught the smell of Kenny’s cigarettes. The woman dropped her hands, reaching into her bag for a tissue, and Futh, not wanting to disturb them, continued on his way, walking the mile back to the flat with the handles of his carrier bag cutting into the palms of his hands.
He wonders what Angela is doing at this moment, then he realises that at just after nine on a Thursday morning she will be working. She will not be thinking of him.
Angela, having considered science at the local university, studied English for one term at another institution. Then she switched again and went back to biology, ending up in publishing, in the editorial office of a scientific journal. It has never really suited her. She has always complained about it. Sometimes she has specific grievances and sometimes she is just generally dissatisfied. She has always kept an eye on the vacancies in the paper, circling some of them, rather randomly, it seems to Futh. He has never really known what she wants.
On the honeymoon, when the hire car broke down, they opened up the bonnet and stood in the pouring rain looking despairingly at the lifeless engine, and Angela said, ‘I wanted to go somewhere hot.’
‘You should have said so,’ said Futh. ‘You told me you’d be happy with anything.’
‘But not this,’ she said.
Futh went to the glove compartment and found Angela’s manual and the page which depicted the engine. He went back to the front of the car and stood there for a long time looking mostly at the diagram, peering warily at the engine itself from time to time.
Angela said, ‘We need Kenny.’
Futh unscrewed an oily cap. He had a good look at it and at the thing he had
taken it off and then screwed it back on again, his hands dirty now.
‘We don’t need Kenny,’ he said.
Angela did not look so sure.
When Futh finally learnt to drive, in the last year of his marriage, he bought a second-hand car through the classified ads in the local paper. Gloria said he ought to have taken Kenny with him, to check the car over before he bought it. Kenny might have spotted the various faults which the car turned out to have.
The very first time Futh tried to drive it to work he had barely gone a mile before he realised that he had a flat tyre. He wondered whether he had bought a car with a slow puncture. He had never had to change a tyre before but he was determined to do it himself. He took out his spare and the jack and with the help of the manual he managed it. He put the tools and the flat away in the boot of the car, feeling very pleased with himself. He was filthy though. He had oil and grime on his hands, under his fingernails, and on his clothes. He decided to go home and shower and change before going on to work.
He parked in a space near his house. As he turned off the engine, he was surprised to see his front door opening. Angela ought to have left for work soon after him, but she was pregnant again and he wondered if she had felt unwell. He was just about to open the car door and get out when he saw that it was not Angela coming out of the house but Kenny, smoking a cigarette. Kenny seemed to look right at him through the windscreen and Futh felt a reflexive desire to hide. Then Kenny turned away, closing the front door behind him and dropping the stub of his cigarette onto the doorstep, and Futh wondered whether the sun was glaring off the windscreen so that Kenny could not see him after all. Without looking again in Futh’s direction, Kenny checked his fly and walked away.
After a minute, Futh got out of his car. Glancing at the still-smouldering fag end on his doorstep, he let himself into his house. He stood unmoving in the smoky hallway for a while and then went upstairs. The bedroom door was wide open. Angela was dressing, and he watched her, looking at her body become strange.
