Eight
‘What we should do,’ said the student who had said his name was Mal, and whose room they were sitting in, ‘is go and get drunk.’
‘No,’ said the student who had said her name was Riva, or had Ethan misheard that? ‘What we should do is cook ourselves a meal here.’
‘And then go out and get drunk.’
‘Why do you want to get drunk?’ asked Lucy, who had the room next door to Ethan’s.
‘It seems like a good way of breaking the ice.’
‘There isn’t any ice,’ said Ethan, thinking even as he said it that this was embarrassingly inane and meaning-less. He grinned, shrugged and lit another cigarette, then glanced round the small room at all the unfamiliar faces. Would they be friends one day? He liked the look of Harry, who hadn’t uttered a word so far and was slouching in the corner still in a long coat even though the room was overheated. And Renée from Paris, who had dark hair, dark eyes, crooked teeth and nicotine-stained fingers. He passed her a cigarette and the stale fug of the room thickened.
‘Who can cook?’ asked the shy Indian, whose name Ethan hadn’t caught.
‘I have a wok!’ said Lucy. ‘We can put lots of things in it and see what happens.’
‘I think …’ began Riva, briskly. She obviously had a plan.
‘My aunt gave me a cookbook for my birthday,’ said Mal. ‘One Is Fun.’
A hoot of laughter went round the room. The door pushed open and two young men came in carrying a plastic bag bulky with cans of beer, which they handed round. Ethan pulled the tab off his and watched the little spume of froth snake out. He didn’t really know if he wanted to be here, after all. Was everyone else thinking the same thing? Were they laughing and chatting and pretending to have fun, and all the time wondering if they should be somewhere else? He caught Harry’s eye and they smiled at each other. He took a long, warm pull at his beer and felt himself relaxing. Best to sit back and see where the evening would take him.
Four hours later, in a sharp wind that carried in its tail the hint of rain, Ethan found himself wandering the streets of Exeter with a group of about twelve other students. Harry had dropped away at some point, and so had Riva, but others had joined them on what had turned into an extended pub crawl. Mal was drunk and rowdy; Lucy was drunk and weepy – her arms were round the shoulders of Ethan and the shy Indian, and she stumbled along, her feet catching on the paving-stones, words jolting from her. Something about a boyfriend who’d let her down and why did she always fall in love with the wrong kind of person, and maybe she wasn’t up to the university course she’d chosen. Ethan wasn’t really listening any more, not to her and not to anyone. He felt mildly drunk and everything around him had become slow and dreamlike. His thoughts were muzzy, and he didn’t feel like talking to anyone. He wanted to go to bed, but he didn’t have the energy to unhook Lucy and set off on his own.
In any case, he had no idea of where they were. They were out of the centre where they’d started and now they were passing a car park that was empty except for a row of recycling bins. Mal and another man leapt on top of the bottle bank (for green glass only) and started clowning a fight. They pushed against each other, staggered, regained their footing.
‘Come on!’ they cried, and a few more of the group climbed on top with them. Mal took an ungainly leap on to the next one (clear glass only) and then the next (newspapers). Soon about eight students were following him. Their feet drummed on the metal surfaces and their voices rose in raucous jollity.
Ethan thought they sounded like seagulls circling a returning fishing boat. He took Lucy’s arm gently from his shoulder, so that now she hung helplessly from the Indian’s neck. ‘I’ve got to go,’ he said, and turned away. He headed for the cathedral in the distance, and was glad of the wind on his face as he walked. His footsteps echoed. In the distance, he could still hear the shouts of Mal and his group, but soon that died away. Before too long, he thought, he’d go to the coast for a day; it was so near, after all. Briefly, he allowed himself to think of his father, sitting on a boat surrounded by heaped waves. Would his father be thinking about him, too, wondering how he was getting on, or would he be pondering the pains and problems of humanity?
Ethan was meandering along a narrow street with old houses on either side and above him a strip of dark sky. Most of the houses’ lights were off and the area felt almost deserted. He came to a small square where he stopped to sit on the low wall to one side and pull out his cigarettes. He smoked slowly, with a relieved sense of his solitude, and as he did so the moon rose above the roofs of the houses and hung above him, almost full, with a ribbon of cloud trailing across its face. The square was filled with its mysterious light. He stared up at it, tears pricking his eyes although he didn’t think he felt sad.
Then, in the silence of the night, he heard footsteps coming towards him. He huddled on the wall, in the shadows, and watched as a young woman approached. She walked quickly, lightly, with her shoulders back. Her pale coat opened out from the waist, swinging, and her skirt rippled with each smooth step she took. One end of her narrow scarf blew behind her, like a pennant. Ethan watched, scarcely breathing. Now he could see her face, a young and creamy oval in the moonlight, her hair piled richly on top of her head, with little tendrils snaking round her cheeks, the column of her neck above a scrap of scarf. She moved lithely, like a cat or a ballet dancer, chin held high, feet seeming to glide over the ground. Her eyes – were they blue or green, grey or brown? he couldn’t make them out – were looking into the distance. Her lips were held in a smile so small that perhaps he was mistaken and she was solemn. From where he sat, silent and absolutely motionless, she seemed like the source of the light that fell around her.
She flowed softly past on the other side of the street, not glancing in his direction. Ethan waited until she was out of sight, the ash of his cigarette crumbling and breaking. A melancholy elation filled him and he stared at the space where she had been. He knew he was a hopelessly romantic fool, a sentimental idiot doomed to insomnia, disappointment and too many cigarettes. He didn’t care.
Nine
It was chilly when Gaby woke, the unmistakable pinch of autumn in the air. She sat up in bed, pulling the duvet under her chin. Her mouth felt dry and her head thick, and she was still half tangled in the dream she had been having, so that it took her a few moments to remember where she was. Her watch showed her that it was nearly nine o’clock. She pulled the curtains apart a few inches and squinted outside, almost gasping at the colours that rolled away from the house. The green moors ran into the blue, bucking sea in the distance; the sky was a metallic grey, with patches of turquoise breaking through, the sun a vague yellow, still low in the sky and its shafts breaking through the trees. Low-lying pools of mist almost obscured the lane that led to the house, but soon these would burn away and the day would be sharp and vivid.
As she looked, a figure came along the lane. It was Nancy, cycling through the mist so that only her upper body was clear. The bike was an old-fashioned kind; indeed, Gaby could almost have sworn it was the same one that Nancy had ridden twenty years ago. It had a solid grey body and, attached to the front handlebars, a disintegrating wicker basket in which there was a towel and, on top of that, several large white mushrooms. Nancy sat upright, as she always had on a bike. Her back was straight and she was serene and quaintly dignified. Her hair, Gaby could now see, was wet, and her cheeks flushed with effort. She watched as Nancy dismounted and bent down, apparently to retrieve the house key from beneath a small boulder that lay just inside the gate.
Gaby pulled shut the curtains and lay back on her pillow. Then she swung her legs out of bed and looked about for her clothes. They were all gone, but a blue flannel dressing-gown lay at the foot of her bed, and there was a pair of moccasin slippers on the floor. Nancy must have come in while she was still asleep and put them there for her. He put on the dressing-gown and shuffled to the bathroom, hearing the door downstairs open and close. There was n
o mirror, only a medicine cabinet above the wash-basin, which she opened out of curiosity and peered inside. Vitamin tablets, paracetamol, plasters, a razor and extra blades, two bandages, a thermometer, a linked chain of safety-pins, a small jar of Vaseline, a pot of moisturizer (not, she noted, one that was anti-ageing, as hers was even though she dismissed such things), three unopened bars of soap (evening primrose), two roll-on deodorants (natural), shampoo and conditioner for normal hair, a spare tube of toothpaste and dental floss, a small pot of lip salve, a tube of mascara and a couple of lipsticks, a box of Tampax. Once again, she was struck by the stern order of Nancy’s life, which was such a contrast to the disarray of her own (in her medicine cabinet, which Connor hadn’t got round to cleaning for several months, there was a jumble of odds and ends, from ancient prescriptions that needed chucking to dozens of little bottles of shampoo and body lotion that she’d taken from hotel rooms). Here, everything was kept in its proper place; everything had a function.
There was a small shower cubicle in the corner, and she let the dressing-gown slip to the tiled floor and stepped inside, turning on the tap and releasing a jet of cold water that gradually turned warm. She washed her hair twice with the shampoo she found on the small metal shelf, rinsed it thoroughly, soaped her body. She wanted to delay going downstairs for as long as possible because she felt awkward this morning, and anxious. Would Nancy be friendly, or cool and efficient the way she could easily be? Would they continue to talk to each other, or had the fever of the evening died away, leaving only its ashy remains? And if Nancy asked Gaby what her plans were, what would she reply? For what were her plans, after all? Was she leaving this morning on the first available train or did she want to stay longer, now that she was here? Surely she couldn’t simply say goodbye and leave, but how could she remain, uninvited and probably unwelcome as she was? The truth was, she didn’t know what she wanted, didn’t understand her mood, which was agitated and yet at the same time lazy and lethargic. She shivered and pulled the dressing-gown closely round her. Her throat hurt. Perhaps she was coming down with something, she thought hopefully: a vague, painless illness that meant she had to lie in bed for a few days being looked after, making no decisions for herself. But she knew she was simply weighed down with emotion.
There were smells wafting up from the kitchen now – coffee, freshly baked bread, woodsmoke. And sure enough, when she went into the kitchen, Nancy had laid a small fire, which was not yet giving out much heat, and was standing at the cooker, stirring mushrooms in a frying-pan. A small white loaf stood plumply on a metal rack, and the kettle was starting to boil.
‘I picked some parasol mushrooms on my way back,’ said Nancy, not even looking round. ‘I thought we could have mushrooms on toast for breakfast.’
‘Lovely,’ said Gaby. ‘Way back from where?’
‘I swim in the sea every morning. It’s only a mile or so away.’
‘Even in winter?’
‘Especially in winter.’
‘My God, how virtuous.’
‘I like it.’
‘I always think I ought to start doing some kind of exercise. All of a sudden everyone I know seems to have taken up running.’ She heard the bright, meaningless words stream out of her. Shut up, she told herself. Just be quiet for once in your life. Let someone else do the talking. ‘Connor runs practically every day,’ she continued helplessly, as Nancy poured boiling water over the ground coffee. ‘Even in blizzards. He looks happy when he runs – his face is settled and there’s a kind of spring in his step.’
Be quiet! Oh, hold your wretched tongue. But still she went on talking, to cover up the silence of what seemed impossible to say this morning. ‘Every time I try it, though, I remember all over again why I don’t do it. I set off and I think, Oh yes, now I remember what it feels like. My legs get heavy and my lungs hurt. I’m like a rusty old lorry. People walk past me.’
At last she stopped, exhausted by herself.
‘Coffee?’
‘Mm, please.’ She stood by the window, staring out.
‘Why don’t you come and sit down? The mushrooms are done. There’s always one place that I find them at about this time of year.’
Gaby sat at the little wooden table. ‘My clothes,’ she said.
‘I washed them after you went to bed, and now they’re hanging over the boiler. They should be dry before long, maybe they are already.’
‘Thanks, but there was no need …’
‘Here. Eat this while it’s still warm. Coffee with milk and no sugar, right?’
‘Right. This is delicious.’
‘Good.’
‘I have to tell you, though, I feel a bit odd. Very odd.’
Nancy didn’t reply. With immense concentration, she was cutting her mushrooms on toast into squares. Then she forked one square and put it into her mouth.
‘I had this dream,’ said Gaby, suddenly remembering it. ‘I dreamt I was packing for Ethan but I kept on putting in things that he wore when he was much younger. Well, I guess it doesn’t take a genius to interpret that one. I wish I had cheerful dreams. Do you?’
‘I don’t dream,’ said Nancy, and put the next square into her mouth.
‘Everyone dreams, they just don’t remember.’
‘Actually, some people don’t dream at all. There’s a woman who had a stroke and stopped dreaming. It didn’t harm her.’
‘You haven’t had a stroke, have you? You must dream!’
‘So maybe I don’t remember.’
‘You mean, you’ve never remembered dreams? Not ever?’
‘No.’
‘Not a single time?’
‘No.’
‘You’ve never even woken up and felt the images slipping away from you – so that you at least knew there’d been something going on inside your brain?’
‘No.’
‘Do you mind?’
‘You’ve said yourself that most dreams are unhappy.’
‘Even so, you’re missing something extraordinary, aren’t you? This vivid, jumbled mess of pictures. It feels better to have some kind of glimpse into what’s been going on inside you – otherwise it’s a terrifying blank. When you don’t dream, it’s as if you cease to exist. I think that’s why children can be so scared of going to sleep.’
‘More coffee?’
‘I wonder what it means,’ said Gaby.
‘Why should it mean anything?’
‘It must. Everything has a meaning.’
‘Does it?’
‘Maybe you don’t want to remember.’
Nancy glanced up from her breakfast and raised her eyebrows.
‘Or maybe you never wake up during dreaming sleep, only when that bit of the night is over – they say that’s what makes you remember them. But surely it’s impossible that in your whole life you’ve never been interrupted during dreams.’
There was a silence between them. Gaby felt that she had said something crass and inappropriate, but she didn’t know what it was. Like the previous night, she had the impression of swinging helplessly between intimacy and alienation, of coming in too close or else standing back too far, but she didn’t know how to correct herself. Wretchedness swept over her, and to conceal it she stood up abruptly and went to look out of the window again.
‘Gaby.’ Nancy’s voice was suddenly gentle.
‘Yes.’
‘It’s not your fault.’
Gaby didn’t know what she meant by that. She pressed her forehead against the window. The mist had all but gone, just a few barely visible wisps lying like scraps of chiffon over the grass, where spiders’ webs smoked and glistened in the sun. ‘It was never meant to be like this,’ she said at last.
‘Listen, in about an hour’s time, I’ve got to go.’
‘Go?’ Gaby turned round, bewildered. Nancy’s face was kind, and that made everything harder. ‘Go where?’
‘I’m accompanying a group of year-sixes to camp in France for a couple of days. I do it every year.
’
‘Oh.’
She tried to keep her face expressionless, but knew that Nancy would be able to see the misery and humiliation that were sluicing through her. She was transparent – Connor often told her so, with rueful tenderness. But she didn’t want to be transparent: she wanted to be like Connor could be, or like Nancy was now – discreetly packed into neat compartments, hidden away from prying eyes, locked in safely with her own secrets, unknowable, tantalizing, valuable.
‘So you see …’ Nancy didn’t finish the sentence, just held out her hands, palms upwards, in a gesture that Gaby recognized from three decades ago.
‘I should leave.’
‘Yes, I think so.’
‘OK.’
‘Are you all right?’
‘Why shouldn’t I be?’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘But will we meet after –?’
‘I’m sorry,’ Nancy said again. It sounded so final.
By the time Gaby was downstairs again, in her clothes, which were creased but dry and smelling of fabric-conditioner, Nancy’s travel bag and leather briefcase were standing by the door and Nancy had changed out of her jeans and sweater into a dark skirt and a silky black mac; she wore flat suede boots and her hair was brushed away from her face. She looked, thought Gaby, pleasantly businesslike and attractively intimidating. Not someone to mess with, not someone whose shoulder you could cry on, or whose personal life you could interrogate.
‘I’ve ordered you a taxi,’ she said. ‘I would have given you a lift to the station but I’m going in the other direction and there isn’t time. There’s a train that goes in forty-five minutes.’
The Moment You Were Gone Page 11
