Bringing the Summer

by Julia Green

  ‘And?’

  ‘Nothing else. Nothing to report.’

  Miranda narrows her eyes. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Promise.’

  ‘OK. I believe you. I think.’

  I laugh. Miranda’s always trying to matchmake. It’s her main occupation. She’s never even met Danny, but she’s convinced he’d be perfect for me, if only he was about a year older. At our age, she says, girls are sooo much more mature than boys. Danny’s sixteen, like me.

  By seven, most of the families have packed up and gone home and a new load of people arrive, with barbecues and beer and music. Swallows swoop low over the field, catching flies. As the sun goes down, the sky turns pink and golden and then a deep turquoise blue. We’re both chilled from sitting still so long. The cows that were grazing at the far end of the field move closer towards the river, chomping the dampening grass as they go.

  I stand up and stretch. ‘Better go back. I haven’t got proper lights on my bike.’

  We pack up the picnic things, and say goodbye to the people we know from school, and traipse back up the path to the railway crossing. There aren’t so many bikes piled up now. We unlock ours and disentangle them.

  By the time we start cycling back, side by side along the canal towpath, the boat people are sitting in groups round small fires along the grass at the edge of the path, lanterns hanging on the low tree branches, and the summer night smells of wood smoke and roll-ups and charred meat.

  ‘Would you like to live like that?’ Miranda asks. ‘On one of those narrowboats?’

  ‘I wouldn’t mind,’ I say, ‘in summer. Except, if I had a boat, I’d want to be able to go places. Not just on the canal, up and down.’

  And that makes me think of my brother, who was going to go places too. And then that reminds me of the train incident, so I tell Miranda about what happened, and it changes the mood of the evening, but not in a good way.

  Miranda looks at me. ‘You want to be careful,’ she says. ‘It was just a random thing. It didn’t mean anything. Don’t go brooding about it.’

  ‘No,’ I agree.

  But of course I do. I just don’t tell her about it any more.

  Four

  We’re into the third week of college. It’s mid-September, and the Indian summer is still with us: one sunny day after another. It’s a waste, having to be inside so much. But at least college is different from school: you don’t have registration with your tutor in the morning, or have to stay on the premises at breaks; you’re free to come and go, and they treat you like you’re grown up. Because the college is right in the middle of town, we can go off for coffees and lunch, and to the park, whenever we don’t have lessons.

  The art studios are amazing, much better than the school art rooms, and one of our teachers – we’re supposed to call them lecturers, now, and we can use their first names (Jeanette) – is a proper successful artist who has exhibitions and sells her paintings. So it feels more real, and more as if it’s a proper thing to do, instead of some pipe dream, which is what Dad thinks. One of my assignments is to research artists’ interpretations of the theme of discord, so that’s what I’m doing now, in the learning resources centre. It’s the end of the day, and no one else is here.

  It’s only a few clicks on a search engine to go from Ana Mendieta and Annette Messager to Railway-Related Deaths. I’m searching, again, for something about the train accident.

  I find a list of deaths, in date order. I check the places, and the dates. It’s that simple. The stark details come up on the screen. The date, first, and the place. I find a name. Bridie. Immediately, my heart does a sort of leap. A real person, a girl, and she died. Of course she did. I knew that, didn’t I? How could anyone possibly survive being hit by a train? But knowing the name, knowing it was a girl, makes it all suddenly much more shocking.

  I find another article, from a local newspaper. There’s just been an inquest in Exeter. It gives the date for the funeral, and the place. I look that up, too. I do all this research on autopilot, and I write it down in my notebook, as if it’s part of the Art project. Perhaps in some weird way it is. I don’t tell anyone. Bit by bit, I work out what I’m going to do. I don’t tell anyone about that, either.

  Five days later, I’m taking the train westwards again, on a Friday lunchtime. It means I’m skipping an English class, but . . . well, I couldn’t explain to anyone why, but I just know I need to go to the girl’s – Bridie’s – funeral. It’s at some random church in the middle of the city but the train journey is easy enough, and the church is only a short walk away, according to the street map I download.

  It’s the first time I’ve been on a train since it happened. I notice how much more nervous I am; the way I check out the other people in the carriage, and listen out to the different sounds of the engine. I breathe deeply to make myself relax. The train stops three times. A few people get on and off. No one takes any notice of me in my window seat with my notebook on the table in front of me.

  At Exeter I get off the train and make my way out of the station and on to the main road. I check the map. I’ve allowed too much time: there’s ages before I need to be there, so I walk along the main road to find a café. I choose one near the church, push open the door and go in.

  I take in the black-and-white lino floor and a random collection of old wooden tables. I sit down at a sewing machine trestle table with metal legs. The café walls are papered with music sheets – pages of them from old books. I order tea. I do my usual thing of watching everyone come in and out. I draw; quick pen and ink sketches, and the sounds of the busy café waft over me: the hiss of the milk steamer; the clatter of cups and saucers; people chatting. I make my tea last a long time. I make up stories in my head about who people are, and why they’re here. A mother and daughter: shopping trip. Three students, having a late lunch, planning some music event. An older man with a younger one – his son, who he hardly ever sees? I watch a middle-aged man and a woman leaning across the table to be closer, so rapt and intent on each other I guess they are new lovers. Not married. Perhaps it is the beginning of an affair . . .

  The bell on the door jangles as a whole bunch of people come in. All part of one big family, I guess: the parents, then two grown-up daughters, two teenage boys and two babies. Apart from the babies, they’re all dressed up really smartly, in black suits and polished black shoes, and the women have hats and even gloves and handbags, all black. They look totally out of place. But they come in anyway and people move chairs so they can all get round one table, and they’re all laughing. I can’t take my eyes off them.

  I look down at my own clothes: jeans, a white shirt with little pearl buttons, short black jacket.

  The family order coffees and cakes, and the babies – toddlers, really – squirm and whine, and one of the boys – he looks about eighteen – entertains them by folding paper serviettes to create animals: paper frogs that hop. The boy looks vaguely familiar, with his fair curly hair, and blue eyes, and hands with fine, long fingers. When he smiles, his face glows. At one point he looks directly at me, and I turn away, quickly. I bury myself in my drawings, shading in the background, adding a detail to the chair.

  I check the time. Five more minutes.

  The church is an ugly modern building. A small group of people are waiting outside. Everyone looks a bit shabby, and disconnected, as if they don’t know each other. I hover, not knowing what to do now I’m here. I don’t want to speak to anyone, or draw attention to myself. I’d expected just to slide into a pew at the back of the church. But when I’d imagined it, I suppose I was thinking of the sort of packed church we had for my brother, not this sparse gathering. And I feel a fraud, far worse than gatecrashing a party. A hanger-on, an intruder at someone else’s tragedy.

  The priest comes to the door and invites people in. I follow. I can’t sit at the back now: there are so few people it would look even more obvious. So I slip in at the end of a row near two older women. It’s horrible that the
re are so few people here, and terribly sad. The music starts, and then there’s a sudden flurry of activity – more people arriving – and I look round to see that same family, the one from the café, file in to the pews behind me. The smart black clothes make sense, now. But they look out of place even here in church, because no one else is dressed in black, or even half as smart. It’s a mystery, what connection they have with everyone else, or with the short life the priest is talking about, in his droning, churchy voice. Our sister, he calls her, but she isn’t anyone’s real sister as far as I can see.

  What was I hoping to find out? Something about Bridie, I suppose, that might help me understand why she did what she did. But I don’t find anything out from the priest’s speech, which is bland, and general, as if he’s never met the girl. He probably hasn’t. There’s no one at the front of the church who seems as if they might be her parents. Or friends. No one young, even, apart from me and the family in black. Most of the others might as well be random people off the street. I wonder, briefly, if the two women near me are social workers, or something like that.

  As soon as the last prayer is over, I think, I’ll leave the church.

  The boy in the pew behind me watches me as I get up. He half smiles, as if he recognises me, too, from somewhere. He’s holding one of the babies on his lap, and something about that touches my heart for a second.

  It’s a relief to get into fresh air, daylight. What did I think was going to happen? Some revelation, perhaps. Or a way to close the door on the incident that caught me up, involuntarily and at random. If anything is ever random, that is.

  I walk back along the high street towards the station, past the café, past the run-down shops and market. Amidst all the normal busy city life, Bridie’s death, her funeral and burial goes unnoticed and unmarked. The sky is tight stretched, a solid grey cloud above the streets and houses, but the air is sticky and warm. I take off the black jacket. I notice each tiny thing, and think: Bridie, whoever she was, will never see any of it, feel it, touch it, hear it or anything, ever again.

  On the train back, I open my sketchbook and look again at the drawings I did in the café. An image of that family keeps coming to me: all ages, all talking and laughing and quarrelling and being a normal big family. And against that, thrown into stark relief, the solitary figure of the girl. Bridie.

  Images of discord, I think. Just a project, for Art. That’s all.

  Mum’s having a cup of tea at the kitchen table; she looks up from her magazine as I come in. ‘Freya! Had a good day? You’re later than usual.’

  ‘OK. Tiring.’ I pour myself an orange juice, take it out to the garden.

  Mum follows, cup of tea in hand. She flops down in a deckchair. ‘It’s the weather, making you tired. The air pressure’s building up for a storm. See all the thunderflies?’

  ‘How was your day?’ I ask her.

  ‘Fine. Busy. I’m glad it’s Friday. Got any plans for the weekend?’

  ‘Miranda and me’ll go out tonight, I expect. I’ll phone her later.’

  I don’t tell Mum where I’ve been. She’d be cross. Upset. I have to keep so many things from her these days and it makes us distant. I hate it but I don’t know what to do to change it. To get back to how we were before Joe died. I’m starting to realise how lonely it makes me feel.

  I text Miranda. We arrange to meet at Back to Mine, at nine thirty. She’s hoping Charlie, from her Geography class, will be there. I don’t tell her why I wasn’t at English and she doesn’t ask.

  Upstairs, I lie on my bed and stare out of the window at the top of the tree. Birds – swifts – fly high, swooping for flies, screaming their shrill high cries. I find an email from Danny, inviting me to London for a weekend.

  Five

  I’m just coming out of the studios the following Monday when I see the boy with the curly hair. I’m sure it’s him. The one from the funeral, with his family. So that’s why he looked familiar. I look again, to make sure. It’s definitely him.

  ‘Hi!’ He nods at me as I go past.

  Does he remember me, from the church?

  At break, I go back to the studios to get my jacket and he’s still there, working on some big colourful painting. His name’s pinned on the board, marking out his studio space: Gabriel Fielding.

  He sees me looking, and I blush, but neither of us says anything. I find my jacket on the back of a chair, and I walk out again. I’m meeting Miranda for coffee before we go to English together. He watches me go. I can feel his eyes on me.

  After that, I keep seeing him – not just at college, but in town, too. We go to the same places, I guess. It’s hardly surprising. It’s not exactly a big city. I like the way he looks, and I like his artwork, too. But what am I going to say if he asks me about why I was at that funeral? I’ll just look weird.

  ‘Who is that guy?’ Miranda says. We’re having lunch outside at the Boston café on Friday afternoon. ‘He keeps looking at you.’

  ‘He’s one of the Art Foundation students,’ I say. I don’t look up.

  Miranda smiles. ‘And very good-looking. And clearly interested, Freya!’

  ‘He’s so not,’ I say. ‘He’s never said more than hi to me.’

  ‘That’s a start,’ Miranda says. ‘Hi.’

  I laugh. ‘Not everyone’s like you, so fixated on relationships. There’s more to life than love and sex, you know.’

  She laughs too. ‘Is there? Really? Like what, for instance?’

  ‘Friends. Finding out what you really want to do. Being creative. Having fun. Swimming. Saving the planet. Making a difference to the world. Want me to go on?’

  ‘Not really. Anyway, you can do all that and be in love. Everyone needs love.’

  ‘How’s it going with Charlie?’ I ask. ‘Seeing as we’re talking love.’

  ‘OK. He invited me to watch him play at the Bell at the weekend.’

  ‘That’s progress.’

  ‘Well, he asked lots of people. Not just me.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘Exactly.’ Miranda sighs. ‘I’m just one of the crowd.’

  I glance over at Gabriel, sitting with a small group of other art students at one of the tables under a sun umbrella. White cotton shirt, sleeves rolled up. Jeans. Flip-flops. Nice. There are three girls in the group, but they all just seem like good friends. He’s almost always in a group of people. I think again about that big family – his family, I presume. He’s at ease with people.

  ‘You could come,’ Miranda says.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘To the pub, on Saturday night.’

  ‘You have to be eighteen,’ I say. ‘They always check. You won’t get in, either.’

  Miranda checks her phone. ‘I’m going to be late for Geography if I don’t go now,’ she says.

  ‘I’ll stay and finish my coffee,’ I say. ‘And see you later, yes?’

  Miranda picks up her bag. She leans over and whispers in my ear. ‘He’s still there, and still looking. Play your cards right and you’re in.’

  ‘Stop it! Have fun in Geography. Say hello to Charlie from me.’

  Two of the girls from the group at Gabriel’s table get up to leave. They each hug Gabriel as they go past his chair. I get my notebook out, and start drawing. I try to draw the market stall opposite, and the Polish man selling strawberries. I’m still no good at doing people. I’ve got Life Drawing next term, so I need to get better. It’s hard to get the proportions right, and my people look flat: surface decoration rather than three-dimensional figures. I draw the pigeons that are picking scraps out of the gutter near the corner shop. It’s less busy now: end of lunch hour. People go back to their offices, college classes, wherever.

  I’m conscious of a figure standing next to me. I look up, and it’s him: Gabriel, carrying an empty glass.

  ‘Want another coffee?’ he says. ‘I’m getting myself one.’

  ‘Thanks!’ I’ve gone hot. Bright red, probably. ‘A cappuccino, please.’

  He
comes back with the two cups and he sits down at my table as if that’s a perfectly natural thing to do. I glance over to where he was sitting before. The people he was with have all left.

  I don’t know why I’ve suddenly gone so self-conscious. It’s like when I had that crush on Matt, years ago. Izzy’s boyfriend. Maybe it’s because Gabriel reminds me of him a bit: the fair hair, blue eyes. Confident.

  ‘I’m Gabes,’ he says.

  ‘Freya.’

  ‘You doing Art A level?’

  I nod.

  ‘It’s a good course,’ he says. ‘I did it last year. Fun. Now I’m doing the Art Foundation.’

  I sip my coffee.

  ‘I’ve seen you somewhere else,’ he says. ‘Haven’t I? In Exeter. A funeral. It was you, wasn’t it?’

  I nod.

  ‘How come you knew Bridie?’

  ‘I didn’t.’

  He frowns. ‘I don’t get it. What were you doing there, then?’

  I take a deep breath. ‘It’s very complicated.’

  He looks at me. ‘So, tell me.’

  ‘Something awful happened.’

  I tell him about the train.

  He listens. At one point he winces, though he doesn’t interrupt. ‘It must have been really shocking,’ he says when I’ve finished. ‘I can kind of understand why you wanted to find out who it was. It’s like . . . seeing something through. Anyone would be a bit curious, wouldn’t they?’

  ‘Would they?’ I’m not so sure. Most people would just want to forget the whole thing. It happens a lot, apparently. The train people try to cover up how often, exactly.

  ‘And you? Did you . . . I mean, how did you know her?’ I ask.

  ‘That’s a bit complicated too.’ He stops talking, and for a moment I’m not sure what to do. Is he thinking? Deciding whether to tell me? But he starts up again.

  ‘We knew her a long time ago. When she was little. So when she heard what had happened, Mum wanted us to go. She guessed there wouldn’t be many people there. We all went, the whole family, except for my older brother.’ He smiles at me. ‘We must have looked pretty weird, all of us in that church in our smart clothes.’