TWNS-2-6-Kindle Master

by Alexander, Nick

  “But he didn’t buy you a drink?”

  “No, but that’s not it. That wouldn’t have bothered me. No, the thing was that he bought everyone drinks and then told the barman to put them on a tab in my name. He said that I’d pay it the next time I was in.”

  “What?”

  “I know! Because I’d gone and he couldn’t use my card, he told them to keep a tab. So the next time I went in there to meet him, there was a bar tab waiting for me. It was thirty-six pounds eighty.”

  “Jesus, Mags. What a weird thing to do.”

  “I refused to pay it, of course. Which became this big row with the barman who said he was just doing his job and what-have-you. And so I walked out and went home.”

  “Wow, I can’t think what to say to that.”

  “Dave arrived about an hour later. He’d gone to the pub to meet me, but hadn’t had his card with him, so he claimed. And the barman had told him that if he couldn’t pay, he was barred. Actually, we both were. It’s the first time I’ve ever been barred from a pub. So Dave went all shouty on me about how he’d been barred because of me, and how embarrassing that was – that’s when you phoned, bang in the middle of that – and then I told him to get out. So that was the end of that, really.”

  “That’s awful, Maggie. I’m really sorry. Is it all definitely…”

  “I went back to the pub to pay the tab afterwards,” Maggie continues, “because… well, because I’m a sop, I suppose. But I felt bad about it, really. Because it wasn’t the poor barman’s fault, either, was it? He’s ever so cute. And I was worried they’d take it out of his earnings or something, you know, like they do in banks? But I told them not to let Dave know it had been paid and that they should get him to pay it again if he wanted to be un-barred or whatever it’s called.”

  “Mags…”

  “Anyway, I’m out of it all. Which is probably a good thing, even if it doesn’t feel that way yet.”

  “I’m really sorry. You should have phoned me.”

  “Don’t be. It’s all thanks to you, in a way.”

  “Thanks to me?” Sean pulls a face at his phone. He’s not entirely comfortable with being responsible for Maggie’s breakup.

  “Yes, you said I deserved someone who was nice to me, and that kept going around my head whenever I was with Dave. Like a sort of mantra, really. And he wasn’t, that’s the thing. He wasn’t very nice to me at all.”

  “Gosh, I hope it’s not my fault,” Sean says. “I really wouldn’t want to think–”

  “Stop, Sean. Dave’s a loser. It just took your friendly nudge for me to see that. So, if anything, I’m grateful. Really. If it’s anyone’s fault, it’s mine. I bring these things on myself, you know?”

  “Not really. No. I’d be tempted to say that if it’s anyone’s fault, it’s Dave’s.”

  “Yeah. But I chose him, didn’t I? I think I do it subconsciously or something. I’ve been thinking about going to see someone, a shrink maybe.”

  “If you think that might help,” Sean says, “then you should do it.”

  “Because ever since… well… ever since Ian, really, I’ve believed, I think, that nothing can ever work out. I think that’s why I go for these hopeless types. To sort of prove myself right. Does that make any sense?”

  “Sort of. Yes, I think so.”

  “I wonder what he’s doing now? It’s such a shame we never kept in touch.”

  “Dave?”

  “No, Ian, silly. He was so lovely.”

  “I thought you hated Ian more than anyone else on the planet.”

  Maggie sighs loudly. “Oh, you can’t hate people forever, can you? Sooner or later it always becomes clear that however awful they were to you, they were still trying to do their best. Nobody sets out to be awful, do they? But we’re all this collection of traumas and hurts and dysfunctional mumbo-jumbo trying to be functional and logical and wise. And Ian, well, he never set out to hurt anyone, did he? His true nature just sort of caught up with him, I think. He seemed as shocked as everyone else about it, the poor boy.”

  “Well, that’s a generous way of looking at things,” Sean says. It crosses his mind that this conversation has relevance for his own life right now, but he can sense, even before he starts to think about it, that it’s a subject which requires time and calm and space, so he mentally files it away for later when he’s alone.

  “Generous?” Maggie says. “Maybe. Or maybe it’s just called survival.” She thinks about this for a few seconds before adding, “But no. It wasn’t Ian’s fault. It was just bad luck on my part that I met him when I did. He’s still the best husband I never had.”

  • • •

  Sean spends the week feeling strange, confused – more blank, really, than disappointed.

  When he tries not to think about Catherine’s affair, he’s aware that it’s there, just out of view, waiting for him. But when he tries to think about it, the overriding emotion is no longer anger, or pain, but emptiness.

  It is as if his memory of his wife, once so solid, so certain, so integral to his own being that it was impossible to believe that she was no longer here, has become blurred and confused by her horrific revelations.

  She has become, in the space of a ten minute cassette recording, a different person from the one Sean thought he knew. And in becoming that different person, he has lost his claim to her and, perhaps, even his capacity to be surprised, shocked, or even angry. For once you accept that you don’t know someone, how can anything they do surprise you?

  There is also, Sean realises, a part of him that wants to understand her. And the key to understanding lies within him. For did he not, once upon a time, meet a Swedish girl at a party? Did he not, himself, acknowledge that sexual attraction could be so powerful as to be quite literally irresistible? But he hadn’t slept with her, had he? Sure, he hadn’t had the opportunity, but he still hadn’t slept with her.

  The weather remains cold and damp, but Sean continues going jogging every evening for the simple reason that it makes him feel less mad. It makes him feel calm and sated, almost as if he has popped a Valium or smoked a joint, and so he runs until he can run no more before showering and zoning out in front of the television.

  When, on Sunday, the bad weather makes running an impossibility, Sean realises that the running thing has become more than a habit, that it really is like a drug. He paces the empty house, peering out at the torrential rain like a frustrated, caged animal, unable to even imagine how to get through the evening without his fix. He repeatedly pulls his running gear on, and once even makes it to the end of the street. But the temperature is hovering just above zero and the rain is icy cold and biblical in its intensity. So he turns and runs straight back home.

  Without his drug, frustration, boredom and resurfacing anger drive him back inexorably towards the tapes. Perhaps I should just get them over with, he thinks. Then I really can bin them. Then I’ll never have to think about them again.

  But still he hesitates until the grey, depressing daylight fades to utter darkness.

  Only then, realising that he’s behind, that he can listen to two tapes, realising that, hell, he can listen to all of the damned tapes if he wants to, does he stride to the kitchen to retrieve the box.

  Snapshot #24

  120 format, black and white. Two children are playing in a sandpit with buckets and spades. The little boy, in a woolly jumper and jeans, is staring at the camera and smiling broadly. The little girl, wearing dungarees and a sweatshirt, has her face obscured by a mop of unruly hair which has fallen forwards as she plays.

  Sean covers his mouth with his left hand as he studies the photo held by the trembling right.

  He knew that this photo would be here – of course he knew. He should have been ready. But he hadn’t expected it here, not in the middle. At the beginning, perhaps. Or at the very end. But not here. Why here? Could this no-longer understood woman called Catherine have chosen it this way? Had she wanted to twist the knife?


  It’s a shock; it’s such a shock that it feels like being stabbed in the heart. Because this image reminds him just how deep and important this thing between them was, this thing that Catherine threw so lightly away, and for what? For a fling with an idiot in a suit?

  For their story had not been mere chance, mere science, as Sean has always liked to think. He’s not comfortable with the metaphysical, never has been. But here, in the privacy of his own mind, he admits it, now. Their relationship had also been built, as Maggie would say, on destiny. And that destiny had revolved, repeatedly, around the tatty, out of focus, utterly magical photo that Sean is holding in his hand – a photo so profoundly symbolic of their life together, that he can barely see it for tears.

  Cassette #24

  Hello Sean.

  You’re still listening, then? I’m so glad about that. Because I’ve still so much I want to tell you. And don’t worry. There are no more lovers in the pipeline. What happened with Jake is awful and terrible and unforgivable, I know. But it was truly a one-off, for whatever that’s worth.

  So, the third of April, 1996. Do you know, I can hardly remember any of it?

  Oh, I remember bits and bobs. I remember opening the door to the policeman. I thought something had happened to April at first. I was relieved, even, when he said that April was fine.

  I remember random words from that conversation, too. “In the supermarket” for instance, and “heart attack” of course. Then everything jumps to Margate General, to that cold green room. I have no memory, for instance, of how we got from one place to another. You must have driven me, I suppose.

  After that, there’s another blank space and then the funeral. April cried and cried and cried until I wanted to shake her. I had no room for her grief. I didn’t even have room for my own.

  It had been so unexpected, that was the thing. She was only fifty-one. Which is what trying to live on oven chips, Stella Artois and Silk Cut will do for you, I suppose.

  As to how it was all organised, how all the little things one has to arrange came to pass, I really don’t have the foggiest. I can only assume that you did all of it.

  I remember you as this great presence, this warm, benevolent mass beside me. You were there when the doorbell rang and you were there when the coffin sank into the floor. And you organised it all, you paid for it all. You must have. And you held us all together. I don’t think I ever even thanked you.

  The grief lasted for months. There were different phases and different intensities. There were different styles of grief, from the wailing screaming of that first day through the weak-kneed collapse at the morgue and finally those hopeless, seemingly endless weeks of grinding, grey misery.

  Eventually, though I never thought it would happen, the fog started to lift. And as I came out of my grief for Mum, I fell headlong into my love for you. It was as if I had such intensity of feeling back then that I needed somewhere new to put it. And what better place than in you?

  I became able to see you for who you were again, and it was like a revelation. You were suddenly this brand new shiny thing in my life all over again.

  As my needing you faded, my love for you returned and I became aware, very gradually, that you were on your way out. You were heading for the door. That came as a terrible, terrifying shock to me.

  Between Jake and Mum, I’d been gone too long. I had left you on your own and I hadn’t even been aware of the fact. The more I analysed it, the more convinced I became that you had worked out about Jake, you had seen just how selfish I was, and you were just waiting for the right time to leave me. You had been, I decided, on the verge of leaving when Mum died. This selflessness was, I came to understand, your final act of kindness before you walked out the door.

  For months, every time you sat down to say something to me, my heart leapt into my mouth. Because every single time, I thought you were about to announce our end-date.

  I was, by then, as in love with you as I had ever been. It’s amazing how imminent loss concentrates the senses. And you’d been so incredible about Mum’s death, so… empathetic, I suppose, is the word.

  Other people expressed sympathy, they said, “Oh, I’m so sorry. But at least you loved her, right?” Or they said, “I’m so sorry, but it will get better, even if it doesn’t feel like that right now.” Or, “At least you have Sean and April.” None of that was of any use to me.

  You were different, though. You had this ability to join me in the darkness. You would press your forehead to mine and cry with me. You would pull April to your chest and cry with her. And that readiness to go there, to feel the pain, even when it wasn’t your pain, was magnificent. And unique. And, to me, infinitely loveable.

  I couldn’t stand the idea of you leaving, I really couldn’t. I used to imagine committing suicide if it came to pass because a world without you and a world without Mum – a world without either of you – felt like trying to survive on Mars. I imagined it would be like trying to breathe on a planet with no oxygen. Something like that, anyway.

  I wanted to get back to you, but there were still walls between us, walls I couldn’t even seem to name – a barrier I had built because of Jake, perhaps, and a wall of grief from losing Mum. And I couldn’t work out how to break through them.

  The letter came from the council in June – recorded delivery. By the time we got around to picking the letter up from the Post Office, Mum’s house had to be vacated within ten days.

  Selfless as ever, you took a week off work and we rented a van and left April with Mags, and drove down to Margate. You tried singing that awful Chas and Dave song to cheer me up. It didn’t work.

  I was useless all over again. I don’t think I did anything much except stare at objects and burst into tears. And again, you did it all, filling the boxes and stuffing the bags and driving all Mum’s rubbish to the tip. You cooked her remaining oven chips, which we ate as if it was a memorial service – I remember that. After I’d eaten the last one, you held me and I wept for the umpteenth time that day.

  And then, while clearing out the bookshelf, you found the photo.

  I was sitting in the garden having a “moment” by smoking one of Mum’s cigarettes when you came rushing out waving it at me. You were so excited. You looked about the same age as you are in the photo.

  “This photo!” you said. “Look what I’ve found! This photo. I have the same photo at home. Look!”

  You sat down next to me on that damp, mouldy sofa and put your arm around me. “Look!” you said again. “Your mum’s got the same photo I’ve got at home.”

  You were back. For the first time in months, you were back, but I didn’t understand yet what was happening because I was only just realising that you had been gone. Yes, you’d been there to love and cherish and support me. But that magical thing of being in love was a distant memory for both of us. It was only then that I understood that perhaps this was what I had been looking for from Jake. So I must have just frowned at you, I think. I frowned at you and looked at the photo, and looked at your face. I noticed how happy you were. I looked at how beautiful you were. There was love in your eyes, deep, painful, bewildered love – like back at the beginning. For the first time in years.

  “It’s you, isn’t it?” you said, pointing at the little girl hiding behind her hair. “Look, it’s you and me. Christ, I’ve known you since I was seven. My Mum told me about it, too, but it was you! On holiday. In Cornwall. The inseparables. It was you! Was it? Was it you? Look, your mum’s got the same bloody photo. Say something!”

  And then you squeezed me excitedly and snatched the cigarette from my fingers and took a drag. “That’s just… wow,” you said. “Do you understand what I’m saying? Do you understand how mind-blowing this is?”

  At that moment there was nothing in the world that I wanted more than to reconnect with you and I could see that there was nothing in the world that you wanted more, either. I nodded and smiled. And when you tried to get me to speak again, I kissed you.

&
nbsp; Snapshot #25

  35mm format, colour. Two women and a tall, skinny man look up at the photographer. They are lying on yellow sun-beds next to a turquoise swimming pool in which a young girl is floating on an orange airbed. All three adults are raising one hand to shield their eyes from the sun, and all are smiling.

  The second Sean flips the photo over, his eyes mist with tears of confusion. Because, of course, their relationship had continued after Wendy’s death. Things hadn’t just ended after Catherine’s secretive fling. And at the moment Sean had found that photo, at the moment he had discovered that there was a reason he had fallen in love with Catherine at first sight – namely, that it wasn’t first sight at all – they still had eleven more years ahead of them.

  Though Sean had never quite understood just how far away Catherine had drifted from him, he had understood, that summer, in Valencia, that she was back. And he had thanked the Gods for that.

  Cassette #25

  Hello Sean.

  How heavenly was Valencia? I found a whole package of Spanish photos, but I thought this one summed it up the best: the long sweltering days lying around the pool, the endless gin and tonics, the fresh fish on the barbecue… But best of all were those long, sultry siestas we all used to have, the scorching Leveche breeze blowing those long white curtains in and out as if a giant was breathing outside the window. I used to wake up feeling as if I had been drugged.

  The whole thing had been Craig’s idea. He was a wine taster or wholesaler or negotiator. Whatever it was, he put half the cost of the villa and most of the meals we had in restaurants down on expenses.

  Do you remember the way they used to wake us up at nights, the way their bed head used to bash against the wall and that little wobbling tremolo that Maggie used to make as they reached the end? The first time it happened, you nudged me in the ribs and whispered, “At least this one isn’t gay, huh?” And we both fell about laughing.