by Emlyn Rees
Three weeks later, with the police investigation ongoing, the inquest into Miles’ death still looming and my mother still in Scotland, I returned to school to complete my revision and sit my exams. Miles’s funeral, attended only by my mother and myself, and conducted with the minimum of attention and the maximum of speed, had taken place at a crematorium near Miles’s birthplace in Warminster a few days before. It had left me numb.
Sitting there in the school library, looking out of the window at the chapel, I couldn’t stop myself thinking about just what there’d been left of Miles to cremate. It had been this way for days. Flashes of what had happened to Miles kept bursting through to the front of my mind. Everything in my life suddenly seemed connected to his death, from the smell of burning toast in the dining room at breakfast to the sound of a car’s engine. There was no escape.
At a desk opposite me an older boy stared. During examination time the school library was meant to be the exclusive preserve of sixth-formers, with members of the junior years working in the communal studies in the boarding houses. My presence here was unusual, a privilege which had been extended to me as a result of my current exceptional circumstances. This wasn’t, however, the reason why the boy was staring.
Like every other student here, he knew who I was and he knew what my father had done – or he thought he did, anyway. I stared back at him until he returned his attention to his work. Miles’s involvement in the ‘Clan Killing’, as the newspapers had taken to calling it, had yet to be proven. But the press and public had convicted him in his absence on the circumstances surrounding his death. If he hadn’t done it, the argument had gone, why would he have tried to run? They’d vilified him as an archetypal gangster, the assumption being that he must have known something of the body uncovered in his club and had probably orchestrated its burial himself.
Staring was something I’d grown used to these last two days at Greenaway. I’d expected nothing less from the majority of the school who didn’t know me. What I’d dreaded, and what had indeed happened, was that my friends effectively had ostracised me. It wasn’t that they’d stopped talking to me, more that when they’d tried, they’d been unable to find anything to say. Our conversations had run out quickly on my first night back and, by the next morning, they’d dried up altogether. It had been as if the common ground on which we’d stood had been ripped as a carpet from beneath our feet, sending us toppling in different directions. I’d landed somewhere new, somewhere that they couldn’t follow, even if they’d wanted to.
I looked down at my revision spread out on the desk before me. Picking up one of the sheets of paper, I attempted to read my own handwriting, but again I failed. What I saw reminded me of a video about dyslexia that I’d watched during a General Studies class the term before. The letters of the alphabet appeared animated, jiggling around and blurring into one another each time I attempted to order and make sense of them. No matter how hard I stared, their meaning remained beyond my grasp, as indecipherable to me as hieroglyphics.
I didn’t have a hope in hell of passing any of my exams. I’d known as much the moment my mother had broached the topic of my returning here to sit them. I’d argued against it at the time, knowing full well the kind of reception I could expect. The argument itself, however – the fact that my mother had finally found a subject to break her silence over – was something I’d welcomed. Watching her take charge, and finding myself subjugated to her will, had reminded me of my practical, problem-solving mother of old. And no sooner had I witnessed this resurrection than I’d known that I would do as she wished, because that way, at least, lay movement and an escape from the stasis into which we’d collapsed.
More important to me, being at Greenaway would also take me closer to Mickey and it had been this desire to see her that had finally dispelled any misgivings on my behalf concerning my return.
The only other option available had been to stay in Scotland. Any move back to Rushton had, thanks to my mother, ceased to exist as a possibility. Without consulting me first, she’d put our house there up for sale. My reaction had been one of horror. Rushton, to me, meant Mickey – and Mickey, to me, meant everything. How dare Mum have torn me away from her? Didn’t I have a say in where we lived as well? She’d stone-walled me in response. We would never be going back and that had been her final word on the topic. I’d get over Mickey, was, I think, how she’d seen it. That was certainly how she’d conduct her own life from now on, by getting over people and moving on.
I’d attempted to ring Mickey three times from Scotland. On the first two occasions her mother, Marie, had answered the phone and had told me that Mickey was out. On the third attempt, again it had been Marie who’d answered, but this time she’d put me on to Geoff, Mickey’s dad. With sadness in his voice, but resolution in his words, he’d told me what I think Marie had been trying to tell me all along: they didn’t want me either to see, call or write to their daughter again.
I checked the clock on the library wall: it was just gone nine. Lights-out time back at my boarding house was at ten and I wanted to take a shower before then. I felt grubby, as I had done every minute of these last three weeks. With the pressure of claustrophobia suddenly bearing down on me, I gathered up the useless clutter of pens and books and notes from the table. I had to get out of here, away from the silence and the ranks of musty books. But even as I thought this, I knew that there was nowhere I could go that would make me feel better. The misery I held inside was not something I could outrun. Miles was dead, and Mickey was far away and I had no means of contacting her.
Outside, it was starting to get dark and I lit a cigarette, carelessly passing the teachers’ common room on my right. It didn’t bother me if I got caught smoking. I could be fined, or suspended, but so what? None of this meant anything to me any more. Like the school itself, these rules had become insignificant. They belonged to another, gentler world. I passed the chapel and sat down beneath a tree, looking out across the school sports fields, where a group of boys my age were kicking a football around. Then I stood up and ground out my cigarette beneath my shoe, setting off along the path which led back to my boarding house.
Not long later, the sound of my name reached me through the heat and hiss of the shower: ‘Roper!’
‘What?’ I mumbled without moving, the water running down my face turning my voice into a growl.
‘Roper!’
The unbroken voice came as a shrill bark this time, and I rubbed the shampoo from my eyes and swivelled round on the tiled floor of the communal shower.
‘I said, what?’ I snapped through the steam at the silhouette of a boy who was standing in the doorway.
‘Telephone,’ he answered with sudden contrition in his voice.
‘Payphone?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did they say who it was?’ I asked, stepping out of the shower’s range and turning off the tap, before reaching for my towel. I’d learnt to be wary of the public payphone provided for the use of the boys in the house, since a journalist had tried talking to me, asking me sick and stupid questions about Miles and how I’d felt. My mother always called via Mr Pearce’s private line, so I already knew that it couldn’t be her.
‘I don’t know,’ the boy muttered. ‘Sorry,’ he went on, scratching his knee. ‘I didn’t ask.’
‘Tell them I’ll be there in a minute.’
‘OK, Roper.’
‘And thanks,’ I added.
I dried myself off, wrapped my towel round my waist and walked from the changing rooms, along the corridor and down to the payphones, which were located outside the games room in the basement. Oldfield, whom I’d yet to speak to after the incident in the chapel where he’d called Miles a spiv, was using one phone and the receiver of the other was off the hook, resting on top of the cash box, which was bolted to the wall. The clack of a snooker ball being hit and someone cursing his bad luck came from behind the closed games room door, against which a prefect called Clarkson, wearing a kafta
n round his shoulders and neck, was slouched.
‘Hurry up, Roper,’ he drawled, glowering across at me as he languidly pushed his long fringe back. ‘Some of us have got important calls to make.’
There had been a time when I would have taken this comment for what it was: a command. Clarkson, the captain of the school rugby team, was a good two stone heavier than me and was used to getting what he wanted when he wanted it.
‘Go fuck yourself,’ I told him, turning my back on him, and picking up the receiver and lifting it to my ear. ‘Hello,’ I said, ignoring the sounds of outrage behind me.
‘Fred?’
‘Mickey?’ I asked in disbelief.
‘Fred!’
‘I –’ we both said together.
‘No, you –’ we both said in unison again.
I felt the skin on my face stretching, suddenly remembering what it was like to smile. I cradled the receiver closer to my ear. ‘Thank God,’ I said, enveloped by her presence, feeling as warm and comforted by it as if it had been a blanket. ‘Thank God you’ve called.’
‘How –’ she started to say. Then she paused and I heard her squeal.
I closed my eyes and I could see her, my wonderful, beautiful Mickey, smiling for me. ‘Talk to me,’ I said.
Her voice became grave. ‘How are you?’
‘I’m …’ I shook my head. How was I? What a question. ‘I’m …’ I tried again. ‘I’m so bloody glad it’s you.’
‘I’ve missed you.’
‘I tried calling,’ I blurted out. ‘I spoke to your mum and your dad and they … they told me not to …’ I suddenly had so much to say that I didn’t know where to begin. ‘Where are you?’ I asked. ‘They’re not there, are they? Because they’ll –’
‘I’m going to kill them.’
‘Don’t,’ I told her, remembering how I’d felt after her dad had put the phone down on me. ‘They’re only doing it to … How did you know I’d be here?’ I asked.
‘Because even if she is in Scotland, your mother’s still Louisa and you’ve still got exams to do …’
‘God, I want to see you.’
‘Really?’
‘Of course, really. What do you –’
‘OK, then,’ she interrupted.
‘OK?’ I laughed. ‘But your parents …’
‘Forget about them.’
‘What about my mum, then? She wants me back in Scotland at half-term. There’s no way she’s going to let me –’
‘I don’t mean then,’ she told me. ‘I mean now.’
‘What?’
There was a pause, then: ‘I’m at the station.’
‘What station?’
I heard her laughing at the other end of the phone. ‘The one that – according to Dad’s road map – is about ten miles from your school.’
‘But how?’
‘Does it matter?’
‘Of course not,’ I said, suddenly filled with hope.
‘Can you get away?’
‘I don’t know. I mean, yes. I’ll find a way.’ I thought quickly. ‘Lights-out is in half an hour. I’ll be able to sneak out after that.’ I suddenly remembered the presence of Clarkson and started to whisper. ‘Do you want me to come to the station?’ I asked.
‘Is someone there?’ Mickey guessed.
‘Yes,’ I confirmed, ‘but it doesn’t matter. Tell me.’
‘Why don’t I come to you?’ she asked. ‘I’ve got enough money for a taxi. I can be there by the time you sneak out. Is there somewhere safe I can meet you?’
Oldfield finished his call on the phone next to me, and Clarkson took his place and started to dial. He turned and stared at me with blackened, malevolent eyes, and I looked away.
‘Hang on a moment,’ I told Mickey and I waited a couple of seconds for Clarkson to begin his call. ‘OK,’ I continued once he was speaking. ‘There are some disused buildings in the grounds. We could break into one of them. I’ll meet you at the bottom of the school drive in an hour …’
‘I’ll bring some candles,’ she said. ‘And I can pick up some food and something to drink …’
‘And cigarettes,’ I said. ‘I’m out.’
‘And cigarettes …’
‘The end of the drive, then?’ I checked. ‘At eleven. Are you sure you’ll be able to find it?’
‘Don’t worry,’ she reassured me. ‘I’ll be there.’ The line crackled and I didn’t speak. I couldn’t bring myself to say goodbye. It was Mickey who broke the silence. ‘Fred …’ she said.
‘What?’
‘I love you.’
Half an hour later, upstairs in my dormitory, lying on my bed with the taste of toothpaste still fresh in my mouth, I stared through the blackness with wide-open eyes. Around me the silence was disturbed by the familiar sounds of dormitory life. People whispered and bed springs creaked. These were noises I’d grown used to over the last three years. They’d long since stopped bothering me or keeping me from my sleep. But I didn’t want to sleep now. My body and mind were as alert as if I’d just been flung into an ice-cold plunge pool. I wanted the voices to stop and the movements to subside. The moment they did I’d be out of here.
Sitting in my car outside the crematorium near Warminster, I lean forward over the steering wheel and wipe a space in the steamed-up windscreen. Peering up, I watch the sodden grey sky wringing itself out. Rain drums down on to the car, as heavy as hail, and I pull my coat from the passenger seat and struggle into it. Taking an old baseball cap from the glove compartment, I tug it tight on to my head and reach for the door handle.
Even though I know this is something I have to do alone, I wish that Mickey were here. This bridging of my present and my past, I know, would be so much easier with her by my side, showing me the way. But she isn’t here. And she doesn’t know I am either. I haven’t seen her since Sunday morning when I woke up on my own on the sofa in her parents’ living room, and dressed and let myself out of the house.
Releasing my fingers from the door handle, I sink back into my seat, pull the pack of cigarettes from the dashboard and light one up. Smoke billows before my face and, winding the window down a fraction, I watch it curl out.
Mickey was right in what she said after Joe had interrupted us in her parents’ kitchen. She was right, too, in preventing matters from going any further between us. Yet still I won’t surrender the precious scent of her skin as we sat on the doorstep, and I cupped her face in my hands and pressed my lips up against hers. I can’t do it, any more than I can relinquish the feel of her hands on my body, or the look of longing in her eyes as she blamed what had happened between us on our having drunk too much wine. The passion I’d felt only moments before had been intoxicating, but it had had nothing to do with alcohol. The passion I’d felt as we’d kissed had been something that I’d only felt once before in my lifetime and that time it had been with Mickey, too.
I’m in love with her. There’s no question about it. She floats through my dreams and I wake with her face imprinted on my mind. My days are spent aching for her. I’m in love with her and I’m no longer in love with Rebecca. I’ve fallen out of love with Rebecca and in love with Mickey. It doesn’t matter which way I choose to look at it, one fact remains: on Saturday, in three days’ time, I’m marrying a woman I no longer love, a woman to whom I’ve been unfaithful in my head for many weeks now and to whom, just a few days ago, I would have been unfaithful with my body, if I’d only been allowed.
But Mickey was right. What I wanted to do – what we almost did together – was wrong. We’re not sixteen any more. Our lives are bigger now than what we desire. There are too many other considerations to be taken into account, too many other people’s lives which intertwine with our own. The baggage we’ve accumulated over the years is too significant for us to jettison and start afresh. We’ve become too grown-up for that.
Grinding out my half-smoked cigarette in the ashtray, wishing I’d never lit it in the first place, I open the car door and step outside. T
hen, slamming it behind me and holding my arm up to shield my face against the driving rain, I dash across the car park to the crematorium. It’s a long, low concrete building and, on reaching it, I duck beneath its pouring eaves and walk round to the entrance. Forty or so people are gathered here, talking in low whispers and, as I come in, some of them turn to look me over, a collective, calm inquisitiveness in their faces.
A dark-haired man around my age steps forward. There’s a tear-swollen puffiness to his gaunt cheekbones and dark circles beneath his eyes. ‘Were you a friend of Bill’s?’ he asks me. ‘I’m Roger, his eldest son.’
I shake my head. ‘No,’ I tell him, suddenly taken aback by the number of people here to commemorate one man’s life. ‘I’m just here to …’ I clear my throat. ‘Do you know who’s in charge of the crematorium?’ I ask. ‘Is there someone who manages everything?’
‘Hang on a second,’ he tells me, turning his back on me. ‘Jonathan?’ he calls and I watch a short, square-shouldered clergyman walk over towards us.
‘I need to find a …’ I begin, before my mind becomes clouded with confusion and my words trail off. ‘Grave,’ I continue. ‘I was about to say grave, only obviously …’ I nod upwards at the crematorium’s roof, towards where the chimneys probably are.
‘Mrs Philips should be able to help you,’ the clergyman tells me. ‘She keeps all the records and she should be back from lunch by now.’ He points away from the crematorium, over the road and across a well-kept lawn, to a small red-brick house. ‘You’ll find her there.’
I thank him and set out across the road, looking up towards the distant gates, where a hearse is slowly leading a procession of accompanying cars towards the waiting crowd of mourners behind me. I think back to the last time I was here, when a burning, unforgiving sun filled the sky, and there were no people here other than my mother and myself.
Mrs Philips is in her early forties and has an open and enquiring manner, smiling at me as I walk into her office and approach the wooden counter behind which she works. ‘How can I help you?’ she asks.
