As he jogged fearlessly over a stretch of crumbling pavement, Richard gave the impression of a man who had not suffered in life. It was every man’s duty, he felt, to let the small, personal triumphs over adversity and heartbreak go unmarked. And now, at this stage in his life, he wondered what had been gained, what was his reward?
Already, the anxiety of his experience at the dump was falling away. This reserved man, who had an aversion to raw disorder, was having a second surge of recklessness, this one more glorious than the last. The meticulous nature of his work as an engineer bred sensible caution, but the less he worked the more cautious he became, the more he feared for himself. He was weary of the selfimposed limits and the tightness that came with his fretting. That tightness, he believed, had created his heart condition. It was time to let go. Time for a bull-charge.
He hadn’t brought his little green leather pouch containing his nitroglycerin heart spray. He carried the spray in a pouch because he didn’t want anybody to see what he had. Fat lot of use it was now, sitting at home on the kitchen counter. Pacing himself could be a matter of life and death. Good. He picked up the pace. He needed to be brave again, and he was being brave. Richard Meadows was alive and kicking. Wasn’t that skyline something special?
2
The only people he saw were the huddled figures in cars, vans and heavy lorries hurtling by. There was nobody else, that is, until he saw the station wagon up ahead. It was pulled in at the curb, engine running, beads of moisture dripping from the exhaust. The silhouette of her head and shoulders at the wheel was fixed: it might have been a cardboard flat, but then he saw the light in her eyes in the rear-view mirror.
He stopped his running by the car. For a brief moment he clung with one hand to the heavy-duty chicken-wire fence to regain his breath. Then he stepped to the front passenger window, which she had lowered. He didn’t lean in, but crouched to bring his face level with hers. He placed one hand in the door-frame. It was the friendly thing to do.
‘I know who you are,’ she said. Not ‘I remember now’ or ‘Of course, I know who you are’. It was a straight admission.
‘You do,’ Richard assured her.
She made no comment about him being soaked to the skin. ‘Get in,’ she said. The light in her eyes was for him. The moment it hit the back of his retina he feared it would quickly fade, but he did not look away. His awkwardness drained from him in a shiver. He got in. They were old friends. It had just been confirmed. The car interior was warm from the blow-heater, and sweet-smelling.
The radio track was lit, but the volume was set to zero. She had turned it to zero when he had appeared as a small, jerky runner in her rear-view mirror. It was easy, this unexpected thrill, but then Richard felt there might be a stall. ‘You were waiting for me?’ he asked unnecessarily.
‘I saw they wouldn’t let you out with your car.’ She put her hand on his thigh, leaned across and kissed him on the cheek. ‘Will you come with me?’
‘Yes,’ he replied without hesitation.
Evidently it was easy for her too. The encounter at the dump presented itself as an extraordinary opportunity. That’s what had them both limber. Richard had recovered his breath, and now his breathing became dangerously shallow. Her face broke with a lush smile. She gave out with a mock swoon. The sweetheart ease would hold for the short time that it was needed. The promise of serious sex tinged with sadness was irresistible.
Virginia turned up the radio before she engaged the engine. There was some dreadful talk show in mid-broadcast. That only made it cozier. The grumpy dump-man passed on his bicycle. He had pedalled hard from the dumpgates and now freewheeled past at speed, tyres hissing on the surface water. He had a filthy scowl for Virginia, who was parked illegally and caused him to veer.
‘There’s that dump cop bastard,’ Richard observed without fear of breaking the mood.
‘You have to come far to get your car back in the morning?’
‘I’m a fool.’
‘Richard Meadows,’ Virginia announced contentedly, and pulled out into the main stream.
‘That’s me,’ he said, resting an elbow in the window-frame. His reply managed to sound both weary and incredulous. Why should he know what he was doing? It was his subconscious mind that knew how he moved his muscles, not his thinking brain. His subconscious that first sent the message up the dumb waiter: time to take the nitroglycerin. This automation extended now to the sexual pull that had him trample any rationale for resisting. He was thinking he might have run his way to a heart attack, but now might ride his way to the same. This thrill might endure if he treated Virginia’s intervention as a gift from the gods.
The rain shower had ceased. Virginia took a sharp left down a narrow side road. ‘This way is quickest.’
‘I don’t know it, but then, I don’t know where we’re going.’ He experienced a little wash of adrenalin down the rib-cage.
She looked over at him. Kept staring. It made the car go faster. ‘You like to run?’ she asked.
‘Not particularly.’
The bonnet of the station wagon rose a little, then plunged smoothly into a great dip in the road. ‘Virginia!’ Richard shouted in alarm, but it was already too late. The car struck the dump-man, sending his bicycle sideways and under the tyres. The station wagon rode over his body with front and rear left wheels. There were no cries, just the rip of metal on the road surface and the flat, liquid sound of the torso being punctured by parts of the mangled bike. There was the dull thud of the tyres finding the road again, and the scorching brakes.
For a moment it was as though nothing had happened except that the car had come to an emergency stop in a part of town that quite naturally smelt of burning rubber. There was the sound of the fast-moving evening traffic back on the main road; there was soft breeze blowing through the nettles and tall ditch grass; there was Virginia’s engine. Nothing else. Nobody else was about. There was just the dark lump on the wet road.
What happened next marked the beginning of a new and extraordinary intimacy in Richard Meadows’ life. Virginia told him to wait in the car. She got out and went to look. She returned quickly to confirm that the dump-man was dead.
Richard got out of the car in spite of her protest. He went to see for himself. He circled the body, crouched beside it, reached out to touch the man’s head with the fingertips of one hand, but stopped when Virginia said ‘Don’t’. How strange that the absence of life presented so clearly in the eyes.
Virginia was standing sideways, facing into the car. The exhaust pipe was dripping again. There was no movement outside the factories, which were set well back from the rusting fences and overgrown verges. She was looking left and right, up and down the road. There was light in the sky, but at ground level it was dropping steadily. She was watching for the glow of headlights beyond the rise on either side of the dip. This was a quite city laced with ribbons of traffic noise. She was listening for the sound of an engine peeling from the body of traffic a thousand yards behind.
‘Richard,’ she called from the car, ‘will you come with me?’ It was the second time she had said that. She was in shock, but utterly composed.
Richard got back in the car. ‘Nobody has seen this. Look …’ she said with an uncanny mildness, ‘we’ve only just met. You can – ’
‘No we haven’t,’ Richard interrupted, surprised and a little insulted.
‘If you want to go to the police – ‘
‘Do you?’ He couldn’t believe he had just uttered those words.
‘Nothing would be made better. Only worse. We can drive away now.’
He threw open the front passenger door again. ‘I’m going back. I need to make sure.’ He got out and went to the body, looked again into the bulging, lifeless eyes. He put two fingers to the man’s neck, but it was futile. Only now was he seized with the urgent need to get away. He sprinted the few yards to the car, fell in heavily, slammed the door. ‘Drive,’ he heard himself say in a short breath.
She said nothing. She put her eyes to the road and pulled away, driving slowly at first, then as fast as she dared as they ascended the incline. The body of the dump-man rose to the roof in the rear window before the crown of the hill wiped it from view.
‘I can drop you somewhere,’ she said. It was her first show of weakness – and triggered the first flush of panic in Richard. ‘It will be as if we hadn’t met – again.’
‘I’ll come with you. We can talk.’
‘I’m responsible.’
‘Dear God. You’re sure he’s dead?’
‘Yes.’
‘He’s dead. I know he’s dead.’
Neither of them said anything more for a time. They looked to the river of light up ahead that crossed east-west. Virginia, it seemed, wasn’t engaged in the act of driving, but had arranged for the station wagon to be pulled through this expanse of industrial parkland on a steel wire, while she weighed what she had done, what they were doing now. She wrestled back control when there was the glow of oncoming headlights. She switched from dipped headlights to full beam and picked up speed. She kept the lights on full until a white van clouted past. They reached the junction with this second main artery about the time the white van skidded to a halt in the hollow just short of the lump on the road.
3
Richard was thinking he could go to the police. It wasn’t too late. The police would understand that his delay was the result of shock. After all, it wasn’t him who had run down the dump-man.
Virgina was holding fast. She would not be deflected. She wasn’t thinking about policemen, or the rough-and-ready dead. Sorry. It was a tragic accident. The result of great bad fortune. Bad fortune could not be undone. It was her experience that it fell behind by the yard. She had killed somebody with her car and had run. That required glue-talk.
Their talk was a safety-valve interview. No, it was more like the soft opening to an interrogation that would end in sex. In all the world, neither of them had really decided what they should do, separately or together. Not yet. They were seeing how it felt to get away with it – just for now. They were testing their badness and their resolve.
‘What are you, Richard?’ The question was confusing. It seemed wildly out of order.
‘What are you saying?’
‘What do you do?’
‘I’m an engineer. And you?’
‘Painter.’
‘A painter. You’re a painter.’ The reply was nothing more than an echo.
‘I married. That changed everything. But now I’m going back to painting.’
‘Your daughter…she’s grown up?’ he asked.
‘Yes. She lives in Canada.’
‘What’s her name?’
‘Clarissa.’
‘That’s nice.’
The traffic was moving steadily. They were moving steadily.
‘You have children?’
‘No. Your husband: when did he die?’
‘Two months ago.’
‘I’m so sorry.’
‘Yes. And when did you marry?’
‘Fifteen years ago. Thereabouts.’
‘It’s good?’
‘Oh yes.’
‘You can tell me her name.’
‘Gloria.’
Oncoming headlights were beginning to bother Virginia. Richard chose to look out of his open window at the night sky, where stars were punching through.
‘You know Gloria from a long time back?’
‘Yes. A long time. Before college. We didn’t get hitched for years, then ….’
‘Where does the time go?’
‘Yes. Where?’
‘I’m glad we’ve met again.’
Richard shook his heavy head. ‘I just can’t believe what’s happened.’
‘No.’
Richard shut his eyes tightly, but they soon opened of their own accord. She was waiting for some improvement, and was now rewarded. Her bare response was so reasonable in tone, so deep and so measured, it made him plunge his hands between his legs. His lips parted, but whatever he was about to say didn’t come out.
There was just the faintest flicker in her eyes. She snapped down the indicator and pulled out from behind a laden car transporter. He wanted to ask what it was she painted, but his question was choked in a cloud of diesel fumes.
4
His clothes were drying. They had him stuck to the seat. The wet had penetrated his bones. He tried not to shiver. He looked for distraction. Any distraction. They had come to a stretch of granite wall with a heavy overhang of dark green vegetation. There was a dense plumes of tiny leaves, which Richard thought might soon bear chocolate-scented yellow flower clusters. He tried to think of the name for it. Virginia slowed and flicked down the indicator wand, though there was no other traffic in sight. Under the circumstances this normal and deliberate act seemed excessive.
A the end of the wall Virginia turned sharply off the country lane and up a narrow gravel drive that snaked in a verdant channel. Richard struggled to remember the name of the bush with the chocolate-scented flowers. It was terribly important. He needed to retrieve the name of this species – not as a distraction, but to demonstrate that all was right in his head. But the name wouldn’t come.
At the top of the drive Virginia swung the station wagon into a double garage that was empty save for some tea chests and a pile of packing blankets. When they got out Virgina didn’t look for damage to the car. Nor did she shut the garage door behind her. She just pulled a handbag from under the driver’s seat, slung it over one shoulder and marched to the hall door. Richard’s progress was altogether more hesitant. He stumbled out of the station wagon and lingered a moment, grateful for the stream of fresh, damp air he took into his lungs. He listened for sounds of the city, but there were none. There was just a breeze that ebbed and surged in the leaves above his head.
The house was nothing like what he had expected. It had a long, narrow leafy drive that wound its way in a deep track through a steep meadow. There were trees in the grassy banks on both sides, which made it impossible for two cars to pass each other. Richard had expected that she would take him to a nice three-bed suburban house in somewhere like Goatstown, but this was something altogether more impressive. A six-light dormer window between two tall chimneystacks, large bay windows fronting reception and bedrooms alike under red-brick gables, small terracotta roof tiles that kicked out at a more shallow pitch for the last six ranks. A thick twist of creeper that was the wrong side of overgrown partially concealed a bright yellow door set in a shallow hall porch. Virginia waited for him with the key stuck in the door. When she turned the key and pushed, she let out a wedge of stale air that was laced with jasmine.
‘Come in,’ she said in a way that made Richard want to reach out and put his hands on her hips. She stopped in the doorway and turned to signal that this was truly the moment of decision. ‘You are coming?’ she asked with a sudden and piercing glare. She wasn’t going to wait long for an answer. Should he cartwheel through the architrave? Or should he turn and resume his run?
He reached for his heart spray. Searched one pocket, then another.
‘What now?’ she demanded, diverting her stare.
‘Nothing. I’ve forgotten something, that’s all.’
‘You’ve lost something? Dropped something?’
‘No. I’ll explain,’ he said, pushing on through into the hall. He put his hand on his heart without realising what he was doing. She followed quickly, and swung the door shut and put her back against it. His impulse to reach out came again, but she beat him to it. She sprang off the door and threw herself against him.
‘I’m so tired,’ she said. ‘Aren’t you?’ she asked, injecting a quick note of suspicion.
He couldn’t help shivering. It was the damp in his bones. She must see that. His feet weren’t about to surrender, but the rest of him was properly damned. If she had not already been pressed against him he would have fallen on her, whichever way his feet were pointing. S
he was an intent listener with soft, steady eyes. Her kind made things happen.
‘Sit down,’ she said.
He sat so quickly he nearly made her tumble. She poured two whiskeys without asking. Ice, but no mixer. In a few short moves they would be in bed together. It was the thing to do. Forceful coupling had its own cockeyed logic. Perhaps then, they might be in a better state to address what had just happened; what she … no, what they had done.
When he thought they had finished in her bed he felt wholly complicit. That, too, had its own logic.
‘Aren’t you going home?’ she asked.
‘No,’ he replied. She found the steadiness in his voice deeply reassuring. There was a lot she had been about to launch into that she now let slip away.
‘Not yet?’ she added.
‘Not yet,’ he confirmed. ‘We need to talk.’
Well, no they didn’t. There was no talk of the accident, their behaviour in the immediate aftermath, their driving away in the night. What Virginia did say when she took both his hands and squeezed them tightly was: ‘We can only help ourselves in this.’
It turned out these words weren’t needed, either.
Richard went for a shower. Spent some time looking out through the bathroom window at the bright, early morning sky. He and Gloria didn’t have a window in their bathroom. This was the perfect little window if you wanted to let your mind drift. There were columns of cloud on the horizon. Pink, creamy yellow, powder purple.
Later, standing at Virginia’s tall kitchen window, the lighted cigarette she had given him fell to the tiles from between his fingers. ‘Look at that,’ he said, ‘I’m perfectly relaxed.’ And so he was. He bent down, picked the cigarette up, put it between his lips without drawing on it. He hadn’t smoked a cigarette for twenty years. He had long harboured a desire to impersonate others, but any shivery stab at this showed Richard he had neither the nerve nor the skill. It was bizarre to be thinking about the business of impersonation in these circumstances.
Quiet City Page 2
