Untouchable Things (51 page)

Anna nods and a smile widens slowly across her cheeks. “I’m going home next week.”

“Home? To Ireland?”

The smile doesn’t fade but tears start to well. “Yes. God, sorry, I’m as bad as you two.”

“Oh, Anna, that’s wonderful.” Rebecca gets up and goes to hug her, fighting tears herself.

When she sits down José winks. “And what about the rest of your news, Anna?”

“There’s more?”

“Go on – tell her.”

But there’s a sudden tap on Rebecca’s shoulder. She turns into a smiling Charles, who wraps her up into a bear hug as she gets to her feet. They step back and look at each other while José grabs another chair.

“Charles! I had no idea you were coming.” She’s so pleased to see his lop-sided smile, eyes twinkling at the surprise he’s given her.

Anna pinches an empty glass from the table next to them. “Sorry, that’s my fault. I completely forgot you might stop by. Here, have some wine.”

He perches next to Rebecca. “I can’t stay. I’ve just nipped out of a job to grab a few bits of shopping.” He coughs and the corner of his mouth twitches. “Pickled gherkins and grapefruit, I think it is today.”

Rebecca laughs and grabs his hands. “Congratulations, they’ve told me. That’s incredible news. How’s Catherine?”

He colours a little but his chest puffs out like a pigeon. “She’s… wonderful. Doing really well. A bit tired of course, a bit of indigestion, but, well, blooming, I suppose.”

Rebecca resists catching Anna or José’s eye. It’s hard to take it in. She nods as if pregnancy is something she knows all about.

He sips at his glass. “It was a surprise, I won’t deny it, but… well, it feels like the best thing that has ever happened to me.” He chuckles into his beard. “Crikey, I sound like a delinquent teenage dad on Jerry Springer.”

Everyone laughs. “I can’t think of anyone less like that, Charles.”

“Well, let’s hope so. But how about you, Rebecca? You look wonderful. All glowing and… glamorous.” More laughter. “When’s your opening night?”

They talk pleasantries until Charles makes a sudden grimace at his watch. “Bugger! Told them I’d only be half an hour.” He stands and bends down to kiss both her cheeks. “You must come over to dinner this week. Catherine would love to see you.” He grabs his jacket and apologises left and right as he squeezes his way through the clutter of tables to the exit.

Rebecca whistles. “Blimey. Was that really Charles?”

Anna smiles. “Amazing, isn’t it? It’s like he’s finally stepped out of the shadows.”

“Out of Seth’s shadow.”

They consider this for a second. Then Rebecca remembers. “Hey, you were about to tell me some more news before Charles showed up.”

“Was I?” Anna makes a non-committal face.

José coughs. “I’ll tell her, if you don’t.”

Anna sighs. “You win. It’s nothing really. Okay, I’m seeing someone.”

It strikes Rebecca that she’s never heard Anna say she’s seeing someone. She watches her squirm in her seat like a bashful toddler.

“My God!” She looks at José who nods and grins. “This is too much to take in. Tell me all. Where did you meet? What’s he like?”

“Hey, don’t get all excited.” But Anna’s face betrays her. “It’s all quite boring really. We met at a work do. He’s the marketing director for Hackney council. He’s… he’s cool.”

Rebecca and José exchange meaningful expressions. “And what’s his name?” She sees José bury his face in a wineglass. Anna squirms again.

“Well, that’s one of the problems.”

“What, his name? I’m sure it can’t be that bad.”

“Don’t bet on it. It’s…” Anna takes a breath, “Grenville.”

“Grenville?” Rebecca sees José’s shoulders shaking and it starts as a little splutter, then a snort, and within three seconds they are all choking in waves of delirious laughter.

Scene 23

Michael hitches his rucksack back onto his shoulders and lengthens his stride. This is what he has missed. The give and squelch of earth beneath his faded brown walking boots as he tramps up the track. Bird song – sparrow and mistle thrush. The whir of a distant lawnmower. And, like a miracle, no traffic noise at all. He stops for a second to feel the rapid thumping of his heart and breathe the clear air until it fills him to the brim. The first day of spring, his father said at breakfast. It’s come late this year. Dew glinting on snowdrops at first light. Faint footfalls of the army of winter darkness retreating steadily, marching on empty stomachs and icy toes.

In the city all of this would pass him by, drowned in discord and diesel fumes. Here his senses are flexed to seize the waft of woody incense snaking down the valley, tiny leaves pitter-pattering like a child’s bare feet on polished floorboards, the cold, sweetening taste of air inside his mouth as he climbs. He knows what waits for him at the top, or he thinks he knows. It’s ten years since he has been here; things change, even in the places of childhood, even when the need to reference yourself demands they stay the same.

He hasn’t told his parents what happened, of course. All they know is that he’s taking a break from teaching and London. He’s let them think that his dad’s stroke has got something to do with it. His dad is surprised by this, maybe a little pleased. His mouth turns down now at the left-hand side and some of the anger seems to have dribbled out along with the milk from his morning breakfast cereal. His eyes are cloudy, lack conviction, rest on Michael more and more. Seeing him for the first time. Perhaps it’s not too late for them to learn to be father and son.

His mum flaps around him, alarmed by his lack of employment and structure, tutting when he comes back with muddy trousers and ruddy cheeks. She wants to know what’s going on but doesn’t know how to ask. There are no family templates for this sort of discourse. He knows he’s partly to blame, having made it clear from his teens that he would make his own decisions. He has never granted her a visa to enter his internal world and she has never requested one.

He pushes upwards, the last part of the track curling before him like a tabby’s tail. He resists the temptation to look backwards at the patchwork hills fanning open, wanting to preserve the surprise until the last possible moment. As he reaches a grassy plateau he sees it’s just as it was; two sets of swings, still flaking and wonky, with a pock-marked red slide like a witch’s nose in between. Only now, stepping out onto the grass, does he let himself turn and behold. It stops his breath. A magical storybook of miniature trees, roads and rooftops is spread out below him. Ancient creviced hills stoop over it, skirts adorned with a giant jigsaw of rush-green fields, faces still streaked with morning mist. This is no false grandiloquence of childhood memory. More than ever it deserves its name, the name he gave it nearly a quarter of a century ago.
The playground on the edge of the world.

He wishes he could broaden his eyes, pan back like a movie camera, but instead they have shrunk, squinting in awe, reminding him of how tiny he is. How is it possible that this enchanted lookout has remained unspoilt? He inhales pine and feels the answer prickle deep in the pit of his stomach. Fingers interlock in front of him and he allows his eyes to close.

At first there are no words, just presence, his presence in this moment. No reflecting or regretting. It’s a technique they showed him, a way to switch off the jet of his mind, or at least turn it down. He presses his fingers together and breathes all the way from his toes to his scalp. Once he would have mocked such an image, made sarcastic observations about the function of lungs. But it’s a different sort of breathing, and this air is purified energy streaming in to fill every molecule of his being.

There’s another presence now, expansive and orange, buffeting him in buoyant waves that take his weight and lift him off his feet. His body is surrendering but his mind holds on. Always holding on. One day he will let go completely and allow the waves to sweep him away, body and soul. He breathes up from the soil again, leans back into the waves, but the tug of his mind still resists like the rope anchoring a hot air balloon. It’s okay, this is good, this is enough for now.

His lips twitch into murmured words once alien, now familiar:
Thank you, help me, Lord.
At this his mind, straining in the wings, bursts back onto centre stage.
Thank you for helping me make this decision, for showing me a new path.
And, more burningly,
Thank you for saving me.

You could call it a coincidence, of course. A year ago he would certainly have named it such. A neighbour who’d locked himself out came banging at the door, wanting to use the phone. The neighbour’s knocking swelled and dipped like waves of sound, each one trickling a bit closer to him until something in him woke up in air too viscous to breathe. Realisation dawning on him. A groping hand found the phone and they traced the 999 call when his voice wouldn’t work. He was pumped full of salt water and shame.

It’s the shame he needs to excise now. In his head he knows he is forgiven. But he can’t always feel it. The Devil pops up at every unguarded moment, springing from the ground or hanging from the rafters like a bat, leering and laughing, cajoling and carousing, until at times he covers his ears and tries to shout over it. Meditation is a better defence but harder for someone so primed for conflict. He has a lot to learn.

He thinks of the others, Catherine, Charles, Rebecca, José, Anna, and regrets his harshness. The heat is gone, the fire left unstoked to fade into gentle warmth, an occasional flicker and glow. But the other one, the missing one, is too closely bound up with the leering sprite, the sprite who still holds out his hand from time to time to draw him back. There is too much fear for forgiveness yet.

He tries to focus on his breathing. Deep peace is ultimately what he’s after but he’s sure God will also smile on this hopping excitement as his mind veers off again. He has a new purpose, one that is born out of the crisis he survived. Teaching is not his vocation, or at least not teaching in schools.

“It’s all very well to trust in God but He’s not going to give you a monthly pay cheque, is He?” This was his mum over lunch yesterday. Well, maybe He will. It’s only two months since he found faith and yet conviction burns inside him that he is meant to share it, that the restless animal in his belly can at last be harnessed and put to use. He will spread the flame, ignite others with passion and purpose. Reveal to them the true meaning of passion; how much more it is than the modern definition of sex. He shudders slightly, drenched again with relief that he can leave this issue behind, dedicate himself to higher things.

And when the Devil had ended every temptation, he departed from him until an opportune time.

Smiling, he opens his eyes and sees the world almost as he left it. The haze over the valley is starting to thin; dense clumps of conifers have moved into sharper focus but the sandy, mottled moorlands above them are still in the clouds. A car potters by behind him, followed by quick, tripping footsteps. He turns to meet the curious gaze of two little girls who giggle like dormice and run off to the slide. Someone is clipping his hedge a few houses down and he hears distant sounds, a village starting to wake.

It’s time to make a move.

Scene 24

Rebecca exits the restaurant into a different London. At first she thinks it’s the light. There’s a late-afternoon haze floating over the city, blurring its edges into commas and question marks. The people passing her are meandering rather than striding, or maybe she’s slowing the whole thing down in her head, so their bodies bob like puppets.

The magic portal. Follow me, Alice.
Maybe Seth has disappeared into this alternative universe. If he even existed at all.

She smiles as she joins the pottering throngs, floating along where only hours before she was jarring and jolting. A couple of people smile back, confused at the warmth of greeting from a stranger, wondering if they know her. Despite the wine, she feels lucid for the first time in months, years, seeing the world pass in slow motion, its beauty revealed to her in a series of urban freeze-frames. Girl with a bandaged arm, a new tattoo. Three Japanese tourists on the way to Piccadilly Circus. Butch man carrying a tiny, trembling Yorkshire terrier. Lights of all hues guiding the weak and weary inside, offering food, drink, massage. She sees it all and embraces it.

Is she dead, an angel, in the world but not of it? She laughs. If this is dead, she’s never felt more at one with her body. She breathes into its solidness, holding her like a bear hug. The hungry ache she’s learned to live with is gone. She feels sated for the first time since Seth disappeared.

No, for the first time since she met him.

It’s a light-bulb moment that stops her in her tracks just off Oxford Street. She’s been associating the restlessness, the gnawing hunger, with his disappearance rather than his arrival into her life. How long was it before she was constantly craving more? Living for the next fix and never satisfied?

Because that’s what Seth did, made you want more. More from life, people, yourself. That line again:
Oh, I know there’s more. For people like us, people who know how to feel.
And she was flattered but she’d felt it too. It was as if he shone a light into the cracks and dark spaces within her until he’d unearthed a bellyful of gaping yearning. But sometimes she wasn’t sure if the hunger belonged to her or to him, if she was vibrating with his unrequited desires or her own. She had believed this was due to the special connection between them. But more likely this was the effect he had on all of them, the deep hole inside of him sucking them in.

They were never going to be enough to fill his emptiness. That’s why he would need to move on to more people, more experiences, more more more.

She starts to feel sombre. The streets have closed in again and everything has sped up,
normal service is resumed.
She’s not far from her old flat but scuttling back immediately would feel like a defeat. The wide avenues of Regent’s Park are only ten minutes away, benches where she can sit and make sense of it all without interruption. These are important revelations and she needs to hold onto them before they fly away.