Be Near Me (27 page)

My mobile rang in the bedroom. Her voice sounded nervous and her words were rather obscure, stranded for a moment or two in a haze of uncertain obligation. 'I've missed our times,' she said.

'Me too, Mrs Poole.'

I knew Mrs Poole must have spoken to the police. I knew she was the only real witness, but I myself was the greater witness, or so I thought, and it never occurred to me to blame her. On the phone, it was quickly a matter of resumed affection, Mrs Poole speaking as if our difficulty had not only faded out but had, like limbo, passed into the history of redundant moods. 'I couldn't get over it, about the house,' she said. 'Your beautiful things. They have no respect in this town and what a scunner to do a thing like that to the rectory.' Mrs Poole had never seemed more Scottish than she was just then, her good common sense measured against the infinite smallness of others. Her instinct to improve and overcome—even on the phone—came quickly to brighten the harbour flat and hoist my degraded spirits. 'Now,' she said, 'I won't have any more nonsense. Give me your address. I'll come with lunch.'

She turned up the next day in the grip of her old efficiency, shopping bags dangling at the end of each arm, her thin body balancing the scales of justice. She put down the bags and looked around the sitting room in a familiar way. 'This place isn't for you, Father.'

'Very spartan, isn't it?'

'Not for you at all. Is this what they call executive flats?'

'I think so,' I said.

She took out a cucumber, some butter, and walked briskly to the kitchen and brought down a pan. Her motions caused me to think she didn't want to be scrutinised. She spoke as she worked, but her eyes were turned down and there was something self-conscious, something vulnerable, even in her decisiveness. Our eyes met as she lifted two packets from one of the bags and held them up. 'Salmon steaks,' she said. 'Organic.'

'Still saving the planet?' I said.

'I think it's past saving,' she said, scrunching cellophane into the bin and wiping the bin with a cloth.

'Your hair is different,' I said.

She bit her cheek. 'It's a wig.'

She bowed for a moment, making it funny, then showed me the label on a bottle of wine. It was a dry Anjou.

'I'm sorry,' I said.

'Oh, never mind. It's okay. Let's have a glass.' She found the corkscrew and plopped a bag of small potatoes into water,
before coming back. 'I'll wait to do the salmon,' she said. 'Salmon is very quick.'

'How delicious.'

She tilted her glass in my direction.

'Saumon poêlé au vin blanc de la Loire,'
she said, haltingly.

I asked her how the treatment was going. She touched her stomach and lowered her glass. 'I'm having chemotherapy,' she said. 'I had an operation, but it won't work. I've always known that.'

I swallowed my words with a mouthful of wine, and she seemed quite pleased with that, her mood of acceptance being undisturbed by the grief and the panic of other people.

'My mother told me you were fighting it.'

'I'm trying,' she said. 'But that's just a thing you do. It won't work. Your mother's been very good to me.'

Over lunch, Mrs Poole told me she had visited the rectory after the fire. 'I thought I might be able to save some of the rose bushes,' she said, 'but they were wasted. I always knew those people were vandals, but to hurt innocent plants is just beyond the beyonds.'

'That happened before the fire,' I said.

She told me the Bishop had been down to address the parishioners. He said an investigation was under way. He said it was a criminal matter and that I was suspended until the matter was concluded. 'But he gave the impression you wouldn't be coming back,' she said. Apparently, Bishop Gerard reminded the people of their faith and advised the young ones to take confession. 'It went down like a lead balloon,' said Mrs Poole. 'That boy's father stood up in the middle of the church and shouted that the children had nothing to confess.'

I barely said anything as she spoke. Some of it was hard to listen to, but of course I was curious. Anyhow, I was glad to find the salmon was fresh. The main thing I noticed was the change in Mrs Poole's attitude. She spoke kindly, but I felt the kindness she expressed was a new and vital thing for her. In some way my reduction had redressed the balance in our relationship. She was the wiser one now; she was the more powerful. Like a spurned lover in a Russian story, she came back from the Grand Tour wearing silver buttons and with knowledge in her eyes. So I accepted my own part in that story without complaint: the fallen idol, no longer spurning but subtly spurned. 'I have to tell you something,' she said. 'I gave a statement to the police and I worry that it won't help you.'

'It's not your job to help me in that way,' I said. 'You're helping me now and that's all that matters.'

'They want me to appear at the trial.'

'You must do what is right,' I said.

'I suppose it's wrong being here. But I wanted to come.'

'No one will ever know.'

She nodded. She was free to act now like one of those people much busier than oneself. She spoke of her environmental pursuits and her struggle to find time for this and that, giving a sense of people chasing her and expecting more than is humanly possible. It was pleasant, though, our old phrases and teases coming back, over the hour, to energise her voice. 'One of my nurses is studying art at the Open University,' she said. 'I told her Matisse had no manners. Forget the red wallpaper. He was one of them who behaved as if he had no talent. Totally horrible to all the women in his life.'

'They probably deserved it.'

'Listen to you,' she said. 'Foreign dictator.'

'Part-time now,' I said.

I noticed she hadn't eaten much, but the wine was gold in the glasses. I looked out and saw a man coughing as he walked past the window. Mrs Poole was putting on her coat as seagulls scattered behind the man and soared over the harbour.

'That looked like Mr Poole,' I said.

'That's right,' she said. 'He's been sitting out in the car.'

'All this time?'

She just looked at me and pursed her lips. The answer was lost in some acreage of pain that Mrs Poole traversed alone. 'He probably went to the pub at the end of the street,' she said. I lifted the plates through to the kitchen and she followed me, tying a scarf round her head. She kissed my cheek next to the microwave oven. 'Good luck,' she said. I noticed a faint metallic smell. 'Tell you what. I'll bring you some CDs the next time I come. I have lots of music now.'

'Thank you,' I said. 'That would be kind.'

She paused next to the entryphone, lifting it off to wipe with the tails of her headscarf. There was evidence on Mrs Poole's face of the old quick-change artist. 'I've been thinking about it,' she said, 'and I think you probably are quite English.'

'Really?'

'Just like that,' she said. 'The way you can say "really?". It's English not to say things, to go on like you don't know things.'

'So, I'm English now. Was that the summit of my crimes?'

'No,' said Mrs Poole. 'It's not a crime not to know yourself. It's not a crime to send life away. It's just a shame.'

'Good Lord. A man in hiding from himself.'

'That's right,' she said. 'And very English to know how to put a name to a problem but not care how to solve it.'

'Mrs Poole, I believe in God.'

'That's right.'

(I recalled Geoffrey Nashe:
It's not the existence of God we're bothered about but the existence of you who say you believe in him.
)

She clutched her handbag close to her chest and smiled. 'I wish I could do more for you,' she said.

'You've done such a lot already.'

'All right,' she said. 'I'll be seeing you.' She went along the hall, the echo of her voice then lost in a rush of cold air.

The sands of Ayr were blue after midnight. The sea was silent and black. It seemed that the morning might never come, but the light on Ailsa Craig shone methodically over the sea, like a beckoning star that winked in defiance of dangers. The night seemed watchful of itself in those weeks before the trial. I walked along the esplanade each night, killing an hour or two, thinking of journeys made.

One Saturday night, I stopped to examine a plaque mounted on the sea railings. 'At Ayr the Scots Parliament met in 1315 after the victory at Bannockburn,' it said, 'to confirm Bruce and his family in possession of the Crown of Scotland.' The plaque was rusted with sea spray and scraps of chewing gum were lodged between its iron words. I would meet a great number of dogs on those nights along the
esplanade. Some of them walked far in front of their owners, sniffing about the bases of the litter bins along the coastal path. 'Aye, aye,' said the owners, passing by with that likeable vulnerability that comes with sleepiness.

That night I heard the sound of the disco. The rave music. It was booming down from the Pavilion, a huge nightclub that stands above the beach. I passed a group of young people who were dancing on the esplanade. One of the boys had two neon sticks in his hands and was making fast coloured patterns against the dark water behind him. He stopped dancing. He put his hand on the back of another boy who was bent over the rail, puking on the sand. 'Yer awright, wee boy,' he said. Then he shouted over his shoulder: 'Geez that water ower, Chubb.' I looked over to the grass verge and saw that friend of Mark's. He was sitting on a bench smoking a reefer and sifting through a pile of CDs.

'Look,' he said. 'It's thingmi—the priest.'

Passing between them I noticed they were all sweating. Those without shaved heads had wet hair despite the cold night.

Lisa emerged from a blue, peeling shelter. A certain panic was evident in her eyes and I slowed down to a stop. 'Father,' she said, 'don't tell my dad you saw me. I'm supposed to be doing a sleepover at Julie's. You won't tell, sure you won't?' She had no notion of how powerless I had become since our friendship began, and listening to her, examining her worried face, I saw the depth of my Ayrshire folly. Lisa hadn't a clue. It had come too late to me as a piece of understanding: young people like her have no time for the weighing of priorities. I was facing some sort of ruin and Lisa faced being
grounded and it all meant the same to her. Tears welled up in her eyes.

'I can't speak to you, Lisa,' I said.

'Whiddye mean?'

'I have to go. Please take care of yourself.'

We shared a bond of selfishness, perhaps of self-pity too. But Lisa was high on something, and she seized the moment to dramatise her needs. She wasn't a very tall girl but she stood in front of me and barred my way.

'I've been sticking up for you,' she said.

'I'm sure you have.'

'You're my friend,' she said. 'We had some right good laughs. That time we went over there tae the island.'

I tried to stare past her and see my way to the road.

'Julie!' she said. 'He's trying tae dizzy me. He willnae even talk. What have I ever done tae him?' She was shouting now and blubbing at the same time, as if the day's great occasion for hysteria had finally presented itself. I wanted to protect her but I didn't know how.

'Leave her alane,' said the other girl.

'I can't speak to either of you,' I said.

'Fucken homosexual,' said Julie.

Like a person in a soap opera, Lisa grabbed her friend's cigarette and took two quick puffs. 'I cannae handle this,' she said. I moved around them and began striding across the grass to get to the main road, and then Lisa came around and pushed me in the chest. 'You're jeest the same as everybody else,' she said. 'It was me that was yer friend. Nobody else gave a fuck about you.' She looked at her chum. 'Go and get McNuggets,' she said.

'Lisa. Please. Don't detain me here. I can't be seen talking to you. It's not my choice.'

'It is your choice! The good times we had before the summer. You said you'd take me tae London. The drives we went on. The wedding. The nights out with me and McNuggets. What about London? You said. Now everything's fucken spoiled because of you and him.'

'I didn't say that, Lisa, about London.'

'Just leave her alane!'

Lisa grabbed me by the arm. 'Whit is this new jack-shit attitude you're coming up with?' She plucked at her blouse and pointed her finger in my face. 'Know what this is?'

She nodded down at her blouse.

'Versace,' she said. It was painful to listen to her, more painful than I would have expected.

'I'm sorry, Lisa. About everything.'

'You're a fucken disappointment,' she said. 'And you know what? I'm finished with you.'

I saw her bright, tired eyes, the pupils engorged. I recalled how she had spoken that time on top of Ailsa Craig. How she wanted to be a make-up artist in films and own bundles of shoes. She let go of my arm and I wanted to say in that instant that I'd find another car and we'd drive to London and Oxford and maybe Rome, not stopping, not ending until we'd found all the things she wanted to possess.

'I'm sorry,' I said.

She gave me a steady look, a look, I think, that spoke of survival, the shrinking of dreams to fit the demands of everyday life.

'You will be sorry,' she said.

The squall of young people receded further behind me on the grass. I got to the road and walked into the pattern of streets that surround the Sandgate. I don't know how long I walked and how many useless thoughts disappeared into the shadows among the old kirks and causeways, but eventually I came to be standing in a lane next to an all-night kebab shop. The smell was of sweltering onions, and I slowly caught my breath, the dark of the lane beneficent. I tried to think of something clean, something fresh, and my mouth flooded with the taste of oranges, the ones, perhaps, that once glowed on the trees of Rome like orbs of infinite plenty. My heart beat quickly and I waited a while, fusing with the thought of these other places. Then I set off. Perhaps if I walked down the lane and across the kirkyard I'd emerge to see the closeness of the harbour lights.

I SUPPOSE OCTOBER
will always remind me of school. No matter where I find myself in the world, autumn tastes of Ampleforth, and I see the mists over the fields and the leaves turning on the hill. As soon as the blackberries are glossy among the thorns, I feel Yorkshire rising out of my memory with its tangle of unbroken hopes, those of a religious people still waiting for God and willing the world to be orderly. For all the years that have passed, I still welcome autumn with a dream of divine wealth for the coming year, and I begin to hear the monks cloaking the evening with the sound of their devotions.