England and Other Stories (7 page)

And one day, one bad day, he did, nearly, destroy it. It was a long time later, but the letter was still there, still as it was on that wet night in May, still in the envelope with the single word ‘Lisa’ on it, but now like a piece of history.

And his will, now, would certainly need altering. But not yet. Not yet. He thought of destroying the letter. It had suddenly and almost accusingly come into his mind—that letter! But the thought of destroying a love letter seemed almost as melodramatic and sentimental as writing one.

How did you destroy a love letter? The only way was to burn it. The smell of Welsh rarebit reinvaded his nostrils. You found some ceremonial-looking dish and set light to the letter and watched it burn. Though the
real
way to burn a love letter was to fling it into a blazing fire and for good measure thrust a poker through it. And to do this you should really be sitting at a hearthside, rain at the window, in a long finely quilted silk dressing gown . . .

Then his chest filled and his eyes melted just as they’d done when he first penned the letter.

The truth is they separated. Then they needed lawyers, in duplicate, to decide on the settlement and on how the two children would be provided for. And, in due course, to draw up new wills. He didn’t destroy the letter, and he didn’t send it on finally to its intended recipient, as some last-ditch attempt to resolve matters and bring back the past, or even as some desperate act of guilt-inducement, of warped revenge. This would have betrayed its original impulse, and how hopeless anyway either gesture would have been. She might have thought it was all a fabrication, that he hadn’t really written the letter on the 10th of May all those years ago—if so, why the hell hadn’t he delivered it?—that he’d concocted it only yesterday. It was another, rather glaring, example of his general instability.

He didn’t destroy it, he kept it. But not in the way he’d waveringly and wonderingly kept it for so many years. He kept it now only for himself. Who else was going to look at it?

Occasionally, he took it out and read it. He knew the words, of course, by heart, but it was important now and then, even on every 10th of May, to see them sitting on the paper. And when he looked at them it was like looking at his own face in the mirror, but not at a face that would obligingly and comfortingly replicate whatever he might do—wrinkle his nose, bare his teeth. It was a face that had found the separate power to smirk back at him when he wasn’t smirking himself, and to have an expression in its eyes, which his own eyes could never have mustered, that said, ‘You fool, you poor sad fool.’

S
EAN AND
A
NDY
found themselves standing to one side of the steps up to the church, on the edge of the broad sweep of driveway. Now it seemed all right to do so, Sean took a pack of cigarettes from his jacket, took one out, then offered the pack in his usual abrupt way to Andy. They’d been together at Holmgate School just six years ago, then together at Wainwright’s till it closed.

The hearse and a couple of following limousines had driven off, leaving the lingering, spreading spillage of a surprisingly large congregation—a ‘good turnout’, as their former headmaster, Clive Davenport, had been apt to say about various other occasions. He was now in the hearse on his way to be cremated.

‘She looks a right little whore,’ Andy said.

Sean said nothing. Then he said, breathing out smoke, ‘How many whores have you seen lately?’

They were referring to Karen Shield, who’d been at Holmgate with them, in the same year. Neither had seen her for some time, but she was recognisable and certainly noticeable.

It was a grey mild blustery afternoon in April and it had rained recently. There’d been a general standing solemnly and silently as the hearse departed, then one or two people had waved. Someone had called out, ‘Bye, Daffy!’ and the atmosphere had broken. The new atmosphere was almost like gaiety. Everyone was freshly aware of being alive in the world and not dead in it and that they’d been involved in something dutiful but oddly animating. There were now many more waves, of recognition, much milling, hand-shaking, smiling and embracing and a good deal of sudden laughter. No one seemed to want to leave immediately.

As if to share the mood, the sun broke through a gap in the clouds and made the surface of the driveway gleam. To one side of the church, the big cedar, stirred by the breeze and with a sudden sparkle, shrugged off its burden of drops.

The news about Clive Davenport—felled by a heart attack only three years after retiring—had circulated quickly, along with tributes to the fact that he’d been head of Holmgate almost since it had opened. This accounted for the impressive gathering, which in turn had reassured many members of it who’d been uncertain about coming in the first place. Several generations of former staff and pupils were involved. Some present had few fond memories of Holmgate and had even once wished old Daffy dead, but the passage of time and the needs of the occasion had instilled an infectious makeshift nostalgia. Perhaps Daffy hadn’t been such a bad headmaster. Perhaps life itself at Holmgate hadn’t been so bad. Life after Holmgate hadn’t always been so great.

Many had turned up simply to see who else would be there and how they were looking now. It was a way of satisfying that curiosity without having to sign up to any grim ‘reunion’. But undoubtedly another motive for attending was having nothing better to do on a Thursday afternoon. It was unemployment.

St Luke’s, a big stone barn of a place, stood on a hillside, within a railed enclosure large enough to feel like a small public park. Below, a good portion of the town was visible, its rooftops wetly glinting. You could even make out, appropriately enough, the playing fields at Holmgate.

‘Has she seen us?’ Andy said. ‘Has she recognised us?’

‘Doesn’t look like it,’ Sean said. ‘Not yet.’

Though in fact, inside the church, when he’d craned his head round, Sean had received a definite look of recognition, though it hadn’t come from the woman (woman was now the word) Andy was speaking of. For a fraction of a second he’d wondered
who
it had come from.

‘Well, shall we say hello?’ Andy said, taking a drag. He had the stance he’d many times adopted, pint glass in hand, in bars on Friday nights. When Andy said ‘right little whore’ he didn’t necessarily mean it as a term of abuse or of rejection.

‘If you want,’ Sean said, but made no move.

Andy had the bravado, Sean had the actual command, it was how it had always been. But—despite the description just given her—their record with Karen Shield at Holmgate was much the same. Neither had got very far.

Andy said, ‘Christ, is
that
her mother? Talking of whores.’

Sean said softly, ‘Andy!’ It was almost, strangely, a rebuke, as if he might have added, ‘You’re in church.’ Except they weren’t any more. And he could see Andy’s point.

They were both dressed in cheap suits—their ‘interview suits’. Many around them were similarly dressed, but there were also definite outbreaks, especially among the women, of something showy, even provocative. It was as if many of the former pupils of Mr Davenport, in wishing to pay their respects, wanted also to demonstrate that they weren’t at school any more, they hadn’t turned into obedient little adults. Or else they wanted to prove to their peers, not seen for years, that they were still alive and kicking, they hadn’t turned drab and sad.

Misery and grief had anyway driven off in the two family cars behind the hearse.

The group of four, less than thirty yards away, that Sean and Andy were eyeing consisted of Karen, her mother (it was her mother), her father and some chattering friend, of the parents’ age, who’d intercepted them and was preventing them looking round, back towards the church. Sean was rather glad of this.

Karen wore nothing that wasn’t in theory appropriate—it couldn’t be faulted on its colour—but what she was actually got up in was a pair of black ankle boots, dark tights, with a seam up the back, a tight shiny-black waist-length jacket, a black nonsense of a hat with some black gauze attached to it, and a short flouncy charcoal skirt with which the wind was now playing mischievously.

The extraordinary thing was that the mother was wearing an outfit that was almost identical—the boots, the seamed tights, the short skirt and flimsy headpiece. Her top was a little different, but if anything more tarty.

It was hard not to conclude that they’d conspired over it, even gone shopping together. If not, who had started the competition, who had copied whom? There might have been something fetching about it, if it had worked. But the big difference between them was that while the daughter got away with it—it was fancy dress, but she had the looks anyway—the mother, the other side of forty, was a sight. The daughter’s hair was dark and glossy, the wind toying pleasingly with it too. The mother’s hair was a brownish frizz, the face rounded, puffy and fairly smothered in make-up.

Strangely, neither woman at this moment seemed aware of the effect. They were both laughing at something the fourth person was saying. They now and then with exactly the same action curled their knuckles cutely round the hems of their skirts. They might have been two happy perky twin sisters.

The father was something else altogether. Beside the two women, he was an unredeemed scruff. No tie, not even a white shirt. His excuse might have been a blunt, ‘I don’t dress up for funerals.’ Or, on this occasion, ‘He wasn’t
my
headmaster.’ But his face, never mind the clothes, was a mess. It was podgy and red, the sun struck it harshly.

But he too was now laughing, as if experiencing some rush of joy or of cocky pride in his womenfolk. It was the face—both Sean and Andy could spot this even at a distance—of a man who’d been drunk when he arrived and who did his best to be drunk as often as he could.

‘She looks a right old baggage,’ Andy said.

Sean didn’t answer this at first. Then he chose to agree. ‘You can say that again.’

‘And is that her dad?’

‘I suppose so.’

‘He looks shit-faced.’

In any case the main attraction was Karen. Sean looked at her without voicing any opinion. Tart’s clothes or not, the only right word was lovely. She’d been lovely at Holmgate too, in the last couple of years, though ‘lovely’ wasn’t in the vocabulary then. It wasn’t in the vocabulary now, not with Andy Sykes around, but it was the right word.

And he was wishing Karen had worn something plainer—to curb her mum. He was also wishing that fourth person would stay there with them, so he and Andy (though Andy was clearly getting other ideas) could just slip away. They’d decided to turn up, for whatever mad reason. For a laugh? To do their duty by Daffy? What had he done for them? They’d come anyway, and now they could just clear off.

He’d tried it on, of course, with Karen at Holmgate. He wasn’t the only one. How many had succeeded? Depending, of course, on what was meant by success. But he wasn’t the only one to try. It seemed an age ago now, being fifteen or sixteen. It hadn’t helped that he hadn’t lost it yet, or not in the true sense, the big V. He didn’t know if
she
had, for all the tease. The more she teased, in fact, the more he thought she hadn’t. Then he’d think what would be better, for his chances? If she had, but he hadn’t? If he had (theoretically), but she hadn’t? If they both had? If they both hadn’t?

He remembered it now, standing outside St Luke’s, all those possibilities running through his head. Had old Daffy been aware of it all—all going on like a sizzling pan under his nose?

One day he’d gone to Karen Shield’s house in Derwent Road, carrying the school bag she’d left on the bus. It wasn’t until he’d got up to get off himself, two stops later, that he’d noticed the bag lying on the seat up ahead. Otherwise, when she’d brushed past him (and she liked to brush) with Cheryl Hudson and Amina Khan he’d have grabbed her wrist and when she tugged back, said, ‘You’ve forgotten something.’

But there it was, and he knew it was hers because it was a plastic imitation leopard-skin. How could anyone forget such a bag?

He never would.

So he’d got off at Thorpe Avenue, his stop, carrying two bags. Then everything had happened. It was all a gift. It was a gift that she’d left her bag. It was a gift that he’d been sitting on his own on the bus and not sitting with handy-Andy here. He hadn’t known, yet, what kind of gift.

He could still see himself walking down Thorpe Avenue, coming to a decision, with two bags, one a somewhat embarrassing pretend leopard-skin. He could still see the October sun coming out from behind the clouds and smiling at him.

The proper thing would have been to phone Karen up and say, ‘I’ve got your bag. I can bring it round if you like.’ It would have earned him points and might have led to something. But it was just a bit too goody-goody and he didn’t have her number. Though that might be in the bag. As might her
phone
!

Or: he might have taken the bag with him to school the next morning and said coolly, ‘Here’s your bag.’ And then perhaps said, ‘I had a good look inside.’ He decided that this option had less going for it.

Though he did look inside, right there in Thorpe Avenue. Or rather he opened the flap and saw a label underneath saying ‘Karen Shield, Holmgate School’. Then her home address. Well he’d known it was Derwent Road, on the Braithwaite Estate, and now he knew the number. But something about the label made him not delve any further. An odd primness came over him. It was like the label for some little girl much younger than and quite different from Karen Shield, and he didn’t want to know about her.

His feet made the decision for him anyway. He turned and walked in the direction of the Braithwaite Estate. Two stops on the bus, but not so far on foot if you cut through the back streets.

Points from Karen, he calculated, and points from her mother, if she was there. If Karen’s mother was there, then Karen couldn’t be anything but nice and grateful to him, her mother would ensure it. But perhaps he was only thinking of Karen’s mother being there to control his excitement about the possibility he really hoped for, of Karen being there all by herself, worrying about the bag she must have stupidly left on the bus.