Golden Hour (16 page)

“So what are your plans, Toby?” says Laura. “Though I don't know why I even ask. You'll tell me you don't believe in making plans.”

“I don't make plans,” says Toby. “But it's not a belief. I don't think I have any beliefs.”

“So you don't care about your future?”

“I don't think I know what the future is,” says Toby. “There's what's happening now. And there's all sorts of fears and hopes and anxieties about what's coming. But then it comes, and it's now again.”

“I don't know what that means,” says Laura. He can hear from her voice that she's irritated. “I've invited some people for dinner on Saturday, which I suppose is the future. So now I'm making plans for what to cook. If I don't do that, they won't eat.”

“That would be quite interesting, wouldn't it? The guests come and you all sit down at the table, but there's nothing to eat.”

Carrie utters a short laugh.

“It would be ridiculous,” says Laura, returning to her list.

The coffee pot begins to rattle on the hot plate. Carrie has assembled breakfast on a tray.

“Come on, Toby. You're annoying Mum.”

“Sorry. I don't mean to.”

They go out onto the terrace and sit at the table in the sunshine. Toby sits with his back to the sun and Carrie has to shade her eyes with one hand to look at him.

“Why do you say such odd things?” Carrie asks him.

“They don't seem odd to me,” he says.

The coffee is dark and bitter. With each sip he feels stronger, surer. The marmalade is homemade, also dark and bitter. One of the many minor glories of England that he has learned to value by being away. Raised railway platforms, radio music without commercials, tap water you can drink.

He takes out his tobacco and his Rizla papers and rolls himself a thin cigarette. A banging sound is coming from the far side of the orchard. A man is at work on the rabbit fence.

“So how do you decide what you're going to do next?” says Carrie.

“I don't decide,” he replies. “When next comes along, I do whatever there is to do.”

“But look.” She leans across the table, pushing the butter out of the direct sunlight into his shadow. “You won't stay here forever.”

“No.”

“So where will you go?”

He drinks his coffee and smokes his cigarette and gazes at her, smiling. The more he sees of her the more interesting she becomes to him. Too young, of course, but not weak. Nobody's fool.

“You look like your portrait,” he says.

She flushes with pleasure.

“The man who painted that was a great artist,” she says. “One day he's going to be famous.”

“That'll be nice for him.”

“He's dead.”

He says nothing to that. He puts down his cigarette and spreads butter and marmalade thickly on his toast.

“You're quite greedy,” she says. “And also lazy.”

He nods his agreement. He eats carefully, almost fastidiously, not wanting to get stickiness on his beard.

“Don't you care what anyone thinks of you?”

“No,” he says. Then almost at once, with a frown of annoyance, he corrects himself. “Yes, I care very much what people think of me. The people I respect, that is. As for the rest, they're of no significance. Their opinions are formed on the basis of values I don't share. Why should their approval matter to me?”

He's aware that he's spoken with more energy than usual, and that this pleases her.

“That's so right,” she says softly.

“But you care, don't you?”

“Too much,” she says.

“I shall most likely go to Eastbourne next,” he says. “Call on my dear mother, who hasn't had the pleasure of my company for far too long.”

“Why not?” asks Carrie.

Toby is surprised at himself, that he's brought up the subject of his mother. It seems he wants to talk about her.

“I've been traveling.”

“But you call her?”

“No. I've been trying to keep away. I'm training her.”

“Training her to do what?”

“To live a life that doesn't revolve around me.”

“What about your father? You said you'd never met him.”

“Did I? That's a lie, of course. You mustn't believe everything I say.”

He watches her processing this information, trying to decide whether or not to believe that he tells lies, or whether this is another lie.

“So you have got a father.”

“There is a rumor to that effect.”

She gazes at him intently, wanting so much to understand him, herself hiding nothing. She has no idea of the power of her vulnerability. Her clear gray eyes hold him and embrace him, making him the unconditional offer of herself.

Bang bang bang
goes the man working on the fence.

“I wonder what you think of us all,” she says.

“I think you're lovely people, living in a lovely house, in a lovely country.”

“No, you don't.”

“Actually I do.”

“But you don't want to be one of us.”

“I don't want to be one of anything.”

Carrie's mother comes out onto the terrace.

“I'm going into Lewes. Is there anything you want?”

“I need more driving,” says Carrie. “Dad promised me some time today.”

“He's in London all day. You can drive me into Lewes if you like.”

“No, it's okay.”

“Then do something for me, will you, darling? Take Terry a cup of tea.”

Laura nods toward the banging in the orchard. She goes back into the house.

“You're learning to drive?” says Toby.

“I can drive,” says Carrie. “I just have to pass the bloody test. Can you drive?”

“Of course.”

Before she can ask any more he says, “Let's take Terry a cup of tea. I want to see what he's doing.”

“Why?”

“It's work. I like work.”

“You're strange, Toby. I never know what you're going to say.”

She picks up the tray and they go back into the kitchen. Carrie puts the kettle on for Terry's tea. Toby looks at the
Guardian
lying open on the table. There's a story about space clouds, with a picture of a colored night sky.

“Noctilucent clouds,” he reads aloud. “Isn't that beautiful? We should get up in the middle of the night and look for them.”

“All right,” says Carrie. “What are they?”

“Luminous clouds sixty miles up in the mesosphere. Noctilucent. That's a beautiful word.”

“Why did you grow a beard?”

“Beards grow all by themselves,” he says.

“So why didn't you cut it off?”

“Like everyone does.”

“Okay. I know. You're different. I get it.”

“I'm not sure you do get it,” he says.

She mashes the tea bag in the mug.

“Do you want tea as well?”

“No. But I'll come with you.”

“To see the work that so fascinates you.”

He likes this trick she has of pushing his own words back at him. It's like that card game where you pass each other unwanted cards and later get them back again. She's a listener, a rememberer. He likes that.

They go into the orchard, down the path mowed through the long grass, to the little gate into the meadow. There on the meadow side Terry is at work, stripped to the waist, his eagle tattoo glistening with sweat.
Pain passes
, it says,
pride is forever
.

“Cup of tea,” says Carrie.

“Cheers,” says Terry, putting down his tools.

Toby studies the brackets Terry is screwing to the fence posts. They project upward and outward, into the meadow.

“For the rabbits,” says Terry. “Stop 'em climbing over.”

“Dad's having a war on rabbits,” says Carrie.

Toby looks round the meadow. The grass is long and yellow-brown, starved of rain. Over by the far hedge he sees rabbit holes. Then in a patch of nettles he spots a rabbit, sitting motionless, staring back at him.

“Will it work?” he says to Terry.

“Bloody better,” says Terry. “Unless they're fucking gymnasts.”

Rolls of netting and barbed wire lie on the ground, alongside wire-cutters and a long-levered tool that Toby has never seen before.

“What's that?”

“Stretcher,” says Terry. “Pulls the wire taut.”

As they make their way back again Carrie asks him, “Why are you interested in tools?”

“I've always liked tools,” says Toby. “They're made to do an exact job and they do it. I like that.”

“I bet you've never done any work with tools.”

“I cut up logs once, with an ax. For firewood.”

“Were you any good at it?”

“I got better.”

They're passing through the orchard. She sits down quite suddenly in the shade of an apple tree.

“Let's not go back to the house yet.”

So he sits down too, cross-legged like her. She starts pulling at blades of grass, breaking them off, throwing them away.

“I'm in a bit of a mess,” she says.

He says nothing. This is her show.

“Basically I don't see the point of my life. I know I should be grateful, wonderful home, wonderful parents and all that. I know I should just get off my bum and stop moaning and get a life and all that. But I can't seem to get motivated. Dad says to me, We can't do it for you. You have to find your own motivation. But I've looked. Where is it? I think mine's got lost.”

She mocking herself and hurting at the same time. She's making this appeal to him as if he's some kind of teacher. Also as a kindred soul.

“Mine's lost too,” he says.

“So how do you cope?”

She's stopped pulling at the grass. Her earnest gaze is fixed on him, her only hope. She gets more beautiful the more he looks at her.

“I don't cope,” he says. “I stopped coping way back.”

“Are you really not going to uni?”

“I can't,” he says. “I never took any A-levels.”

“Wow!” She's awestruck. “You got off the train.”

“I did.”

“So now what?”

“That's what I'm finding out.”

“Aren't you scared? I'd be terrified.”

“It was being on the train that scared me. Who wants to go where that train's going?”

She's nodding and nodding.

“You can't imagine,” she says. “Every word you say, it's what I think. But where do people like us end up? Don't we end up sad and poor and lonely?”

“We end up different,” says Toby.

He can see the hunger in her for all he has to give her. If he wants he can shape her soul. There's a powerful seduction in that, in being so yielding. He knows he should back off now, make more space between them. But the demon has other ideas. He holds out his hand, and at once she holds out hers to meet it. They press lightly, palm to palm, under the apple tree. Then their fingers interclasp.

Her eyes fixed on his. Her hand warm against his.

The offer of love is there, unprotected, without conditions, without limits. First love, timid but not yet wounded. The dappled sunlight falls through the leaves of the apple tree onto her solemn face. Yes, she's beautiful.

“Hello, Jack's sister Carrie,” he says.

This is what life is offering me. Why would I say no? This is my chance for today. Tomorrow is another universe.

“Hello, Jack's friend Toby,” she says.

“I don't believe it! You're kidding me!”

“If only,” says John Randall.

“No one in the department's been keeping back-up emails? Since when?”

Maggie is in shock. Her entire case against the Harvey's site agent rests on the exchange of emails in March 2009.

“It's up to you to keep your own emails, if they're likely to be needed.”

“But we keep getting those messages telling us the servers are full. We're supposed to delete any emails that are more than a year old.”

“So I expect that's what you did.” The planning director makes a wry face. “Being a good girl.”

“Jesus,” says Maggie.

She's on her way out for her lunch break. Now caught in the door from her little office to the open-plan floor of the greater department, she looks round in bewilderment, as if hoping to find a solution among the work stations.

“What am I supposed to do now? Murray's the one bringing the legal action.”

“You'll have to withdraw the accusation. I'm afraid you'll have to offer an apology.”

“Apologize to that smarmy crook? Not in a million years.”

“I'm sorry. What can I say?”

He's on her side, she knows. He shares her frustration. He'll give her time to come round. And even as she says “Never!” Maggie knows she will have to bow to the inevitable. Grovel to the inevitable. Eat the dirt that Murray kicks in her face. Life is made up of these little defeats. She feels like she has the job of protecting the white cliffs of England from the merciless power of the sea. She stands there, back to the roaring waves, arms outstretched, embracing the high bare chalk, and the water crashes over her, and the cliffs crumble under her hands. It's an ocean of money that roars at her back, money and contempt for the past and indifference to the future. One day the sea will break through the last of their gallant inadequate defenses and will erase all record of those who have lived before. Then Murray and his children and grandchildren will live in an interminable present, and will never even know what they have lost.

“I'm going out,” she says. “I may be some time.”

She climbs Watergate Lane, passing the deep scary gorge that takes the London railway line into the tunnel below Lewes; past the high wall of the gardens to Pelham House. She touches the wall as she goes, in habitual homage to its construction: parallel bands of brick set in napped flint, with here and there single bricks marooned in a sea of flint. The bands of brick converge as the lane rises, making the great wall on its skirted base seem to have grown naturally from the ground.