Perfect (41 page)

All the time James has spoken, there has been no café. There has only been the two men, and a bewildering collision of past and present. Then there is a noise from the server, a whoosh from the coffee machine, and Jim glances up. Paula is staring straight at him. She turns to Mr Meade, murmurs something in his ear, and he too stops what he is doing and stares in the direction of the two old friends.

James, however, sees none of this. He is back to his zip. He realigns the pull with the metal teeth. He says, ‘There is something I need to say to you.’

And all the time that Jim is hearing James Lowe, he is also seeing Mr Meade. The manager pours two cups of coffee and sets them on a tray. James’s voice and Mr Meade’s actions blend to become part of the same scene, like a soundtrack to the wrong film.

‘This is so difficult,’ says James.

Mr Meade lifts the plastic tray. He is heading straight towards them. Jim must find a way of excusing himself. He must do it immediately. But Mr Meade is so close, the coffee cups make a nervous rattle against their china saucers.

‘Forgive me, Byron,’ says James.

Mr Meade stops at their table with his plastic tray. ‘Forgive me, Jim,’ says Mr Meade.

Jim has no idea what is happening. It is like another accident that seems to make no sense. Mr Meade sets the tray on the edge of the table. He addresses the hot beverages and also a plate of mince pies. ‘I have brought refreshment, courtesy of the management. Please, gentlemen, be seated. Sprinkles?’

‘I beg your pardon?’ says James Lowe.

‘On your cappuccinos?’

The gentlemen agree they would both like sprinkles. Mr Meade
produces a small dispenser and applies a liberal coating of powdered chocolate to each drink. He sets the table with knives and forks and clean napkins. He places the condiments in the middle. ‘Bon appétit,’ he says and ‘Enjoy,’ as well as ‘Gesundheit.’ Turning swiftly, he scampers towards the kitchen, only relaxing his pace when he is at a safe distance. ‘Darren?’ he calls out with sudden authority. ‘Hat.’

Jim and James Lowe stare a moment at the gift of coffee and pies as if they have never seen such richness. James pulls out a chair for Jim. Jim in turn passes James his coffee and a fresh paper napkin. He offers him the larger of the two pies. They sit.

For a moment the two childhood friends do nothing but eat and drink. James Lowe carves his mince pie into quarters and tidies each one into his mouth. Their jaws chew, their teeth bite, their tongues lick, as if to draw every shred of goodness from the sustenance provided. They are so insignificant, these middle-aged friends, one tall, the other small, one in an orange hat, the other in a waterproof jacket, and yet they each wait as if the other holds the answer to a question which for now lacks words. It is only once they have finished that James Lowe begins again. ‘I was saying,’ he murmurs. He folds his napkin in half and half again and then into a tiny square. ‘There is a summer I’ve never forgotten. We were boys.’

Jim tries to drink but his hands are shaking so hard he has to give up on the coffee.

James leans one hand on the table to steady himself and puts the other over his eyes, as if shielding himself from the present, and seeing nothing but the past.

‘Things happened. Things neither of us really understood. They were terrible things that changed everything.’ His face clouds and Jim knows that James is thinking of Diana because all at once he is thinking of her too. She is everything he can see. Her hair like a gold frill, her skin pale as water, her silhouette dancing on the surface of the pond.

‘Her loss—’ says James. And here his mouth freezes. There is a long moment of silence in which they both sit, saying nothing. James reassembles his face. ‘Her loss is still with me.’

‘Yes.’ Jim fumbles for his anti-bacterial spray but even as he picks it up he knows it is redundant and puts it down.

‘I tried to tell Margaret – about her. About your mother. But there are some things that can’t be said.’

Jim nods, or does he shake his head?

‘She was like—’ and again James falters. All at once, Jim can clearly see the boy, the intense stillness that was always James Lowe. It is so obvious he can’t understand how he initially missed it. ‘I was never a big reader. It is only really in my retirement I have discovered books. I like Blake. I hope you don’t mind my saying this but – your mother was like a poem.’

Jim nods. She was. A poem.

It is clearly too much for James to keep speaking of her. He clears his throat, he rubs his hands. Eventually he lifts his chin, just as Diana used to lift hers, and he says: ‘And what do you do, Byron, in your spare time? Do you read too?’

‘I plant.’

James smiles as if to say yes. Yes, of course you plant things. ‘Your mother’s son,’ he says. And then without explanation the smile slides into an expression of such grief, such sorrow, Jim wonders what has happened. James says with difficulty, ‘I don’t sleep. Not well. I owe you an apology, Byron. I’ve owed it to you for many years.’

James screws his eyes shut but tears shoot out anyway. He sits, with his fists clenched into balls on the tabletop. Jim would like to reach out across the laminated table and take his hand, but there is a plastic tray between them, not to mention over forty years. And such is the consternation in his heart, his head, he can’t remember how to lift his arms.

‘When I heard what had happened to you – when I heard about Besley
Hill – and your father’s loss – all those awful things that followed – I felt terrible. I tried to write. Many times. I wanted to visit. I couldn’t. My best friend and I did nothing.’

Jim looks round helplessly and finds Mr Meade, Darren and Paula all staring from the servery. Embarrassed, they try to become busy but there are no customers, there are only plates of cakes to rearrange, and they are not fooling anyone. Paula mimes a little series of words with her fingers. She has to do it twice because he doesn’t respond, he only stares. ‘Are you two OK?’ she mouths.

He nods once.

‘Byron, I’m sorry. I’ve spent my life regretting it. If only – My God, if only I’d never told you about those two seconds.’

Jim feels James’s words reach him. They slide beneath his orange uniform and touch his bones. Meanwhile James brushes down his jacket sleeves. He picks up his driving gloves and undoes the poppers and slips his fingers inside.

Jim says, ‘No.’ He says, ‘It wasn’t your fault.’ In a fumbling rush, he plunges his hand in his pocket. He pulls out his key. James Lowe watches in confusion as he struggles to unhook the keyring. Jim’s fingers are shaking so hard he wonders if he will ever do it. He catches his nail on the silver ring but at last it is free and lying in the palm of his hand.

James stares at the brass beetle. He doesn’t move. Jim stares too. It is as if both men are seeing it for the first time. The smooth folded wings. The small engraved markings of the thorax. The flattened head.

‘Take it. It’s yours,’ says Jim. He offers it again. He is both desperate to give and terrified of what it will mean when he goes to the van and does not have it. Everything will fall apart. He knows that and yet he also knows the keyring must be returned.

Understanding none of this, however, James Lowe nods. ‘Thank you,’ he says softly. He takes up the beetle and twists it between his fingers,
unable to believe what he has been given. ‘My goodness, my goodness,’ he says, smiling over and over, as if what Byron has returned to him is an intrinsic and long-lost part of himself. And then he says, ‘I have something of yours.’

Now it is James’s turn to tremble. He fumbles with his inside jacket pocket, his eyes on the ceiling, his mouth parted, as if waiting for his fingers to get it right. Eventually he produces a wallet. It is brushed leather. He opens it and from a line of pockets he pulls something out. ‘Here.’ He places a crumpled card in Jim’s palm. It is the Brooke Bond Montgolfier Balloon card. Number one in the series.

It is hard to say how the next things happen. One moment they sit opposite each other, staring at their returned possessions. The next, James stands and something seems to undo him even as his legs straighten. Before he can fall, Jim has leapt up and caught him. They stand a moment like this, two grown men, caught in each other’s arms. And finding one another again after all these years, they cannot let go. They hold on tight, knowing even as they do so that the moment they pull away, they will behave as if they have not.

‘It was good,’ says James Lowe into his ear. ‘To find you again. It was good.’

Jim, who is not Jim, who is Byron after all, murmurs yes. It was good.

‘Tout va bien,’ says James bravely. Or rather, his mouth makes the shapes of those words. The two men break apart.

When they say goodbye they shake hands. Unlike the first time, and unlike the embrace, this is both swift and formal. From the same wallet, James Lowe produces his old business card. He points to the telephone number and says the mobile details are still the same. ‘If you are ever in Cambridge, you must visit.’ In turn, Jim nods and says yes, he will, knowing all the while that he will never leave Cranham Moor, that he will always be here and his mother will be here too, and now he has found it again,
there can be no disconnecting from the past. James Lowe turns and creeps out of Jim’s life as unobtrusively as he has just entered it.

‘That looked intensive,’ observes Paula. ‘You all right?’ Darren suggests he might like a nip of something strong. In turn, Jim asks if they would excuse him a moment. He needs fresh air.

There is a tugging at his elbow and, looking down, he finds Mr Meade. Flushed like a raspberry, he suggests Jim might be more comfortable if, if – he can’t say it, he is so embarrassed – if he removed his orange hat.

C
HANGING HIS NAME
was not something Byron planned. The thought had never even occurred to him. He assumed that, once you had a name, that was who you were, you could not move from that. His new name was something that happened in the same way that Diana’s death was something that happened, or Besley Hill was something that happened, or the clouds’ movement over the moor was another. Each of these things came in the same moment they passed. There was no warning. It was only afterwards that he looked back and put words to what had occurred and thereby began to make order of something fluid; to find a specific context in which to fix it.

When his father failed to collect Byron from the police station, Andrea Lowe came instead. She explained that Seymour had telephoned her from London and asked for her help. Byron sat very still and heard the constable reply they had the poor kid in a cell because they didn’t know what else to do with him. He had travelled three hundred miles in his
pyjamas, school blazer and shoes. From the look of him, he hadn’t eaten for days. Byron tried to lie down and his feet reached the end of the mattress. The scratchy blanket would not cover him.

Andrea was saying there were family issues. Her voice was sharp and fast. He thought she sounded frightened. The mother was dead. The father was – how could she put it? – not coping. There were no other living relatives, apart from a sister, and she was at boarding school. The problem was, she said, that he was a problem. He was trouble.

He didn’t know why she would say that about him.

The constable pointed out they couldn’t keep the boy in a police cell just because he’d run away from school. He asked if Andrea could take him in for the night but she said she could not. She would not feel safe alone with a young man with a history like his.

‘But he’s sixteen. And there’s nothing wrong with him,’ repeated the constable. ‘He says he’s dangerous but you only have to take one look at him to see he wouldn’t hurt a fly. He’s in his pyjamas, for goodness’ sake.’ He actually raised his voice.

Andrea’s voice, however, remained low. Byron had to keep very still in order to hear, so still he was almost not himself. She spoke in a rush as if she didn’t want the words in her mouth. Had the police not heard? Byron had been sent away because he was trouble. These were facts, she said. He had stood and done nothing while his mother drowned. He even ate cake at her funeral. ‘Cake,’ she repeated. If that was not enough, there had been further trouble. The boy had been responsible for a head injury to his sister. The signs were there from the start. When he was ten, he had nearly killed her son on a pond. She had been forced to remove James from the school, she said.

Byron’s mouth yawned open in a silent scream. It was too much to hear these things. He had wanted to help his mother. He would never have hurt James. And when he put the ladder outside, he was trying to save his
sister. It was as if they were talking about another boy, one that was not him, but who also appeared to be himself. Maybe she was right? Maybe it was all his fault? The bridge and Lucy’s accident? Maybe he had wanted to hurt them all along, even though another part of him would never want that? Maybe he was two boys? One who did terrible things and another who needed to stop them? Byron began to shake. He got up, he kicked at the bed, at the bucket beneath. The tin bucket spun round and round, it was dizzying, and then it crashed against the wall. He picked it up. He threw it again at the wall and then it was too much to keep hitting the bucket at the wall because the bucket had dents in it now. It would fall apart. Instead he knocked the wall with his head to stop hearing, to stop feeling, to meet something solid, and it was like shouting at himself because he didn’t want to be rude and shout out loud. The wall was cold and hard against his head and it was a crazy thing to do and maybe that was why he couldn’t stop. He heard shouts at the door of the cell. Everything seemed to be going up a notch. To be happening in ways that did not add up.