Saving Nathaniel (32 page)

He went online and looked at other agents, checking out similar properties on the market. What he'd been told seemed fair. He made a call back to the agent and told them to go ahead, he wanted to sell…and as quickly as possible.

After Rebecca had gone home and the daylight began to fade, Nat went from room to room opening doors and putting on all the lights.

Standing in the hallway, the heart of the house where everything came together, he could see into all the rooms - the sitting room, the kitchen, the study and the dining room through to the conservatory. He followed the curve of the sweeping staircase to the landing above and he looked up at the large chandelier, hanging like a giant icicle from the hall ceiling.

As he looked around, he imagined what it would be like not living there any more. It wasn't as hard as he thought it might be. He didn't love the house any more. He had, when he had first moved in there with Joanna and their plans for the future, but not any more.

They had spent more than they could afford buying and furnishing their home, but now, if the truth be told, he could gladly walk away from it and throw the keys into the river. In that moment, he knew he had made the right decision to sell.

Seven years of his life he had spent here, seven long years, five of them on his own. He had company if he wanted it during most days, but the nights, with the exception of a few he would rather not think about, he had spent alone.

The prospect of facing the dark and empty loneliness of an empty bed in the wee small hours of the morning was too much to bear. He didn't want to spend the rest of his life by himself. He wanted to share whatever time he had left with the woman he loved.

But, would she want to spend hers with him? He had already declared his willingness to share his life and possessions with her, but she had not, in so many words, accepted. What if she decided he was going to be too much of a burden and she couldn't love him after all? She might cast him aside like an old sock. What would he do then? The answer to that was simple - he would rather die. But if he didn't ask, he would never know. Was her rejection a risk worth taking? He decided it was. He would ask her tomorrow, when he had done what he had to do.

He went round and turned off the lights, plunging the house back into dim quiet. He returned to the kitchen to see what Rebecca had left him for his evening meal. It looked like beef stew and vegetables and it smelled good. He ate it at the kitchen table in the quiet company of the radio, whilst studying the property pages of the county paper. With a pencil, he circled some properties that captured his interest.

Ensconcing himself in the study after his meal, he settled down in the chair. He stretched out, his feet up on the footstool, switched on the TV and sipped at his beer.

He rested the bottle on the arm of the chair. Condensation dripped from it and added yet another blemish to the soft brown leather.

He loved his chair. He loved its feel and its smell. He loved how it was almost worn bare in areas that matched where parts of him touched it. He loved where the arms had been rubbed pale and shiny by his elbows and the indentation in the back where his head had rested over the years. He loved the seat, pummelled into glorious softness by the innumerable times his backside had dropped onto it. It had lost most of its firmness, now moulding itself to him when he sat on it. Whatever had happened in his life, in that house, the chair had been there, reliable and faithful.

He recalled some of the things it had been witness to…his making love to Joanna; his crying his heart out at her loss; his sitting with the barrel of a loaded shotgun in his mouth and, unable to bring himself to pull the trigger and join his beloved, drinking himself into an alcoholic stupor that lasted for three days and nights. If only the chair could talk…

He tried to remember how long he had had it. Was it fifteen or twenty years now?

'You're going to die in that chair,' Megan had said to him.

She had come uninvited into the study, her blatant intrusion interrupting a period of sullen moping and its associated progress towards drunkenness. Unceremoniously she pushed his feet off the footstool and replaced them with a tray carrying a mug of hot tea, a plate of buttered toast, two boiled eggs and a glass of orange juice.

'Come in, why don't you,' he said, contemptuously.

'I will thank you.'

He eyed the tray. 'I don't want that. I'm not hungry.'

She puffed out a harsh, 'Pah!' before snatching the glass of spirit from his hand and replacing it with the juice.

'Give it back, Meg, if you know what's good for you.'

'Come and get it.' She put the glass out of his reach on the desk, picked up the tray and placed it over his lap. She stood back, her face set as tight as a spinster schoolmarm's, obviously expecting him to throw it at her. He wouldn't give her the satisfaction.

'I don't want it,' he reiterated.

'I don't care what you want,' she said, planting her hands firmly on her hips. 'You will eat,' She leaned forward menacingly. '…or do I have to feed you like a child?'

'Get out of my sight, ye interfering busybody.'

'I'm not going anywhere until I see you eating.'

A scowl formed on his brow, hooding his eyes. 'I said I'm not hungry. Are ye deaf now, woman?'

'I heard you plain enough.'

The scowl deepened and his mouth puckered in defiance.

'You can be just as stubborn as you like,' she said evenly, folding her arms. 'I can wait here all day…can you?'

He didn't stand a chance. He may have been in possession of a mule-like obstinacy, but she too had the intransigence of a bull elephant. She really would have stood over him all day. She didn't have to. The stand-off lasted only a couple of minutes before he weakened. He had failed the challenge. The tea was hot, the toast smelled delicious and the eggs were done just as he liked them, with soft runny yolks. Betraying him, his stomach rumbled. He gave in and picked up a piece of the toast, dipped it in the egg, coating it with sticky, yellow yolk and took a bite.

Her face softened as she smiled. 'There now, that's better isn't it?' She sat on the vacated footstool.

'Are you going to watch me?'

'To the last bite. Get on with it.'

He made rapid progress through the eggs and the toast. 'What did you mean, I'm going to die in this chair?' he said, wiping his mouth on the napkin.

'Do you want any more to eat?' she asked, avoiding the question.

'No thanks. What did you mean?'

She rearranged the items on the tray. 'You can't go on doing this, Nat.'

'Doing what? Eating eggs?'

She waved her hand over him and the chair. 'This...this sulking.'

'I'm not sulking, I'm thinking.'

'You have to be sober to think.' Her voice was edged with resigned sadness. 'Face it, Nat, you're languishing in this room, and it can't go on any longer. I've tolerated it, God knows I have, but even I've reached my limit. Thankfully, I'll be gone in a few weeks and won't have to see you doing this any more. If Rebecca had any sense she'd leave you too, and you'll be all on your own here. There'll be no-one to look after you because you'll have driven them all away with your miserable bad-temperedness and rudeness, then what are you going to do?'

'I can look after myself,' he said.

'Oh really?'

'I'm perfectly capable. I don't need…mollycoddling.'

'Is that what you think I'm doing? I'll tell you what's going to happen, Nat, you're going to sink down in that chair and just fade away. You'll not eat, you'll not wash, you'll grow yourself a long grey beard and slowly but surely, like a latter day Howard Hughes, you'll drink and starve yourself to death.'

'You're being melodramatic. That's not going to happen.'

'Have you looked at yourself lately? It's already started.'

He ran his hand over his face, the sharp, stubbly three-day growth pricked at the skin of his palms and he and felt a germ of fear begin to grow in him.

'You're killing yourself, Nat, and it's breaking my heart to watch you do it.'

Her words were like a dagger, stabbing him straight in the heart. He looked at her; at her face, in her eyes, and they reflected the depth of her anguish - she was earnestly afraid for him. The image he suddenly conjured up of himself - dressed in rags, soaked in incontinent urine, emaciated and drink sodden, suddenly filled him with terror.

His voice grew soft and tremulous. 'I don't want die alone. I don't want to be found rather than missed.' His eyes moistened with trepidation. 'Don't let that happen to me, Meg. Don't let me end up a shrivelled, stinking corpse, forgotten and alone, surrounded by empty bottles…I want to go in my own bed, at a grand old age, surrounded by my friends and family, not a drunken, lonely old man.'

She put her hand on his knee and applied a little reassuring pressure. 'You're not old,' she said, and gave him a comforting smile.

He placed his hand on top of hers. 'Don't let me die like that.'

'I've done everything I can already, sweetheart. Now, it's up to you. Think about it, before it's too late.' She took the tray, and his drink, away, and left him with his thoughts.

He presented himself for inspection in the kitchen a short while later, freshly washed and shaved with neatly combed hair. He was tidily dressed and smelled nice. 'How's that?'

She looked him over from head to foot, and all around before rewarding him with a wide approving smile. 'Very nice,' she said. 'Very nice indeed.' She hugged him tightly and her lips brushed his smooth, newly shaved cheek.

And as he sat in the chair recalling that particular battle of wills, a sudden realisation came to him - that kiss was it. A hug and a smile and a brief, almost imperceptible touch of her lips, and he had fallen in love with Just Megan.

It had been brewing for a long time, but that, he now knew, was the instant when it had all come together. It was the one shining moment he had been searching for - the how and the when.

She had threatened him with decrepitude and a lonely, miserable death if he didn't mend his ways, and then she had hugged him, kissed him and put her faith in him. Yes, that was definitely it. The recollection filled him with a warm glow of optimism and, smiling broadly, he toasted his future with the beer.

Very different dreams disturbed his sleep that night.

They didn't involve Joanna at all, instead he saw Megan. She was there with him in his bed, just as they had been in hers.

She had been watching him as he slept, her hand stroking through the hair on his chest. She leaned over and kissed him. He returned it and as he did, he felt her hand brush gently over his naked stomach. She draped her leg over his and brought herself closer and he could feel the heat of her groin against his. Her touch, her warmth and her smell were arousing him and his erection began to push against her.

'That tickles,' she said, through her kisses.

Then her hand was on it, stroking with fingertips that had the smoothness of a silk sheet. He felt his stomach tightening and the throbbing warmth creeping into his now fully attentive organ. She kissed his stomach and he gasped as a short wave of delight rippled through all his limbs. He wanted more. He wanted what she had given him before. He wanted her. He needed her…

Suddenly she wasn't there. He was wide awake and alone in his bed with his cock standing to attention and the memory of her touch on his goose-fleshed skin.

Lying back, he closed his eyes trying to bring her back to him. He masturbated until he climaxed, but it was not the same in an empty bed. The post-orgasmic waves pulsed through him and his firing nerves gradually calmed as he breathed.

He cleaned himself up with tissues from the box on the bedside table, before flopping back into bed. He lay still, staring vacantly at the ceiling, too many thoughts whirling around in his head for him to grasp any one of them and make sense of it.

He closed his eyes and allowed himself to doze. A ray of sunlight seeped through a gap in his curtains and moved across the bed. When it touched his face, its bright warmth woke him again. He threw back the duvet and went to the bathroom to take a long, hot shower. He needed to be fresh and alert today. He had a lot to do.

He spent the best part five hours alone in his study that day. He watched through the window as Old John the gardener, puffing on his ever present pipe, pottered around in the shrubbery clipping, snipping and pruning and raking up any odd leaves he could find. He hadn't really taken much notice of the old man before, he had just always 'been there'. Like Rebecca, he had come with the house. Now, suddenly he appreciated how very aged his employee was - eighty if he was a day, and still as fit as a flea. He himself had just turned a respectably middle-aged fifty-five, but at times felt twice his age.

Rebecca returned from her morning out, running errands in town. Twenty minutes later, she brought him his lunch on a tray - soup, a bread roll, cup of tea and a banana which he accepted with quiet thanks. He told her nothing of his plans.

He then passed the afternoon deep in thought, pacing across the rug where Megan had helped him get over his panic attack. He sat on the window seat where he had cried like a baby, held safely in her arms, and he sat in the easy chair cradling his head in his hands. His agitated, anxious thoughts raced. Normally he would have needed a drink to calm and order them, but today he didn't touch a single drop.