The Watchers on the Shore (38 page)

I want to go now, walk out before there's any more of it. But I'm
scared. Unreasonably scared stiff. But still scared. And shaken. I
finish my cigarette, holding it with a hand that trembles like some
body with palsy. In the morning, I think. We'll talk about it then.
Calmer. In the morning.

Scene Two starts with weeping in the night which develops into
hysterics in the living-room when I leave the bed and take refuge there in the cold light beside the dead ashes of the fire.

'Don't you walk out when I'm talking to you.'

'I thought you were just crying.'

'I was saying something.'

'I've heard enough. I don't want to hear any more.'

She takes a running kick at me, the hard sole of her slipper
catching me a painful clout on the shin.

'You'll bloody listen when I talk.'

'And I'll break your bloody neck if you do that again.'

I rub my shin, thinking how near it all is to farce. All it needs is a
slight shift in tone and it would send an audience wild.

She draws herself up in her dressing-gown.

'You can go when you're ready.'

'That wasn't what you were saying before.'

'It's what I'm saying now.'

'Righto, then.'

I go into the bedroom. I've dressed and got my grip packed in
less than five minutes.

'I'll write to you about the arrangements.'

'What arrangements?'

'Things'll have to be sorted out, won't they?'

'I don't want anything of yours.'

'Half of it's yours.'

She says nothing. I get my overcoat.

'So long, then.'

'Are you going now?'

'Yes.'

'There aren't any trains running at this time, are there?'

'I'll find something.'

'You can't go to your Christine's, can you?' she says. 'She's heard it before.'

'I should never have come back that time.'

'You should never have married me.'

'I thought I was doing the right thing.'

'You think you are now, don't you?'

'Yes.'

'There's nothing else I can say, then, is there?'

'No, not really. Only, I'd like to think we could part as ... as friends.'

She's standing with her back to me, looking into the cold grey ashes of the fire, but I hear quite clearly what she says.

'I hate you for what you've done to me.'

Scene Three finds me an hour and a half later, dropping from
the cab of a lorry at the Ferrybridge roundabout on the A1. The
driver leans out and gives me a friendly farewell.

'Hope you get there okay, chum. I'd stand the other side of the roundabout if I were you. There'll be plenty of 'em going south. You'll get fixed up.'

Nice bloke. I think he'd have liked company all the way to
Grimsby. I shout good night and thanks as he goes on his way,
pulling the big wagon across the intersection.

I feel very much on my own as his tail-lights disappear over the hill and the noise of his engine dies. Quiet. I walk round and stand
on the southbound lane, wondering how long it'll be before another
Good Samaritan takes pity on me, but not daring to start walking
on because that'll take me on to the clearway where they're less
likely to stop.

There's a high, almost cloudless sky with plenty of stars and it's
quite light when you've been out a bit. But cold.

It's over with. There'll be some music to face from the others later on: my mother and father, Chris, Mrs Roth well ('I always
told you so.') and maybe even young Jim. But the deed's done. I'm
free. You say something and a matter of hours later it's all over;
nearly four years gone.

And God! Oh God! what a terrible thing. I'm thinking of her, small and scared and lonely in that flat and me, small and scared and lonely here. And Donna ... Is it dark and cold in Cornwall as well? Ah, Donna, Donna, I'm standing here on the roadside in the middle of the night. Going where, and to what?

Headlights suddenly rake the sky. I watch them approach and
sweep round the big island. I wait for them to hit me and light me
up before stepping forward and raising my arm.

Going forward, I'm thinking as I wonder if he'll stop. It's all you can do. Going in fear and trembling, maybe, but forward,
knowing the best and hoping against hope that it'll come to you;
and just refusing to notice, just simply trying not to acknowledge,
how cold and dark it is outside.