The Whole World (14 page)

Lesley must have been over thirty. But she’d always looked “grown-up” to me, so the changes were … appropriate. She was still in the right proportion to me, always older and wiser, always beautiful. She was as beautiful as a person could ever be.

“I made some poor decisions,” I said. “I didn’t want to hurt anyone.” She looked alarmed so I quickly explained: “I haven’t done anything bad, not like that. I just … I had to leave.” It had seemed so urgent at the time.

I put more chicken tikka into my mouth. I didn’t want to explain.

“Does anyone know you’re here?”

I shook my head.

“God, Nick. Did you tell someone you were going?”

“I know,” I said, putting both fists against my head. “I know.”

She looked at her phone. “My mobile’s out of charge.” She put it back in her bag. “You should see a doctor.”

I think she meant for my ankles but, given my demeanour, she could have meant anything.

“I was worried about slipping in the shower, and getting in and out of a bath,” I explained, justifying my Robinson Crusoe look. Hitting my head crossing the ford had frightened me. “I’ve been brushing my teeth and washing my hands; I’ve done that much,” I asserted, suddenly almost in tears.

She told me about her recent trip to Kosovo, from which she’d just returned. She was on the board of several charitable groups and had gone to inspect a children’s home they’d funded.

I felt small, which was wonderful. I felt like nothing in comparison to attempted genocide and potential independence. I felt like no one was looking in my direction, and I could finally relax.

“What have you been up to?” she asked, as if this were a normal conversation.

“I’ve almost completed my thesis. I’d like to get a Fellowship.”

“You want to be one of those eccentric old men who live in college rooms as lifelong bachelors?” she teased.

I shook my head, smiling. “You know it’s not like that,” I corrected her.

And it’s not. It’s just normal, a more peaceful version of normal. As a child I’d been treated as a prodigy. The truth is, I liked lecture halls because the seats were set out and the focal point was obvious. People had been impressed, thinking me clever. Really, I’d just been suited to the atmosphere.

“We’ll go now,” she said, standing up when I’d eaten everything. “Or would you like to shower first?” she added, reminding me what a mess I’d made of myself.

She would have to help me. It would be too embarrassing. It all would. Where would I let her drive me? Would I just walk into the Chanders’ house as if nothing had happened? I’d have to go home. To my parents’ house. It’s what I’d been wanting, to put them out of their grief, but my shame swelled greater than my compassion.

“I can’t,” I said.

But I whispered it, and she said, “What?”

“I can’t,” I said more loudly, pushing on the second word. “It’s too embarrassing.”

This is not how I wanted to be in front of her.

“I’m not proud of myself right now,” I explained. “I deeply distressed one friend, misled another, and stirred up things that would have been better left alone. Now here I am, a dirty hermit hiding out in the house of someone whose respect I would really like to have. I’m not respectable right now, at all, and I can’t even wash myself.” I’d actually started a scraggly beard, which takes some doing with my fair hair. “I’ve been brushing my teeth,” I repeated. It seemed important that she know that.

Lesley laughed again. It took great rib-spreading breaths to make a laugh like that. She put her hands on her face but even they couldn’t make it stop. At last it petered out, and two little wet spots on her cheeks sparkled from reflected light. “I’ve just been among people who, fifteen years ago, were murdering each other,” she said quietly. “You can’t shock me. All right? I’m not shocked.”

My supervisor, Richard, sometimes has to defend himself to creationists, because he combines his faith with his science. He told me about a time he got in an argument over Noah’s Ark. He’d said to some devout person, or at least in her hearing, that his understanding of the idea of a “whole world” flood had flexibility. That, depending on who was telling the story, “whole world” could mean different things. The borders of one person’s whole world may not match another’s, or even overlap. This upset her a lot. But I know what he meant. And I realised in this moment, here with Lesley, that my whole world was actually rather small. It matters, of course it matters, because it has people in it, but it’s not the actual whole world, and I needed to get that straight.

“You’re right,” I said.

If I’d been washed, I’d have reached out to her. I would have pulled her to me and made love to her somewhere in the house on some grand bed or uncomfortable Victorian sofa. I’d have again ignored Richard’s admonition not to rush. I’d have rushed ahead and lost myself in it. I wanted to rush, even though rushing had, so far, been a terrible idea.

“I broke up with my fiancé,” she said, out of nowhere. “He works in Kosovo right now, though he’s being transferred to Congo. He’s with an American charity. He’s American. He’s saving the world.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” I said.

“His world, my world. You know. I don’t want to live there. Either there. Maybe I should, but I don’t.”

She stopped talking about it. I tried to picture her in Africa, but I don’t know what Congo is like.

“Your father,” she said, “will kill me if I don’t promptly return you.”

“I would like to bathe,” I said, determined now to risk a fall coming out of the tub, knowing at least that I wouldn’t be left shivering on a tiled floor for potentially weeks. “I can do it myself.” God, I sounded five years old.

“Help yourself. There’s a ground-floor suite with a tub in the east corner. Leave your clothes on the bed and I’ll put them in the wash. Soak. I’ll put my toiletry bag in there. Some soap and a razor.”

She turned on a water heater in some far cupboard. The hot bath felt wonderful. I scrubbed myself, and shaved my face with her leg razor. I drained the tub and towelled off inside of it. Getting out was all right because she would be there if my one good foot slipped, though I was not going to let that happen. I hobbled into the adjoining bedroom, holding on to the tub edge, then the doorframe. Of course my clothes weren’t ready yet. She walked in just then with a robe in her arms. I shook my head.

“God, I want you,” I said, helpless to get her naked myself. I wanted to pull off her shirt but she was wearing a turtleneck. She pulled off her own clothes and guided me to the bed. It was an enormous, indulgent bed—maybe an American king, I’ve heard about those things. Right then it was big enough to be the whole world.

“I can’t believe you don’t drive,” she said.

“I’ve lived all my life in London and Cambridge; why would I drive?”

“I still don’t believe you can’t drive!” she mocked, and still hadn’t started the car. We were in the curved drive in front of Dovecote’s massive front door. The car was spattered with mud from her journey from the airport, but the weather was clear now. It was dark, but there was a bright moon. “Are your legs really all right?” she asked seriously. I nodded. The left one still hurt, but it wasn’t horrible. It wasn’t broken. So she got out and came around to my side.

“No, Lesley, I don’t …” I don’t know why I felt such an aversion to the idea, but I really didn’t want to.

“I want to teach you,” she said. There was an absurd and irresistible sexual undertone to it. I shook my head and groaned, knowing I’d give in. “It’s dark. It’s muddy. I don’t know these roads.” Thank goodness the rains had stopped.

“I’ll lead you,” she said, right up in my face, through the open window. I kissed her again, I had to. “All right,” I said, getting out of the car. “All right.”

I strapped myself into the driver’s seat. I thought of the mechanics of the engine and the condition of the roads. I didn’t think of how I would face my parents, what Gretchen would do, whether police would be involved. I was grateful that the battery of Lesley’s mobile phone had expired en route from Pristina, preventing me from responsibly phoning home. There would be this privacy, this fantasy, for at least a while longer.

She pulled a map from a pocket behind the passenger seat, and showed me the route home. I objected to taking the M11 and insisted on village roads; they’re skinnier and windier, but much less likely to have other cars on at that time of night. I didn’t think I could face competition or confrontation. Bury Lane, Church Road, Crawley End … The names of the streets washed over me. Across the A505, then through Newton, Harston, and Haslingfield. Polly and Liv popped into my thoughts, and the way those street and town names would sound so English to them. Then I put the girls out of my mind. I wanted to stay in Lesley’s world as long as I could. Church Street, Brook Road, streets called after their towns, and then yet another Church Street. They all sounded familiar. Village streets tend to share the same names.

Lesley patiently explained the gears; I could manage the clutch if I squeezed my teeth together while my foot pressed down. I made the windscreen wipers whoosh and flashed the headlamps. I felt giddy like I had when visiting the war museum at Duxford with school, and had been allowed into the cockpit of a World War II T-6 Harvard Warbird.

“It’s going to feel different when it moves,” I said aloud, when I had only meant to think it. Somehow this too was a kind of double entendre. Everything was.

“Take me to Cambridge,” she said, like it was an outing. She’d always made me feel like a grown man.

I used the bright headlamps, because no other cars were out.

I dismissed the thatched cottages and fields as we passed them to concentrate on the road itself, but, really, I’ve always ignored them. My blindness to the picturesque had driven Liv crazy.

I braked to cross the A505, and, when I tried to start again, the engine made horrible screechings. I pushed down the clutch, winced, and changed gears, though apparently to a worse gear, which I quickly corrected. “You should take over,” I said.

“If you really want to switch with me you can pull in at the pub in Fowlmere. It’s not far.” She sounded tired, and her willingness to accept my surrender made me change my mind.

Driving was all right. I said it to myself over and over:
It was all right
. It all hummed along, between occasional dire gear changes. I even enjoyed it. We were almost to Newton, which sounded familiar, but most of them do. The road here was unusually long and straight. I looked over at Lesley, proud to be managing the car, to have accomplished something in this mess I’d made. She was fast asleep.

This is where things went wrong.

All along the way I’d been reassured by the signs pointing the direction toward nearby towns. I meant to be heading toward Harston. A sign in Newton assured me I was. Then a sign in Harston assured me I was heading for Haslingfield. This was all good. It was where I was supposed to be.

On the Haslingfield High Street, a sign for Harston pointed me up New Road. I couldn’t remember if I’d been through Harston yet. All the place names had become a jumble. Was New Road somewhere I’d meant to go? It was too common a name for its familiarity to warrant confidence.

I took it anyway, and then a singular name stood out to me in the light of New Road’s yellow streetlamps: Cantelupe Road. Like cantaloupes. Surely this street must be part of the route we’d sketched out. Why else would I remember it?

I turned. It was unlit, single track, and unpromising as a route to the distant ambient glow that was Cambridge. There wasn’t room to turn around. I had no idea how to reverse without stalling the car.

Still moving forward, I reached for the map in Lesley’s lap.

I never saw it, not even in the headlamps. I must have been looking at the map at just that moment. There was just a horrible thud and then a
bump-bump
, a lump in the road under the left side of the car. Both left wheels went over it, and the car tilted to the right. It almost went over; I felt like it was going to; I pulled the wheel far to the left to compensate. We ended up sideways to the road, across the middle of it. The headlamps faced directly onto a house, Tudor-looking, very English, with a sign instead of a number: Rose Cottage. Our headlamps shone rudely into the front windows, but I dared not turn them off. We had to see. I wanted to move the car, but I’d become disoriented. I didn’t want to run over whatever it was again.

“A dog?” Lesley asked. She was awake, already exiting the car, taking things in hand. She grabbed a torch from the glovebox and swept its beam over the road. I scrambled out myself, following the torch beam with my eyes.

It was a person. The mid-body had been crushed. The limbs were stretched apart at surprising angles like they were running away from each other. Lesley swept the beam over to the face.

I jumped backwards. I pointed. Lesley turned the beam onto me. I gibbered at her.

The face was Gretchen’s. She’d been pushed almost in two by the weight of my driving over her abdomen.

I did something terrible: Instead of wishing for it to not be real, I wished that I wasn’t crazy. I wanted Lesley to see her too. I didn’t want to be losing my mind.