What about us? (3 page)

“It’s your bed, you ought to be
a bit more comfortable.” he said.

He looked brighter.  His eyes
still looked a bit distant and sad, but not quite so haunted.

“Thank you.” That was all he
said; just, “Thank you.”

“Don’t mention it; it seemed
only fair.  After all, you saved my life.  How are you feeling?”

“Better.”

“You were having a nightmare.”
I told him.

“I think I’ll be having that
one for quite some time to come...”

His voice seemed far away as he
spoke and he looked down at our hands, which were still intertwined.

“You have lovely hands Grace.”

It was a nice way to change the
subject and he was right; I’ve always thought that my hands are my best
feature.

“Are you hungry?” I asked.

It was almost seven-thirty and
my stomach was gently reminding me that I’d eaten nothing, despite being up
since five.

“Hungry and dirty.  Is it ok if
I take a shower?”

He seemed a little unsure about
something.  Not about being with me, but about being there.  I couldn’t quite
put my finger on it, but he seemed out of place somehow and it niggled at me.

While he cleaned himself up I
made poached eggs and toast and as he came out of the bathroom I looked at him
properly.  His clothes were odd.  I mean he wore trousers and a shirt, but they
were wrong somehow.  The shirt was the old fashioned sort without a collar and
he was wearing braces.  The trousers were baggy with turn-ups and came up too
high over his waist and over his arm he was carrying what was clearly a
home-knitted sleeveless pullover.  His coat was a proper coat, not a light
summer jacket and he had a scarf too.  While British summers can be laughable,
the weather wasn’t that bad.  I’m no style guru, but he looked like he’d
stepped out of the only photograph I’ve ever seen of my great grandfather and I
wasn’t aware of it being the current fashion.

He smiled sheepishly, as though
he’d read my thoughts.  Then his eyes saw the food.  In a flash he plonked down
the pullover, coat and other bits, sat down and began eating.  He’d cleaned his
plate before I was halfway through mine.

“More toast?” I asked, trying
not to smile.

“I’ll do it,” he said and
jumped up to put more bread in the toaster.

“So, as you are off the hook
from work today, what would you like to do?” he asked, sounding more upbeat.

As the toast popped up, I got
the marmalade and marge out of the fridge and thought about his question, but I
must have looked puzzled.

“Well...? What do you usually
do when you are not working?” he asked gently.

“Not much... clean the flat, go
to the shops, watch telly.  You know, normal things...” I trailed off
unhappily, realising that I’d given myself away.  I wasn’t interesting or
exciting and now he knew it too.

“We could go to the countryside
or the coast.  Let’s have a proper holiday!” he announced, waving his bit of
toast at the window.  “It’s a lovely day after all.”

His enthusiasm was contagious
and I laughed as I found myself getting excited at the prospect of a whole day just
waiting to be spent; not only with him, but a day out too.  To be honest, I
didn’t care where we went, although a day by the sea sounded lovely; I hadn’t
been for years.

“The seaside!” I said
decisively.

He beamed at me, clearly
pleased with my choice.

We caught the tube
to London Bridge, crammed in with all the morning commuters and because of the
squeeze I could press my face into his shoulder.  His clothes had a strange,
unpleasant
odour that I couldn’t quite place
and it bothered me.  But as I moved closer to his neck, I found he smelt nice,
in a soapy, scrubbed way.  It was only a few stops and when we arrived, we got
separated as a great mass of people poured out onto the platform, making for
the escalators.  But we soon found each other again and went hand in hand to
the mainline station to catch a train to Margate.

As we were paying for the
tickets, we were told that the train was already at the platform.  Jack grabbed
my hand and we ran, getting on board only seconds before it pulled out.  Then laughing
at nothing, we threw ourselves into some empty seats, still holding hands.  Every
now and then he gave a little squeeze and smiled at me.

We watched the world speed by
and with each stop we got further away from my life.  The blocks of flats got
fewer and then there were more houses and then more trees and more sky.  I
suppose there was just more space, really.  It made me feel free, as though I’d
left all my responsibilities a long way behind.  It was a nice feeling and not
one that I was in anyway used to.

The stations got smaller and
the people looked different, more outdoorsy.  Because now the rush hour had
been and gone, like us these people were going to places more leisurely,
perhaps for reasons other than work.  It was also more social; people were being
met as they got off the train and there was lots of chattering and laughing.  Seeing
everyone so cheerful seemed to give our day out a boost.  I now had a whole new
world to watch.  Jack had a good imagination, almost better than mine and we
made up funny stories for many of the people we could see, setting us off in
fits of uncontrollable laughter.

As we got off the train in
Margate, I breathed in deeply and tasted the tangy sea air.  I honestly
couldn’t remember the last time I’d been by the sea.  It was a long time ago;
probably a school trip, because I don’t remember a holiday with Mum.  I must
have laughed, because Jack turned to me, amused but puzzled.

“This just feels so nice.” I said
and could see from his eyes that he understood.  I didn’t need to explain
anything and that felt good too.

We spent some time wandering
along the High Street and down some of the narrow roads.  Everything was so
close to the sea-front, that every now and then we’d come across it and it was
always a nice surprise.  We played games in an amusement arcade and then went
tenpin bowling, something I’d never done before.  I seemed to be quite good at
it, or maybe I was just lucky, but either way it was brilliant.  Everything we
did that morning was fun.  With Jack I could just relax and enjoy myself in a
way I’d never been able to before.

We bought fish and chips for
lunch and ate it sitting on a bench looking out to sea.  Despite the notices
saying not to feed them, we held up bits up for the seagulls, envying their
agility as they swooped down to take them from our fingers.

As the tide went out, we rolled
up our trousers, took off our shoes and wandered along at the water’s edge,
letting the sand puddle around our feet as the water dragged at the beach. 
Other times we pulled faces and laughed as wet mud squidged up between our toes. 
We didn’t talk about real life, almost as though there was an unspoken
agreement to leave it all behind, if only for a few hours.  He must have had
his reasons, as much as I had mine; something else I could understand.

We didn’t ask each other
questions, like; so what do you do for a living then? Or what films do you
like? Which bands do you listen to? We didn’t do any of that.  We talked about
what it would be like to be a dolphin or a seagull and wondered what it must
have been like for prehistoric man to walk along this beach.  What he would
have seen and what would he have been hoping to catch for his supper.  We
looked for messages in bottles, but didn’t find any, so instead imagined what
we might write if we were stranded on a desert island.

“I think I’d say, ‘leave us
here’.” he said thoughtfully, squeezing my hand.

“But what would we do without
fish and chips?” I asked, with pretend seriousness, which made him laugh.

As we sat on the damp sand, he
recited a poem from memory about the sea.  He said I wouldn’t know it, because
the writer was not well known.  He didn’t know that I didn’t actually know any poems
at all, but it was lovely, listening to the sound of the sea sucking at the
sand and rolling broken shells, while he softly spoke the words of his poem.  It
was clear that it meant something to him and I asked him what it reminded him
of.

“It will always remind me of
today.” he said, taking my hand and pulling me to my feet.

I’d got so used to his strange
clothes, that it was only when someone else gave him a funny look that I
remembered them.  Curiosity got the better of me and the question popped out as
we sat down at a small table in a cafe.  “Is there a reason why you’ve dressed
so old-fashionedly today?”

“Yes.  When my day started,
they were right.  They’ve just become more wrong as the day has progressed, while
the day itself, has become more right than I’d dared to hope.”

He quickly picked up the menu
and studied it, as though he realised he’d said something wrong or maybe had said
too much.  Either way it didn’t make any sense to me, but I didn’t push it.  I’d
built my own life around secrets that I didn’t want to share and I knew that
feeling; when something that shouldn’t have slipped out, did.  I just shrugged
my shoulders and smiled at the other part of what he’d said.  He was right; the
day was getting better and better.

I looked around the cafe and
realised it was more of a tea room.  The photos and pictures on the walls
belonged to a different age and they all seemed to be local, because many of
them had the beach or the main street in them.  A few had old cars, but most of
them had horses pulling a carriage or a cart.  The furniture and the wallpaper
complemented the things around us and I wondered aloud, more to change the
subject than anything else and to put him at his ease again.

“Sometimes, when I’m in a place
like this I think about the people who came before.  You know, in times past.  Were
their lives really so different from ours? Would we have anything in common, or
anything to talk about? I mean if one of them just sort of walked in and sat at
this table right now...”

As I stopped speaking I turned
back to face him and saw that he was staring at me with a strange look on his
face.  I realised that instead of changing the subject, I’d inadvertently
stumbled onto something that made him more uncomfortable, but I couldn’t have
said what it was.

“I’m sorry, I prattle on
sometimes.” I said quickly, wanting to kick myself for spoiling such a nice
time.

“Don’t be.  I’m the one who
should be sorry.  I shouldn’t be here.” he said sadly.

“What, here in Margate or here
with me?”

I think I already knew the
answer before I’d finished speaking.

“Both, I suppose.” he replied.

“But you came looking for me.  I
never expected you to, but you did.  Why did you come, if you shouldn’t be with
me today?”

I could feel my eyes brimming with
tears and with each word I said everything got more blurry.  I didn’t want to
cry, so I was fighting them every inch of the way.  I wasn’t really surprised
that it was all going wrong, but I was more hurt than I’d expected to be and
unusually, I found it hard to hide my feelings.

I looked across the short space
between us and his eyes looked as sad and as confused as mine felt to me.

“Grace...”

I interrupted him.  “Please
don’t say that it’s complicated.”

That overused phrase made me
feel stupid, as though everyone else always understood ‘complicated’ things,
only lumpy Grace couldn’t.

“I wasn’t going to.” he said
slowly.  “The explanation is actually remarkably simple, but that doesn’t make
it any easier, or even right.”

“Can’t I be the judge of that?”
I asked, “I mean before you disappear again.  Don’t I even get the chance to
understand?”

It was so easy for me to be
honest with him and just say whatever popped into my mind without having to
think it through first.

He nodded slowly.  “Yes, you
deserve that.  Actually you deserve much more, but I can’t give you more.”

“That’s ok Jack,
really it is.  I never expected any of this, but understanding will help.  Then
you can go back to wherever and not feel guilty about anything.”

And
I meant it, really I did.  I knew I had no claim on
him, but I was sure that if I understood something about the life he couldn’t
or wouldn’t share with me, I could just hold onto the memory of this day and
that would be nice.  I mean, it wasn’t as though we’d done anything wrong; we’d
just held hands and spent a day at the seaside together.

Nothing about him gave me the
impression that he was married; he didn’t wear a ring and he didn’t behave in
the way that the other married men I’d seen with my Nan or my Mum did.  But
maybe he was, or at the very least in a relationship with someone more like him,
someone he didn’t want to give up and that was ok, natural even and I could
handle that.

The waitress, in her neat black
pinny and white apron, brought a pot of tea and two china cups and saucers.  There
were some slices of what looked like home-made cake on a china plate that was
decorated with tiny blue flowers.  They were almost the same colour as his eyes
and I wondered if they were periwinkles.  It was all so lovely and so unlike
anything in my normal day.