An Ocean Apart (10 page)

David dropped the photograph back down to his chest and closed his eyes, suddenly cradled in the enveloping warmth of humorous nostalgia. He remembered now that he had chosen the photograph because at that time he had realized that it encapsulated every facet of Rachel's character. Direct, funny, incredibly beautiful. He felt his face break into a smile and he crossed his arms over the picture, hugging it to his chest, his pain gradually fading out of focus.

*   *   *

“Tell me again why Frank was called Frankie Push-Push?”

“What?”

“Frankie Push-Push. You remember—your friend at Oxford. Why was he called that?”

“God, what made you think of that?”

“I always think of things like that. They're all very precious memories—things like that.”

David looked across at his wife on the bench beside him and reached over and tucked the tartan rug around her neck. Even though they were in the relative warmth of the old summer-house, he knew that she really shouldn't be out of her bedroom—not when it was this bloody cold.

“This is mad. You should be in bed.”

“Come on, don't fuss. I'm all right. I just looked out of the window and saw you working, and I wanted to be with you.”

Giving a shrug of resignation, David got up and walked over to the corner of the dark-pined room. He picked up an old paraffin stove and gave it a shake to check if there was any fuel in it.

“Should be enough,” he said, removing the funnel and delving in his pocket for a box of matches. He lit the wick and watched as the thin yellow flame worked its way around each side to meet, then, replacing the funnel, he adjusted the flame until it glowed blue through the little window. Instantly, the summer-house was filled with its heady, comforting smell.

As he sat down again, Rachel unravelled her hands from the rug and pulled her woolly hat farther over her ears. “Well?”

David frowned at her for a moment before remembering her question. “Ah, yeah, Frankie Push-Push.” He put his arm around his wife's shoulders and eased her gently towards him, ever conscious of her now constant pain. “Well, it was all a bit naughty really. He just happened to turn up at the flat one evening with a girl who turned out to be, well, somewhat loud when it came to love-making, and we all just happened to hear her yell out. ‘Push! Frankie, Push!' probably at rather an important moment. Anyway, the next morning, I happened to call him Frankie Push-Push, really just as a passing remark, and he was so taken aback that he sort of blew out his mouthful of cereal across the table. After that, the name just stuck; actually, as it turned out, to his own egotistical pride and joy!”

Rachel's face broke into a wide smile. “I always loved that story.”

“You knew it all along, didn't you?”

She turned towards him. “Yeah, but I still love hearing it.” She moved awkwardly on the bench and let out a deep sigh. “It all seems so long ago.”

“Twenty-one years, to be exact.”

“I know. I'll never forget it.”

For a moment, they sat together in silence, looking out onto the partly frozen loch, the opaque rays of the weak February sun glinting off the surface of the icy water. It was so quiet that even with the doors of the summer-house closed and the background hiss of the stove, somewhere, out on the lower reaches of the snowcapped hills, the distinctive and haunting sound of a single grouse could be heard, calling out its panicked chuckle. Rachel pulled the rug closer about her and let out a shiver, despite the heavy pine-tanged heat that filled the now fuggy interior of the summer-house.

“Do you remember how warm it was that morning after the Commem Ball?”

“That whole summer was boiling.”

“That's right. It was, wasn't it? We had the roof of the car down—and then we tried to have breakfast with the Duke of Marlborough at Blenheim Palace.”

David laughed. “Well, sort of. It was a pretty halfhearted attempt. I don't think he would have been too happy to be woken at five o'clock in the morning.”

“No, maybe not. But then if we
had
seen him, we would never have ended up in that hayfield near Woodstock, would we?” She pushed herself in beside him to get the warmth from his body. “I can remember so vividly the smell of the hay—and the quiet. It was just like this. And then that fox appeared right beside the car—and he just stood looking at us.” She let out a shuddering sigh. “My God, that was a magical morning.”

David kissed her lightly on the side of her woollen hat. “Yeah, but there was something else, wasn't there?”

Rachel turned her head to look at him. “You mean Smokey Robinson?”

“Yup.”

She grinned and nodded lightly. “Can you remember how many times you recorded that same track for me?”

“Not offhand, no.”

“Twenty times. Ten each side. We must have played it about three times right through that morning—and we just danced—you in your kilt, me in my ball gown.”

She swallowed hard, and David felt her body grow taut with effort.

“And still Smokey sang.” She let out a short laugh. “You know, that was the one year of my life I kept a diary, and that was the sole entry for that whole week—‘And still Smokey sang.' I wrote it diagonally across the page in big black letters. It said it all, really.”

David could now feel the vibrations of her shivering against his body. “Come on, I think it's time that we got you inside.” He put his arms around her to lever her gently to her feet.

She pushed his hands away. “No, not yet,” she said, shaking her head. “I'm loving this—being outside again. It's just—
so
beautiful.”

David held up his hands resignedly and sat down again, pulling her close in beside him once more. At that moment, they both became aware of a new sound, the faintest fluttering reverberation against the windowpane. A butterfly, having lain dormant in some dusty crevice of the summer-house, had been tricked by the heat of the stove into waking, and was now vainly attempting to make its way though the invisible screen into the open air. Rachel took a hand out of the rug and, leaning across, closed her fingers gently around it. For a moment, David heard the soft whirring of its wings against her palm before it stopped, content to rest itself in the moderate darkness of its shelter.

“Poor thing,” she said, squinting through her fingers at the rich orange and brown of its colouring. “Doesn't stand much of a chance, does it? Either it stays in here and dies of starvation, or we let it out and it freezes.”

David pulled her hand towards him and looked in on her little captive. “Yeah, the odds are pretty much stacked against it, aren't they?”

Rachel got to her feet and shuffled over to the door and opened it. She slowly uncurled her hand, but the butterfly seemed reluctant to move. She lifted it to her mouth and gently blew on its wings, encouraging it to fly. After a moment, it took off and was borne away on the frigid air. Rachel closed the door and stood watching until it disappeared.

“At least it will get the smell and taste of the world,” she said, almost inaudibly, “even if it is only for a short time.” She turned and shuffled back to the bench. “Better than being cooped up inside for the rest of its days.”

David stared straight ahead, not wanting to catch her eye, understanding the simile that she was making and frightened by its direction. He felt her hand on his knee.

“We don't talk about it, do we?”

“What's that?” he said unconvincingly.

“Come on, my darling, you know—the inevitable.”

David took in a faltering breath. “Darling, we don't…”

Rachel turned to him. “Yes, we do, David, we do. Because I really want to tell you that I'll be all right. I want to tell you that so that you can tell Sophie and Charlie and Harriet that I'll be all right—that I'll be safe—and that I'll be with you all wherever you go.” She reached up and stroked the side of his face. “You know, you were without doubt the most handsome boy in Oxford.” She let out a weak laugh. “I just could never quite believe that you would turn out as nice—and that it was me that caught you.”

David leaned his face against her woolly hat, secretly using it to brush away the tears from his eyes.

“I'd really like to go back to Oxford, darling.”

He cleared his throat before replying. “Would you?”

“Yeah. Very soon. Very, very soon.” She pushed herself away from him. “But right now, I'm absolutely bloody freezing. Let's go back to the house.”

Needing no further encouragement, David jumped to his feet and turned off the stove, then, helping her to her feet, he opened the door and put a supporting arm around her waist. As they walked close together across the frost-hardened lawn towards the house, David's leg bumped against a hard object in her coat pocket, making her wince with pain. He stopped.

“Are you all right?”

Rachel smiled bravely at him. “Yup.”

“What have you got in there?” he said, feeling the side of her coat.

Rachel pushed her hand deep into her pocket and brought out a Walkman.

“It's my music.”

“What is it?”

She stopped. “Here.” She reached up and pushed one of the ear-plugs into his ear, then, standing close to him, she placed the other in her own, and pressed the “play” button. “It's the tape.”

The song cut in immediately, filling his head with the words. “So take a good look at my face, you'll see the smi-ile, it's out of place.”

He looked at her and smiled, shaking his head, incredulous. “You still have it?”

“Of course. All twenty recordings of it.”

David linked his arm around her shoulder, and as they walked across the lawn, around the side of the house and up the steps to the front door, still Smokey sang.

Yet they never made it to Oxford.

*   *   *

The photograph fell onto the floor with a clatter, and even though he had been fast asleep, David sat bolt-upright, swung his feet over the side of the bed and stooped down to pick it up. He checked the glass. Nothing broken. He laid it on the bed beside him and bent forward, leaning his elbows on his knees, and rubbing his eyes with his knuckles. He glanced over at the clock. It was twenty to two in the morning.

He turned round, picked up the photograph and sat looking at it.

It had never been any different—from the moment they met to the moment they were married to the moment that she died. They had loved and laughed through life and through the procreation of life, and their children had loved and laughed with them. He was she, and she was he, their true bonding not having been made during the pageantry of the wedding, but three years before in that vast open Oxfordshire hayfield under the burning blue sky, witnessed only by the birds, the fox, the Triumph Vitesse—and Smokey Robinson and the Miracles.

He pushed himself off the bed, walked over to the dressing-table, and carefully stood the photograph up beside the one of his children. Then stripping off his shirt, he unbuckled his belt and kicked off his jeans, and fell into bed to sleep more soundly than at any time since the night that Rachel died.

Chapter
  
SEVEN

The next morning David woke early and immediately became aware of an ache of anxiety gnawing deep in his stomach, a different and more frightening sensation than the cold realization of solitude which normally settled like a leaden weight around his heart. He pushed himself up quickly from the bed, as if fast action would help to shed this unwelcome feeling, and hurried out across the landing and into the bathroom. Turning the shower tap full on, he entered the cubicle before the water had a chance to heat up, and tilted back his head so that his face took the full force of the invigorating flow.

Yet the thought was still with him. Today he would not be going back out into the garden to work alongside Jock. Today, without option, he was having to return to a way of life for which he knew he was still both physically and mentally unprepared.

He bent down to retrieve the bar of soap which spun haphazardly above the outflow of the shower, and started to scrub hard at every part of his body, trying to scourge the cowardice from his being and revitalize the drive which he knew was locked away deep within him. In his mind, he went back over the conversation he had had with his parents the night before, remembering that for the first time he had suddenly understood their own feelings of anguish and vulnerability, feelings which lay just beneath an outward show of strength and support.

He shut off the water and stepped out of the shower, his skin tingling and his mind clearer. Still with the same sense of urgency, he shaved quickly and returned to his room. He put on a clean pair of boxer shorts and slipped into them, then, without thinking, pulled on his work jeans and started to do up the buttons. He stopped in mid-action.

“Oh, come on, get your bloody act together!” He pushed his jeans hard to the ground and, with a swing of his foot, kicked them back onto the chair, then, walking over to the wardrobe, he slipped his dark blue suit off its hanger and laid it on his bed. He stood back and stared at it blankly.

Somehow, he hadn't been able to bring himself to wear a kilt at the funeral. It was just too tangible a link with Rachel, and in some irrational way he had wanted to distance himself as far as possible from her on that day, hoping that it would make it easier for him to cope with the whole thing. So he had worn the suit—and he hadn't worn it since. He shook his head, his mind suddenly thrown into turmoil by an overpowering sense of rejection both to wearing it again and to his new routine. In one quick movement, he picked it up and threw it onto the chair next to his jeans. He pushed his fingers through his hair and glanced over to where it now lay, its pressed perfection standing out in powerful and self-assured contrast to the honest simplicity of his earth-streaked denims.