Perfect (40 page)

Four years later, he ran away from boarding school. He took several night trains and a bus and returned to Cranham Moor. He went back to the house but it was locked up, of course; there was no way in. So he took himself to the police station and handed himself in. They were at a loss. He hadn’t done anything although he kept insisting that he might. He caused accidents, he said. He cried. He begged them to let him stay. He was clearly so distressed, they couldn’t send him back to school. They
rang the boy’s father and asked him to fetch his son. Seymour never arrived. It was Andrea Lowe who came instead.

When Byron heard about his father’s suicide, several months had passed. Things were very different by this time and he had no space left in which to feel. As a precautionary measure, he was given sedatives before and after the news. There was talk of a shotgun and a terrible tragedy as well as most sincere condolences but by now he had heard words like these so many times, they were sounds that meant nothing. When he was asked if he would like to attend the funeral, he said he wouldn’t. He remembered to ask if his sister knew, but he was told she was at boarding school. Didn’t he remember that? No, he said, he didn’t. He didn’t remember very much. Then he saw a fly, a dead one, black and upside down, on the windowsill and he began to shake.

It was all right, they told him. Everything would be all right. They asked Byron if he could be still? If he could not cry and remove his slippers? And he promised he could do those things. Then the needle pierced his arm and when he came round they were talking about biscuits.

J
IM HAS TO
keep looking at his trainers. He can’t work out if his feet have grown or stayed the same. They feel different inside shoes. He has to wriggle his toes and lift his heels and admire the way they stand, side by side, like a pair of old friends. He is glad they have each other again. It is strange not to walk with a limp, but evenly; to be like everyone else. Maybe he is not so irregular after all. Maybe you have to take things away sometimes to see how right they were before.

He knows he owes his rescue to Paula and Darren. Concerned about his absence from work, they took the bus to Cranham Village. They knocked at the door and windows of the van. At first they thought he must be on holiday. It was only when they were walking away, she admitted afterwards, that other thoughts occurred to them. ‘We thought you were dead and stuff.’ It was Darren who had clambered on to the roof of the van and yanked open the pop-up roof. They wanted to take him straight to A&E, but he shivered so hard they made tea instead. With difficulty they
removed the tape from the windows, doors and cupboards. They fetched blankets and food. They emptied the chemical toilet. They told him he was safe.

It is late afternoon on New Year’s Eve. He cannot believe he so nearly gave up. It was in him, to surrender. And yet now that he is on the other side of that, now he is back at work and wearing his orange hat, his orange apron and socks, he sees how wrong it would have been. He almost gave up but something else happened and he kept going.

Rain clings like beads to the darkened windows of the supermarket café. Soon it will be time to close. Mr Meade and his staff begin to wrap clingfilm over pastries. The few customers finish their drinks and put on their coats and prepare to drive home.

Paula has spent the afternoon discussing her fancy dress outfit for the party Darren is taking her to at the Sports and Social Club. He in turn has spent a long time in the lavatories doing something with his hair to make it look as if he hasn’t done anything. At five thirty, Mr Meade will change into the black suit hired from Moss Bros by Mrs Meade, and meet his wife downstairs. They will attend a dinner dance, followed by fireworks at midnight. Moira, it turns out, has a date with one of the youth band and will accompany them on the minibus to a New Year’s gig. The café will close and everyone will have somewhere to go, except Jim, who will make his way back to the van and perform the rituals.

‘You should come with us,’ says Paula. She clears the empty plates and cans of Coke from a table. Jim takes out his spray and his cloth in order to wipe. ‘It would be good for you. You might meet someone.’

Jim thanks her but says he won’t. Since she found him in the van, he has to keep reassuring Paula he is happy. Even when he is frightened or sad, and occasionally he is both those things, he has to push his face into a wide smile and give her a thumbs-up.

‘By the way, she rang again,’ says Paula.

Jim tells Paula he doesn’t want Eileen’s message. But she has rung three times, Paula insists.

‘I thought you said—?’ The sentence stabs at the air. ‘I thought you said – you said – she was t-t-t—?’

‘She is trouble,’ interrupts Paula. Since there is now one customer left in the café, she puts down her tray. She tugs a blue wig out of her pocket and yanks it over her hair. She looks like a mermaid. ‘But she’s good trouble. And here’s the thing, she likes you.’

‘It’s no – it’s no g-good.’ Jim is so confused by what Paula is telling him, and in turn by what he feels, that he finds himself squirting the table of the single remaining customer. The man sits very still. He has not yet finished his coffee.

‘Suit yourself,’ says Paula. ‘I’m going to get changed.’ She walks away.

‘Excuse me, do you have the time?’

The question is part of the café. Jim barely hears. It is part of the youth band finishing their limited New Year medley downstairs, part of the flashing fibre-optic tree. It is part of other people going about their lives, but Jim does not consider it as pertinent to him, and so he continues to wipe. The man clears his throat. The question comes again, only this time it is a little louder, a little more placed in the air. ‘Pardon me for asking. Do you have the time?’

Glancing down, Jim realizes with horror that the stranger is staring straight up at him. The café seems to snap to a standstill, as if someone has turned down the light and the volume. He points at his wrist to show he does not have it, the time. There is not even a mark on his skin for a strap.

‘I beg your pardon,’ says the stranger. He drains the last of his cup and mops his mouth with a festive paper napkin. Jim continues to spray and wipe.

The man is dressed in pressed casual clothes: fawn trousers, checked shirt, rainproof jacket. He looks the sort of person who has to think about
relaxing. Like his clothes, his thin hair is a nondescript shade of greying brown, and his skin is soft and pale, suggesting a life spent mostly indoors. Beside his coffee cup he has folded his driving gloves into a bundle. Is he a doctor? It seems unlikely he was ever a patient. He smells clean. It is a smell Jim dimly remembers.

The stranger pushes back his chair. He stands. And then just as he is about to move away he appears to pause. ‘Byron?’ he whispers. ‘Is it you?’ His voice is thicker with age, a little more fluid around the consonants, but unmistakable. ‘I’m James Lowe. I don’t suppose you remember?’ He offers his hand. It is palm-open, like an invitation. Years fall away.

Suddenly Jim would like to lose his own, to have no hand, but James waits and there is such kindness in his stillness, such patience, Jim cannot move away. He reaches out. He places his hand on James’s. His own is shaking but James’s feels clean and soft, and warm too, like freshly melting candle wax.

It is not a handshake. There is nothing shaken about it. It is a hand-grasp. A hand-hold. For the first time in over forty years, Jim presses his left palm against the right palm of James Lowe. Their fingers touch, slide together, and lock.

‘Dear fellow,’ says James softly. And because Jim is suddenly shaking his head and blinking his eyes, James removes his hand and offers instead the festive paper napkin. ‘I am sorry,’ he says. Though whether he is sorry for gripping Jim’s hand, or offering a used napkin, or calling him dear fellow, is unclear.

Jim blows his nose to suggest he has a cold. Meanwhile James aligns the fastening of the zip on his jacket. Jim continues to dab his nose and James runs the zip right up to his neck.

James says, ‘We were passing on our way home. My wife and I. I wanted to show her the moor, and where we grew up. My wife is getting some last-minute shopping before we head back to Cambridge. Her sister
will be with us for New Year.’ There is something childlike about him, with the zip fastened all the way up to the collar. Maybe he realizes that because, looking down at it, he frowns and carefully unzips it to a midway point.

There is so much to take in. That James Lowe has become a short, thin-haired man in his fifties. That he is here, in the supermarket café. That he has a home in Cambridge and a wife. A sister-in-law who visits for New Year. A waterproof jacket with a zip.

‘Margaret sent me to buy a coffee. I get under her feet. I am afraid I’m still not a practical man. Even after all these years.’ Since the handshake, James can’t seem to look Jim in the eye. ‘Margaret is my wife,’ he adds. And then he says, ‘I am her second husband.’

Bereft of words, Jim nods.

‘It was a shock,’ says James. ‘It was a shock to find Cranham House gone and the gardens too. I didn’t intend to drive that way; the satnav must have made a mistake. When I saw the estate, I had no idea where I was. Then I remembered I’d heard about the new village. Only I had somehow imagined they would keep the old house. I had no idea they would flatten it.’

Jim listens and keeps nodding as if he is not trembling or holding antibacterial spray or wearing an orange hat. Occasionally James pauses between sentences, offering an opening, but Jim can only muster a few hm-hm noises, a few trudges of breath.

James says, ‘I had no idea, Byron, about the size of Cranham Village. I can’t believe the developers got away with it. It must have been so hard to see the old house go. And the garden. It must have been very hard for you, Byron.’

The use of his real name is like being repeatedly hit. Byron. Byron. He has not heard it spoken in forty years. It is the ease with which James says it that unpicks him, as if he is helping Jim into an old piece of clothing, like his old blue gaberdine, for instance, something that he thought was
mislaid, or no longer fitted. Still Jim – who is not Jim, who is Byron after all, but has long been someone else, this other person, this Jim, this man without roots, without a past – can’t speak. And sensing this, James continues:

‘But maybe you were ready to let the place go? Maybe you wanted them to flatten it. After all, things don’t always go the way we think. They never made another landing on the moon, Byron, after 1972. They played golf up there, they collected samples, and then the whole thing stopped.’ James Lowe pauses with his face in a frown of concentration as if he is rewinding the last sentence and listening again. ‘I don’t have a problem with golf. It just seems a shame they had to play it on the moon.’

‘Yes.’ At last. A word.

‘But it is easy for me to be sentimental about the moon, just as it is easy for me to be sentimental about Cranham House. The truth is, I haven’t come back. Not for many years.’

Jim opens his mouth. It gropes and snaps around words that will not come. ‘They – they s-sold.’

‘The house?’

He nods. But James does not appear confused or embarrassed or even surprised by the stutter.

‘The trustees sold it?’

‘Yes.’

‘I am sorry. So very sorry, Byron.’

‘There was no – there was no money left. My father let things – he let things go.’

‘I heard as much. Such a terrible thing. And what happened to your sister Lucy? What did she do?’

‘London.’

‘She lives there?’

‘She-she-she married a banker.’

‘Does she have children?’

‘We lost – we lost – touch.’

James nods sadly as if he understands; as if the rift between brother and sister was inevitable, given the circumstances, but nevertheless to be mourned. He changes the subject. He asks if Byron still hears from any of the old crowd. ‘My wife and I went to one of those drinks receptions – for old Winstonians. I saw Watkins. Do you remember?’

Jim says yes, he remembers. Apparently Watkins went into the City after Oxford. He married a nice French lady. James adds that parties are more his wife Margaret’s thing. ‘So what brings you here, Byron?’

He explains it is his job, to squirt tables, but James does not look surprised. He nods eagerly, suggesting this is marvellous news. ‘I’m retired myself. I took it early. I didn’t wish to keep up with new technology. And time is such a precise measurement. One cannot afford to make mistakes.’ Jim feels his knees weaken as though someone has just struck them with a blunt instrument. He needs to sit, the room is spinning, but he can’t sit, he is at work. ‘Time?’

‘I became an atomic scientist. My wife used to say my job was fixing the clock.’ James Lowe smiles but not in a way that suggests he thinks he has said anything funny. It is more crumpled, his smile. ‘It was a difficult job to explain. She found people either looked tired or busy. Although you would understand, of course. You were always the intelligent one.’

James Lowe refers to caesium atoms and minus the twenty-fourth. There is a mention of Greenwich Observatory, as well as phases of the moon, gravitational pull and Earth wobbles. Jim listens, he hears the words, but they do not register as sounds with meaning. They are more like soft noise drowned by the confusion inside him. He wonders if he heard right; that James Lowe said he was the intelligent one? Maybe he is staring or making a face, because James falters. ‘It’s so good to see you, Byron. I was thinking
of you – and then here you are. The older I get, the more I have to admit that life is strange. It is full of surprises.’