Breakdown (28 page)

“Are you going to be okay with him?”

“We’ll work it out.”

“It didn’t seem a good start, the other night,” she commented.

“That won’t happen again,” he said. “It’s too hard, being angry.”

“I never understood how you two, of all people, could fall out like you did.” She put a hand on his shoulder again. “You were such mates.”

Chris didn’t know what to say to that, so he didn’t say anything, and Laura continued with his hair.

“It’s Simon, really, that we have to thank for all of this,” she said after a few minutes of snipping.

“Yes, Jon told me it was all his doing.”

“The place you were, in Breton, is it like here?”

“Well, it’s a farm, like here, so they grow a lot of their own food, like you do. Not as big. They don’t have electricity. No one in the town does. And they have to hand-pump their water.”

“Fiona said it sounded like you were happy there,” Laura said and paused.

Chris held himself still. “I worked there is all.” He felt her fingers in his hair again. “How did you meet David?” he asked, to change the subject.

“We worked together, in Frome. In a lightbulb factory, of all places,” she said with a little chuckle. “I still work there. It keeps us in lightbulbs.”

“Oh.”

“I work a week, then I’m off a week,” she explained. “This is an off week. When I’m working, I stay with David. He has a job with the government now. That’s what he did before, so he’s glad to be back at that.” She pushed Chris’s head to the side and concentrated while she trimmed around his ear. “He wants me to come and live in Frome all the time.”

“So why don’t you?”

“I like it here,” she said, and the scissors were still. “Maybe I’m not ready.” She tilted his head the other way and did around his other ear. “He has a nice place, but he depends on his ration book, y’know? He hasn’t a place to grow anything. That worries me, I suppose. He says he can get me a better job, though, if I’m there all the time. But there have been two quarantines in Frome. That really worries me.”

“How far is it?” Chris asked, trying to remember.

“Oh, something like seven miles, I think. Bit of a ride, especially if it’s raining. We bike it, usually, to save the bus fare. Jon goes on Saturdays, did you know?”

“No, he hadn’t mentioned it.”

“There’s a good market; he trades there. Brian goes into Bath, and Simon goes over to Westbury. There’s a little market here in Hurleigh on Fridays; we have a stall.”

“Really?”

“Jams and such. Simon put in quite a few berry bushes. Plenty of extra to trade.”

“It’s a nice setup,” Chris said. “I’m impressed.”

“There,” she said, brushing at his head with her hand and carefully lifting the towel off. She stood up and shook it out, then used it to brush him off more. “All done. You’ll probably want to have a wash.” She stood back and surveyed him. “Much better.”

Chris ran his hand across his head. “Just like old times, eh? Thanks, Laura.” He stood up too, and saw her face, gone all pinched, as if she’d heard bad news. “What is it?”

“It’s not like old times at all, really.” She sat down on the stone step and folded the towel into a fastidiously neat rectangle on her knees.

Again Chris did not know what to say. He hadn’t meant to upset her. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—”

“We were so young,” she said. “We thought everything was going to be perfect. We had so many options.” She looked up at him. “And we still managed to screw it up.”

Chris stood silently, watching her.

“We were happy, for a time, weren’t we?” she said.

“Like you said, we were young.”

“And we changed. Everything in our lives changed. It scared me. But we loved each other, didn’t we?”

It had been a love of discovery, of togetherness, of intimacy. He had confused a love of what she represented with a love of her. “In a way, we did. For who we were, at the time,” he said.

“But not the way Brian and Fiona did. Do still.”

“No, obviously.”

“Not the way Stephen and I did, or you and Sophie.”

“We both got it right the second time,” he said.

“Now everything’s changed again. But I’m not sure I’ve changed. Everyone expects me to marry David. They don’t understand why I don’t jump at the chance to move to Frome.”

Chris took a breath in surprise. “I’m sorry if I gave the impression—” he said, but again she interrupted him.

“No, not you, sorry.” She didn’t look at him. She shook out the towel and folded it again. “I’m sorry, you don’t have to stand there and listen to me whinge on.”

Chris settled himself next to her on the stone steps, his arm almost touching hers, and waited.

She smiled down at the towel. “Thank you.”

“Don’t do something because someone else thinks you should,” he said. “Not if it’s not what you want.”

“I don’t know what I want.” She continued to stare at the towel, smoothing it out with her fingers. “Well, I do know what I want, but I can’t have that back.”

“It’s no good doing that to yourself, Laura.”

“I know. I don’t, generally. I’ve just been thinking about—well, things from before is all. Recently.”

“Since I got here?”

“Yes.”

“Well, so have I,” Chris admitted.

“Brian?”

“Of course.”

“We had such good fun, the four of us, didn’t we?”

“Yes.”

“But we have to take what we can get now, don’t we?”

“No, we don’t,” he said and looked hard at her. “We have to make what we want.” She chewed on her lip, thinking about it. “I think you do know what you want,” Chris went on. He watched her thinking for a time. “What do you want?”

“I want it to stay the way it is, for now,” she said, fiddling with a corner of the towel. “I want him to be happy with that. For now.”

Chris nodded. “That doesn’t sound so hard.”

“You don’t know David. He wants things his way.”

“What you want is important, too.”

She sat looking back at him for a time. “What do
you
want?”

He didn’t have to think about it, but he had to take some time before he answered her. He looked away. “Home. I want to be home.”

“Are you, now?”

“Well, I’d better be. It took me long enough to get here,” he said, trying to make light of it but not sure if he succeeded. She kept looking at him. It had been a long time, but there were still things about her that he remembered. She had been good at seeing through his disguises. From her look, he guessed that she was doing it now. He stared down at his feet, his heart thumping in his chest. She put her hand on his shoulder, moved it toward the middle of his back. He managed not to flinch, but had to draw a deep breath. She leaned toward him, put her forehead on his shoulder, slipped her arm around his waist and squeezed him gently.

“Make what you want, Chris,” she said. Then she gathered up her scissors and comb, stood, and went back toward the house.

Good Match
(excerpt)
(Wolcott/Price, 1991)

The hoovering’s always left ’til last,
I do it slow, you do it fast,
In spite of this,
We’re still a good match.

Still a good match,
Still a good match.

Like magnets, we attract,
Some time ago we made a pact,
I sometimes think that it’s an act,
I love you, though, and that’s a fact.

CHAPTER 24

C
hurch Street curved away to the left, bordered by stone walls and hedges in places, a footpath and a row of cottages on the right, their warm stone fronts glowing in the late afternoon sunlight. Chris walked slowly, hands in pockets. The trees hid his view of the church tower from here. He kept to the footpath until he reached the cottages, then took to the road.

The church could have been the same church in a hundred other small villages nestled across the countryside. The squared-off tower, rounded Norman arches, the drunken gravestones covered with lichen looked nearly the same as their counterparts in Breton. The blue-and-gold clock on the side of the tower did not have the correct time.

Chris ambled among the old stones, reading names and dates. Birds chirped; a gentle breeze brushed his face. The grass here was kept mowed, soft and green, the bushes pruned, in stark contrast with so many other unkempt public spaces.

In another part of the churchyard, all the gravestones were new. Chris found a seat on a stone wall, near three small markers placed close together. He did not need to read the names on them. He tried to keep his thoughts superficial. He had practiced it for years, thinking of nothing important, resting.

But thoughts of Pauline kept intruding, in short, vivid scenes: kneading bread dough at the kitchen table with her hair clipped back; working in the garden in her mucky cords and wellies; laughing as she scooped up a snowball to throw at him while he shoveled; putting her arm around him at the pub.

He remembered their encounter in the barn the day before he left Breton, and the feel of her lips against his. He dropped his head into his hands.

He remembered her face as he walked away and left her on the road.

Chris had spent the journey to Hurleigh trying to forget all of it, but he couldn’t do it. How long would it take? He fingered his wedding band, but the hurt was not from the loss of Sophie. He had let her go somewhere in Breton, and he couldn’t get her back.

The sun sank lower. The shadows from the gravestones reached across the ground. Another shadow moved into his sight.

When he looked up, Chris was startled by how close Brian had got before he’d noticed.

“I didn’t mean to sneak up on you,” Brian said.

Chris sat up straighter. “I was just thinking.”

Brian eyed the three graves. He came closer, leaned against the wall where Chris sat, with an arm’s length between them. He looked out over the whole space. “No one you know here, is there?”

“I don’t think so.”

Brian pulled a brown beer bottle from his pocket. He unscrewed the top, held the bottle out to Chris. “I stopped by the pub.”

“Cheers,” Chris said as he took it. “It’s not sacrilegious or something, is it?”

Brian pulled another one for himself from his other pocket. “They have wine in church.” He shrugged. “A toast?”

“All right.” Chris held his up in front of him. He thought for a moment. “To loved ones lost,” he said, and moved his bottle toward Brian.

Brian had raised his bottle, too, but he stayed still, gazing out over the churchyard. He turned to look at Chris.

“And found.” He touched his bottle to Chris’s.

Chris nodded, and they drank.

The first taste brought back memories of days long ago, when they had sat up drinking late into the night, so serious, thinking themselves invincible, believing that once they hit it big the world would be theirs and they could make it better. The future had seemed a bright adventure and they believed they had control, when really they were just specks in a sea of humanity, caught up in an immense wave rushing toward a crashing, chaotic dissolution.

Now they were cast together once more. Chris took a deep breath and said into the silence, “I never hated you.”
There, done.

“You had every reason to.”

Yes. But I didn’t. I loved you.

Brian took a long drink. “When I think back about the way I treated you...I don’t know why. I’m sorry. I’d take it back, if I could.”

“I didn’t come looking for an apology. I don’t need it, not anymore. It’s over; it’s done. Everything has changed.”

“No, I do know why.” Brian put his head down, eyes squeezed shut. He hugged himself, one hand holding the bottle.

Chris waited. Is this how he had looked to Pauline? Is this how she had felt, curious, but unsure if she really wanted to hear it?

“I didn’t think I could be successful by myself,” Brian said. “I depended on you. I didn’t know how I’d go on without you. I thought I was finished, a failure. I blamed you. So I did what I could to hurt you.”

“You had all the talent.”

“I might have had more musical talent, but you had everything else. You knew how to deal with the label, the execs, the publicity, the fans. I didn’t know shit. I was scared. I’d never had to do anything without you to turn to. And suddenly I had to do it all.”

“Huh.”

Brian tipped his bottle back again. “Holy shit.”

“Therapy. It’s a bugger, innit?” Chris glanced over at Brian. “I’ve just been through nine months of it.”

Brian gave him a questioning look.

“Long story. Never mind.” He raised his beer in Brian’s direction. “To starting over.”

“Starting over,” Brian repeated, and they drank together again. “It can never be the way it was, can it?”

Chris regarded the plain brown bottle in his hand. It had no label. The glass was scratched. It had been used over and over, saved and refilled. “No, but I knew that was never in the cards. I just couldn’t leave it, though. If you weren’t dead, there had to be something better than the way we left it.”

“If nothing else, I’ve learned that the people you love are what’s important in life. I’m glad you’re here.”

“Me too.” Chris stared ahead, and his eyes settled on the three gravestones in front of them. Brian shifted his feet.

“I’m sorry, Chris, about Sophie and Rosie. I should have said it before now.”

“No, it’s okay,” Chris said. “I’m sorry about all of them: the kids, and Colin, and Emily. Preston told me about the little girl.”

Brian nodded. “He never knew her, of course.”

“Tell me.”

“I found her in a house. She was the only one left. Her parents and a brother were all in their beds. She was waiting for someone to come and help them. She thought I was there to help.” Brian shook his head. “Of course, there was nothing I could do. I was just foraging, not looking to help anyone. When she told me her name was Alice, I couldn’t leave her.” He looked over at Chris. “I couldn’t leave her there, to die alone. I brought her home.”

“Did you know she was ill?”

Brian took a drink and stared at the ground before he answered.