THIRTEEN

I picked up my cigarettes and walked out of the hotel. There were lamppost halos, a steady stream of cars making their way up the road. A short walk to my right would take me to the Queen’s and the Red Lion; to my left my secondary school; to the north my father’s house; somewhere to the south-west the place where they found Bethany. They all felt far away. It was slightly chill and I buttoned up my jacket as I descended the stone steps.

The Italian restaurant was half full, all wooden floors and bright lighting. I scanned the room through the glass, faces unfamiliar except for one table of four towards the front. Simon Beech and Ian Mawby were sitting eating pizza with two women I didn’t recognize.

They drank their bottled beer and laughed; one of the women got up to go to the bathroom. It is possible that the two men remembered me; possible that they still had occasion to think of me passing them the football, shouting something random at them. If they’d seen me they might have paused, trying to place me. But I kept on walking.

The Barclays bank was now a pub, two men guarding its door, the swinging sign above – calligraphic writing announcing it as The Counting House – the only clue to its previous incarnation. The noise was audible outside, the banners describing promotions on wine and cider. I paused for a moment, wondering whether this might be the place where the Coach’s regulars had decamped. But everyone I could see through the protected doors was young. Young and dressed for a night out. One of the bouncers looked at me and chewed gum. The other one spat on the floor. A group crossed the road from the High Street and a car sounded its horn. One of the kids flicked him the Vs as it sped past. No IDs were checked, despite how young they looked.

Ferne would be dressed in her nightclothes, her salad eaten, watching whatever was on the television. Though I had met her only briefly, it would have been nice to have her with me, sitting at the window seat in the Indian restaurant. The dining area wasn’t bad, though it was overlit like all the new places I’d seen: as though people had become afraid of the dark. The table next to me was occupied by two younger women, but most of the patrons were my father’s age: roughly middle-aged and softly packaged, their cheeks reddened from the heat of the food. They could be any one of many people’s parents. Some of them could have known Bethany, some may even have been at the funeral.

I ordered and passed back the menu, looked around at the diners. As I did, I realized the risk I had taken. I shifted my seat closer to the wall and closed my eyes, the way I had as a child, imagining that no one could see me.

The food arrived and I could think of nothing as I ate; just the curry and the bread, the beer and the rice. It was better than the Indian places where O’Neil and I used to eat in New York. O’Neil had never seen the attraction, but would humour me when I got a craving. He preferred chilli, his own a version that consisted mainly of beer and bourbon, and was dismissive of any of the curries I forced him to try. I only went when I could no longer face down the longing, full as the curry houses were with ex-pat Brits, or small canteens where the food was too authentic and the waiters’ Gujarati delivered with ill-disguised sarcasm.

I drank my second Cobra and stared out of the window, at the young people walking up Mill Street. The styles had changed little, still sportswear and earrings and short skirts. Hair was iron-flat, skin tone an unnatural orange or blistering white. They look happier than we ever did, Bethany said. You ever think about that?

‘Can I get you a dessert?’ the waiter said. The plates had gone and the table had been swept. A cooling twist of towel lay in a wicker basket.

‘Just the bill, please,’ I said and he nodded. The women on the next table were talking loudly.

‘Looks real from where I’m sitting, Trish. I’d kill to have legs like that these days.’

‘They look like scrubbers.’

‘They’re just having fun. Might as well while you can.’

‘If that’s fun, you can keep it.’

‘You weren’t ever young, were you?’

‘With my life? With my old man?’

‘Come on, let’s go Queen’s for a drink.’

The woman shifted in her seat, looked at her watch. ‘Okay, but just one. Can’t be back later than ten. Going fucking kill me anyway.’

‘What’s that thing about sheeps and lambs? Me dad used to say something like that.’

‘Maybe I’ll call him first,’ the woman said, taking out her phone.

‘Oh, just come for a drink. Say it took ages for a taxi.’

The waiter returned with their coats and I lost their thread. They couldn’t have been too much older than me, if they were at all. I knew them at school, Bethany said.

The waiter had the bill, the waxy paper inside a leather wallet.

‘They were always like that, always bickering,’ he said with a smile. ‘Funny how things don’t change.’

I handed over some notes and then looked up at the waiter. For a moment I thought it was Abel Farah, captain of the school football team.

‘Did you go to Kelmscott?’ I said.

‘No,’ he said. ‘Eaton Valley. They don’t remember me, but I remember them. Bad girls. Bad girls both of them.’ He laughed and headed back to the bar. On the pavement, the two women were continuing their argument. If we’d stayed, Bethany said, that’s what we’d have become.

*

Where Mill Street meets Harrington Street you can see over the town. Green’s Off-Licence was still there, as was the motorbike showroom. The Masonic Hall too, dark and smutty behind a row of new flats. Fully dark now, there were stars in the sky, and the hum of cars and the smell of dope from a bunch of skateboarders sitting on a bench by the entrance to the Safeway car park. We bought our first joint from people like that. You remember? From a guy called Gillon, and you misheard and thought he said Dylan.

I heard her laugh and saw her talking to one of the long-haired guys, him passing her a spliff and her running across the road. Seventeen years old and with her arm in mine, telling me that she loved me. I must because I’d never have done that for anyone else.

By the car park’s chain-link fence I lit a cigarette and followed Bethany up the street, past the discounted home and beauty shop, the butcher’s that had somehow survived, a betting shop with pictures of sporting legends unchanged since the late eighties, the same clusters of teenagers drinking on the benches, the same clack of shoes on the brickwork. You used to call this the gauntlet, you remember? she said. You always thought you’d get beaten up. I took a right up to the restaurant where I had worked; it was called something different now, candles visible through the window. The menu was sophisticated, but I couldn’t imagine such cuisine being prepared in the tiny kitchen out back. Things change, Bethany said. You can’t be surprised at everything.

We passed the Chinese take-away. Sore finger? she said laughing. You remember that, right? With Hannah we’d get chips on the way home, the Chinese woman asking if we wanted salt and vinegar and it always sounding like ‘sore finger?’ If there were a group of men there would be the inevitable joke and we would roll our eyes, even though we had found it funny many times before.

The passageway dipped down and on my left there were three small conjoined cottages, tucked away, the bust of a local philanthropist between them. It was said that in his direct eyeline a young boy’s body had been found, drowned by the adjacent river. It was just a story, but we always walked quickly past the cottages and never saw anyone go in or come out. Creepy fucking place, Bethany said, always was.

At the top of the cut we reached her old house, the lights off, the gate in need of some attention. Bethany’s bedroom window was at the back, the view extending over the untended fields. I sat down on the wall and smoked a cigarette, wondering if Mike really was still there, in bed now, dreaming of Bethany. No time for that now, she said. We have places to see!

We walked past the Woodman, the sound of karaoke coming from the doors. To the right was a church, the gravestones bent by age. A man was shouting into his phone and for a moment I thought it was John Boxer. You’re not looking, Bethany said, this is not the place you left, so just let it go, okay?

The Carpenter’s was the first pub Bethany and I went for a drink alone. I ordered a Jack Daniel’s and Coke and stood to the side of the bar, Bethany laughing. You don’t change, do you? she said. Everything changes but you.

In fact little had changed in the Carpenter’s, though the music was less abrasive and there were fewer leather jackets. We had agreed to meet there as it was neutral territory: no one from either of our schools would know us. So we drank and smoked, talked about our absent mothers, but quickly, and moved on. When we kissed, drunkenly, I felt like the world had started anew. It was one of those kisses. I was young, full of hormones and full of everything else, but the power of that moment—

Had I lived, would you feel the same way? Bethany said. Poor boy, you’ll never know, will you?

Bethany sat on the stool next to me, smoking a cigarette, drinking gin and tonic. She watched me with amusement. You never cease to amaze me, Mark. Your capacity for delusion. She finished her drink and walked out onto the High Street; I followed as she walked over to the Queen’s, the record shop opposite now a mobile-phone store. They shut down the Melody Maker too, she said. It was only a matter of time.

The Queen’s was stinking full, hard to negotiate and packed with people who had a glimmer of girls and boys I had once known about them. They did not look my way. The bar was three deep as it always had been, the same beers on, the same look of veiled dislike on the bar staff’s faces. I ordered a pint of Pedigree and it foamed on the bar towel, thick and faintly smelling of sulphur. The barman took my money and I turned away, bumping into a belly. I looked up at the man it belonged to.

‘Matthew,’ I said. ‘Matthew Cunningham?’

He looked down on me, his height cramped under the low roof.

‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Do I know you?’

‘We went to school together. Kelmscott.’

‘Oh. Okay. Yes, I remember. You well?’

‘Good, yes.’

‘Funny accent you got there. Sound like a Septic.’

‘I moved there years back,’ I said. ‘Must have picked it up.’

He nodded. He had no idea who I was. He liked hip hop and had an attractive elder sister; he liked to draw and was funny without being a clown. He was always trying to make money, always had a scheme on the go. Now he looked, dressed as he was in smart jeans and a Ralph Lauren shirt, like he had made his money, was living as best he could. He got the barman’s attention and ordered a round of drinks.

‘Nice to see you again,’ he said. ‘See you around.’

Bethany laughed. You think they remember you? What an ego you have!

I stood in the room where the pool table used to be. I placed my pint pot on the mantelpiece of an unlit fire and watched Bethany drink a pint of Guinness. She kept a cigarette lit at all times. You think this is bad, she said, you’ve got your father to see yet. Mine too. Imagine how that’s going to play out! You just dropping by like this with no word for what, how long? And then you’re back. What are you going to ask them? What are you going to say? Sorry? That isn’t going to cut it, not by a long way. Sorry, Dad, I walked out on you. Sorry, Mike, that I never contacted you? You have no clue what you’re doing, no idea of the wounds you’re going to open up with your salty fingers. But so long as you’re okay. So long as you feel like you’re doing the right thing. Fuck everyone else, right? What exactly is it you want here? If you’ve come looking for answers you’re a decade and a bit too late. Anyway, you’re Josef now, right? You’re a whole other person. Go back to New York. Go back to America. Just fuck off now, okay? Home is where real life happens, where we can’t just hide behind stupid names and bought identities. There isn’t anything for you here, Mark.

I wept then, softly, unable to stop Bethany’s questions, stop her smiling mouth from scything through me. I drank my pint quickly and headed through the bodies to the door. Bethany followed, a jacket covering her Cramps T-shirt. You don’t get away that easily, you fucking coward, she said. There’s more to see. Much more to see than this!

*

The war memorial had fresh flowers by it, soldiers fallen in Afghanistan. I sat on the bench and smoked a cigarette, Bethany, still holding her pint of Guinness, was standing in front of me. You think I matter? All those people who die, they don’t matter, so why should I? What makes me so fucking special? I was raped and murdered. Happens all over the world. Every single minute of every single day. But you had to take it personally.

‘I loved you. I still love you,’ I said.

You love yourself.

Bethany drank the last of her Guinness and sat down next to me on the bench. We need to keep moving, she said.

*

Hannah’s house was a long walk away. Her estate was typical of those that had sprung up in the seventies. Cars guarded garage doors like sentries. Bethany walked in silence until we arrived at her red front door, the crazy-paved driveway. There were lights on inside, the flicker of a television projecting onto drawn curtains. It was where the three of us used to meet before going out.

They probably fucked in there, Bethany said with a snort. Bethany marched off and I hurried in her wake. Imagine it, the two of them!

We came out at the east corner of the estate and met the Crewe Road. Now this you’re going to love, she said. My school, the reason we had met in the first place, should have been up on the right, but as I approached, the road looked too wide and open. Cranes and diggers were chained together behind big wooden boards, the gaps in between showing the deep excavation of the ground. Where the science block had stood there was rubble, where the playing fields had been there were the first imaginings of a housing estate: scaffolding, breezeblocks and partly constructed roofs. Bethany stood with her hands on her hips. I told you, she said.

The Carpenter’s meeting had been arranged in the school, a note given to me by Hannah. It was not long, written in Bethany’s scratchy, elegant handwriting. I remember that note, long and stupid it was. I think I quoted from some band you said you liked. I asked you if you’d meet me sometime, said that I’d had such a good time with you in the restaurant and that I owed you a drink for being so nice to me, taking me in out of the rain. The letter I got back was a disappointment, to be honest. Just half a side ripped from an A4 binder. Your handwriting was poor and it was hard to make out what you’d written. But it quickened my heart anyway.

I put my hand to the boards and looked again over the building site. She sparked up another cigarette and laughed. The thing is, if you go looking to destroy yourself, someone else will always do it better.