Thirty-three
Ethan found the note two days later, when he was late for a lecture and rummaging futilely through his possessions for a pair of clean socks, all the while promising himself that he would go to the laundrette that afternoon. He pushed the pile of notes to one side and saw the signature without realizing he was seeing it. Then he did a double take and pulled it out to hold up to the light. ‘7.30 p.m.: I came to see you but you were out – if you want to see me, please call a.s.a.p. Lorna xxx’, he read. He stumbled over to the window, opened the curtains and read it again, out loud.
When could she have come? He’d been here at seven thirty last night. And the night before, he was sure of it. Yes, he’d gone out later, at nine or something. That meant she must have come round when he had got lost on his bike and ended up at Reginald’s house. She would think he didn’t want to see her! She would think he’d read the note and simply not bothered to get in touch.
He didn’t have her phone number, though: he’d never dared ask her. Before he had time to think, he called Harry, who answered almost at once.
‘Hi, it’s Ethan.’
‘Ethan. Fancy a game of squash or something?’
‘I can’t. Sorry.’
‘Another time, then,’ Harry said carelessly.
‘I just needed to ask you for Lorna’s number.’
‘You did, did you?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Why’s that?’
‘I just want to ask her something, that’s all.’
‘You just want to ask her something. I bet.’
‘Look, Harry –’
‘You know we’re not going out any more, don’t you?’
‘No. I didn’t know. I’m really – I mean. God. Are you OK?’
‘Why shouldn’t I be?’
‘No reason. I only –’
‘What?’
‘I didn’t know.’
‘Yeah.’
‘Can I have her number, then?’
‘No.’
‘No?’
‘I don’t have it any more. I erased it.’
‘Oh.’
‘For Christ’s sake, Ethan. You know where she lives, don’t you? Just go and ask her.’
‘Ask her?’
‘Whatever it is you want to ask her.’
‘Right.’
‘It’s OK, you know.’
‘What is?’
‘Whatever happens. It’s no big deal.’
‘You mean –?’
‘I mean,’ said Harry, in a slow, sarcastically patient voice, ‘that it’s fine by me if you go out with Lorna. It wasn’t a great romance, and now it’s over.’
Ethan mumbled something about there being nothing between them anyway and – but Harry interrupted: ‘Whatever. I’m just saying it’s OK. You’re my friend.’
‘Harry.’
‘Yeah.’
‘I – you know. Thanks. And ditto.’
‘Ditto? Ditto!’
‘You’re my friend too.’
‘That’s better. Off you go, then.’
Ethan pulled on two unmatching dirty socks and a shirt that was clean but balled up at the end of his bag and creased. He pulled his fingers through his hair, then over the stubble on his cheeks. He grabbed his mobile, wallet and the key to his bike lock, then ran out on to the streets without even a jacket, not noticing how cold it was. He fumbled with the key, dropping it and cursing. It seemed to him that every second counted; that if he got to Lorna at once – a.s.a.p. – then it might turn out well, but that a few moments could tip the balance against him.
It did not take him long to arrive at the hall of residence where she lived. He skidded to a halt, locked his bike against a lamp-post and pelted indoors, taking the stairs two at a time. But when he got to a few feet from her door, he stopped with a thudding heart. What was he going to say? What if she hadn’t meant anything by her note? And, now he came to think of it, of course she hadn’t. Why on earth should he have assumed she had from the few casual words pushed under his door? It was only the agony of hope that had converted them into anything more than amiability. He took a step backwards, blushing at the mistake he had nearly made although there was no one to see him. For several seconds, he hovered in agonizing indecision, turning over the alternatives in his mind. He could leave now, and avoid humiliation and pain, or he could stay and find out what he already knew: that she didn’t love him. But what if she did? What if she felt the same way? The memory of her kiss still tingled on his skin. It was just a kiss. A kiss on the cheek. How many people, men and women, did he kiss on the cheek to say hello, to say goodbye? Everyone. Why should be imagine that Lorna’s kiss had meant more than goodbye? He didn’t believe that Lorna felt about him the way he felt about her, but he wanted to cling to the uncertainty. Not to know for sure meant that there was room for doubt and for deluded dreams, which, however painful they were, seemed better than the dull, flat knowledge that would fall on him once she had turned him away.
He took another step backwards. Somewhere in the distance he heard a voice. Two voices. They were coming towards him, up the stairs. Oh, God, what if Lorna was to find him standing like this outside her door? What would he say? Hello, I was just passing …
Two young women turned on to the corridor. They looked at him as they approached and one smiled in a friendly, incurious manner. He tried to appear purposeful, pulling his mobile out of his pocket and pretending to press keys to call a number. He lifted the dead instrument to his ear and said, ‘Yes? Yes, it’s me. Yes.’ They passed and turned the corner, out of sight. Ethan put the phone back into his pocket, grimaced at his foolishness and strode up to Lorna’s door. He didn’t pause to think, just knocked firmly, three times, and stood back. He pushed his hair out of his eyes, turned down the collar of his jacket and stood up straight, waiting.
It had never occurred to him that Lorna might not be there, though it was the middle of the morning in the middle of the week in term-time. He knocked once more, louder. No, the room was empty. He pressed an ear against the wood and listened. Nothing. He turned away, and as he did so a figure came along the corridor, swinging his bag and whistling. ‘Looking for Lorna?’
‘Yes. I was just passing …’ Ethan dribbled to a pause.
‘She’s not here.’
‘I know.’
‘I mean she’s gone away.’
‘Gone away?’ Ethan echoed.
‘She went yesterday. She said it was something about her family. Her sister was ill or something.’
‘When will she be back?’
‘No idea.’
‘Oh. Where do they live?’
‘Her family?’
‘Yes.’
‘I haven’t a clue. No, hang on a minute. She said it was somewhere near Bath, I think. Yeah, because we talked about the Roman baths and she said she’d never been even though she lived so close. Why?’
‘No reason. Thanks.’
Ethan left and went back to his bike, cursing himself for not taking Lorna’s number before he left. He pedalled to the station and when he arrived there, phoned Directory Enquiries and asked the number for Vosper, he didn’t know the initials, near Bath. There was only one Vosper in the area, Jonathan Vosper – did he want to be put straight through? No, he said in panic. No, but could he check the address to make sure it was the right person, after all? He repeated the words the operator said – Tye Cottage, End Road, Ofden, Bath – memorizing them, then disconnected, wheeled his bike into the station. He would have to change at Bristol, Temple Meads, but the journey would take less than an hour and a half. He bought a return ticket for a train leaving in thirty-five minutes, checking that he could take his bike with him, then went and bought himself a double espresso that burnt his lips and made his head buzz. He realized he was cold in his thin shirt, and slightly dazed with fatigue and hunger, but the thought of eating made him feel nauseous. He bought a paper and boarded the train for Bristol, settling back in his seat and looking at his mobile to check the time. His lecture would be over by now. The next would begin in an hour. A whistle went and the train pulled out of the station.
Ethan tried to read the paper but soon found he wasn’t taking anything in. It might as well have been written in a foreign language. He looked out of the window and saw that the blue light was already softening to a silvery grey. It was mid-afternoon. His second lecture would be under way. He should be sitting scribbling notes while the hands ticked round the clock on the wall and the day faded outside. Instead – but he didn’t want to think about what he was doing. He put his head on the seat back and felt the train’s motion in his body. He had always loved travelling by train, gazing out of windows at unfamiliar landscapes speeding by, half thinking and half letting thoughts drift over his mind like early-morning mist in a valley.
He tilted his head and stared out at the unknown worlds he was passing. There was a canal, with a footpath running along it, going straight into the distance. A wood, half stripped of leaves and mysterious in the dusk. A single house with smoke coming out of its chimney and its downstairs windows already lit. A field of cows. A syncopated section of houses whose gardens led right up to the track: as a boy he had always thought it would be exciting to live by a railway and lie awake at night hearing the rumble of trains passing to who knew where. Something about the stream of lit-up carriages in the darkness still filled him with the longing to be off as well, travelling to a faraway destination with a single light bag and a few notes stuffed into his back pocket. The exhilarating loneliness of it, with its whiff of homesickness and longing. His mother loved to travel. She used to say that her idea of bliss was to get on to a train, any train, and see where it took her. He had asked her if she’d ever actually done it but she’d shaken her head and laughed, saying that she and his father would some day soon. ‘You’ll see,’ she had said. ‘We’ll become vagabonds when you’ve left home. We’ll do things back-to-front – stability and responsibility in our youth and recklessness in old age. Won’t we, Connor?’ His father had given his secretive smile, the one that meant he was saying nothing.
At Bristol, Ethan had only a few minutes to wait for a connection to Bath and contemplate bolting back to Exeter. He bought himself another cup of coffee and carried it carefully in one hand, wheeling his bike with the other, on to the second train, then sipped it slowly, trying to ignore his nervousness. Now the day had almost gone, and when he gazed out of the window he saw his face staring back, and for a while he let himself become lost in his reflected features through which he could discern the landscape outside.
At Bath, he bought a map of the city and outlying areas and soon found the small village of Ofden, and even End Road leading north from it. It wasn’t many miles. He didn’t have his bike lights with him, so when he left the city he was cycling in a gloomy half-light in which shapes became incomprehensible – a stooped figure became a small tree, what he took for a barn or tumbledown outbuilding turned out to be a copse, and a bulky horse or bull was just a haystack. He was shivering with cold now, and it was too dark to consult his map so he relied on memory to take him along the small road until he came to a sign pointing left to Ofden.
The village where Lorna lived was really a straggle of houses, a few larger and older than the rest, set back from the road and surrounded by lawns. He stopped at what he guessed was its centre, where there was a triangle of grass and a tiny post office, its metal shutters pulled down. Ethan had been planning to buy a bunch of flowers, a bottle of wine or a box of chocolates – he’d imagined himself standing at the door and holding out the gift for Lorna’s ill sister, like a kind of entry into her family. But he clearly wasn’t going to find anything here. End Road forked left off the road that led out of the village and he cycled along it for a few hundred yards until he came to a gravel driveway, full of potholes, that led up to a battered grey house with large windows and a porched door. The upstairs windows were dark, but downstairs the curtained windows were illuminated. He pushed his bike over to the open wooden gate and made out the name of the house: Tye Cottage.
Ethan took a deep breath, cleared his throat, as if he was about to make a formal announcement, and wheeled his bike slowly up the drive. He thought a shape passed in front of one of the windows and wondered if it might have been Lorna; the very idea made his forehead prickle with sweat. He leant his bike against the tree that stood to one side of the house and walked up to the front door. Taking hold of the brass knocker, he rapped it boldly, hearing it reverberate inside the house. Then he took a few paces backwards.
There was the sound of bare feet slapping across tiles and the door swung open to reveal a girl of eight or nine, glaring at him. She was small and skinny and her dark brown hair was in two tight plaits. Ethan took in the thin face, the fierce eyes and flushed cheeks, the knobbly knees under the short corduroy skirt.
‘Hello,’ he said.
‘What?’ Her voice was surprisingly loud for such a small body.
‘Are you the one who’s been ill?’
‘That’s Polly. Come with me,’ she said, took his hand in hers and yanked him over the threshold into the house.
‘But listen – sorry, I don’t know your name.’
‘Phoebe.’
‘Listen, Phoebe.’ He dug in his heels. ‘I’ve come to see your sister –’
‘I know.’
‘You know?’
‘Come on,’ she said. Her fingers were hot and sticky in his and she hauled him through the dingy hall and to the carpeted staircase that led from it. Ethan could hear the sound of voices from the room to the left, but the child wasn’t going to let him stop.
‘This way,’ she said, turning at the top of the stairs along a short corridor, and stopping in front of a door on which a sign written in large green letters read ‘Keep Out. No Entry Without Knocking.’
Phoebe didn’t knock. She kicked the door open and pushed Ethan inside. The curtains were closed and the lights off, and for a few seconds Ethan stood in the darkness, which smelt sour and close, trying to make out the shapes around him. There was a narrow bed to one side of the room, and a desk beside it, under the light grey rectangle that was the window. A wardrobe to the other side, and perhaps that was a chair or a stool.
‘Phoebe?’ he said.
Phoebe had disappeared. He took a step back and a shape rose up out of the bed.
‘Who’s that?’ The voice was small and hoarse.
‘Sorry,’ Ethan stammered. ‘You’re ill?’
‘Are you the doctor?’
‘I’m Ethan.’
‘Who’s Ethan?’
‘I don’t know Ethan. Where’s the doctor?’
‘I’ll go now. Lie down. Go back to sleep. Sorry for waking you. I thought –’
‘Daddy! Lorna!’ The figure flung out an arm and caught the glass that was on the bedside table, sending it flying with an arc of spilt liquid across the room. ‘Someone!’
The child wriggled back frantically in her bed until she was pressed against the wall.
‘It’s all right, Polly. I’m going. I’m not here to harm you. Aah, please don’t cry.’
‘What is it? Polly, I’m on my way.’
Ethan knew that soft, low voice. He gave a small moan and stood aside as Lorna hastened into the room and knelt at the side of her sister’s bed. She didn’t see him standing there, and he watched in silence as she laid her hand on Polly’s forehead. ‘It’s just a dream,’ she was saying. ‘A feverish dream.’
‘There was a man in my room, watching me.’
‘I’m going to get a flannel for your head. You lie down again. Look, you’ve spilt your lemon barley. I’ll get you some more. You have to keep on drinking.’
‘I want Mummy.’
‘I know. I know you do. But I’m here.’
‘There was a man.’
‘No, don’t you worry.’ She pulled the covers over the child and straightened them. ‘You were dreaming.’
‘No,’ said Ethan. ‘Not a dream. It’s me, Lorna.’
Polly gave a rasping shriek, then broke into a spasm of coughing and clutched at Lorna, who was struggling to her feet.
‘I didn’t mean to frighten her.’
‘Ethan?’ she repeated. She put a hand to her hair and pushed the stray locks back from her face, and with that one anxious, womanly gesture Ethan felt a moment of hope. ‘But what on earth –?’
‘I wanted to help.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Who’s that man? Why’s he here?’ Polly wailed from the bed.
‘Hush, it’s all right.’
‘I said it wasn’t a dream. I told you so.’
‘Is it a dream?’ asked Lorna.
‘I didn’t see your note.’
‘What?’
‘What’s going on?’ a voice asked from outside, and the door opened once more. Another girl – this time a teenager, as far as Ethan could tell – burst into the room, still in her coat, with a backpack slung over one shoulder, closely followed by Phoebe. ‘Oh,’ she said, when she saw Ethan. ‘Hello.’
‘Hello.’
‘I’m Jo,’ she said.
‘I’m Ethan.’
‘He was standing in my room,’ said Polly, from the bed, ‘looking at me.’
‘I’ve just come in from school and Phoebe said the doctor was here and then I heard these terrible screams, as if someone was being murdered.’
‘I think I confu –’
‘Lorna said it was a dream. She didn’t believe me.’
‘But I didn’t think we were expecting the doctor and, anyway, even in the dark I can tell you’re not one. Are you?’
‘No,’ said Ethan.
‘No,’ repeated Lorna.
‘Why did you lie to me?’ asked Phoebe.
‘It was a misunderstanding. I didn’t mean –’
‘Oh, well,’ said Jo. ‘Never mind. You OK today, Polly?’
‘My throat hurts and my chest hurts and my glands hurt and my ears hurt and my mouth hurts and …’
‘That’d be all the screaming. You should go to sleep.’
‘I’m bored of sleeping and, anyway, when I close my eyes everything tilts and it’s scary. I want to do something.’
‘Shall I read to you?’ asked Ethan, who was feeling quite light-headed by now.
‘Why are you here in my room?’
‘What? Oh, well, I was in the area so I thought I’d come and see – actually, I have no idea what I’m doing here. You might as well be dreaming me. Or I’m dreaming you.’
Lorna came and stood by his side, close enough so that if he reached out he could stroke the soft shine of her hair or take her slender hand in his. ‘He’s my friend,’ she said to Polly.
‘He still shouldn’t just turn up in my room like that.’
‘Sorry.’
‘OK, then.’
‘Thank you.’
‘No. I mean OK, then, you can read to me.’
‘Polly –’
‘No, I’d like to,’ said Ethan. ‘Can we turn on the light?’
‘Only the small one or it hurts my eyes.’
Ethan went to her bedside, feeling bulky and shy, and bent down to turn on the shaded lamp on the desk. The light dazzled him momentarily so that when he turned he only saw the other sisters as silhouettes. Then their shapes resolved and he found he was gazing at Lorna at last. She looked small – smaller than Jo, who seemed tall and strong and glowing with health – and almost plain. Her hair was pulled back in a crooked ponytail; she was wearing no makeup or jewellery and her face was tired, with purple smudges under her eyes. She was wearing old jeans and a grey man’s sweater with the sleeves rolled up. Her feet were bare. Ethan thought he had never seen anyone so purely, simply lovely in his entire life and it was all he could do to prevent himself kneeling at her feet.
‘Oi! What book are you going to read me?’
He sat carefully beside the girl in the bed, his back to the others. Her hair was greasy and her cheeks blotchy; her eyes glittered at him. ‘What do you want me to read?’
‘Dunno.’
‘How old are you?’
‘Ten.’
‘Double figures.’
‘How old are you?’
‘Nearly twenty.’
‘Well, then. That’s twice me.’
‘Exactly. How about this?’ Ethan took a book from the top of a pile by the bed.
‘OK.’
Ethan started to read, intensely conscious of Lorna standing by the door. The book was some kind of fantasy set in sinister marshes and peopled by all manner of strange beasts with complicated histories and long names, and very soon he lost track of it. He spoke the words, but his thoughts wandered. He heard when Jo and Phoebe, whispering to each other in piercing hisses, then Lorna left, pulling the door to with a muted click. He heard footsteps going down the stairs. He heard voices. Shortly after that a beam of light swept through the window and a car pulled up outside in a crunch of gravel. He read about poisoned berries and girls with the power to know people’s thoughts, about babies with wings curled up at their shoulder-blades and dogs with red eyes and dripping tongues. A faint, rasping snore stopped him and he put down the book. Polly’s mouth was slightly open and a tiny trickle of saliva had worked its way down her chin. With the hem of his shirt, he wiped it away, then stood up, pulling the duvet so that it covered her shoulders. He turned off the light and tiptoed from the room.
For a moment he stood on the landing. A man’s voice was coming from directly below him, and, a bit further off, the sound of a TV: canned laughter. He went slowly down the stairs, into the tiled hallway, then hesitated outside the door where he could hear voices.
‘Is he staying the night, then?’ the man asked.
Ethan knocked and pushed open the door on to a large kitchen, festooned with wet sheets. Lorna was sitting at a wooden table, chopping onions and her father was opposite her, struggling to open a bottle of wine.
‘Hello,’ said Ethan. He saw that Lorna had changed into a white shirt and brushed her hair. There were earrings hanging from her lobes. She had put gloss on her lips. I hardly know her, thought Ethan. I’ve only talked to her a few times. What am I doing here? He hardly dared to look at her.
‘You must be the mystery visitor who’s created such confusion in the house.’
The man examined him with Lorna’s eyes; Ethan tried to hold his gaze. He was solid and rumpled, wearing a shabby cardigan over an unironed shirt over a T-shirt ripped at the neck, and slippers on his feet. His hair, silvering at the temples, was past his collar.
‘I’m Ethan.’
‘Jonathan Vosper. We weren’t expecting you.’
‘No. Well, you see, I’m a friend of Lorna’s from university and when I happened to find myself in the area I thought it would be nice to – you know – drop in and see how she – you, I mean, I don’t mean to talk about you in the third person like that, Lorna – to see how you were … I didn’t mean to intrude.’
‘Don’t worry. We’re glad you just happened to find yourself in the area,’ said Jonathan Vosper, with a snort of laughter.
Blushing furiously, Ethan stammered something incomprehensible.
‘Do you like curry?’
‘Curry? Yes. I love curry.’
‘Hot?’
‘Very,’ said Ethan, bravely.
‘Hot,’ said the father to Lorna. ‘We’ll have it very hot. Suicide curry.’
‘Am I staying?’
‘Aren’t you?’
‘Lorna?’ said Ethan, summoning up his courage. ‘Am I staying?’
She looked gravely up at him and a surge of joy passed through him. Of course he knew her. He had known her from the moment he had first seen her.
‘I don’t know,’ she said.
‘It was under my clothes. My room’s such a mess.’
‘Do you like Monopoly?’ asked Jonathan Vosper.
‘No. I hate Monopoly. Lorna?’
‘Pity. I thought we could all play a game before supper. It’s been ages.’
‘Will you come for a walk with me, Lorna?’
‘It’s dark outside and Lorna’s making curry for us. We’ve been living on baked potatoes and pasta.’
‘Lorna?’
‘Yes,’ she said. She stood up and rinsed her hands under the tap, dried them thoroughly, then put them on her father’s shoulders. ‘I’ll play Monopoly after supper, Dad. All right?’
‘You’ll get cold.’
‘You have a glass of wine,’ she said.
‘The curry.’
‘I’ll be back.’
‘But …’
‘Dad!’
He grimaced and rubbed his craggy face. ‘Sorry.’
Ethan followed Lorna out of the kitchen and into the hall. She pulled a jacket off a hook and put it on, then handed him a thick moleskin one.
‘Where are you two going?’ Phoebe was standing at the top of the stairs.
‘It’s dark. You won’t be able to see anything.’
‘We know that.’
‘Can I come too?’
‘No, you can’t,’ said Ethan, opening the front door and feeling the cold air biting through him.
‘You’re not a doctor.’
‘I know.’
‘So you can’t tell me what to do. I wasn’t talking to you anyway. Lorna?’
‘No,’ said Lorna.
‘But –’
They closed the door on her rising wail.
They walked side by side but not touching, until they could no longer see the house, where faces might be pressed to the windows. Now they were out of range of the light it threw, and on the narrow road they were in darkness. The sky was clear and pricked with silver, but there was no moon. Trees leant in from either side like shadows. Ethan listened to the sound their feet made. He listened to the wind in the trees, like waves breaking on the shore. He listened to his heart thudding. Soon, he would have to say or do something, and the hope that was making his knees weak and his stomach liquid and his breath shallow and ragged would turn into a more certain, solid emotion. But for now he walked dreamily beside Lorna, not looking at her but feeling her figure beside him, moving like a dancer’s down the road.
‘Lorna,’ he said at last. ‘I – Tell me if I’m a fool.’
‘You’re a fool,’ she said.
‘I found your note under my stuff by the door. I didn’t see it until a few hours ago. I didn’t have your number and I called Harry and he said it was over between you and then I went to your room and someone said you were with your family and I just – I just had to – I had to find you, and I went to the station and I got the train and I came here, and I know your family probably thinks I’m mad and you probably think I’m mad too, and maybe I am a bit mad because I’m so much in love with you every bit of me hurts and aches and burns and if you don’t put your arms round me soon I’m going to fall over or start to cry. Please.’
‘You don’t need to cry,’ she said. ‘Or fall.’
She put one hand on his shoulder and turned him towards her. In the gloom, they stared at each other. He could see her soft dark hair, her eyes, the pale column of her neck. He put out his hand and with one finger touched her cheek. ‘You’re not just a dream?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Because if you turn out to be –’
‘Ethan, do you always have to talk so much?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘No.’
He ate prawn vindaloo until his eyes watered, drank red wine, told stories and jokes, teased Phoebe, begged for anecdotes about Lorna as a child, gabbled with happiness, ran up the stairs with lemon barley water for Polly, washed the dishes, helped Jo with her Spanish verbs, played Monopoly with Lorna’s father and made him happy by going spectacularly bankrupt in record time.
Then he lay on the living-room sofa-bed, covered with a thin, lumpy duvet and looking at the ranks of framed family photographs on the windowsills. He saw Lorna as a baby, as a tiny girl with bobbed hair and gappy teeth; he saw her growing up. He saw her with her mother, her father, her sisters, her pet rabbit; then second to the right in some large family gathering but he would have recognized her anywhere. In shorts and sandals with an ice-cream; in wellington boots and braces; in tight jeans and a T-shirt that showed the curve of her new breasts. As a teenager, standing as straight as she did now, she had had the same luminous smile on her smooth oval face. Standing with her sisters round her mother, gaunt and old with illness.
He could hear lavatories flushing, taps running and doors shutting upstairs. He turned off the light, put his head on the pillow and waited, his eyes wide open in the darkness, until at last he heard her footsteps coming lightly down the stairs towards him.