If This Is Home Page 11

  The lads become cruder, the three trying to outdo each other. She looks away from them, over to where the empty bookshop straddles Jackson and Harrington Streets. The stewards in their orange and blue vests do nothing; to tell the lads to be quiet would only make things worse.

  She is long past the Taj Indian restaurant when she recalls that Mark first told her he loved her in there, drunkenly, food-flecked and lit by a low-wattage red bulb. What he said exactly she can’t quite remember, but he used a song lyric of some kind, Dylan maybe, or Joni Mitchell. They were the only people in the place, in that lull between the early evening’s middle-aged diners and the post-pub food fights. She knew already, knew also that she loved him. She took his hand and leant over to kiss him. ‘You’re stupid, but I love you too,’ she said.

  They went back to the restaurant just once more, on that occasion with her father. Mark was on his best behaviour, while her father acted the stentorian parent in a way Bethany found funny, but served to simply confuse Mark.

  ‘You need to lighten up a bit, Mark,’ he said over poppadoms, onion bhajis and vegetable samosas. ‘If you take this world too seriously, it’ll bite you on the arse, you mark my words.’

  ‘Ignore him,’ Bethany said to Mark. ‘He thinks he’s the funniest man in the North-West.’

  ‘I know I’m the funniest man in the North-West,’ he said. ‘I’m just waiting for everyone else to realize it.’ He put down his poppadom on his smeared plate. ‘You know, they used to laugh when I said I’d be a comedian when I grew up. Well, they’re not laughing now!’

  Mark laughed along and put down his half-moon of poppadom.

  ‘I’m not much of a fan of Bob Monkhouse, but that’s a good one,’ he said.

  Bethany’s father looked hurt for a moment and drank from his glass of wine.

  ‘I always thought that was a Wilder original.’

  Mark shook his head. ‘Definitely Monkhouse. My dad loves him. Him and Tommy Cooper.’

  The two of them spent the remainder of the evening quoting old gags, catchphrases from radio shows and comedians who had long since faded into obscurity. Bethany watched them; tracing the curious alchemy from indifference to something approaching respect. They drank more than they ate and wandered back to her house for a glass of wine before Mark had to head home. On the step they kissed and Mark whispered in her ear. ‘I like your dad, but he’s bloody mental.’

  ‘You should have met my mother,’ she said and squeezed his behind.

  *

  The footmen are sweating profusely and the beat of the change in the buckets has slowed. The procession is now by the roundabout on the approach to the bypass. The motorcycle shop has a big sign, illustrated with a ring of fire, reminding people to attend the formation bike display at the tattoo. Green’s off-licence, the most difficult place to get served in town, has boarded up its exterior, presumably expecting violence of some kind.

  Bethany looks out towards the roundabout. The town has won countless awards for them, and it has excelled itself with a centrepiece of a palm tree surrounded by red, white and blue flowers. Day trippers come from miles around to admire these displays, and then take a walk through the park’s gardens, where the same horticulturalists have been let loose.

  Bethany smiles to herself. The palm looks so ostentatious and strange, completely at odds with the town’s otherwise militant functionality. One night, not long after they first met, she and Mark were walking to Hannah’s and saw that the roundabout had changed once again. How it had managed to do so without either of them noticing was a mystery.

  ‘It’s the roundabout gnomes,’ Bethany had said. ‘Must be.’

  ‘Okay,’ Mark said. ‘Gnomes?’

  ‘You never heard about the roundabout gnomes?’

  ‘New one on me.’

  ‘Well,’ she said, reminded of a story her father had once told her. ‘Back a long time ago, just after the car was invented, there were three gnomes. And these three gnomes had no interest other than making beautiful gardens. They used the most unusual, most sensual, most vibrant flowers you could imagine, and some that you couldn’t. They spent their lives travelling from town to town, from city to city, constructing gardens that would make princes, kings, peasants and knights weep with joy.’ They sat down on a bench by the roundabout. Mark checked his watch.

  ‘And then it came to pass that they found themselves just a few miles from here. The thing was, though, the town gardener was a powerful man, and one who had heard rumours of the gnomes’ great skill. He knew that his standing would be destroyed if they came here, so before they could arrive he sent a witch to cast a spell over them and turn them to stone. But just as she was completing the spell, the last gnome pleaded for clemency. The witch cackled, but then saw the flower he had plucked from his pocket. It was exquisite. The kind of beauty not even a hoary old witch could resist. In exchange for the flower, she agreed to let all three of them come back to life just once every season. And now, four times a year, they decorate the roundabouts to let people know that they’re still here, and that they remain cursed. No one remembers the old gardener and the gnomes, but everyone loves to look at the roundabouts and the little stone men who live on them.’

  Mark lit a cigarette. ‘I so wish that were true,’ he said, as Bethnal’s initial laughter melted into something sadder. ‘But I’ve met the guy who does them. His name’s Dave.’

  She laughs now at the memory and feels for a moment that she might cry. Still waving. She is saying goodbye to everything; she feels that keenly, almost like a pain in the gut. She imagines her new friends in New York: thin, stylish people who will be entranced by her stories of growing up in such a place. And she’ll say, thank God we found each other, and Mark will say, thank God we left while we still could.

  They are by the banks of the river now, its water the colour of rust. Two huge factories overlook it, built just at the base of a large hill. They are red-brick and grimy, letters missing from their ageing signs. Smoke and steam pour from their vents and chimneys. Bethany’s father manages the one on the right; a textiles company clinging to the last of the area’s connection to the cotton trade. It is vast and ugly, a place her mother refused to enter for any reason. Bethany is glad she no longer has to work there, operating a machine that breaks down every couple of hours. She gives an animated wave at its windows as she passes by. As she does, she sees Daniel, alone, waving back.

  *

  The parade fades away. She no longer cares whether she is waving or drowning or just standing there like an automaton. She sees Daniel, smiling expectantly. And as Bethany nears the intersection by the leisure centre, part of her desperately wants to see Mark. She is reminded of the lecture he had from his father. The spitting rage Mark vented when he arrived at her house, the redness of his cheeks, the arousing nature of his indignation. And yet for all of her calming words, for all of her understanding, she also saw something in what his dad had said. Here they would always be children. Here they could never throw off what has gone before.

  She keeps waving, or at least she believes she does, and the beat of the buckets increases, the heat intensifies, the bugles and brass bands blow harder and harder. They are on the final stretch. The crowds are pressed willingly against the metal barricades and there are wolf-whistles and peals of laughter and the screams of young children. The foremen dance along, the sun melting the asphalt slightly, the light blinding from high windows and the air heavy with the smell of frying sausages and onions.

  They are cheering her on; telling her that she is making the right decision. She looks left and right hoping, still, to catch sight of Mark. She waves and waves, smiles wider and brighter than she has all day. There is no more than a hundred yards until the parade’s end, and for a moment it saddens her. She thinks of Mark, his careful hands, his late-night whispers. And then Bethany Wilder thinks of America. Of New York City.

  ELEVEN

  There was an empty seat next to me on the aeroplane, just as there
had been the last time I’d crossed the Atlantic. I put the notebook there as soon as we reached cruising altitude. The economy cabin was not busy: a cluster of young men towards the back, couples dotted around talking quietly, the odd single person sitting silently alone. The engine drone was comforting, the red wine and aeroplane food numbing the ache in my chest. The beating I’d taken was suggested rather than broadcast: there had been no reaction from any of my fellow travellers or the airport staff. But I could still taste the blood, could still feel a sharp pain as I inhaled.

  Bethany had once told me that she liked planes because they were magic: the kind of everyday magic we take for granted. She’d said that in my back garden, with my father standing beside us, turning sausages on the large barbecue he’d bought from the local garden centre.

  ‘There’s magic there all right,’ he said. ‘But a lot of hard work too. Did I ever tell you about the chickens? There’s this hangar they’ve got on the shop floor—’

  ‘You’ve told us about the chickens, Dad,’ I said. ‘You always tell us about the chickens.’ It wasn’t quite true. He had mentioned it once or twice, how they fired frozen chickens at aeroplanes to simulate birds hitting planes on take-off, and it was a story I loved as a child. But not then.

  He made to say something but was distracted by another plane flying overhead. He did not call out its manufacturer or its model. He’d learned that much at least. It was one of the few times the three of us were together alone.

  The video screen in front of me plotted our progress, the crude mapping as unconvincing as the video games O’Neil used to play: Super Mario Bros., Legend of Zelda. I put my finger on the screen and traced the line all the way to our destination. Even with the perspective skewed so that you could believe you were almost home, England looked so small, so crooked: an island where battles and puzzles and big bosses would have to be challenged. I thought about O’Neil safe in the arms of Edith, his look of confusion slipping slowly into anger, as the tiny plane moved a pixel every minute. I kept my finger on it, half-remembered lines from Joni Mitchell’s ‘This Flight Tonight’, one of Bethany’s favourites, repeating over and over.

  When I woke it was light outside. I opened the blind and looked out onto the clouds, ice fields waving into the distance. I got a cup of water from the stewardess and drank it down, stiff and uncomfortable, and picked up the notebook. I read it, but none of it rang true. Joe’s memories were laboured; they wanted to retire. I turned to the last page and there was nothing there that gave me hope. It was a notebook, a life, written in optimism: it was not real.

  It was only on the descent that I really thought about what I was doing. As we dropped incrementally – circling Manchester Airport, or Ringway as my father always called it – I saw the town, how it now was: how it should be. Risking the ire of the stewards, I got my bag down from the overhead locker and took a piece of paper ripped from the notes I’d made about Brooks and started to write.

  I wrote about a town that still worshipped Bethany. That still mourned her. I imagined a place that had stayed black-clad and frozen in time, stopped just at the moment of my departure. I wrote until we taxied across the tarmac, and read it back as I waited to get off. It was the town to which I wanted to return. One that understood.

  On the way out of the plane I said goodbye and thank you to the cabin crew. They said the same back. One of the men looked like someone I used to know, but I could not place him. He could have been from anywhere, any life I had cared to live. Outside, Manchester was bright and gleeful; no reservoir skies, just a perfect blue, as though refreshed from the night’s dark.

  The queue for immigration was mercifully short. I looked at the passport, the name on it, my face looking back. How had it got me this far? It was a fake and holding it then it felt exactly that: counterfeited and illegal. At Vegas airport I hadn’t given it a thought, but in the quick-moving line in Manchester it seemed to lose all sense of authenticity. There would be conversations; I would be led to the white cubicles and asked awkward questions. Had that happened to the real Josef Novak? Had he even made it this far?

  Uri, the fixer who’d organized my papers and everything else, had explained in a strangely formal, almost legalistic manner, that if I had any objections to the workmanship I should raise them there and then, because there were no refunds. At the time I didn’t think I was ever leaving. What did I care?

  I handed over the passport and landing card. The woman behind the counter looked up at me and down at the desk, then back at me. Perhaps on another day she’d have noticed the alarm on my face, the slight shudder as I’d handed over the passport. On another day it might have been different. Maybe that morning she was hung-over, or tired, or broken-hearted, or maybe she just hated her boss and didn’t care. Whatever her reason, she waved me through, the security guards untroubled, the awkward questioning avoided. I put the passport in my pocket and walked quickly through security, looking at my watch as though late for something important and impending.

  *

  My father worked mainly on military aeroplanes but loved civilian aircraft. After Mum left he would drive us to the observation tower at Ringway and take photographs or look through his binoculars. I would sit on one of the hard seats and read a book or do my homework. He didn’t seem to mind so long as I shared his enthusiasm when something unusual occurred. We did that regularly for about a year, then there were some problems. A boss, a project that failed, I can’t remember. He was moved to the civil side of the business. He worked longer hours and saw enough tail fins and engine brackets to no longer care about those flying out from the airport. He asked me once if I missed it: the drive to the airport, the planes, the fast food on the way home, and I told him that I did. That I missed spending time with him. We were both satisfied with the lie and went back to watching the television, a mug of beer balanced on the armrest of his chair.

  *

  I was soon out into the cool morning air and in the taxi line. As I’d walked through the arrivals terminal I’d half hoped that someone would be waiting with a felt-tip written card with my name on it. No one knew that I was there, but I studied those cards for either one of my names anyway. I had perhaps got more used to my life in Las Vegas than I realized: there was no chauffeur, no limousine, just the taxi queue and the pull on the long-desired cigarette.

  I got into a cab and told the driver where I was headed. He nodded and turned up the radio. Sunlight danced off advertising hoardings, the grass was muddy, the tarmac gummy with earlier rain. Out of the window, the landscape gave the lie to what I had written. No one was mourning Bethany. Nothing had stayed the same. Industrial parks had been replaced by shopping malls, American-styled and sprawling. The Little Chefs were Burger Kings; old pubs, McDonald’s. The cars were smaller, less corroded. The only familiar detail was the signposts, their whiteness and blueness as we swept up the M56.

  ‘Been on holiday?’ the driver said as we mounted the slip road.

  ‘What?’ I said.

  ‘I said, you been on holiday?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘Well, yes. No. Business actually.’

  He nodded, whether in agreement or in time to the music I couldn’t say. He negotiated a roundabout and pulled into traffic. There was the sound of horns.

  ‘I’ve always liked the airport run,’ he said. ‘Been doing it years now. Hours are shite, but you get to see what folk are really like, y’know? Folk are funny when they get off a plane. Can’t explain it. True, though. There’s some blokes that won’t do it. Me, I like it. Tips are good and you always get to know about places. Makes you feel you don’t have to go to ’em yourself, y’know?’

  The man had a shaved head, like a bullet covered in milky skin. I could see his sunglasses in the rear-view mirror, they were sepia-lensed and made him look somehow ill.

  ‘Been away long?’

  ‘Long enough,’ I said. ‘Long enough for things to change.’

  ‘Tell me about it,’ he said and indicated right. H
e opened his window and rested his arm along the door.

  ‘Got to say, though, I think it’s for the best after all. I know what folk think of cabbies, but I’m optimistic, you know? I’m a glass-half-full kind of a bloke. Always looking on the bright side and all that. People forget too quickly, that’s my point. People forget. Problem is that we think this is a new thing! That we all just invented it. Fact is it’s always been this way. Always. But you know, I believe in Blair. I do. Years from now they’ll look back on him and they’ll say he’s the reincarnation of Churchill. Though he was a cunt, if you’ll pardon my Français, ask any Irish.’

  ‘You’re Irish?’

  ‘Second generation, but the hurt’s the same, you know what I mean?’

  A white van cut us up and the cab driver shouted out the window.

  ‘Like I said, things don’t change. Bastards still can’t drive. Women still run off with your best friend, your kids still think you’re fucking useless. But if you don’t look on the bright side, what chance have you got? Take my kid, Stevie. Seventeen he is, fucking stupid haircut, looks a right state, but he’s going go university. First of us lot to go. Both sides. You’d’ve told me old mum that one of us lot were going to university, she’d’ve laughed. Honestly. She’d’ve laughed until she’d wet her knickers.’

  He took a very tight left bend and pointed to the dashboard.

  ‘That’s him there. Stevie. Back when he looked like a boy and answered to his father. I’m so proud of him. But I don’t tell him that. Might fuck him up even more, right?’

  He laughed and I laughed with him. He continued to talk but I’d stopped listening.

  We were in Wilmslow and the cinema where Bethany and I saw Beetlejuice was closed down, plywood covering its art-deco exterior. Her father had been invited to a business function at a nearby restaurant, so we watched the film and went to the pub afterwards, drank whisky and ginger ale and were eventually joined by Mike. He looked tired but had another drink with us anyway. He told me a joke that he’d heard on the radio and I imagined my own father there, rather than snoozing on the sofa. He would have bristled, at least initially, and then the two men would have talked work or football, my father quickly assuming a position of deference.