If This Is Home Page 17

  There were sketchy puddles on the tarmac and my clothes were hanging damply from the coat hooks on the back of the door. Ferne and I had been caught in a storm leaving the Thai restaurant and had run with our coats over our heads back to the hotel, laughing drunkenly past other people similarly caught unawares. We were still laughing as we got to the bar, ordered drinks, and then went to our separate rooms to change into dry clothes. We drank a final bottle of wine sitting on bar stools, her dressed in sweatpants and jumper and me in another black suit.

  ‘I didn’t pack properly,’ I said. ‘It was all I had.’

  ‘I feel underdressed,’ she said. ‘But I don’t care. Is it wrong not to care?’

  I assured her it wasn’t.

  As I began to talk to Ferne, Bethany shook her head. She’d been sitting there in disapproval, and then disappeared as I briefly closed my eyes. As we drank that last bottle, Ferne asked me more about O’Neil and Edith and what Vegas was really like. By then I was tired of confessions, tired of my own voice. It was only her thirst for information and her luminous eyes that made me continue.

  There was a moment. On the landing, with the two of us standing outside room 11. Ferne cocked her head to one side and put her hand on my shoulder. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said.

  ‘What for?’

  ‘For everything. No one should have to go through those things.’

  ‘People do every day, though. And they cope with it better than I ever did.’

  She shook her head. ‘You did what you needed to do. You shouldn’t be ashamed.’

  She placed a kiss on my cheek and I wanted to kiss her back, wanted so much to hold her and tell her the whole true story, not just the edited version I’d presented. But I paused. I didn’t want this, whatever it had become, to be coloured by the past; my partial truths leading from here to the bedroom. For all intimacy to be predicated on the intimacy of my half-confession.

  *

  Her reaction to the stories of my past had been balanced incredulity, pity and sympathy. She bit her lip and restrained herself from interrupting, only occasionally telling me to go on when I reached a part that caused me to stumble. When I finished, ending on the fight with Brooks, she looked at me wistfully and said nothing for a time.

  ‘You know in science-fiction films, there’s always a scene where the time traveller or the alien or whatever has to explain to someone that they’ve come from a different world or time or something? And the person they’re telling never believes them, right? I’ve always thought that was bullshit. If it were me, I’d believe them straight away. Why would they lie? What on earth is in it for them?’

  ‘Are you saying you don’t believe me?’ I said, the plate of green curry going cold in front of me. Ferne laughed.

  ‘No, you dope. What I mean is that there’s only so much you can invent. The rest has to be true. I had this friend at university, Laurie. He was always involved in some kind of strange romantic liaison or other, and then he met this girl. Lovely girl, too, I met her a couple of times. They fell for each other, but she had a boyfriend back home … Am I boring you?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘Not at all.’

  ‘Good. Right. Anyway, she breaks it all off with the boyfriend and she moves in with Laurie. For a year or two, they’re deliriously happy. Then all of a sudden, they break up. He stays with me for a while and he seems okay. Pretty soon, he goes back to his old ways and pretty soon he’s forgotten about this girl. Then one night he’s at this club. He sees this girl and bam. That’s it. Eyes meet across a crowded room and all that bullshit. They go straight back to her place.

  ‘The next morning, he wakes up and she’s sitting on the edge of the bed, crying. He asks her what’s wrong and she says she’s sorry, but she has a boyfriend and she’s really not like that, but she just couldn’t help herself. Laurie’s disappointed and a bit pissed off, but they hug and she tells him that he’d like her boyfriend. He’s a nice bloke. He deserves better than her. She tells him this, then says that just last week her boyfriend came home from business with a bunch of presents for her. He’d bought her three books. His favourite books in the whole world.’

  Ferne pushed away her plate and lit a cigarette.

  ‘Laurie just looks at her and says, “Steppenwolf, The Unbearable Lightness of Being and The World According to Garp?” She looks at him at first in amazement and then in horror. “Oh Holy Living Fuck,” she says. “It’s you. He told me all about you!”

  ‘Her boyfriend was the guy Laurie had stolen his previous girlfriend from. The bloke had bought that girl the exact same books for her birthday. Laurie knew because they were the only novels his girlfriend owned when they moved in together.’

  I had my mouth open, then shut it. Ferne tapped her cigarette in the ashtray.

  ‘That’s like Laurie’s party piece story. He tells everyone that. Most people think it’s kind of funny, some people think it’s a bit sick. But no one thinks he’s made it up: it’s too stupid. I love that story, though. I love it because it shows you that even when you least expect it, life has something special up its sleeve; something to take your breath away.’

  *

  But there was the pause outside her hotel room. I said goodnight and thanked her for a lovely evening. Her hand was on the door. ‘See you tomorrow,’ she said. ‘If you fancy lunch, just let me know.’ She went inside without telling me how to contact her.

  Bethany came back to talk for some time in the night. Mainly she talked about her father. She told me stories I already knew, asked me if I really thought it was right to be visiting like this. She stood by the window looking through the curtains and out onto the darkened town, glancing back at me whenever she wanted to emphasize something. I drifted off to sleep as she told me about how he used to sing ‘Ballad of the Teenage Queen’ when she couldn’t sleep, his hand stroking her long hair and his voice getting quieter as she slowly settled down.

  *

  The breakfast room was deserted, silver dishes filled with meat and eggs under hot lamps, a fruit and cheese station, the same kind of juice dispensers we’d had at the canteen at school. You should eat, Bethany said, it’ll do you good. I poured some coffee and drank it black, chewed on a croissant and looked at my notes. I wrote down the questions I needed answering, as I should have done before meeting with Parks. I read them back and they seemed stupidly formal, as if for a job interview. I crossed them all out and ripped out the page.

  Out in the sunshine, an old man passed me by dressed in a crisp suit and a tie, a flat cap on his head. He nodded at me as we crossed paths, perhaps impressed that someone else was in their Sunday best. For him, it was a conscious flourish, almost an act of defiance: you may forget, but we shall not; the way I knot my tie before leaving the house keeps those times alive.

  The corner shop was open, the same sign – Senior Service Satisfies – on the window of the door. We thought for years that this was a reminder that service, real service, could only be delivered by the old. That the elderly shopkeeper was one of the rudest women anyone of us had ever encountered – she had called Hannah a trollop as she bought cigarettes one evening – made the sign all the more perplexing. The woman was no longer there, but the man behind the counter could only have been her son. He had the same pinched face, the same errant hair and a comparably brusque manner. I bought chewing gum and cigarettes and he conducted the transaction without speaking, the whole time keeping his eye on a small television.

  ‘Papers?’ he said, eventually looking up.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘Just these, thank you.’

  ‘No. Not now, papers for last week. You still owe for last week’s papers.’

  ‘I don’t take any papers from you.’

  ‘Yes you do. Mr Arnold, right? Up on Terront Road.’

  ‘No, I’m not Mr Arnold.’

  ‘You’re sure? You look like him.’

  ‘I’m not Mr Arnold. I don’t even live here. I’m just staying for a few nights at the Coach down the road.�
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  He looked back at the screen, then at me again. ‘It’s my eyes,’ he said eventually. ‘Everyone looks the same to me these days. Sorry. Now that I look, I can see.’

  I picked up the cigarettes and the gum and left him to his television, wondering whether I did actually look like this Mr Arnold, whether a doppelgänger had already taken my place.

  At the end of Mike Wilder’s road I smoked a cigarette and watched a small congregation leave St Stephen’s Church: more men in suits, some of the women in hats. The vicar shook their hands as they left; there were some young couples too, putting in their stint to prove worthy of being married inside. They would not bury me there, Bethany said. Funny, isn’t it? You’d have thought they’d want the publicity.

  There were two cars parked outside the house, a BMW and a smaller town car. One had a ‘baby on board’ sticker, a child’s seat set up in the back. Don’t you think you might have called first? Bethany said, sitting on the doorstep. But I guess if you called, you wouldn’t have come. You’d have played coward again. Sounds like people are in, though. Maybe you’ll get lucky and they’ll have moved away. You could go to church, pray that he’s gone.

  I ignored her and rang the doorbell. I heard someone shout, ‘I’ll get it,’ and feet padding down the stairs. The door had been kept well, the same stained glass above the frame. It opened and there was Mike Wilder, older but demonstrably himself. He was thinner in both body and hair, but did not look bad for it. He wore denims and a polo shirt that had various milky deposits on its shoulder. Bethany said nothing.

  ‘Can I help you?’ he said. The hallway was blocked by his outstretched arm. The floor was bare floorboards now, rather than the green carpet they’d once had; a pushchair was folded up next to the staircase.

  ‘Mike? Mike Wilder?’ I said.

  He looked me up and down and nodded.

  ‘Yes. I’m Mike Wilder.’

  I had assumed that he would recognize me, that he would stand in horror, as though seeing a ghost. But he only saw someone prepared to sell him something, perhaps canvass his opinion on the Labour government. Bethany remained silent and I put my hand in my pocket.

  ‘Do you not remember me?’ I said. ‘It’s been a long time, but I thought …’

  ‘I’m sorry, but I don’t … Look I’m rather busy. Two kids playing havoc in the kitchen, you know.’

  I should have left. Made some apology and told him I’d made a mistake. He could go back to his children and later tell his wife that something odd had happened that afternoon. They could have spent the evening wondering who I was and what it was I could have wanted.

  ‘Mr Wilder, It’s Mark. Mark Wilkinson.’

  He looked me up and down and scrunched up his face.

  ‘If this is some kind of joke, it isn’t funny. Has someone put you up to this? If—’

  I shook my head. ‘I’m sorry for coming over unannounced but I’m only in town for a few days and I really wanted to see you. To talk to you.’

  He looked into the house and shut the door behind him. He leant in close to me and pointed a long finger into my chest.

  ‘You fucking stay away from me,’ he said. ‘You stay away from all of us.’ He was shaking, like he was about to lose control. ‘After all these years and you come back like this?’

  He pushed me backwards.

  ‘I don’t have anything to say to you. Nothing. After all that you’ve done, and you come back like this? My daughter. My daughter! You stay away. You don’t come to this house. You don’t come anywhere near me or my family. You come near us and I swear to God I’ll kill you. I’ll fucking kill you.’

  He turned and opened the door, fixed me with a look of absolute disgust. ‘I’m warning you,’ he said and slammed the door so hard it made me think of my father.

  *

  The Woodman smelled of roast dinners and cigarette smoke. A family were eating at a small table while some men played on the quiz machine.

  ‘You all right there, love?’ the woman behind the bar said. ‘You look white as sheet.’

  ‘I’ll be fine,’ I said.

  ‘Not going to be sick, are you?’

  ‘No. Honestly. Just had a bit … can I have a pint of Guinness?’

  She started pouring. ‘Hair of the dog, is it?’

  ‘Something like that,’ I said.

  ‘Well, go easy, won’t you.’

  I nodded and handed her the money. I drank half the Guinness down in one go and lit a cigarette. I thought I might throw up right there on the sticky mahogany bar, but managed to keep it down. Well, you got your answer, Bethany said. You wanted to know how he copes. He gets on with it, got on with it. He has a new family, a new life. I keep saying it, but what did you expect? What precisely did you think was going to happen?

  Anger was not what I expected. I didn’t expect to feel like a threat to him.

  But the past is always a threat. When it came for you, didn’t you try to ignore it, honey? Didn’t you try to pretend it wasn’t really happening?

  But I was never angry. Never aggressive.

  Brooks might disagree with that. You’ve just punctured my dad’s life, just taken him back years. Have you any idea how that feels?

  I’m living it now, aren’t I? Isn’t this what’s happening to me right now?

  Interesting choice of word, living. Really? Are you?

  I finished my drink and ordered another.

  And that isn’t going to help.

  I should just go.

  Yes, but where? Just where would you go?

  I sat on the bed, my suitcase open beside me. The room was a mess, a wine glass smashed on the floor, the contents of the dressing table swept to the carpet, a Gideon’s Bible thrown against the wall and lying next to a pile of clothes. There were marks on my hands from where I’d punched the walls and slight scuffs of blood by the light switch. I didn’t notice the knocking at the door for some time. I could hear a voice, but not exactly what it was saying. ‘Do not disturb,’ I shouted. ‘Can’t you fucking read?’

  The knocking continued and I eventually went to the door and opened it a crack. Ferne stood there, slightly breathlessly.

  ‘Joe, let me in.’

  ‘I can’t. I haven’t got any clothes on.’

  ‘Wrap a towel around you or something. They’ve called the manager.’

  ‘Just leave me alone, okay, Ferne. Just leave me alone.’

  ‘Fuck’s sake, Joe,’ she said and barged past me and into the room. ‘I’ve got my eyes closed. Now shut up and get something on.’

  I went to the bathroom and wrapped a towel around my waist. There was more knocking at the door and then the sound of voices, then the door being shut. Ferne banged on the bathroom door.

  ‘All clear,’ she said. Then: ‘Jesus.’

  With her in the room the damage looked even more extensive.

  ‘What the fuck have you been doing in here?’ she said. ‘Looks like Mötley Crüe’s come to town.’

  ‘I don’t know … I just.’

  ‘Go and sit in the bathroom,’ she said. ‘Let me get some of the glass up before you cut yourself.’

  I locked the door and sat on the toilet seat. Bethany was crouched in the bath, smoking and talking, but whatever she was saying was muddy and unintelligible. I stood up, eventually, and looked at myself in the mirror, the redness around my eyes, the oddness of seeing myself in that moment. You once said that you’d look into a mirror and find it hard to believe that it was actually you looking back, and as you were thinking that, you couldn’t imagine that it was really you thinking that and looking at yourself. Do you remember that? Bethany said.

  Yes. You said that I was a weirdo. But that you liked that I thought about those kinds of things. And it was true, I used to do that all the time. Maybe I thought, eventually, I’d reach the end point, that there was no going back.

  But you never did.

  No. Never.

  Ferne knocked and I opened the door.


  ‘I’ve done as much as I can, Joe. The rest you’ll have to sort out yourself.’ She sat down on the easy chair by the curtains.

  ‘What happened?’ she said eventually. ‘Actually, you know, I don’t want to know. Let’s get out of here, okay? Get away from here for a while,’ she said. ‘Get dressed and meet me in the lobby. I’ll be there for ten minutes. After that, I’m gone. You understand?’

  I nodded. She had done a remarkable job on the room, the full wastepaper bin and the smudges of blood on the walls the only memory of the mess before.

  ‘Ten minutes,’ she said, and left without saying anything more.

  *

  She was parked at the back of a cobbled courtyard, a small red car with a long aerial. We got in and she turned the key, snapped off the radio.

  ‘So?’ she said. ‘Where to?’

  ‘I don’t know. Where do you want to go to?’

  ‘Anywhere but here. Anywhere.’

  ‘Let’s just drive. Take a right, then another and just keep driving.’

  ‘You’re okay, now, Joe. You are, aren’t you?’

  ‘I will be once we get moving.’

  ‘Okay,’ she said, ‘I like to smoke when I drive, so you’ll have to light them for me as we go, all right?’

  We drove up a thin avenue of red-brick houses, the gradient of the road making our progress slow; we passed the primary school that Hannah had attended then dog-legged right, the squat terraces giving way to bungalows with sloped driveways and manicured lawns. They looked like displaced holiday chalets, the kind of places rented out to tourists who want a little home from home; then the terraces were back, and then the countryside: fields out to the left, yawning expanses of green and arable land.

  ‘It’s hard to imagine, isn’t it?’ I said. ‘All these fields and no one yet to colonize them, put up those boxy houses.’

  To the right was the flooded quarry, though the old signs warning of blue-green algae had been swapped for advertisements for windsurfing lessons and a new mere-side development of houses. Through a copse of trees I saw the tips of the masts and sails, the roofs of the housing complex in the distance. Once Bethany and I had got stoned there, stayed the night in a borrowed tent that had been difficult to pitch. We’d made love and hugged tightly in our zipped-together sleeping bags, the sound of nocturnal life both intimidating and distracting. We never were at one with nature, Bethany said, it was what made New York so inviting.