‘I’ve not been able to look at birds the same way since,’ she’d continued. ‘Although it’s not really about birds, is it?’
He looked at the wall behind her, the doorframe above her, anywhere but directly at her. It was because of the dress, the dress and the way she’d done her hair in tight coils that he could imagine someone gently pulling just to watch them spring back into place. He assumed that she must be on her way out, or on her way home after being out. But she seemed in no rush at all. He had turned from the bookcase to find that she’d followed him into the room and after a few minutes hovering she had promptly sat down where she stood. He had hastened into the kitchen then to escape, and when he returned with the two cups she was still there. She had glanced up from her nails and nodded at the chair, his chair, and he sat. Her dress had ridden up her thighs a little. She was wearing black stockings. Almost immediately he felt himself begin to perspire.
‘It made me think of my father,’ she said. She was still talking about Jonathan Livingston Seagull. ‘The flying parts of it. He’s a pilot in the air force. Or he was. He’s not allowed to fly anymore because of his eyes. I’m sad for him. He misses it. He says he doesn’t, but he does. He’s my best friend. What about your family?’
There had been a beastly storm overnight. The first leaves of spring had all been shaken off and the bare branches shuddered in their new nakedness. Far above them small clouds scudded along at great pace. From his seat he couldn’t see, but had seen many times, the weak shadows that would be trying gamely to keep up, slithering over one rooftop then another.
Yes, what about his family, what had become of them? It had been Charlie’s birthday the previous week. He would have liked to have sent a card had he known where to send it. He looked back at Clare. She frowned at her fingernails, wiped away the polish and began again.
‘It’s like one long awkward silence,’ she said, not looking up, ‘coming here, I mean. Only it’s not awkward. Despite you.’ She did look at him then, peering up through long eyelashes. ‘I’m confused though. How long did you say you’d lived here?’
‘I’ve been here a while.’
‘A while,’ she repeated absently. She looked all around her, then back at him, and tilted her head as she was wont to do. ‘So, I hope you don’t mind me asking, but where is everything?’
There was the table, the small chair, there were the bookcases and the television that watched him as much as he watched it – why was that, why did he feel always that vague sense of being observed? Everything was right there.
‘Everything is right here,’ he said.
‘No, but I mean–’ She stopped, smiled the way someone smiles when they don’t understand the joke. ‘You should see my room.’
An image of her bed flashed across his thoughts. He began perspiring fully then. He felt the heat coming into his face and a single bead trickle from the pit of his arm and down his side beneath his shirt. The first thing he’d have changed about himself – maybe not the first thing, but a thing – was how he never stopped assessing his performance in life while it carried on around him.
‘My room is overflowing with…’ Clare searched for the word, ‘clutter, I guess.’ She told him then how they had moved all the time when she was growing up, how they had lived on exotic bases all over the world but never the same base for long. ‘It was only what I brought with me that made it home. I couldn’t bear to throw anything out.’
‘I keep all my books,’ he said.
‘Yes, that’s true. All four hundred and something of them.’
‘Four hundred and thirty-nine.’
She contemplated that for a moment. ‘It’s not so different, really. The things I keep, they’re stories too. Just my own stories.’
She was, somehow, more beautiful than she looked. He remembered what his mother had said about people being Christmas presents, that what they looked like was the wrapping paper and that the real gift was inside. To his horror Benjamin Tate began suddenly to weep. Large bulbous tears streamed silently out of his eyes without any good reason. He gathered the cups and hurried into the kitchen. When he returned she was standing by the door. She was holding his coat.
‘Shall we go then?’
They were beside the canal now, walking in the watery sunlight. She wasn’t holding his hand. He had thought perhaps she might. The path was narrow and unruly bushes kept impeding their progress, forcing them into single file. He realised he’d never seen her from behind. Her shoulders were broad, like a swimmer’s, and her hips seemed to belong to a larger woman. How round and marvellous and opulent they were in that dress. He saw beneath it and beneath her skin to the skeleton, to the bones that rolled and rose one side then another, making everything sway. How old did she say she was? The people that came in the opposite direction, that looked from her to him and back to her again, they wondered what she was doing there. He wondered that also.
‘We’re so lucky to have places like this to come to,’ she said. A heron stood on the far bank, long and slender, beak turned up to the sky, its reflection rippling beneath it. ‘Quiet places. I know I talk a lot, but the truth is I prefer the silence.’
She stopped walking then and turned to face him. One of the coils of her hair was uncoiling in the damp dusk air and she brushed it out of her eyes.
‘Can I ask you something, Benjamin?’
‘Yes.’
‘Has something happened to you?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I don’t know. It’s just… I like to help people.’
He didn’t answer. She walked on a little, slowed, waited for him to draw up alongside her, then they walked on together. Behind them the heron watched them depart through blank, black eyes. Eventually, satisfied, it launched itself off its low perch and swept past them, flying flat over the water with great, slow swoops before gradually climbing higher and higher on its wide wings.
‘Here,’ she said a little later. The town was far behind them now. ‘Let’s sit down. It’s my favourite spot.’
Through a gap in the hedges the bank rose away sharply to a level patch that was sheltered from the wind. The ground was damp and he took off his jacket for them to sit on. From up there they looked down through the light that was flattening into a dullish blue-grey towards the path and the canal. He’d seen a fox in there once. It had been perfectly preserved in a sheet of ice, its lustrous coat was still a healthy chestnut brown and apart from the fact of it being dead it appeared completely untroubled by the ordeal. The water below stirred then stilled. Whatever had disturbed it had sunk back down into the grim depths. What must it be like down there, on the bottom, the things that must coming apart piece by flaky piece.
‘I didn’t mean to pry earlier,’ she said.
‘No, it’s fine.’
‘But if you ever want to talk about anything, anything at all… I don’t judge people. Sometimes just saying something makes it go away.’
He wanted to kiss her; more than that, he wanted her to kiss him. He wasn’t sure but he must have had a dream the previous night. He awoke from it to the shocking but not unpleasant surprise that his entire body, every inch of it, was awake. He had lifted up the duvet and opened his knees. Yes, it had been undeniable. He’d put his hand down there and held it for a moment. It was surprisingly hot and he’d been able to feel it pulsing.
‘It’s just that something is meant to happen,’ Clare said, ‘to us, or between us. Don’t you feel it, too?’
A cyclist passed in front of them. Benjamin Tate followed him along the path until it turned his head and he found himself looking at Clare’s fixed profile. She hadn’t noticed the cyclist. He had simply passed through her line of sight, like a deer might pass through a sunbeam in a forest. As he watched, her lips parted ever so slightly, drawing out between them a silver, glistening thread of saliva. Suddenly she turned to face him. The directness of her action froze him and he felt his mouth instantly dry up. A section of his brain wondered about the way fluid moves around the body, why his tongue and lips were thick like cardboard yet his brow, his palms and his spine prickled with sweat. He could feel her breath, cool and a little stale in his nostrils.
Something is meant to happen between them, she’d said. She must not know him. Nothing ever happened. But this was happening. ‘Be brave’, he’d written in that stupid ledger. He leant towards her.
‘Oh,’ she said, jumping up. ‘Oh no. I’m so sorry. I– That’s not what I meant.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
