It was nearly dark when he entered the street he’d been searching for. It was wide, the thin trees that lined its pavements were taller than the lamp-posts, behind them on each side vast lawns – elegant, soft, strangely aloof – unfurled themselves to lay at the feet of grand well-lit houses. Discreet lights hidden beneath hedges or atop walls turned on as he passed, throwing ghostly shadows around him, lighting up in yellow hues the underside of leaves. Number two. Number four. Woodlands. The Haven. Not everywhere is confident enough to give itself a name. Number twelve. Number fourteen. At the next house he stopped, taking in the gables, the bay windows. Was it Victorian, Edwardian, a modern imitation of either? It wasn’t what he’d expected, although he’d not have been able to say what exactly he had expected.
A pebbled walkway led away from the gate into a garden now black, like water at night. He started down it and a spotlight in the turf suddenly glared up at him, momentarily blinding him and vanishing all else behind a kaleidoscope of colours. At the porch a second light, softer, more tactful, turned on to reveal the white panelled door and the gold-leaf knocker. It was deceptively heavy in his fingers, and the dense, metallic sound it made against the door echoed through the small space where he now stood. He wondered if he would be recognised. How would he introduce himself if not? He realised he may be at the wrong house entirely, that the information he’d been given might be incorrect or out of date. Either way, this was as far as it went for Benjamin Tate, or this version of him at least.
He knocked again, waited, stepped off the porch and glanced up at the window where a light shone behind the curtains. Perhaps they were out after all. Was it Saturday night, or Sunday? He had already decided to wait indefinitely when the door finally opened.
The old man standing there looked at Benjamin Tate with blank, expressionless eyes.
‘It’s you,’ he said. ‘You finally came then.’
‘You’re not surprised?’
‘I’m surprised it’s taken so long.’ He turned then and shuffled in that familiar way back into the house. Benjamin Tate followed him down the hallway. To his left and right the walls were almost completely covered with pictures of her. Some had been blown up to poster size, some, most, overlapped in montages that looked haphazard but were anything but. All the hours he’d taken, cutting them, shaping them, arranging and rearranging them, removing them and then, years later, retrieving them from the box and sliding them again behind the glass. There she was as a baby, on a high chair with food around her mouth and on her fingers and a haughty, defiant look upon her upturned face; there she was, older now, on the beach, on a grey day, bent forwards, head thrown back and hair blowing, laughing, laughing in that unbridled way that children do, children and blessed adults who keep the inner child alive; there she was, gap-toothed and beautiful, astonishingly beautiful, revealing the woman she’d have been, but mournful also, profound even, as she gazed away at something unseen. What was it about these pictures, all of them together, the collective, that bothered him?
The hallway opened into an enormous room, larger perhaps than his whole flat. Tim was on the opposite side of it, pouring drinks. His hand was shaking. The neck of the bottle trembled against the rim of the glass. It was the only sound in the room, that brittle high-pitched tinkling.
‘I wasn’t sure you’d recognise me,’ Benjamin Tate said from the doorway.
‘But how could I not recognise you? You must know I see you every night.’
Tim put the two glasses down on the table and lowered himself into a deep leather chair. He sunk into it easily and Benjamin Tate imagined he had spent many hours in that position.
‘Sit,’ he said, pointing to the chair opposite.
Benjamin Tate crossed the room and sat down. Between them, on the glass table, faint images of each man stared up tensely. For many moments then neither spoke as they came to terms with the other’s presence. For more than two decades they had been intrinsically linked by a shared experience. They had each in their own way obsessed about the other, lived out this moment in their heads and wondered whether it would ever come to pass.
‘So, here we are.’
‘In the end I couldn’t not come.’
Benjamin Tate looked around, taking in the vast room. So much space. Almost too much space. Yes, his entire flat would comfortably fit in here. A deep burgundy rug covered much of the polished wood floor. A gigantic mirror – how had they manoeuvred it through the door? – showed the two men again, seated quietly, in a parallel dimension. They might have been friends there. There was a fireplace, leather sofas, modern colour schemes and plush décor. He thought sourly of his own home, so bleak and meagre by comparison.
Tim drained the last of his drink and then leaned back. He put his head against the cushion and closed his eyes. For a moment he softly hummed to himself and then fell silent. He might have been asleep were it not for his finger tapping on the glass. Tap, tap, tap it went. Tap, tap, tap. So satisfied. So untroubled. Good for him, though, Benjamin Tate thought, good for him. But also, fuck him. While I’ve been enduring the unendurable he’s been living here, building an empire. It doesn’t matter. Who am I to be bitter? The triumph of the world has no bearing on the failure of the individual, as convenient as it might be to think so.
‘You’ve done well for yourself,’ he said.
‘I’ve been successful,’ Tim answered. ‘Is that the same thing? I don’t know. What about you? I noticed you limping. Is that still from then?’
‘Yes. My knee.’ He put a hand to it subconsciously. ‘It’s nothing.’
Tim nodded. ‘So, there was no scholarship then.’
Scholarship? Good Lord, was that even the same life? It was hard to fathom. The word came from a past so distant and removed that it was almost impossible to believe it had ever existed. But it had once. He had lived in it once, been its star, and once upon time so much had been in front of him.
‘No,’ he said now. ‘No scholarship.’
‘That’s a shame. What have you done instead?’
‘Nothing. I’ve done nothing. Actually, that is something I’ve been thinking a lot about lately.’
‘Have you, indeed?’ Tim smiled to himself. He had finished his drink and was halfway through another. ‘An existential crisis. Poor you,’ he added, closing his eyes again.
Benjamin Tate studied him closely. He appeared so much older than he’d expected. He’d allowed for the passage of time, added the years and created an impression of what he thought he might look like, but this decrepit figure was nothing like what he’d seen in his mind’s eye. The spotlight was above and in front of him, glaring down on his face from a height. A reading light, he realised. Yes, he had surely spent many evenings in just this pose. The light was not flattering. It deepened and darkened shadows that he imagined were already deep and dark. And bald as a coot, too, with lips that had all but vanished, and those creases on his face. They made his skin look like a sheet of paper that had been screwed up and flattened out again.
He wanted to tell him that he wasn’t in crisis, not of the existential kind or any other. It had been resolved, or very soon would be. He thought of his dream, of the dark shape that was approaching. He wasn’t scared. Or he was a little scared. He put his hand on his thigh. The object was still tucked up tightly against it. It would come out soon enough.
‘I hope you’re up to it,’ he said.
Tim opened his eyes again. ‘What’s that?’ He refilled his drink, noticed Benjamin Tate’s was still untouched and leaned forward, nudging it across the table towards him. ‘Please, drink,’ he said.
But he didn’t want to drink. He wondered why he was even being offered a drink. He began to feel like something was slipping through his fingers, like he was being cheated in some undefinable way. He hadn’t come here for this, to find solace in some sort of uneasy survivor’s bond. Is that what was being offered?
‘Are you married?’ Tim asked.
‘No.’
‘Ever been?’
‘No.’
‘No. Something like this can isolate you, can’t it?’
‘I’ve got no one to blame but myself. Where’s your wife tonight?’
Tim’s finger froze on the glass. Was that a smile, a trace of a smile? ‘Well, time really has stood still, for us, hasn’t it? My wife is no longer my wife. Not for years.’ He waved his glass dismissively, spilling much of it on the rug. He either didn’t notice or didn’t care. ‘It was inevitable,’ he continued. ‘Husbands and wives rarely survive the death of a child.’
Benjamin Tate was shocked. That phrase. How could he say it like that, so casually, so matter of fact? Had he no heart? But it had been there all the time, circling. It had crept closer, snuck up stealthily, hiding behind other things, less diabolical things, and then leaped out into plain sight. It couldn’t now be ignored. The death of a child. The fact of it sat there on the table like a hideous thing, like a horned beast, like the devil himself.
