Dark Companions (26 page)

Next morning, when my head had stopped drumming savagely, I went to the shop to apologise to Rebecca, while her parents looked forbidding in the background. That night at the fair she refused to go on most of the rides, and when I persuaded her into a Dodgem car she felt withdrawn, stony within the clasp of my arm. As I walked her home I nagged her until she agreed to go to a concert in Manchester the following week.

At least she was grateful for the concert. It was Beethoven’s Ninth; I’d learned she was happiest with familiar things, though I refused to believe that summed her up. The applause was so rapturous that it provoked an encore, and we missed the train.

I couldn’t see that it mattered; there would be another in less than an hour. I tried to keep her occupied on a bare bench as far as possible from the sullen yellowish lights, but she kept starting up to peer along the line, a couple of sketched gleams embedded in sooty darkness. Overhead a large metallic voice announced trains to places I’d never heard of. Could she hear other voices, demanding what she meant by coming home so late? “They’ll have to get used to it eventually,” I said.

“Why will they have
to?”

“Because you’re an adult,” I said incredulously. “You can’t let them tell you what to do.”

“Is it adult to behave irresponsibly?”

I thought she was growing pompous. Besides, we were wasting time when we could be necking. “If you always did what they wanted,” I pointed out, “you’d never see me again.”

“I know that.” She seemed close to tears. All at once I saw how to cheer her up and clear the way for myself. “Look,” I said, “if they bother you so much, why don’t you move away and get a job?”

“A job?” She made it sound insulting. “I don’t want a job. I’m only helping in the shop to keep my parents happy.” She added more gently “When I’m married I’ll want to devote my time to my music.”

That stopped me. Were we planning marriage all of a sudden? She’d said she would resist her parents’ choice; who else could she mean except me? I wasn’t ready to discuss marriage—and besides, I’d realised at last that her dream of seeing the world was nothing but a dream; Manchester was about as far as she cared to venture.

The romantic mood seemed worth preserving. “You know, I’d wanted to meet you for years,” I said. “I could never work out how to, until that day you had to come for treatment. And then I’ll bet I suffered more than you did. I never told you,” I laughed, feeling that a secret ought to bring us closer together, “but when someone I didn’t like was in there, I used to stand outside and listen to the drill.”

When she pulled away from me and hurried to the edge of the platform, I thought she was going to vomit, but she was only hoping for the train. Nevertheless she looked sickened when I tried to coax her back to the bench. On the train she tolerated my embrace, but shook her head dismally when I demanded what was wrong. Her parents were waiting on the lit stage of the porch, and I left her at the gate; I’d had enough.

I didn’t see her for days. I yearned to, yet I was afraid she might insist on talking marriage; that would force me to ponder our relationship, which I didn’t want to do. Why couldn’t we just enjoy it, forget our differences and enjoy each other as we had at first? If I’d thought beyond that, I would have had to wonder how, since she insisted on staying at home, we could stay together once I went to University.

As I wandered brooding around the village, I saw Mr Ince. He was pushing his barrow, which was laden with the theatre, towards the green, but it looked almost as though the barrow was dragging him. Not only his elbows but the rest of his bones appeared ready to tear his skin, which resembled tissue paper. Now that the workmen’s booth had gone from outside the post office, there was nothing to take the children away from Mr Ince’s show, but they may have been as distressed by the performance as I was: Punch and Judy seemed to drag themselves limping along their ledge, their heads nodding as if they were senile, their limbs moving hardly at all.

The following day I received the card. Though the envelope bore Rebecca’s return address, it was not in her handwriting. I knew instinctively that the sharp severe letters were her mother’s. When I made myself tear open the flap, I found a printed invitation to Rebecca’s twenty-first birthday.

I hadn’t realised it was so close. What other secrets had she kept from me? I replied that of course I would come, and rushed to Manchester to buy her a present that I hoped would let us share a happy memory: a recording of Beethoven’s Ninth.

The birthday reception was at the country club, a converted mansion amid fields overlooked that night by flocks of stars. A uniformed girl took my coat, a livened usher led me to the party, and Rebecca’s mother tried to gain possession of my present. I wanted to hand it to Rebecca, who was surrounded by expensive-looking friends, but her mother said firmly “Leave it on the table.”

A long table laden with presents stood against one wall. I stared for a while in dismay; then, remembering the memory it was supposed to evoke, I dumped the record on the table and made in despair for the bar. The table already bore a complete set of Beethoven’s symphonies.

I managed to kiss Rebecca before her mother steered her away. For a while I hung about on the edge of conversations, listening as Rebecca’s friends agreed what was good (hanging, the birch, repatriation) and bad (unions, comprehensive education, the state of the world outside the village). What upset me most was that her young friends, Alan and the rest, sounded exactly like their elders. I don’t know who or what provoked me to say “Why don’t you just build a wall around the village?”

“It strikes me you don’t care much for our village,” Rebecca’s father said. “You seem happiest when you’re away from it. Like that fellow Ince.”

“Don’t mention him,” his wife said. “Letting us down like that over the pageant, not even bothering to stay.”

“He wants locking up,” Alan said. “God only knows what he thinks he’s doing—I don’t think he knows himself. I had a look at his show today. No wonder people are keeping their children away. It isn’t entertainment, it’s monstrous.”

Before I could ask him what he was talking about, Rebecca said “He’s so restless. All that travelling. Like a gypsy.” She wrinkled her nose as though at a bad smell.

“What’s wrong with gypsies?” I managed not to blurt, restraining myself not only because I could imagine the sort of reply she would make but because I’d suddenly realised the trap that had been set for me. Her parents had wanted her to see how out of place I was; perhaps they’d hoped I would make a scene to estrange her once and for all. Instead I drank and smiled and nodded, and cursed what I thought was my cowardice.

In the morning I had a mission: to save Rebecca from herself, from the attitudes of her parents and friends. She couldn’t be as ingrown as they were, not yet; otherwise, how could she appreciate Beethoven’s Ninth? But I couldn’t reach her all day, and next morning a notice in the antique shop said that they had gone on holiday for two weeks.

Had her parents arranged this swiftly, or was it another secret she had kept from me? My anger couldn’t feed on itself for more than a couple of days; before the week was over I felt almost guiltily free, able to do things I wanted to do without thinking of Rebecca. I walked all day through the spread countryside, towards a promise of hills that I never quite reached, and my mind grew attuned to the pace of the clouds. I stood beneath an oak in Delamere Forest and watched a storm fill, then burst, the sky.

The day after she returned, my nervousness infuriated me. I keyed myself up to braving the shop and her parents, only to find that they hadn’t opened the shop. Whenever I called her house the phone was engaged, tooting monotonously. There was nothing for it but to go to the house.

I couldn’t go in. I’d used up all my courage in braving the shop. I paced back and forth outside the gates, and grimaced furiously at myself in the dark. Wind rushed down the drive, trying to shoulder me away; along the drive, trees roared at me. Twice I strode halfway up the drive before I faltered.

I was still patrolling, almost suffocated by self-disgust, when the porch lit—like a refrigerator, I thought distractedly—and Rebecca emerged. I dodged out of sight, back towards the village. She was alone, and looked determined; perhaps she was going to my house.

I appeared from a lane. “Oh, hello,” I said. “I didn’t know you were back. I’ve been walking.”

Was her start of pleasure or dismay? She didn’t sound as glad to see me as I thought she should, but didn’t resist when I took her hand. “Where are you going?” I said.

“Walking, like you.”

Perhaps that was a riposte; I thought it best to gain an advantage. “Did you like your record?”

“Yes, very much.” But I’d expected her at least to squeeze my hand. Surely she must be grateful not to be alone on the dark road; shouldn’t I make the most of her gratitude? But when we reached the square I had to say “You didn’t tell me you were going on holiday.”

“No.” Her voice sounded as though it was trying to hide in the blustery wind.

“Why didn’t you?”

“Because of the way I felt.” Her hand jerked in mine. “Don’t make me worse.”

I hurried her past the antique shop, before I could grow too irritable to keep quiet, towards the green. The night we’d sat there, we had been closest. Perhaps the muted glow of the grass would calm us now.

Was it the tension between us that made the place seem too vivid? Large bruises blackened the green where the rides of the fair had stood. Around them the sparse grass looked oily with traces of rain. The glimmering blades were lurid as green wires, and when I gazed at them they seemed to flicker like dying neon. There was no peace here, for in the clump of trees at the edge of the green, someone was croaking.

Should I have guided Rebecca away, since she was growing more tense? Ultimately it would have made no difference between us. I crept towards the trees, but faltered before she did, my hand tightening inadvertently on hers. In the dark beneath the trees, Mr Ince was standing upright in a coffin.

Of course it was the theatre. The back of the stage, which concealed him from the audience, was gone. His head appeared above the ledge, dwarfing the performers. Though the puppets were croaking at each other as they nodded back and forth, in the dimness his mouth seemed not to be moving. Only his eyes rolled in their sockets like marbles in a fairground mask, watching the puppets.

Rebecca was trying to drag me away, but I wanted to hear what the voices were saying, all the more so since they sounded vicious almost to the point of incoherence. I could make out some of Judy’s phrases now, though they seemed to ebb and flow like wind in trees: “…living like an animal…nobody to look after you…can’t look after yourself…” The croaking rose almost to a shriek. “…might as well dig yourself a hole and live in it…that’s where you’re going anyway…deep in the dirt…”

I might have heard more if Rebecca hadn’t held me back. Was he repeating accusations that had been levelled at him? I couldn’t see how, since he had always lived alone. Was part of him accusing himself? “Come on,” I said irritably to Rebecca, “don’t be stupid. Nothing’s going to hurt you.”

“No, I won’t.” Her voice was so cold that it stopped me. “You watch by yourself if you want to. I don’t enjoy watching people suffering.”

“What do you mean by that?”

Her tone had already made it clear. “You told me how you enjoy listening to people in your father’s surgery.”

I thought this ridiculously unfair, so much so that I followed her away from the green. “Well, so would you,” I said.

“No, I would not. Perhaps I was brought up differently.”

“Yes, well,” I said ominously, “maybe you’d better leave your parents out of this.”

“Don’t you dare say anything against my parents.”

I felt possessed by an atrociously banal script. “Oh, don’t they ever say anything against me?”

“Stop it. Let’s talk about something else. I don’t know what,” she said miserably.

We were outside the antique shop; I was tempted to kick in the window. “I want to hear what they said,” I persisted. “Go on. Go on, let’s hear it.”

“All right, you shall
hear. The way I feel now, it doesn’t matter.” She was staring into the dim maze of antiques. “They say you’re not like them or my friends. They say you’ve never tried to get to know them, and that you’re a drunkard, and that you’d make me go out to work.” As though to drive me away for good she added defiantly “And they think you’re probably a sadist.”

I hadn’t fully realised that she must have told them everything when I snarled “If their opinion means so much to you, you’d better go to Alan.”

“I was on my way to see him when I met you.” When I froze, she added dully “At least I feel peaceful with him.”

“Well,” I said and wondered momentarily if I would be able to say anything so final, “you’d better piss off then, hadn’t you?”

She gazed at me, then fled sobbing. I managed to leave the antique shop without committing any of the crimes that were seething in my head. As I stalked towards the green, I thought bitterly that the Punch and Judy show summed up our relationship. I was ready to enjoy it on that level, but the clump of trees was deserted. No doubt the creaking on the hedged path was Mr Ince’s barrow. As I passed his cottage he was stumbling in, and for a moment I thought two birds were riding on his shoulders—but no wonder my perceptions were disordered.

I spent the next day brooding over how much of the fault was mine. If I hadn’t sworn at her, would she have run away? During my last few days in the village, I managed occasionally not to brood; there was packing to be done before I left for University, trees to be kicked in Delamere Forest, a whole string of curses it took me a quarter of an hour to shout one afternoon amid the fields, a kind of exorcism that didn’t quite work. All week I avoided the village square. When I had to pass near it, I turned my face away.

Yet I was realising that our relationship had been a bad mistake. That was why, on the night before I left, I strolled past Rebecca’s house: to prove that I could. Beyond the ranks of trees her father was pounding the piano, a dark oppressive sound. I was turning away when Rebecca’s violin began to sing. It sounded far more inspired than before.