Junction X (21 page)

We had begun the games. These were a staple of “Mr. Johnson’s parties,” especially New Year ones. I pride myself that people came to my New Year gatherings because of the games. They were mainly silly, but they were good ice-breakers. Games that involved standing up and getting too close to strangers were ideal after a few cups of punch.

I was umpiring “the orange game,” which involves two teams each with an orange who have to hand the orange up the line without using their hands or teeth. The first person who gets the orange up and back down the line wins. Simple but hilarious—especially if you arrange the line-ups particularly so that Miss Pearson, the local Akela (who, as far as The Avenue gossip went, had never had any man in her life older than a Cub Scout) next to David Greckle, the local and much-married spiv, followed by Janice Meadows, who, it’s rumoured, has been having an affair with David for several years, off and on. As I say, simple amusement in more ways than one.

I was thusly busy, so I didn’t see or hear the new arrivals; the record player was on too loud. It wasn’t until I announced the winning team, gave out small prizes to all involved, and turned the music down a little for everyone to rehash the fun that I realised that Sheila, Alfred and, most importantly, my Alexander had actually arrived. My heart jolted—I felt my entire body was joined to his, pulled around, like a compass needle towards that irresistible force.

Arming myself with paper squeakers and three hats, I greeted them. “Another hour and you’d have been our First Footer,” I said handing them the party things. Alex took them delightedly, his parents rather less so.

“You’ll have a drink?”

“Valerie is seeing to us, we are going to be boring and stick to the punch,” Alf said.

“Alec?”

“Mrs. Johnson’s getting me a Coke.”

I appealed to his parents, becoming the new devious Edward. “Oh, come on—we can do better than that, surely? Isn’t he eighteen this year?”

“February,” Alex said. “The twentieth. And I’ve told Dad a hundred times it doesn’t matter at home, anyway.”

Sheila smiled. “Well, maybe one small glass, a beer or something. Or some punch?”

I interrupted. I certainly
didn’t
want Alex trying the punch. “I’ll get him a beer. Come and choose.” I grabbed his elbow, squeezing it gently, my pulse racing. As I left them, I turned around: “And a glass of champagne at midnight, surely?

“Half a glass,” said Sheila. They left us then, and gravitated towards the buffet.

Phil was in the kitchen, regaling several of our mutual acquaintances with a story about work. He raised a glass and there were several cheers as I entered. It was getting a little rowdier, which I liked.

I poured Alex a small glass of beer. “You can’t fool me with the angelic face,” I said. The noise in the kitchen was loud enough for me not to worry, and in any event I wasn’t saying anything too intimate. “That’s not your first beer, or boys aren’t what they used to be.”

He grinned. “My parents still think I’m twelve.”

“They always will. Even when you are married.”

His eyes clouded a little, and he took a large drink. I longed to stay with him, to settle down in one of the kitchen chairs and talk, but it was impossible. “I have to go, there’s to be another round of games before midnight.” His lips were wet from the beer and the smallest trace of foam clung to his upper lip. “But I didn’t even ask you how your Christmas went.”

“The snow was great.”

“I thought you’d have problems getting back. In fact, I thought you might have been held up because of that.”

“No such luck. We couldn’t get away until late because…well, it’s not an interesting story. I think my parents were a little surprised how eager I was to get home, what with school around the corner.”

I had a chill then; in a few short months, he would be moving away for what might as well be a lifetime. “And you came home loaded with socks?”

In reply, he looked down and raised his trouser leg a little. A garish pair of tartan socks in yellow and purple shone out from above his sensible black lace-up shoes. “Mostly. Got some good stuff for the layout too.”

“What like?” I asked, but Valerie leant in through the hatch at that point.

“Darling, could you bring the tray out from the bottom shelf of the fridge?” I swear his face clouded over when she said “Darling,” but I may have imagined it. I may be looking back at something that I just wish had happened.

“It’s all right,” he said. “I’ll go and join in the games, if…”

I told him yes, of course, and went to resume my hostly duties.

Phil followed me out of the kitchen, surprisingly sober, and I remarked upon it.

“You too,” he said.

“I generally am on New Year.”

He raised his eyebrows at me at that, which I deserved. “Are we getting old or something?”

I turned on the record player for musical chairs, and he slumped on the settee next to me as I manipulated the music so that Alex won. It wasn’t easy; he had to fight Fred for the last chair. I felt a slight guilt at my deceit until Phil growled at me, “You’d better not let that bastard win.” So that sealed Fred’s fate, and Alex got the prize, which was a small bottle of Cointreau. I looked around but Sheila and Alf were not in the lounge, so I said, “Don’t tell your parents,” and everyone laughed.

Valerie had turned on the radio. As usual the music consisted of bagpipes and more bagpipes, but thankfully they stopped fairly swiftly while the announcer gave the airwaves over to Big Ben. When the first bell tolled after the carillon, we all cheered and sang like mad things. Valerie kissed me and called everyone into the lounge where we all linked hands and sang “Auld Lang Syne” in terrible Scottish accents. With Valerie on my right and Alex on my left, I remember being stupidly happy, sure that 1963 was going to be a year I would enjoy and make the most of—at least until Alex went to university.

The song finished and Valerie slid into my arms. “Happy New Year, darling,” she said and kissed me. I opened my eyes during the kiss and saw Alex, his face pale in the festive light, sitting huddled and miserable on the chair in the corner.

I knew then that I’d been stupid, so utterly
stupid
. Someone—no matter what happened—was going to be hurt, and I had been stupid enough not to see it until that moment. I also realised for the first time that there was nothing I could do— and that there was no escaping it.

Chapter 16

I wonder what people would think of that last statement. More self-delusion? Perhaps. I can almost hear people thinking—
was he really that short-sighted?
I don’t know. Between now and then, the time that has passed has blurred the charcoal of many details and of many faces with an unforgiving brush. So much has been lost. I’m finding that it’s hard to be as truthful as I wanted to be here, for perhaps what I
think
I felt back then, I did not.

Maybe I’m painting myself better than I was. Or worse. But hand on heart, here and now, that party was really the first time I had the cold feeling of a path diverging before me. One step more had to be taken, just one small step, onto one path or another.

The snow continued all through New Year’s Day, dropping soft, thick and bright from skies that were full of nothing but grey. None of us had any idea, when we rushed as a nation into the garden to make our first snowmen of the year, that it would be months before the world stopped being white.

But that day, like all the Alex days, was memorable, not because it was the start of the Big Freeze, but simply because he was in it, helping the twins with their snowman; fighting on my side against them until we were all soaked to the skin; lying warm and pink on the floor in front of the fire, his hair damp against his cheek; and sipping the hot chocolate that Valerie had made him.

I had no chance that day to show him that I’d known the night before that I’d hurt him. But he showed no sign of it. Neither of us showed any sign of anything. He was just my children’s friend that day.

When all was quiet that night and Val and I sat together on the settee watching some unmemorable film, she said something about him, and I remember changing the subject. I found it hard to discuss him with her, even then, just as later I found it hard to discuss her with him.

It snowed through the night and continued as I got ready for work, but even as I struggled down to the Junction with my suit in a case, I had a fair idea that there was little chance of me getting to London. With every step I took, the snow was knee-deep.

The scene at the station told me all I needed to know; the track itself was covered, and, although there were men, digging in Herculean optimism, at both ends of the platform, it was clear that nothing was coming from the terminus. I stamped around for a while on the empty platform, then took advantage of the solitude to investigate the tunnel where the door to the flats was situated. It was locked, of course, so I went home.

I didn’t get to work for more than a few days, but my job was—to some degree—manageable by phone, and I also had some holiday due to me, which I took at the end of January. I was lucky that my secretary lived in London and was able to get in to the City with few problems. I went down to the station every day, but nothing was moving. For weeks, the news told us that trains all around the country had been disrupted, buried under snow as deep as twenty feet in some places. The schools opened late, too. And the children complained that all their classes were held in the hall where heating could be turned up full, rather than to heat separate classrooms. There were stories on the news every night of rural families who were cut off, and the army had to be mobilised to fly provisions out to them.

The roads were clearing quicker than the railway, and, from reports back from others who had risked the journey, were slightly more reliable, but Val wouldn’t hear of my risking myself on the roads, which was touching. Alex took it upon himself to make sure the twins got to school all right. They’d set off, all three of them, bundled up to the ears with scarves and hats, with Alex holding tight to each of them. After the first two days, when it became clear that the weather was not going to change, Alex had the brainwave of taking his sledge and pulling them behind him. Hard work for him, but he said it kept him warm.

The benefit of this arrangement was that, throughout that first week (and most evenings, during the Freeze), he came to the house every day. Valerie had insisted to his parents that, as he was minding the children in the morning, he should have his tea with us. He left school later than the children and at first objected, but she was difficult to argue with. No, she would say, she wouldn’t hear of him leaving until he was dry with at the very least a hot drink inside him. I realised, as I heard her fuss over him, that she had become very fond of him.

Consequently, he had his tea with the children more often than not, and I found excuses, sneaking into my own kitchen like a burglar, to pop in and talk about trains, or nothing much. All too brief, and all too monopolised by the children—but now and then, when they’d said their excuses and thundered upstairs, I had just enough time to slide my arm around his waist or to kiss his hand. He was always more wary than I, never losing himself in the moment like I did—and I suppose it was just as well.

The next week, some post began to filter through and I drove into town several times to check the post office box. I remember now the thrill I got seeing the lease as I pulled it from the envelope. I signed it on the spot, getting the custodian to witness for me, then practically ran (or rather slid) down to the post office and sent it back. It seemed forever until anything returned, and I couldn’t tell you how long it seemed, for each day was the same: cold, wet and white.

But finally the keys arrived; they fell out into my hand, icy brass with a large luggage label attached with “Number 8” scrawled in a clumsy hand. Just two little keys, but they seemed like treasure as they weighed in my hand like guilt. I pressed them into my hand, watching the white shapes they made in my half-frozen palm; I dug them into my flesh to make them real. It seemed to dilute them when I had them copied for Alex, as if my secret was spreading a slick of lies across the world.

From this time on, there was rarely a moment without guilt. I’m not going to write about it endlessly, but it was there, polluting everything I touched, everything I said, everything I did. I lived with a woman I loved, but I longed for a youth I adored. It had all seemed simple to me at the beginning. I would take a lover and keep him separate; but, as the claustrophobia of that winter’s freeze drove us all closer together in our Blitz-spirit of rationing, power cuts and isolation, and as I saw how Alex was loved by others than myself, the whole “keep it separate” idea weakened and cracked like thin ice over dark water.