Me Before You (21 page)

‘Fine,’ I said, brightly. I took a little breath. ‘I love a bit of crackling. Let’s go to the old hog roast.’

We ordered three buns with pork, crackling and apple sauce, and sheltered under the striped awning while we ate them. I sat down on a small dustbin, so that I could be at the same level as Will, and helped him to manageable bites of meat, shredding it with my fingers where necessary.
The two women who served behind the counter pretended not to look at us. I could see them monitoring Will out of the corners of their eyes, periodically muttering to each other when they thought we weren’t looking.
Poor man
, I could practically hear them saying.
What a terrible way to live
. I gave them a hard stare, daring them to look at him like that. I tried not to think too hard about what Will must be feeling.

The rain had stopped, but the windswept course felt suddenly bleak, its brown and green surface littered with discarded betting slips, its horizon flat and empty. The car park had thinned out with the rain, and in the distance we could just hear the distorted sound of the tannoy as some other race thundered past.

‘I think maybe we should head back,’ Nathan said, wiping his mouth. ‘I mean, it was nice and all, but best to miss the traffic, eh?’

‘Fine,’ I said. I screwed up my paper napkin, and threw it into the bin. Will waved away the last third of his roll.

‘Didn’t he like it?’ said the woman, as Nathan began to wheel him away across the grass.

‘I don’t know. Perhaps he would have liked it better if it hadn’t come with a side order of rubberneck,’ I said, and chucked the remnants hard into the bin.

But getting to the car and back up the ramp was easier said than done. In the few hours that we had spent at the racecourse, the arrivals and departures meant that the car park had turned into a sea of mud. Even with Nathan’s impressive might, and my best shoulder, we couldn’t get the chair even halfway across the grass to the car. His wheels skidded and whined, unable to get the purchase to
make it up that last couple of inches. Mine and Nathan’s feet slithered in the mud, which worked its way up the sides of our shoes.

‘It’s not going to happen,’ said Will.

I had refused to listen to him. I couldn’t bear the idea that this was how our day was going to end.

‘I think we’re going to need some help,’ Nathan said. ‘I can’t even get the chair back on to the path. It’s stuck.’

Will let out an audible sigh. He looked about as fed up as I had ever seen him.

‘I could lift you into the front seat, Will, if I tilt it back a little. And then Louisa and I could see if we could get the chair in afterwards.’

Will’s voice emerged through gritted teeth. ‘I am not ending today with a fireman’s lift.’

‘Sorry, mate,’ Nathan said. ‘But Lou and I are not going to manage this alone. Here, Lou, you’re prettier than I am. Go and collar a few extra pairs of arms, will you?’

Will closed his eyes, set his jaw and I ran towards the stands.

I would not have believed so many people could turn down a cry for help when it involved a wheelchair stuck in mud, especially as the cry did come from a girl in a miniskirt and flashing her most endearing smile. I am not usually good with strangers, but desperation made me fearless. I walked from group to group of racegoers in the grandstand, asking if they could just spare me a few minutes’ help. They looked at me and my clothes as if I were plotting some kind of trap.

‘It’s for a man in a wheelchair,’ I said. ‘He’s a bit stuck.’

‘
We’re just waiting on the next race,’ they said. Or, ‘Sorry.’ Or, ‘It’ll have to wait till after the two thirty. We have a monkey on this one.’

I even thought about collaring a jockey or two. But as I got close to the enclosure, I saw that they were even smaller than I was.

By the time I got to the parade ring I was incandescent with suppressed rage. I suspect I was snarling at people then, not smiling. And there, finally, joy of joys, were the lads in striped polo shirts. The back of their shirts referred to ‘Marky’s Last Stand’ and they clutched cans of Pilsner and Tennent’s Extra. Their accents suggested they were from somewhere in the north-east, and I was pretty sure that they had not had any significant break from alcohol for the last twenty-four hours. They cheered as I approached, and I fought the urge to give them the finger again.

‘Gissa smile, sweetheart. It’s Marky’s stag weekend,’ one slurred, slamming a ham-sized hand on to my shoulder.

‘It’s Monday.’ I tried not to flinch as I peeled it off.

‘You’re joking. Monday already?’ He reeled backwards. ‘Well, you should give him a kiss, like.’

‘Actually,’ I said. ‘I’ve come over to ask you for help.’

‘Ah’ll give you any help you need, pet.’ This was accompanied by a lascivious wink.

His mates swayed gently around him like aquatic plants.

‘No, really. I need you to help my friend. Over in the car park.’

‘Ah’m sorry, ah’m not sure ah’m in any fit state to help youse, pet.’

‘Hey up. Next race is up, Marky. You got money on this? I think I’ve got money on this.’

They turned back towards the track, already losing interest. I looked over my shoulder at the car park, seeing the hunched figure of Will, Nathan pulling vainly at the handles of his chair. I pictured myself returning home to tell Will’s parents that we had left Will’s super-expensive chair in a car park. And then I saw the tattoo.

‘He’s a soldier,’ I said, loudly. ‘Ex-soldier.’

One by one they turned round.

‘He was injured. In Iraq. All we wanted to do was get him a nice day out. But nobody will help us.’ As I spoke the words, I felt my eyes welling up with tears.

‘A vet? You’re kidding us. Where is he?’

‘In the car park. I’ve asked lots of people, but they just don’t want to help.’

It seemed to take a minute or two for them to digest what I’d said. But then they looked at each other in amazement.

‘C’mon, lads. We’re not having that.’ They swayed after me in a wayward trail. I could hear them exclaiming between themselves, muttering. ‘Bloody civvies … no idea what it’s like … ’

When we reached them, Nathan was standing by Will, whose head had sunk deep into the collar of his coat with cold, even as Nathan covered his shoulders with another blanket.

‘These very nice gentlemen have offered to help us,’ I said.

Nathan was staring at the cans of lager. I had to admit that you’d have had to look quite hard to see a suit of armour in any of them.

‘Where do youse want to get him to?’ said one.

The others stood around Will, nodding their hellos. One offered him a beer, apparently unable to grasp that Will could not pick it up.

Nathan motioned to our car. ‘Back in the car, ultimately. But to do that we need to get him over to the stand, and then reverse the car back to him.’

‘You don’t need to do that,’ said one, clapping Nathan on the back. ‘We can take him to your car, can’t we, lads?’

There was a chorus of agreement. They began to position themselves around Will’s chair.

I shifted uncomfortably. ‘I don’t know … that’s a long way for you to carry him,’ I ventured. ‘And the chair’s very heavy.’

They were howlingly drunk. Some of them could barely hang on to their cans of drink. One thrust his can of Tennent’s into my hand.

‘Don’t you worry, pet. Anything for a fellow soldier, isn’t that right, lads?’

‘We wouldn’t leave you there, mate. We never leave a man down, do we?’

I saw Nathan’s face and shook my head furiously at his quizzical expression. Will seemed unlikely to say anything. He just looked grim, and then, as the men clustered around his chair, and with a shout, hoisted it up between them, vaguely alarmed.

‘What regiment, pet?’

I tried to smile, trawling my memory for names. ‘Rifles … ’ I said. ‘Eleventh rifles.’

‘I don’t know the eleventh rifles,’ said another.

‘It’s a new regiment,’ I stuttered. ‘Top secret. Based in Iraq.’

Their trainers slid in the mud, and I felt my heart lurch. Will’s chair was hoisted several inches off the ground, like some kind of sedan. Nathan was running for Will’s bag, unlocking the car ahead of us.

‘Did those boys train over in Catterick?’

‘That’s the one,’ I said, and then changed the subject. ‘So – which one of you is getting married?’

We had exchanged numbers by the time I finally got rid of Marky and his mates. They had a whip-round, offering us almost forty pounds towards Will’s rehabilitation fund, and only stopped insisting when I told them we would be happiest if they would have a drink on us instead. I had to kiss each and every one of them. I was nearly dizzy with fumes by the time I had finished. I continued to wave at them as they disappeared back to the stand, and Nathan sounded the horn to get me into the car.

‘They were helpful, weren’t they?’ I said, brightly, as I turned the ignition.

‘The tall one dropped his entire beer down my right leg,’ said Will. ‘I smell like a brewery.’

‘I don’t believe this,’ said Nathan, as I finally pulled out towards the main entrance. ‘Look. There’s a whole disabled parking section right there, by the stand. And it’s all on tarmac.’

Will didn’t say much of anything for the rest of the day. He bid Nathan goodbye when we dropped him home, and then grew silent as I negotiated the road up to the castle, which had thinned out now the temperature had dropped again, and finally I parked up outside the annexe.

I lowered Will’s chair, got him inside, and made him a
warm drink. I changed his shoes and trousers, put the beer-stained ones in the washing machine, and got the fire going so that he would warm up. I put the television on, and drew the curtains so that the room grew cosy around us – perhaps cosier for the time spent out in the cold air. But it was only when I sat in the living room with him, sipping my tea, that I realized he wasn’t talking – not out of exhaustion, or because he wanted to watch the television. He just wasn’t talking to me.

‘Is … something the matter?’ I said, when he failed to respond to my third comment about the local news.

‘You tell me, Clark.’

‘What?’

‘Well, you know everything else there is to know about me. You tell me.’

I stared at him. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said, finally. ‘I know today didn’t turn out quite like I planned. But it was just meant to be a nice outing. I actually thought you’d enjoy it.’

I didn’t add that he was being determinedly grumpy, that he had no idea what I had gone through just to get him to try to enjoy himself, that he hadn’t even tried to have a good time. I didn’t tell him that if he’d let me buy the stupid badges we might have had a nice lunch and all the other stuff might have been forgotten.

‘That’s my point.’

‘What?’

‘Oh, you’re no different from the rest of them.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘If you’d bothered to ask me, Clark. If you’d bothered to consult me just once about this so-called fun outing of ours, I could have told you. I hate horses, and horse racing.
Always have. But you didn’t bother to ask me. You decided what you thought you’d like me to do, and you went ahead and did it. You did what everyone else did. You decided for me.’

I swallowed.

‘I didn’t mean to –’

‘But you did.’

He turned his chair away from me and, after a couple more minutes of silence, I realized I had been dismissed.

I can tell you the exact day I stopped being fearless.

It was almost seven years ago, in the last lazy, heat-slurred days of July, when the narrow streets around the castle were thick with tourists, and the air filled with the sound of their meandering footsteps and the chimes of the ever-present ice cream vans that lined the top of the hill.

My grandmother had died a month previously after a long illness, and that summer was veiled in a thin layer of sadness; it gently smothered everything we did, muting mine and my sister’s tendencies to the dramatic, and cancelling our usual summer routines of brief holidays and days out. My mother stood most days at her washing-up bowl, her back rigid with the effort of trying to suppress her tears, while Dad disappeared to work each morning with a grimly determined expression, returning hours later shiny-faced from the heat and unable to speak before he had cracked open a beer. My sister was home from her first year at university, her head already somewhere far from our small town. I was twenty and would meet Patrick in less than three months. We were enjoying one of those rare summers of utter freedom – no financial responsibility, no debts, no time owing to anybody. I had a seasonal job and all the hours in the world to practise my make-up, put on heels that made my father wince, and just generally work out who I was.

I dressed normally, in those days. Or, I should say, I dressed like the other girls in town – long hair, flicked over the shoulder, indigo jeans, T-shirts tight enough to show off our tiny waists and high breasts. We spent hours perfecting our lipgloss, and the exact shade of a smokey eye. We looked good in anything, but spent hours complaining about non-existent cellulite and invisible flaws in our skin.

And I had ideas. Things I wanted to do. One of the boys I knew at school had taken a round-the-world trip and come back somehow removed and unknowable, like he wasn’t the same scuffed eleven-year-old who used to blow spit bubbles during double French. I had booked a cheap flight to Australia on a whim, and was trying to find someone who might come with me. I liked the exoticism his travels gave him, the unknownness. He had blown in with the soft breezes of a wider world, and it was weirdly seductive. Everyone here knew everything about me, after all. And with a sister like mine, I was never allowed to forget any of it.

It was a Friday, and I had spent the day working as a car park attendant with a group of girls I had known at school, steering visitors to a craft fair held in the grounds of the castle. The whole day was punctuated with laughter, with fizzy drinks guzzled under a hot sun, the sky blue, light glinting off the battlements. I don’t think there was a single tourist who didn’t smile at me that day. People find it very hard not to smile at a group of cheerful, giggling girls. We were paid £30, and the organizers were so pleased with the turnout that they gave us an extra fiver each. We celebrated by getting drunk with some boys who had been working on the far car park by the visitor centre. They were well spoken, sporting rugby shirts and floppy
hair. One was called Ed, two of them were at university – I still can’t remember where – and they were working for holiday money too. They were flush with cash at the end of a whole week of stewarding, and when our money ran out they were happy to buy drinks for giddy local girls who flicked their hair and sat on each other’s laps and shrieked and joked and called them posh. They spoke a different language; they talked of gap years and summers spent in South America, and the backpacker trail in Thailand and who was going to try for an internship abroad. While we listened, and drank, I remember my sister stopping by the beer garden where we lay sprawled on the grass. She was wearing the world’s oldest hoody and no make-up, and I’d forgotten I was meant to be meeting her. I told her to tell Mum and Dad I’d be back sometime after I was thirty. For some reason I found this hysterically funny. She had lifted her eyebrows, and stalked off like I was the most irritating person ever born.