Offcomer (15 page)

Headlights swept the dark tarmac. The coach rounded the corner, swung across the forecourt, and pulled up at Gate 17. The engine shut off with a rattle. Alan stood up reluctantly, not sure if he should feel relieved or even more annoyed. He walked slowly over towards the automatic doors, careful not to get close enough to make them slide open. It was cold outside. He didn’t want to stand waiting in a draught. The coach door hissed open and the driver jumped down. He walked along the flank of the bus and swung open the boot. He began lobbing out bags and suitcases, tartan shopping-bags on wheels, rucksacks. Alan watched the passengers get off. A young couple with a baby, a dribble of elderly unsteady women, and some scruffy, denimed student-types. They all gathered round the side of the bus, picking through the baggage. Then, through the curved coach windscreen, he saw Claire coming down the steps. She
walked out onto the tarmac. She seemed unsteady on her feet, she looked frail. He realised suddenly that he was surprised by her. She had managed, somehow, to seem unfamiliar. She was smaller than he had remembered. She was slender. Delicate even. He had never noticed before. If she wasn’t his girlfriend already, he realised, he would have fancied her.

She stood at the back of the crowd, waiting for her bags. Alan watched her slim straight back for a minute, then glanced at his watch again. They would be there all night if she didn’t push her way through. The young couple were already strapping their baby into its push-chair, the old ladies were navigating their way through the crowd, their bags bumping and knocking against shins, and a couple of the younger lot had hitched their rucksacks up onto their backs and were marching off down towards the taxi rank. The crush was clearing and still Claire stood there, waiting. Why didn’t she shove past the others and grab her bags? There would be no taxis left at this rate. He drummed his fingers against his thighs, frowned, rocked back on his heels. Finally, she moved forward. He watched her thread her way between the remaining passengers, towards the driver. Alan didn’t hear her speak, but she must have said something because the driver smiled at her. He was, Alan noticed, quite young. He lifted up a rucksack and held it out towards her. He spoke and she came closer and turned her back to him. He held the weight of the bag as she slipped the straps up over her arms. She said something over her shoulder to him and the man laughed. Alan took a step forward. The electric doors slid open with a blast of cold air. Claire glanced over. She saw him. She smiled. She bent and picked up two more bags from the tarmac and spoke again to the driver. This time Alan heard the words:

“Thank you. Goodnight.”

And she turned, started to head for the doors.

As she came towards him, the last grains of his ambivalence crumbled away. He suddenly realised, for the first time, that she was, in fact, beautiful. The idea was startling, even terrifying. Even that evening nearly a year ago, when she had taken off her clothes for him to draw her, when she was utterly new and unknown to him, he hadn’t really thought that she was
beautiful
. He had wanted her, right enough, but that was different. Perhaps, he thought, he’d been so focused on his thesis that he’d been unable to look past it, and see her properly. Perhaps her spell at home had refreshed and revitalised her, and she actually looked better than she used to. Perhaps she had lost weight. Alan couldn’t be sure, but from the moment he knew that she was beautiful, he was filled with an unfamiliar and unpleasant sensation. A lurking, inexplicit terror. It made his teeth ache and his skin crawl. From that moment on, he was never quite rid of it. He never quite identified it. He never even really thought about it. It didn’t occur to him that he might be jealous.

As she walked towards him, upright beneath the weight of her rucksack and bags, a small smile played on her lips, and Alan watched the way her hips swayed, and felt that it was intended for the bus driver’s appreciation, and that her smile was just a little too self-satisfied. So she thought that he wouldn’t notice. She thought that she could fool him. Anger suddenly bubbled up inside him like indigestion. How dare she, right in front of him, flirt with a
bus driver
? Had she no standards at all? And who else had she been flirting with while he was out of the way? His stomach lurched; he felt hot. What if it wasn’t just flirting. What if she had
really
taken
advantage of their time apart. What if she had been seeing someone else. What if she had
slept
with someone else.
What if she had been fucking all round her?
He felt his face burn. All the ignorant hamfaced yokels from the village. Shit on their shoes and accents like treacle. Hung like horses, too, probably. He gritted his teeth. His head began to throb. She wouldn’t. She wouldn’t.

She stopped in front of him. She dropped the bags down on the cigaretty floor. He kissed her angrily and quickly on the lips.

“Hi,” she said.

“Hi.” Her skin, he noticed, looked pale yellow in the artificial light. There were shadows underneath her eyes.

“Long journey,” she said.

“Yeah.” He glared at her, then looked angrily away. Even washed-out with travelling, she was beautiful. “Come on,” he said. “There’ll be no cabs left.”

She picked up her bags and followed him down the concourse.

Mum and Dad had taken her to the Blackpool Illuminations. An autumn evening with a heaving dark sky. The gale had buffeted the little car. She had sat in the back gazing up at the coloured bulbs as they swung and rattled in the wind. She had felt safe and warm and proud of the brave, fragile lights that looked as if at any moment they might break themselves against each other, but always managed not to.

When they turned inland and the multi-coloured bulbs were replaced by orange streetlamps, white-lit windows, traffic-lights, Claire was melted by a vision of completion.
The world, containing her, her mother and father, their little metal car, the bright lights, the dark, the wind, and Blackpool there every day of the year, seemed suddenly whole and meaningful. She felt expansive and alive, as if she could wrap herself around everything. She felt suddenly happy, and at home.

The sensation had faded gradually as they left the bright town and suburbs behind them, and began the long drive in the dark. She had woken as the car turned into the driveway and stopped, a vague and anxious ache all that was left of her revelation.

The ache, but not the memory, returned as she sat in the back of the black taxi, looking out at the new city. After the rural dark of home, Belfast seemed brilliant with light. The cab sped them through pools of music, gusts of noise. A fluorescent strip spelt out the name
Dempseys
. Red dots formed the letters of a message and scrolled away before Claire could read it. A car passed them, windows down. Claire didn’t hear the music but felt the visceral throb of the bassline. Along the pavements, underneath the brown-leafed trees, people were walking, talking, dressed as though this were Italy, and June. Ahead, high up, a giant telescreen flickered. They were past it before she could put the images together into sense.

Alan was staring out of the window. She could only see the back of his head, his pale neck as he leaned round, away from her. He hadn’t spoken a word to her since they left the bus station. He would tell her, sooner or later, what she’d done. She didn’t like the wait, but it was better than the row that would inevitably follow.

“How are you?” she asked tentatively.

“Fine.”

So he wouldn’t even speak to her. And she knew that if she
spoke she’d only wind him up even more. She leaned back in the seat, caught herself mid-sigh. The engine’s rattle dropped as the driver slowed and shifted down a gear.

The road faded left, up a slight incline. As they passed, she glimpsed a Spar sign, a railway station, a Salsa club. There were trees. Some thick trunks, some slender, surrounded by a protective metal mesh. Lime trees, Claire guessed, by the shape of them. And more cafés, more bars. As the taxi slowed to turn she looked through the bright-lit window of a crowded restaurant and saw an elegant grey-haired woman sipping on a slender cigar. The woman glanced towards the window, smiled. For a moment Claire thought that she was smiling at her. She smiled back, then realised that the glass, lit brighter on the inside, would reflect. The woman was smiling to herself.

The taxi took the left-hand turn, then almost immediately turned right into a poorly lit side street. The trees here were bigger, heavier. There were cars parked nose-to-tail the length of the street. The taxi pulled over, engine rattling. In the dark, between parked cars and trees, Claire could see a flat-faced redbrick terrace.

“We’re here,” Alan said.

The bedroom smelt as if it were permanently dark. The bed was small, not quite a double. She lay awake beside Alan’s heavy body, listening to the calls and laughter and shouted conversation on the street. She couldn’t quite catch the words. Footsteps passed and repassed the window. Alan’s breath became heavy and slow. She heard a distant car alarm, a door bang shut.

Cautiously, she turned on her side. She lay, eyes open, facing the wall.

She woke with the buzzing of the alarm clock and the lurch of the bed as Alan heaved himself out. She watched him walk away, down the room, scratching his hip. His blue-striped pyjamas were crumpled. She heard him lock himself into the bathroom.

She lay for a moment, becoming aware of her body. The blankets had got pulled up in the night, leaving just a sheet covering her feet. Her toes were cold. Her nose had an outdoors kind of chill. She stretched a hand over to Alan’s side of the bed. It was warm, but faintly damp and uninviting. She crawled over the crumpled sheet and out of bed. Her bags were in a heap by the door. She padded over, dragged out a jumper and pulled it on over her pyjamas. She went through to the living room. Alan had already flicked on the electric fire. One bar glowed in the dim room. She walked down the corridor, past the bathroom, into the kitchen. Dark, dirty and cold. She heard the toilet flush, the burst of water as the shower was turned on. She set out things for breakfast on the kitchen table. Bowl, spoon, Weetabix, milk. The shower’s hiss ceased. She heard the rattle and splash as he ran a basinful of water, then the tap of razor against ceramic. The cistern groaned and gurgled, refilling itself. She put the kettle on, heard the scrape of the bathroom door-lock, then Alan’s footsteps as he walked back to the bedroom. She dropped teabags into the teapot. The kettle clicked off; she poured the water over the teabags. She watched the brown dye seeping out.

She heard his heavy tread as he walked back down the
corridor. He came into the kitchen. He was wearing a black poloneck and trousers. She had never seen the clothes before. His hair was scraped back, the tooth-marks of his comb still visible; his scalp showed pinkly through the hair. He sat down at the table. He peeled the plastic wrapping off the Weetabix, dropped two biscuits into his bowl. He doused them with milk.

“Sleep well?” she asked.

“Yes.”

Alan leant low over his bowl, spooning Weetabix into his mouth. She sipped her tea, watched the wallpaper-pattern dance.

“I’m teaching at nine,” he said. He glanced at his watch.

“Are you all sorted out for it?” she asked.

“Yes.”

Claire nodded.

“I told you you’ve got to go down to Conroys sometime today.”

“Conroys?”

“I did tell you. I got you a job.” Alan spooned up more of the milky slush. Liquid dripped from the spoon back into his bowl. He looked up at her coldly. Claire took another sip of her tea.

“What kind of job?” she asked.

“I don’t know. I left the address by the phone. Any time after eleven, he said. You’ll have plenty of time to find the place.”

“What kind of place is it?” she asked cautiously. “What do they do?”

“It’s a pub,” Alan said. “They sell beer.”

He had finished his breakfast. He stood up, scraping back
his chair. Claire put his bowl in the sink and stood there numbly, looking at the bowl, the tea-stained metal sink, her own cold hand. He walked out of the kitchen. She heard him moving around the flat. The wardrobe door opened with a squeak, was shut again. The bedroom door tapped shut. She looked up from the sink, up the hallway towards the living room. She couldn’t see him, but could still hear him moving around. The creak of his jeans, a sharp exhalation as he bent down to pull on his shoes. He muttered a few words under his breath, reminding himself of something. She walked cautiously down the hall. He was pulling on a tweed jacket, tugging down the sleeves. It was neat, new. She had never seen it before. He picked up an armful of papers from the coffee table.

“I’ll be back around six.”

“Right.”

“There’s a spare set of keys in the kitchen drawer.”

“Right.”

He turned towards the door.

“See you,” she said.

“Yeah. See you.”

The flat door slammed behind him, then, a moment later, the door onto the street. She didn’t move, didn’t think. The cold made her gradually aware of herself. A shiver was gathering between her shoulder blades. Her toes were almost numb. The skin on her legs crawled. Her nose was icy. But the mug in her hand, she realised, was still hot. It was burning her skin. She looked round for somewhere to put it down.

The shelves were full. Alan’s books. Hardback covers black like carapaces, paperback thrillers, broken and papery along the spines. The table was covered in computer; pale
tangled wires and flexes trailed away from the machine like worms. The coffee table was cluttered with files and papers and polythene envelopes. On the narrow mantelpiece, above the boarded-up fireplace, was Alan’s graduation photograph.

She walked through to the bedroom. Three paces. She set her mug down on the chest of drawers. Alan’s comb, deodorant and aftershave were arranged on a cotton doily on the top. She sat down on the bed. Her feet looked pale and bluish. Beneath her feet, the carpet was dirty and patterned with obscure red whorls. She followed the pattern with her eyes across the room, towards the door. Her bags still piled up in a heap. Clothes, books, linen.