Remember Me This Way (7 page)

Murphy has reached the end of his story and the others are all laughing. Onnie, driven back into herself, lowers her head and starts working at her nails again. I imagine myself standing up and saying thank you for the drink. I imagine it so clearly I wonder if I have actually done it, but I still seem to be sitting. Murphy, over by the fireplace, says ‘Very good’ to a comment Tim has made, as if marking it with a verbal pen.

‘Is it awful being a widow?’

Onnie is looking at me. I am not sure if it is a statement or a question, but I say, ‘Yes. It is. It’s very sad. I went to the scene of his accident yesterday to leave flowers.’

‘Did you?’

Her eyes are fixed intently on me, and I find it hard to look away. I feel a flush of yearning, an overpowering sense of loss, and at the same time, madly, an overpowering sense of Zach’s presence. The combination of these impressions dizzies me and, in the outer edges of my vision, the walls of the room begin to bend in and I wonder if I might be about to pass out.

I stand up blindly and say, to no one in particular, ‘Do you have a bathroom?’

Murphy leaps to his feet. ‘We do have a bathroom,’ he says. ‘In fact, we have several bathrooms. And they are all at your disposal.’

Next thing, he’s leading me into the hallway. ‘Posh upstairs, or bog standard through there, first right.’ He points to the door at the end of the hall, then brings his hands together in a single clap. ‘Make yourself at home.’

Immediately beyond the hall isn’t the kitchen, as I had supposed, but a scullery, full of coats and muddy shoes, cricket bats, a set of boules. An air rifle leans against one wall. It’s warmer in here. I can hear frantic sizzling from the oven beyond. I tie Howard to the boot rack – how organised some people’s lives are, how rich with contraptions it would never occur to me to need. Then I push open the door and sit on the loo with the seat down. I lean my head against the wall and breathe deeply. Eventually I realise I am staring at a framed cartoon of Murphy: a winking Fred Astaire tap-dancing on a table, with various members of the Cabinet in his top pocket. Above the basin is a matriculation photograph from Brasenose College, 1986. I expect if I look hard enough I’ll find the prime minister.

I put my head between my legs and close my eyes. I can smell pine disinfectant and a lower tang of ammonia. I feel concussed, wrong for company, out of place in the world. I feel as if I have no perspective on anything. I have a sharp sense of panic, as if I’m supposed to be doing something important, that I’ve abandoned it halfway through, that I should be somewhere elsewhere.

Quiet footsteps approach the door, pause, and then move away. A door slams.

I force myself to stand up and open the door into the scullery. I lean against the wall for a moment and try to pull myself together. Howard is still sitting by the boot rack: a row of inverted wellingtons. The last pair of wellies on the rack, half hidden under a beige mac, are green Hunters. As I unhook Howard’s lead, my heart gives a small lurch of recognition – absurdly. They’re just boots. Not Zach’s. Not here. Why would they be here?

Upside down, the soles of this pair are spotless, unlike the others in the row – the mud has been brushed off; the treads are clean and definite, the rubber size stamp unobscured by soil. Size 43.

I step forward. My hands are shaking. I move the coat. I unslot the left boot from its wooden stand, and turn it over. There, at the top, are some marks and a snaggling line of rubber glue. And on the side a splatter of paint.

I leave through the back door without saying goodbye and run down the hill, Howard bounding beside me, jumping up, tugging the lead to one side, like this is some kind of game. We follow the farm lane down to the caravan site, across the field to the road below.

The keys to Zach’s studio, in the old garage next to Gulls, are under a terracotta pot at the bottom of the garden path, and I tip the pot on its side, spilling earth and knotted bulbs. My hands are shaking. I can hardly fit the key into the door.

I push the door and a bottle of methylated spirits rolls, skids into the middle of the floor. Zach, as in everything else, was meticulous as an artist. He needed silence and clarity, white spaces, no mess. His brushes would be laid out in size order, his tubes of paint lined in neat rows, the labels facing up. The floor had to be clean, nothing in his line of sight to distract. When he worked, he placed his easel in the centre of the room and turned any other paintings in the room to face the wall.

The scene inside takes a moment to process – tubes, brushes, rags, glue, newspaper. The cupboard is tipped on its side. The table where Zach laid his tools is bolted down, but his chair has been upended and the beechwood easel, the one he would rub and oil before starting, is missing. No, not missing – pulled apart, snapped into pieces like firewood. And the walls . . .

The walls are splattered with blood.

I freeze in the doorway, my hand at my mouth. There is a ringing in my ears and a rawness at the back of my throat. One canvas is propped on the table, facing me directly. I know this painting well. It’s an oil of the sea – gunmetal grey, horizontal, the horizon black, clouds low – his favourite view, his screensaver. A dark shape in the foreground – an empty fishing boat, unpiloted, setting out into the unknown. It’s a picture of loneliness. ‘My life,’ he once said, ‘without you.’

But the picture has been vandalised. I hold on to the door frame to stop myself from falling. I can feel the truth burning on me. In a scrawl of charcoal, he’s added a raw figure to the front of the boat, facing into the horizon: a man, with his back to us, in a hat and a heavy coat.

A knot of fear. I hear his voice in my ear: ‘Don’t ever leave me. If you leave me, you don’t know what I’ll do.’

I ring Jane from the service station. I am pacing up and down between the lorries and the Snack & Shop. I tell her I’ve worked it out. Zach got to the bungalow and read my letter. He knew I was leaving. He can’t take rejection, Jane, from anyone. But from me? You should see his studio. It’s been wrecked. And there’s blood. I don’t know whose. But he didn’t kill himself, Jane. He didn’t. He wouldn’t. I know him. I know what you’re going to say, but it wasn’t suicide. I wouldn’t . . . I can’t have driven him to that. It’s something far more complicated. I spoke to him on the phone and you wouldn’t have known. He was in control of his emotions. He’s so clever, Jane. He left a message for me in a painting. This is my punishment. That body . . . what was left of the driver of the car . . . I’m telling you, Jane, it wasn’t him.

Jane asks me where I am. She says to stay there, to get warm, she’ll come and get me. Her voice is calm and gentle. She thinks I’ve lost it.

I don’t care. I just repeat it to her, over and over. ‘Zach’s alive. Zach’s alive.’

Zach

September 2009

This evening, I followed a woman. It was a little bit sordid – no denying that – but the thrill I experienced was extraordinary.

It was possibly dangerous, but I posted a profile on an online website. I was an almost immediate hit – thirty enquiries within twenty-four hours. That black-and-white photo, taken ‘unawares’ with my iPhone, was a winner. Three dates so far. The first, a lawyer, was too old, even without the forehead-freezing Botox. She was wasting her time, as well as mine. I kissed her vein-wrinkled hand as we parted and said, ‘Madam, if our paths cross again, then we will both be the richer,’ or something similarly naff and confusing. I didn’t want to hurt her feelings, but really, who did she think she was kidding, posting that picture?

Date number two was divorced, pretty, quite bright (a biology degree from York, had worked for GlaxoSmithKline), but she lied to me, too. She told me she lived alone, but I worked out pretty pronto that she had a child. She kept checking her phone and when I came back from the bar, she was whispering into it. I caught the words ‘Bed.
Now
.’ This sort of deception – well, it’s nothing to build a new life on. Disappointing.

These first two, I could tell, couldn’t work out why an attractive, normal guy like me had resorted to Internet dating. Tonight’s hopeful, the best of the bunch, thought she had my number. We met in a bar at the bottom end of the King’s Road in Chelsea, ‘just across the river’ from where she claimed to live. She was wearing a purple wrap-around dress that clung to her curves and fell low over her cleavage. Spiky blonde hair, heavy eyeliner, a gap between her front teeth. Not bad actually. Reminded me a bit of a young Vic Murphy. The other two had simpered a little bit, gazed into their wine as they rolled it around the glass. Cathy? (Not her real name, I suspect.) She crossed her legs provocatively, looked at me straight in the eye and said, her vowels flat South London: ‘You don’t have to pretend. Cards on table. I know what you’re in this for.’

‘Relocation?’ I said. I was only half joking.

She gave me a funny look and shrugged. ‘Sex. You’re married. You’re pretending to be looking for “Love? Life partner? Let’s see what happens?” Or whatever lies you concocted for your profile.’

‘They weren’t lies,’ I said, truthfully.

‘But I’ve been in this game for a while. I’ve met plenty like you. If a man seems too good to be true, then generally he is.’ She licked her finger and ran it around the rim of her glass. It made a small squeak. ‘That shirt – no way you picked it out for yourself. It’s the kind of shirt a woman chooses for a husband.’

I pretended to gulp and stutter and deny all charges. I talked about shyness, and a long-term partner who had bought me the shirt shortly before running off with my best friend. ‘A guilt purchase,’ I said. ‘Don’t make any judgements on the grounds of a guilt purchase.’ Oh I am good when I need to be. I am bloody good.

I can be brown, I can be blue, I can be vi-o-let sky . . . I can be anything you like.

‘Look,’ she said. ‘I find you attractive. If you can remember my Encounters entry, I said, “long- or short-term commitment, I’m not fussy”. I won’t lie to you. I’m ideally after someone to share my life with, but I’m not going to turn down the opportunity for some fun if it throws itself in my path.’

I hate it when people say ‘I won’t lie to you’. It means nothing. It’s just one of those phrases they use to make themselves sound more important. A verbal drum roll. And quite often they do lie, or tell a half-truth, or a truth they haven’t properly thought through but quite like the sound of.

‘What are you saying?’ I stammered.

She studied me quizzically. ‘Hmm. Not sure.’

I managed to change the subject to give myself time to consider my options. She was offering to have sex with me – tonight if I wasn’t mistaken. I was tempted. But she was a little too sharp for my liking; well off beam, of course, but uneasily upfront, confrontational. And anyway, she was wrong. I was in it not for the short but the long game.

I asked her what she did for a living. A psychologist, administering cognitive behavioural therapy to patients in emotional distress. I pretended to be impressed. ‘A doctor!’ I said, though I knew she damn well wasn’t – all that time lodging with medical undergraduates at Edinburgh taught me the difference between a simple psychology degree and ten years’ hard medical training, even with a bit of postgrad thrown in. All talk, no drugs. Interesting, though, that she didn’t deny it.

The evening went fast enough. She was good company, simultaneously indiscreet and flirtatious. I particularly enjoyed her description of how CBT is currently helping a couple who have ceased marital relations. ‘On the second day, they can touch or stroke each other anywhere, chest and arms and upper thighs, though not breasts, or vagina, or penis.’ She drew out the sibilants for my delectation. I watched her mouth as she spoke, the space between her tongue and the gap between her teeth. Sex: it has often been my downfall. Almost went home with her then and there.

She made a big play of paying for the drinks, flamboyantly slapping a pile of notes on the table before I could object. If I had been wearing a tie, I expect she’d have taken hold of it and yanked me out on to the pavement. I managed to wrestle control once we were standing there, told her I needed to head off as I had an early start the next day.

‘Home to wifey?’ she said, a little deflated.

‘No.’ I tapped her warningly on the nose. She tried to catch my finger with her mouth. ‘But I am a gentleman and I will walk you wherever it is you’re going.’

‘I’ve read the small print,’ she said, doing up the buttons of her coat. ‘No personal details on the first date.’

‘What do you think’s going to happen? I’m going to strangle you?’

She laughed. ‘I’m a big girl.’

But I insisted. I was intrigued enough to want to know a little more. ‘Can’t be too careful,’ I said. ‘It’s late. There are a lot of nutters out there.’

She relented and let me walk her to the Tube – a bit of a hike, which put me in a bad mood. Still, I stooped to kiss her at Sloane Square, once slowly on each cheek, letting my lips open, feeling her flesh. I let my hand graze her breast. If she wasn’t interested before, she would be now. She tried to keep it cool, waved, a coquettish trill of her hand as she disappeared down the escalator, called, ‘Ring me. Let’s do this again.’

It wasn’t hard to keep her in sight. You need to stay two or three people behind, that’s all. She didn’t even look round. She stood on the eastbound platform – Circle line – staring straight at the ad for mouthwash on the other side of the track, fiddling with a piece of hair at the back of her head. She undid her coat to retie the belt on her dress, wriggled her shoulders as if to unstick the skin from under her bra.

When the tube came, I got into the carriage behind and watched her through the window. She sat down and took a magazine out of her shoulder bag.
The Economist
– well, that was a surprise. Useful, however, because although she got out at Victoria, the next stop, she kept reading all the way up the escalator and didn’t put it back in her bag until she was on the main concourse. More intellectual, or more pretentious, than I thought.