Road Ends (41 page)

“So where is he?” she demanded.

“Who?” Tom said. He tried to edge past her but she blocked the way.

“Why haven’t you brought him with you? Give me one good reason.”

“I’ve just finished my shift,” Tom said. “And I’m hungry. That’s two good reasons.”

He took a step towards her and she had to take a step back or he’d have been right on top of her, so he kept that up until they reached Luke’s table. Tom slid in opposite him for moral support.

“How long would it take you to go home and pick him up?” Bo said, hands on hips. “Ten minutes? If you’re too lazy to walk you could’ve picked him up in the snowplough on your way here. Think how much a four-year-old boy would love riding in a snowplough. Just think about it.”

“Any suggestions?” Tom said to Luke.

“About kids and snowploughs or about her?”

“About her.”

“Nothing works,” Luke said. “Just stick a couple of pieces of Juicy Fruit in your ears and get on with your life.”

Beside Luke’s plate there was a page torn from a newspaper. It was creased all over as if it had been crumpled and then spread out again. Luke passed it across to Tom.

“Brought this in for you,” he said. “It was wrapped around some tools I had sent up from Sudbury, caught my eye when I unwrapped it. It’s a couple of weeks old—there was that blizzard, newspapers didn’t make it as far as here. Thought you might not have seen it.”

The headline read, “The Big Bird Flies.” Beneath it was a photograph of what had to be the most beautiful aircraft that
had ever existed or ever would exist, sailing up into the sky. “Concorde makes faultless maiden flight,” the sub-headline read.

“Holy Moses,” Tom said. “Holy Moses.”

He’d seen interpretive drawings and artists’ impressions and photos of the prototypes and plans of the profile of those incredible wings, but the finished plane was so much more beautiful than anything he’d imagined it made him go hot and cold all over just looking at it.

“Says it only went three hundred miles per hour, though,” Luke said. “Wasn’t it meant to go faster than the speed of sound?”

Bo walked off, disgusted. Neither of them saw her go.

“Yeah, it does,” Tom said. “The top speed’s something like thirteen hundred miles per hour, but they wouldn’t take it to the limit on its first flight. You need to warm things up a little.”

He couldn’t take his eyes off it—that incredible fusion of beauty and function. Even in the grainy photograph you could almost see the air streaming over those wings. He could see exactly how it would work.

His dinner landed with a thump on top of the newspaper. Tom looked up to warn Bo that if she splashed gravy on the photo he would tear her head off but she was already halfway down the aisle.

“She’s giving you the silent treatment,” Luke said.

“Hallelujah,” Tom said. “Long may it last.” Though the fact was, when he’d been face to face with her a few minutes ago, it had been disconcertingly difficult to resist getting a little bit closer. Ever since noticing how good-looking she was he hadn’t been able to stop noticing it. Grow up, he told himself. You’re as bad as the boss-guy. She must be ten years younger than you. Eight, anyway. If you want to look at something sexy, look at Concorde.

“Could I have this?” he asked Luke. “To keep, I mean.”

“Sure. That’s what I brought it in for.” He was looking thoughtfully at Tom.

“What?” Tom said, suddenly nervous.

“I was just wondering if you really want to spend your life making furniture.”

“Oh,” Tom said, relieved. He lifted his plate, folded the paper carefully and set it to one side. “I don’t know,” he said honestly. “I’ve been thinking about it, but I still don’t know.”

There’d been moments lately when going back to it did seem possible. And just now, looking at Concorde, he’d felt stirrings of a kind of hunger he’d thought had left him forever. Imagine working on something like that. It had to be the most amazing job on the planet. But would he be up to it? It would be a challenge and he wasn’t sure he was ready for a challenge. A couple of months back he’d had a letter from Simon, who’d been with him down in the ravine that day. Simon was working for Boeing now, out in Seattle, and after a cautiously worded inquiry about how things were going, he’d said that Boeing had a new project under development and in a few months’ time would be taking on more aeronautical engineers.

“Don’t know if you’re interested,”
he’d written,
“but there’s some great stuff going on out here.”

At the time, Tom had been unable even to contemplate it. Now, though …

“I need to think about it a little more,” he said to Luke. “I’m still not sure.”

“That’s okay,” Luke said. “I talked with your dad this morning and I’m going to be extending the workshop and buying more equipment, so I won’t need more guys for a few weeks yet.”

Bo sailed by carrying three dinners, a jug of coffee and a foil-wrapped package tucked under her chin. It seemed to Tom she stirred the air in a certain way when she passed, as if she generated a strong magnetic field. He had to resist the urge to turn and follow her with his eyes.

On her return trip she stopped at their table. Tom concentrated on his hot beef sandwich. She’s too young for you, he reminded himself, forking in a mouthful.

“This is a brownie,” Bo said grimly, depositing the foil-wrapped package in front of him. “It is not for you, it is for Adam. I imagine you’ll eat it yourself on the way home but that’s a risk I have to take.”

Tom swallowed his mouthful. “I thought the silent treatment lasted for days,” he said to Luke. “I was counting on it.”

Luke shook his head. “ ’Fraid not. Half an hour’s her limit. After that her mouth snaps open like it’s on a spring.”

That night, just as he was sinking into sleep, there was a knock at the front door. It wasn’t loud, but nonetheless it jolted him awake, almost as if he’d been waiting for it. He heard his father answer the door, heard voices faintly. He knew it was Reverend Thomas. He stayed where he was, lying on his back, staring at the darkness, until finally he heard the front door open and close again. Then he got up and went downstairs.

Afterwards, when his father had told him what Reverend Thomas had said, he went back up to his room. He didn’t go to bed straight away; instead, he went over to the window and stood for a while looking out at the night. The wind had picked up and it was snowing again, the snow creating a shifting, swirling halo around the light at the end of the drive. For a moment he saw Rob and himself staggering down the road in the wake of the snowplough, laughing like idiots, Rob clutching the hubcap he’d found in the snow.

He thought about Robert’s death—allowed himself to think about it, for the first time didn’t try to suppress it.

A car went by, a cloud of snow whirling up behind it. The wind caught it and sent it spiralling upwards and then it paused and drifted down.

He thought about Reverend Thomas, coming out on such a night, driven by the unendurable need to unburden himself to another mortal soul. And also to absolve him, Tom, of blame. Grateful though he was, Tom wasn’t sure the Reverend was right that no one could have prevented Rob’s suicide, but he could see now that it was possible; that someone might be in so much pain they couldn’t even hear what anyone else said, far less be comforted by it.

You’re never going to know, he said to himself, watching the snow. You’re going to have to live with that. There’s nothing you can do but face it, and accept it. That’s all. Just let it be.

Late the following evening there was another knock on the door and when Tom opened it Sergeant Moynihan was standing on the doorstep.

“I need to speak to you and your dad,” the sergeant said. You could see by his face that it was bad news. Tom took him through to his father’s study and the three of them sat down.

The sergeant spoke heavily, directing his words at the floor. He told them that earlier in the afternoon he’d been driving along Whitewater Road. As he passed the turnoff to the ravine he saw a glint of metal through the trees and decided to investigate. The glint of metal turned out to be Reverend Thomas’s car, stuck in a snowdrift. Reverend Thomas was inside.

“Wasn’t carbon monoxide poisoning,” the sergeant said, “ ’cause the engine was switched off. The doc says it could have been a heart attack. He can’t say for sure until the post-mortem. He says it could have been just the cold. Got down to minus eighteen last night.”

When he stopped speaking there was no sound in the room. Tom watched snowflakes hitting the windows, spearing out of the dark. The snow had been heavier still last night. He thought of it drifting silently down around the car, the old man watching it, perhaps even marvelling at its beauty, as the cold crept in.

The sergeant had been studying his boots but now he looked up.

“Haven’t found a note,” he said. “So could have been an accident. But he hasn’t been lookin’ too good lately. My guess is he just couldn’t make sense of things anymore. Couldn’t find a reason to go on.”

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Struan, March 1969

When she arrived, Tom was standing in the middle of the kitchen eating cornflakes. His shoulders were hunched in order to shorten the distance the spoon had to travel and he looked thin and dishevelled, just as he always had. The unexpected rush of gladness at seeing him was so great that for a moment Megan didn’t notice that he was eating out of the upturned lid of a saucepan. Then she noticed and, looking beyond him to the kitchen counter, saw why he was eating out of the lid of a saucepan and she almost turned around right then and there and went back to England.

“Why are you eating out of a saucepan lid?” she asked.

Tom turned and saw her and his face lit up.

“Well hey!” he said. “It’s Meg! Hi! You came! How are you? How was the trip?”

“Long. Why are you eating out of a saucepan lid?” She wanted to hear him say it. She was floating in a haze of fatigue—the Toronto airport had been closed by snow and the plane diverted to Montreal, adding many hours to an already painfully long trip—and she was not in a tolerant or forgiving frame of mind.