What about us? (4 page)

I poured the tea, the way I’d
seen in films and waited.

“That first time I met you, I
was there for work.” he said.  “I’m a sort of historian or maybe more a sort of
journalist, the lines get blurred sometimes.  I was just making notes and
taking pictures, that sort of thing, when I saw you walking.  You were lost in
your own world, but there was something about you that made me watch you.  On
the one hand, a bit silly of me really, but a bloody good job on the other that
I did!

“Anyway, as I told you before,
I thought you had stepped in front of the car on purpose and it just seemed so
senseless.  I acted without thinking.  I ran, grabbed you and knocked you out
of the way.  I’m usually more subtle when introducing myself.”

He smiled at me ruefully and I
found myself smiling back.

“Then once we were in the cafe
I found I was enjoying myself.  Actually, you’re very easy to be with Grace.  I
can just be myself and generally speaking, I err, well, I’m a bit shy and
awkward around people I don’t know.”

“
That
I can understand.”
I said, interrupting him.  “Not about you, but about me.  I find it really easy
being with you, too.”

I looked across at him and saw
that he understood, because he smiled.

“Well, a cup of tea just to
make sure you were ok turned into dinner and when I left you, I told myself
that I wouldn’t see you again; that it wasn’t fair on you.  I’m not even based
in this country you see.  I spend all of my time travelling; that’s my job and
I rarely go to the same place twice.  For one thing it’s usually against the
rules and for another there’s always so much to do, so many other places to go
to.”

“They sound like funny rules to
me.” I muttered.

I didn’t know much about
journalists, archaeologists or historians, except for what I’d seen on the telly,
but from what I could recall, they seemed to spend a lot of time going to the
same place.  He shrugged.  Again, it was as though he could read my thoughts.

“Yesterday,” he said,
continuing with his explanation, “I was somewhere really horrible.  I won’t go
into the details, but it was bad.  I’ve seen some bad things in my job, but
this... well this twisted me up inside.  It made me question the whole ethos of
only watching; just witnessing.  I had to get away from there and I realised
that all I wanted was to be with you.  In all the time that has passed since
our first meeting, I’ve thought of you often, so today I broke the rules and
came back.”

He sighed heavily and looked
down at his plate.  “But I can’t stay.”

Some of what he said made sense
to me, some of it didn’t, but I just knew, intuition you could call it, that he
was telling me the truth.  I knew then why he’d said goodbye so seriously that
first time and I sensed he would have to say it again and soon.  I also knew
that this time he would have to mean it; for reasons that were clear to him but
not to me.

We’d finished our tea but
neither of us had touched the cake.  There didn’t seem to be much more to say.

“Do you have to leave now?” I
asked, but again, I think I already knew the answer.

“I should really, I can go from
here just as easily as from London.” he replied.

“Probably for the best then.” I
said, trying to sound happier than I felt.

There was one of those silly
moments when we both spoke at once; each just saying the other’s name and I
think we both knew that behind each word was so much more that we wanted to say,
but couldn’t.

“I know, me too.” he said,
standing up slowly.  “I’ll pay the bill on the way out.  Will you be able to
get home alright from here?”

“Of course I will, silly.”

I tried to sound confident.  I
didn’t tell him that I’d never been further than Oxford Street on my own and
even then, only once or twice.

He brushed my cheek with his
fingers as he left.  I watched him pay, go out of the door and walk away... again.

I sat there for a little while
longer.  I poured myself another cup of tea and thought about eating a slice of
cake, but I didn’t really want to.  I was confused and really lost.  It was
clear that he liked me; he obviously enjoyed my company and yet something was
preventing him from even travelling back to London with me.  I was certain he’d
been telling me the truth, but there had been bits missing.  That was why none
of it really made any sense to me.  There were things that he had held back and
I couldn’t help but wonder what they might have been.  Eventually, feeling
frustrated, I thanked the waitress and made my way out to the street, standing
there for a moment, realising that I didn’t know which way the railway station
was.

Suddenly I heard someone call
my name and turned round to see Jack coming towards me from further up the
street.  All my confusion disappeared; he’d come back.  I waved and began
walking towards him.  Then I realised that he was wearing different clothes.  He
had jeans and a T-shirt on.  He also had a leather jacket, one of those fifties
style ones and his hair was different; shorter and swept back off his face.  I
stopped in my tracks.  I began to feel angry; I felt that he wasn’t playing
fair, that he was messing about with me.  He knew how I felt and yet it seemed
that there was some sort of game going on, one that I didn’t know the rules to.

I was torn.  Part of me wanted
to walk away, never to speak to him again.  Another part of me wanted to tell
him just how angry I was.  I dithered and just stood there, watching him coming
down the other side of the street.  As he was almost opposite me he began to
cross, walking between the parked cars.  When he got to the middle of the road
he stopped, checked his watch and then the strangest thing happened.

The whole street shimmered;
there isn’t any other way to explain it.  It was like that scene in the Matrix
film, where Neo has a sense of déjà vu, except this was different.  I’m sure I
must have blinked, because in that instant it seemed as though everything
stopped for the briefest moment and then restarted.  Everything was the same
but had somehow changed.  I felt nauseous and confused, wondering if I was
going crazy.

I scanned in all directions, but
Jack wasn’t there anymore.  He was gone, just like that.  There was no possible
way he could be gone; for one thing he’d been crossing the road right in front
of me and for another, there was nowhere to go; no alleyways or buildings that
he could have dodged into.  I must have stood there for ten minutes, but there
was no sign of him.  I knew I hadn’t imagined it; I’ve never ‘seen’ anything
that wasn’t there in the whole of my life.

In the end I asked someone for
directions to the station and made my way there.  I had to wait about fifteen
minutes for the train and stood in the middle of the platform, so he could see
me if he came back.  But of course he didn’t.  I got on the train and travelled
back to London Bridge through the countryside, only by then it had lost all the
magic and pleasure of our outward journey.

As I walked into the empty flat
the first thing I saw was his coat over the chair.  I picked it up took it into
my bedroom, sat on my bed and had a good cry, feeling thoroughly miserable. 
Then I folded it up and put it at the bottom of my wardrobe, together with his
hat, gloves and scarf.  Although I knew he wouldn’t be coming back for any of this
stuff, I couldn’t bear to just give it away or throw it out.

For weeks after that I tried to
work out what he’d been trying to tell me.  He had a secret, of that I was sure. 
I knew all the signs; I was a master at hiding things myself.  I recognised the
way he chose his words and spoke carefully; the way you can speak but say
nothing at all that matters.  I’d seen the way he glanced at me sideways, when
he thought I wasn’t looking, trying to judge what to say and what not to say.  I
didn’t think that he had lied to me as such, but I was certain that there was
something he hadn’t been able to tell me.  I was also certain that it bothered
him; he wanted to be honest but couldn’t.  But no matter how many times I went
over our conversations in my mind, I couldn’t find a single clue to what it was. 
Maybe there was simply someone else in his life that he didn’t want to hurt, or
leave, but that just didn’t feel right to me.

Then there was the ‘shimmering’
thing.  That I couldn’t explain, not rationally anyway.  As the weeks turned
into months, I had to resign myself to the fact that I would never know.  I
looked everywhere for him, no longer walking with my eyes glued to the
pavement, just in case he was around and was shy of calling out to me, but I
didn’t see any sign of him and I had no option but to get on with my everyday
life.  I couldn’t forget him though, because nothing that nice or that strange
had ever happened to me before.  Admittedly, normally not much ever happened to
me, so maybe that’s why it stayed on my mind.

Even Mum noticed
that something was up, which was unusual; she’s never been famous for her
observation of
other people’s feelings.  I
suppose I stopped tip-toeing around her.  I’d spent my life judging her mood
and her moods can change quickly, so I always had to be ready.  There was no
point in preparing dinner when what she really wanted was a drink, or
suggesting that we watch the telly if she was waiting for someone to call.  If
she’d had too much to drink, which was often the case, her moods could veer
back and forth without notice.  It wasn’t that I stopped caring; I think I just
stopped thinking about her all the time, while still trying to figure out what
had happened.  Not just the shimmering, but the whole thing was a complete
puzzle to me.  What bothered me most was why I cared so much about it all.

There was of course, a price to
pay for taking my eye off her and we spent a very long night at the hospital
after another of her overdose attempts.  Thankfully, I always found her in time
and after one of those episodes, for a while at least, we usually became closer
as a result.

They were always caused by the
most recent ‘love of her life’ leaving her, often just going back to the wife
who demanded less from him.  To her, at least when they arrived, they were
always ‘the real thing, the one she’d been waiting for’, even though there had
been so many over the years.  I also knew, even if she wouldn’t agree with me,
that just like the number nine bus, the next one would be along shortly; it was
only a matter of time.

It was just before
my twenty-first birthday when I met Jack again.  In all that time I hadn’t forgotten
him, but a lot had happened to me.  Mum had taken up with yet another loser the
year before, one who kept her drunk, spent what little money she had to call
her own and stole from
me as well.  We
had row after row about Gavin and about a lot of other things too.  One day,
after he or they had emptied my purse yet again, I found that I’d had enough,
so I gathered what few things I had and moved out.

One of the women I worked with
at the home took in lodgers, usually foreign students from the university or
medical students from the hospital.  She preferred them, mainly because they
were only there for a year and were gone during the holidays, but she made an
exception for me.

She gave me a large bedroom;
one of the attic rooms at the top of the house.  It was big enough for a really
comfy armchair and a telly up one end of the room, with the bed under the eaves
at the other.  There were no windows as such, which made it really cosy, but
there was a skylight, so I could still see the stars from my bed if I craned my
neck a little bit.  It was warm, comfortable and all mine.  I’d bought some new
stuff too; a couple of blue and yellow throws, one for the bed and the other
for the chair.  I also bought some framed pictures.  One was of the sea at
sunset; it appeared to change, depending on the light, so I enjoyed looking at
it.   I had some nice colourful china things and a mirror with a half moon and
some stars painted around the glass.  In many ways it was home, a place I liked
to be.

I shared the small bathroom
with Natalia, the girl in the other attic room.  She was tidy and quiet and
came from Madrid, but I can’t for the life of me remember which part and she’d
never been away from home before.  Her English wasn’t brilliant, but it was
good enough, better than my Spanish, which wasn’t hard! Sometimes we watched
films on the telly together, or cooked a meal in the shared kitchen with bits
from each of our supplies, or we went out for a cheap pizza or a curry.  We
didn’t eat out very often, because she studied hard and I had to take on more
shifts to pay my rent and everything, but it was nice to have someone my own
age to talk to and she never asked any of those prying sort of questions about
my life.  Towards the end of her year she met Mark, so I saw less and less of
her, but that was ok too and in the summer she went back home to Spain anyway. 
Come late September, I would have a new neighbour for a year and I hoped they
would be as nice as she was and not too noisy.

I still checked up on Mum, but
mainly when I knew Gavin would be out, which wasn’t often.  She wasn’t eating
enough and looked terrible most of the time.  She cried a lot too, but wouldn’t
hear a word said against him.  I hated seeing her that way; it made me feel so
helpless, but helpless is exactly what I was.  It depressed me, but I made
myself go at least once a week.