I Could Love You (29 page)

‘Just a pump needs replacing.’

He pads off down the stairs.

‘Oh, God,’ says Alan. ‘Cas has been on the computer all this time. I hate those bloody computer games.’

‘They won’t hurt him.’

‘He should be out in the woods playing with his little friends.’

‘How about me? Should I be out in the woods playing with my little friends?’

‘You were writing a story when I came in. I saw.’

‘Just tinkering.’

‘Can I see it?’

‘Not yet.’

‘What’s it about?’

‘It’s about a boy like Cas. It’s about finding out for the first time that there’s unhappiness in the world.’

‘Oh, Alice.’

‘Don’t worry. I’m okay. As much as anyone’s ever okay.’

Alan finds it hard. She’s so brave, so beautiful.

‘You know,’ he says, ‘I want you to be happy far more than I want to be happy myself. I don’t mind about life being hard for me. But I don’t want it to be hard for you.’

‘It’s not so hard. Though sometimes I do wish it could be that tiny little bit easier.’

‘Give me a hug, then.’

They hug.

‘I’ll go and boot Cas off the computer.’

Cas turns out not to be playing video games at all. He’s on Google.

‘I’m doing a secret,’ he says.

‘What sort of secret?’ says Alan.

‘Not telling.’

He’s closed the screen windows he had open.

‘Well,’ says Alan, ‘I need to get back to work.’

‘That’s okay. I’ve finished.’

He scoops some sheets of paper from the printer tray. For a moment Alan is amazed that a child of six can search Google and print out the results. But then he thinks, it’s not exactly difficult.

‘Cas, I really ought to know what you’ve been looking at. There’s bad stuff on the Internet.’

‘Trains,’ says Cas.

‘Trains? What for?’

‘I like trains.’

With that he runs off to his room, clutching his printouts. Alan wonders if he’s found out yet about unhappiness in the world. It seems unlikely. He still believes firmly in Father Christmas.

30

All the time that Matt Early is working on the shower pump he’s aware of Meg’s movements in the other parts of the flat. The conversion of the Victorian rooms has been shoddily done, the divider walls are poorly insulated, the door frames poorly fitted. The sounds of the television come through clearly from the lounge. Then after the television is switched off he hears the gush of the kettle being filled in the little kitchen, then the hiss as it boils, then the tinkle of music from a radio.

In a little while the job will be done. He will gather up his tools, exchange a few brief words with Meg, and leave. In those short minutes he must somehow establish a means of seeing her again. How? This is a problem more insuperable than any he has ever encountered. It seems to Matt to be a literal impossibility. Even given the slight connection formed between them on his last visit, when she had wept in his presence, he can see no way forward.

In a well-run universe, where true feelings are truly expressed, he would say to her, ‘I like you, and I’d like to know you better.’ He would suggest they share a pot of tea, or go for a walk on the Downs, or some such safe and innocent pastime. It would be nothing grand, and might lead to nothing, but it might just as easily be a beginning to everything. And yet it could not be done. He might want it with all his heart, and she might welcome it, but it was not going to happen.

In his practical way he puzzles over why this should be so, as he tightens the bolts on the refitted pump. If he wants a pint of milk he goes into a shop and asks for it. A perfect stranger takes his money and gives him the carton. How is it different if he were to ask Meg to join him on a walk?

The answer is brutally plain. You ask for a pint of milk and that’s it, no other hopes are concealed beneath the request. Ask a young woman to walk out with you and you might as well be saying, Do you love me? Will you marry me? Shall we set up house together and have children?

Well, maybe not quite that far; but the first move contains all that is to come, or all that will not come, which is even more daunting. Lifelong joy or lifelong loneliness lie tightly twined in those few brief words. The burden is too great, the risk too terrible. Matt knows he dare not make the move.

It’s a bit late to expect the girls to come knocking on your door.

His mother’s words haunt him. We’ll see, he says to himself. We’ll see about that.

The pipe work sealed once more, he opens the water valves and tests the system. The pump starts up with a slight shudder. The water streams out of the shower. He checks that the thermostat is performing as it should, turning up the setting until the water scalds his hand and then down again. Then he shuts off the shower and cleans up the grease marks he has left.

He’s aware as he packs away his tools that he’s moving slowly. What am I waiting for? Nothing is going to happen unless I make it happen. There’s no war on any more.

Matt envies his granddad, who met the love of his life in a bombed-out building in the Blitz. He pulled her out of a hole in the ground and carried her in his arms down a flaming street, or so he said. So of course they fell in love and were married.

I could carry Meg in my arms across a universe in flames. But I can’t speak a few simple words.

They manage things better in other countries. Your parents make a match for you, with someone you’ve never met. They let you meet, and if you’re not totally turned off you say, Okay, why not? The love comes later. Anyone can love anyone, really, if they try.

So why do I know that Meg is the one for me?

Because of the way she looked when she was crying. No, I knew earlier than that. Truth to tell I knew before I even saw her. I knew from the sound of her voice. Can’t say how or why. She just sounded right.

He can delay no more. He opens the bathroom door and joins her in the lounge. She’s sitting on the sofa with her eyes closed listening to the radio. A Brahms trio.

Her eyes jump open as she hears him come in. She reaches out and switches off the radio.

‘All done,’ he says.

‘Oh, that’s wonderful. Thank you so much.’ She gets up, avoiding his gaze, and looks round for her handbag. ‘How much do I owe you?’

‘Well, the pump was £109. It’s a very straightforward job. I quoted you £150, didn’t I?’

‘That doesn’t seem enough. Are you sure?’

‘Yes, that’ll be fine.’

She writes him out a cheque. Her hand is shaking. Her face is very pale. In a moment she’ll tear out the cheque and give it to him, and he’ll pick up his tools and his shoes and go. Then the greatest test his life has yet offered him will have come and gone and he will have failed.

‘There,’ she says.

The sound of the cheque being torn from its stub fills the universe.

‘I’m so grateful,’ she says.

He takes the cheque and pushes it unseen into a pocket. He picks up his tools with one hand, his shoes with the other. Four steps between where he stands now, by the little white coffee table, and the door.

‘Any time,’ he says. ‘You’ve got my number.’

One step. There’s a humming sound in his ears. He feels flushed, short of breath. Maybe I’ll faint, and she’ll have to revive me. But of course he’s not going to faint.

A second step. Time moving slowly.

Dithering in the doorway like my dad. But not in the doorway yet.

She goes ahead of him, opens the door for him, can’t wait for him to go. Or a kindness, seeing that both his hands are full.

Someone has left a window open in the stairwell. A gust of cold air rushes in to the centrally heated flat. It picks up some papers resting on a music stand in the corner and flutters them onto the floor by his feet.

He puts down his shoes to pick up the papers. Sheet music. Handel.

‘Are you a musician?’ he says.

‘Oh, no,’ she says. ‘I just sing in a local choir.’

‘I play the violin.’

‘Do you?’

She looks at him with startled eyes.

‘I’ve played Handel. His Violin Sonata in A major.’

‘I didn’t know Handel wrote violin sonatas.’

‘Oh, yes. All the composers who write for the voice write for the violin too. It’s the closest instrument to the voice. The sound is made in the same way, really. A violin has a part called the voice box. It’s different for every instrument. There’s a tiny part in a violin called the sound post, it goes just under the right-hand foot of the bridge, its position makes all the difference to the instrument’s tone. Move it as little as a quarter of a millimetre and it changes everything.’

He knows he should stop talking but he can’t. She’s gazing at him wide-eyed.

‘There’s a special tool called a sound-post-setter which slips in through the F-holes, the sound holes, and goes round the corner to grasp the sound post and lets you move it. There are special dedicated tools for everything to do with making violins. I have a spoon gouge made by J. Spiller that I found in an antique shop, a junk shop really, I only paid a fiver for it, and it’s the best you can get. I was so happy when I took it home.’

He stops as abruptly as he started, and finds he’s standing in the open doorway, his eyes on the floor, breathing rapidly. His cheeks are hot and his back is cold in the wind.

I’m a nutter, he thinks. What on earth do I think I’m doing?

‘Do you make violins?’ she says.

‘Restore,’ he says. ‘I restore old violins.’

‘That’s amazing,’ she says. ‘I had no idea.’

‘No,’ he says, still looking down.

‘Why?’ she says. Wonder in her voice.

‘It’s just something I do,’ he says. ‘I have a shed out the back, where I keep all my tools. I like to go out there and work.’

He looks up then and finds her eyes fixed on him with such an intense gaze, as if she truly wants to understand him, that he says, ‘I could show you, if you like.’

‘Your shed?’

‘The violins. The tools.’

As he says it he hears himself and drops his eyes again. The violins, the tools: why would she want to see all that?

‘Would you?’ she says. ‘I’d love to see how you work on the violins.’

‘I’ve got about forty instruments. Some in pieces.’

‘Forty violins!’

He’s breathing deeply now. He feels suddenly buoyant, like a balloon. He wants to soar.

‘You could come over tomorrow evening.’

There: the dangerous words are out. No flash of lightning. No end of the world.

‘I’d really like that,’ she says.

He has asked her to come and see his violins. She has said yes. The first highest most unclimbable wall has tumbled before them. Now it can all begin.

He tells her where to come. They agree a time: seven o’clock tomorrow evening. He picks up his shoes and his tools and leaves her flat.

Outside there’s an icy wind blowing across the car park. Matt Early smiles at the wind, he hugs the wind, the beautiful wind that blew the sheets of music to his feet. This late afternoon December wind is his blitz, his miracle, his matchmaker. Meg knows nothing of how close he came to leaving her without a word. Maybe one day in years to come, sitting side by side in a house they share together, listening to the roaring of a south-westerly outside, he’ll tell her why she must always be grateful to the wind. She’ll say, Oh, but we would have sorted things out one way or another. But he knows this isn’t true. It takes some outside agency to get things started. An accident, a break in the pattern.

My God! I told her about the sound-post-setter! She must think I’m insane.

He drives home smiling to himself.

31

As the train pulls in to Gatwick Belinda becomes ever more silent. It’s not nerves, or fear; she’s focusing her energy. Already her mind is reaching forward to the coming encounter. What she has been calling to herself ‘a bit of a laugh’ has grown into an event of significance, a test of something that matters to her very much.

Have I still got it? Or am I old now?

‘Good luck,’ says Laura. ‘Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do. Not that there’s much I wouldn’t do. In fact, I can’t think of a single thing.’

‘I wouldn’t go camping,’ says Belinda.

‘Yes, you’re right. There are limits.’

They smile at each other. The doors go pip-pip-pip.

‘Hey ho,’ says Belinda. ‘Away we go.’

She gives Laura a last wave as she crosses the platform to the escalator. At the top a short blank passage leads to automatic doors. They open before her, as if controlled by her will, ushering her into a space that seems no longer to be located within her everyday world. Above the check-in desks the flight destinations cast their magic spell: Orlando, Agadir, Faro, Kos. Distant gleams of sunshine and sensuality, the sheer otherness of the names flickers in this brightly lit and thronging hall. A ceaseless stream of passengers with trolleys or hauling wheeled suitcases flows across her path. People in an airport are no more beautiful than elsewhere, but they have about them an aura of soiled glamour that suits Belinda’s mood. Their lives are in flux. No social expectations bind these hurrying forms. They come from everywhere, go to everywhere, free from memory or obligation. The arrivals hall shivers with rootlessness.

Belinda looks for signs to the Hilton hotel and finds none. At the information desk she’s told to head for the coach station, where there will be signs. She joins the stream of arriving passengers, her own lack of luggage marking her out as an alien among aliens, and rides the travelator past a long red Virgin advertisement. The travelator moves too slowly. She starts walking on it, carried forward by her own power and by the motion of the conveyor beneath her. This makes her think of the greater motion that propels her, the spinning of the earth. And the planet’s orbit round the sun. Everything is in motion. Everything on the point of departure.

Caution. You are reaching the end of the conveyor
.

Yeah, right. Slow down. I’m not jetting away for a holiday romance. Not seventeen any more. Kenny’ll take one look and send for the cocoa.

But what if …

All those years ago, the rumour shared in girly whispers among her group of friends. Jimmy Kennaway has a really big one. Like, Oh boy! That is big!