Natural Flights of the Human Mind (13 page)

‘Your mother and I will stand by you,’ his father announced, positioning himself in front of the marble fireplace. One of the
logs newly placed on the fire cracked violently and sent out sparks, which bounced on to the back of his father’s trousers. His mother jumped up from the sofa and patted his trousers with a cushion.

‘Get off, woman,’ he shouted. He believed he was immortal, that a few sparks couldn’t touch him. Pete believed that too.

His mother sat down again. She was a small woman, but she nearly disappeared altogether on that day, her hands clasped tightly round her knees, her grey head leaning forward at an uncomfortable angle, ever-anxious, nodding in time with her husband’s words. Her body was bowed, as if she’d spent her whole life scrubbing floors. In fact, she had. They had two cleaners, but every day after they’d gone, she could be found on her knees polishing the parquet, sweeping the stairs, scrubbing the stone floor in the kitchen. Today she wouldn’t look Pete in the eye.

‘I have appointed a solicitor for you, Pete. He’s the best. Anthony Sullivan. Expensive, but we can afford it. No point in having money if you don’t use it when you need to.’

‘It was an accident,’ Pete said, for the thousandth time, wanting to believe it. ‘I just lost control.’

‘Yes, yes.’ As usual, he didn’t seem interested. ‘I’ve made an appointment for this afternoon. Three thirty. Got to go to his place. Wouldn’t come here. Says he won’t be needed for the inquest, but it’s best to play it safe in case it goes further.’

Pete was twenty-eight and they were the same height, but his father still seemed enormous. Pete felt that he was shrinking next to him, unable to stop himself disappearing.

‘And when this nonsense is out of the way, you get started on a proper career. A man of your age should be married with children in a respectable career. Sort out what you want to be—doctor, lawyer, accountant. Tell me what you want and I’ll pay. You’re never too old to train for something. Look at me.
Washing cars at fifteen, married to your mother at twenty, millionaire at forty.’

Watching him there in front of the fire, absorbed in his own greatness, Pete discovered with a jolt that he hated him. It rushed into him like a strong taste in his mouth, the bitterness of it infecting every part of his body. Pete saw his father’s height, his huge weight, his florid complexion and Savile Row suit, and realised that he’d never even liked him. The man who’d always towered above him, manipulated his life, made decisions for him, was a fraud. He had so much money he didn’t know what to do with it, and so much power that he had no idea how to use it.

‘I don’t want to see the solicitor,’ said Pete. He wanted to say, ‘I’ve changed my mind. It wasn’t an accident,’ but he couldn’t.

‘Don’t be stupid,’ said his father, walking to the door. ‘The car’ll be out the front at three o’clock.’ He went out, slamming the door behind him out of habit.

Pete stood where he was, facing the fireplace. ‘Mum,’ he said.

She still wouldn’t look at him.

‘I don’t want to—’

‘All those people,’ she said suddenly, in a low voice. Pete had never heard her speak like that before. Her voice was usually high-pitched and nervous, fluttering around the room, agreeing with her husband, never settling on anything, too restless and unconfident to find a sane pitch of her own. Something had changed. There was a new intensity about her, as if she’d just discovered something unexpected inside herself.

Pete tried to speak, but the words wouldn’t come out.

Then she lifted her head and looked at him. Her eyes were unusually large. He’d never noticed before how blue they were. How could he not know the colour of his mother’s eyes? ‘Seventy-seven people have died,’ she said. ‘Maybe seventy-eight. Over a hundred injured.’

‘I know,’ he said.

‘Because of you.’

He understood then, more clearly than he’d ever seen anything before, that she would never forgive him. He could see that it hurt her to force herself to look at him.

He couldn’t speak. There was nothing to say.

She rose from the sofa, a small, slight woman who had spent a lifetime in the shadow of her husband. She’d found courage in herself to condemn carelessness in her son, to reject the child she’d delivered and nourished and nurtured for twenty-eight years. She looked at him once more, then turned and walked out of the room.

Everything that had anchored Pete’s life slipped out of sight. The ropes that held him to the ground were loosened, the gravity that kept him upright in the world ceased to operate and he floated away. He was adrift without a rudder.

He had never before been so terrified.

‘Hi, Pete. Remember me?’

‘Of course I remember you, Francis. How could I forget?’

‘Easily done, old man. Easy come, easy go—’

Justin interrupts: ‘But we don’t really go, do we? That’s the point.’

Francis: ‘Give us a break, man. Lighten up. Hang loose.’

I can’t decide if he believes in all these clichés or if he’s trying to be funny. Did he always talk like this and I didn’t notice?

Francis: ‘So there you go. Here and not here. Courtesy of Pete, stuck in 1979, destined never to grow old.’

‘Immortality.’ Justin sounds interested. ‘Maybe you did us a favour, Pete.’

‘With a bit of help from my friends. I didn’t do it singlehandedly.’

Francis jumps in quickly. ‘It was your booze, your old man’s cash, your aeroplane.’

Justin’s voice alters, becomes more thoughtful. ‘Should have been good, shouldn’t it? The four of us in all that empty sky. How can you make a mistake when you’re surrounded by space? You’d think we’d have missed everything, wouldn’t you?’

Francis: ‘Everybody’s got to come down to earth. Gravity. Physics. Common sense.’

I want to ask them again. Can you remember what happened? But I don’t, because I don’t want them to tell me
.

‘We didn’t have to come down precisely where we did, did we?’ says Justin. ‘It could have been a field, or the sea or—’ He stops
.

Francis chuckles. ‘That’s it, really, though. Field, water, roads, houses, people. Doesn’t make any difference to us. Either way, we’re dead.’

Justin: ‘Except Pete.’

‘Yes,’ says Francis, after a pause. ‘Did all right, mate, didn’t you? Back to the old girlfriend, back to Daddy with all the money—’

Girlfriend? Did I have a girlfriend? I can’t remember anyone
.

‘Mel,’ says Justin. ‘Alison, Liz, Helen, Pippa…’

‘Daisy, Katie, Melinda, Ellen…’

‘All those girls waiting for us to come back down. Wonder if they cried.’

‘Bound to. They’d never have found anyone as handsome, clever, witty…’

‘Experienced, able to give them a good time…’

‘Good times…’

Straker goes shopping. Four bottles of Coca-Cola, an enormous bar of Cadbury’s Dairy Milk, sardines for Suleiman and
Magnificent, toilet-cleaner, fabric conditioner and two loaves of thick-sliced Mighty White. He feels the need for the comfort of toast.

He works on the garden, washes his clothes and hangs them outside the lighthouse, letting them blow in the salt wind. He is trying to avoid thinking. He is waiting for Saturday and the return of Mrs Doody.

Harry sat alone on the train and pretended to look out of the window. He had moved twice. The first time, he’d found a nearly empty carriage and sat down in a corner, looking out of the window, willing everyone to walk on past and find seats elsewhere. Within two minutes a crowd of children appeared from nowhere and flooded the entire carriage. He rose immediately, struggling to breathe, his knees trembling, walked to the end of the carriage and into the next. There he found a space that was not surrounded by people. But just before the train left, a middle-aged woman in a red coat climbed in, carrying a Debenham’s carrier-bag, a large gnome and a medium-sized poodle.

She put the gnome on the table and talked to the dog. ‘There we are, sweetie. You settle down there opposite the nice man.’

The poodle was a soft beige colour and appeared to have just had a perm. It sat on the seat facing Harry and stared at him. Its eyes were green and alert and interested. It put its head on one side, and Harry looked away. When he glanced back, the dog was still studying him with interest. The woman rummaged in her bag and produced a dried biscuit, which she put on the seat beside her. The dog snatched it with its teeth, and settled down, gnawing contentedly. It kept one eye on Harry as it ate.

‘There,’ said the woman to Harry, smiling cheerfully. ‘Just in time.’

She’s talking to me, thought Harry, and looked away.

‘It was difficult to find a seat further up,’ she said comfortably, getting a plastic container out of her bag.

The train started to move. Harry watched the station slide past, the backs of the people waiting on the other side of the platform, the piles of bags waiting for the Royal Mail train, the Coca-Cola adverts, the overflowing litter-bins.

He became aware that a plastic container was under his nose. ‘Would you like one? Cheese and tomato.’

He looked down at the sandwiches and shook his head. He didn’t trust himself to speak.

A cheese and tomato baguette, walking round Worcester when he was first married, having lunch with his new wife. They took a bite in turns, straight out of the paper wrapping, sharing their saliva, their germs. Polite at first with tiny nibbles, then more voraciously, taking huge bites, watching each other eat, laughing hilariously. Swans on the river, drizzle spotting the water, people huddled under huge multi-coloured umbrellas on their boat trips. Harry and his wife holding hands, dizzy with the sensation of pretending to be adults, experiencing a secret joy in the way they walked together through the rain, indifferent to the wet and cold.

Harry rose abruptly, did up the buttons on his coat and set off down the train.

‘You’re going the wrong way for the buffet,’ she called after him, but he didn’t turn round.

He walked as far as he could to the rear of the train and sank down on to an empty seat. The unoccupied seats around him were silent. The space soothed him, and he breathed more easily, watching his chest rise and fall. He was facing backwards, and it pleased him to see the passing world dropping away in front of him with no clue about what would appear and gradually disappear next. He wasn’t sure why he was on the train but he had a vague idea that it was heading north. He remembered counting the last fifty pounds in his wallet and deciding to leave London. He might feel better away from the city, in the countryside or by the sea. There wouldn’t be so many people ready to kick him off a park bench or throw him
out of a shop entrance, waiting to rob him as soon as he shut his eyes. He thought he had probably been awake for about six weeks now, and he wasn’t sure how long he could keep it up.

He held his head upright and closed his eyes. Nobody to watch here, a comfortable rhythm from the train, nothing to worry about. Just a blank in his head. A space.

He let go for the first time in weeks. He could feel his body grow heavy, sliding away from reality, into the lower levels of consciousness.

‘Harry!’

He woke with a jolt, and looked up at the round face of Hassan.

‘Your shift. I’ve had enough.’

Harry pulled his exhausted mind back to the present. His eyes were full of grit. He didn’t know how to open them.

‘You’ve got to do Mrs Grisham’s blood test again. The lab has lost it.’

Harry forced himself out of bed in one quick movement and stood unsteadily, watching Hassan undress. ‘What’s the time?’

‘Four thirty.’

‘I’m not on till six. I’ve only just come to bed.’

Hassan stopped taking his socks off and looked at Harry. ‘Sorry, forgot to say. Emergency. Multiple pile-up. At least ten seriously injured. They want everyone they can get.’ He gazed into space for a minute. ‘Except me. Johnson told me to get out of there before I killed someone.’ He paused. ‘I don’t think he likes me much. He wants you, Harry, old man. You’re more his style.’

He sat silently for a second and then keeled over, fully dressed and fast asleep.

Harry tried to dress, but nothing would go on right. His telephone rang. He tried to find it by the bed, but nothing seemed to be in the right place. He was grasping at the air, and the telephone stopped ringing.

Harry! Get up, Harry, emergency! Harry!

He woke with a start as the train lights flickered on. ‘The train will be calling at Birmingham International, Birmingham New Street…’

Harry shook his head and put his hand straight into his inside pocket. OK. The wallet was still there. There was no one in sight, but he knew he had to keep watching. They might be behind him, waiting for the right moment, waiting for him to slide into sleep, the moment of surrender. They nearly got him then. He couldn’t afford to let it happen again.

He thought of his wife. He didn’t remember a great deal about her, but he had a picture in his mind. Small, puzzling, sometimes silent when he thought she should speak. She was too compliant, and it had worried him after a while. ‘Don’t just agree with me,’ he’d said, over and over again. ‘Argue with me.’ But she had shaken her head, smiled and said nothing.

‘I’ll have to stay at the hospital when I’m on duty,’ he had said. ‘It’s too far to travel.’

‘You could work in Birmingham,’ she said, smiling again.

‘It wouldn’t make any difference. I’d still have to sleep there.’

‘Wherever you are,’ she said, ‘I am too.’

He hadn’t really understood what she’d meant, but it had sounded good. ‘I suppose I could look for a job here,’ he said.

‘Yes,’ she said, and made him a cup of tea. It bothered him that she always made the tea.

‘It’ll be better now I’m qualified,’ he’d said, putting an arm round her. She snuggled up to him, and he liked the way that they physically fitted together. It seemed right.

He shouldn’t have done it. It was too much. The travelling. The tiny little bedsit where he left her, where he went home to. Damp seeping through under the front door, the dog barking in the flat below when he was just dropping off to sleep. The meals that she cooked to save money. Liver and bacon. Heart stew. Sago pudding, lemon-curd tarts. She wasn’t very good at
it. She read the cookery books and followed the instructions precisely. Upset tummies, getting out of bed in the middle of the night with diarrhoea.

‘You must go to the doctor,’ she said.

‘I am a doctor.’

‘You know what I mean. You shouldn’t get upset tummies like this. I don’t.’

Not enough sleep. Getting up to go to the toilet. Only two days at home and then back to the hospital.

‘We’ll buy our own place soon,’ he’d said. ‘When we’ve saved for the deposit.’ London was so expensive. ‘It’ll be better then.’

‘It’s all right now,’ she said. And she had smiled. The smile that had gone through him when he’d first met her at a party. It had been a smile that had told him all about her, right from the beginning.

‘I’m Harry,’ he had said, feeling big and clumsy.

‘Hello, Harry,’ she said. ‘I’m Imogen.’

‘Harry!’ said his mother. ‘She’s only eighteen. She works in Asda, for goodness’ sake. Stocking shelves.’

‘No,’ said Harry. ‘She’s on the tills.’

‘Nevertheless,’ said his mother. ‘She’s not suitable.’

Harry grinned. ‘She doesn’t have to be suitable. I love her.’ And he did. He loved her big sad eyes, her dyed blonde hair. The way she spread and rippled her fingers when she didn’t want to finish her sentences. ‘Anyway, she’s highly intelligent.’

‘Then why is she working in Asda?’

‘It gives her time to think. She’s had a tragic life.’

‘Wait two years,’ said his mother. ‘Then decide.’

He caught himself just as his head started to nod. Careful, Harry, he thought. Don’t look backwards. Concentrate on
where you’re going. He felt in his pocket. The wallet was still there. There was nothing in it except the money. He’d got rid of all identification right at the beginning. He couldn’t afford to be traced.

It was getting dark outside.