The First Time I Saw Your Face (19 page)

I haven’t even got to the stage where I can call him by his first name.

‘Look, Cress,’ she said, desperate to make herself understood, ‘I know I promised to see where this led, but it’s pointless. Remember when I had that counselling and they said that there’s sometimes a period where your mind lags behind what’s happened to your body? Well this is just an aspect of that – I’m still fancying men like Matt Harper because that’s who I used to fancy. But why would he choose to go out with me? All he’s going to get is people looking at him and thinking poor—’

‘Jennifer Elizabeth Roseby,’ Cressida shouted so loudly it actually hurt Jennifer’s ear. She stopped talking and swallowed repeatedly to try and get back in control.

As Jennifer struggled she heard Cress say, away from the phone, ‘No, I’m not coming. Family crisis. I don’t care; I’ll be there when I’m ready.’

‘You have to go, Cress,’ Jen said wiping her eyes with her free hand.

‘I do not have to go. I’ve had to wait around for some people who shall remain nameless to get their lines out properly, now they can wait for me.’ There was the sound of a door slamming before the less ballsy Cressida said, ‘Jen, you won’t believe me when I tell you this, but you’re incredibly beautiful.’

‘Half of me is,’ she said before starting to sob.

‘All of you is, Jen. And all that grace you’ve got … it’s what made you special on the stage; it’s what makes you special in life. All that’s still there.’

After that Cress just made little ‘there there’ noises down the phone until Jennifer had stabilised again. ‘Please
listen to me, sweetie,’ Cress said eventually, ‘have I ever given you flannel about people not judging others by the way they look? No. Have I ever denied that when people first meet you they get distracted by that scarring? No again. But this Matt has had time to get to know you. Which means you’re way ahead of the pack, should that girlfriend fall by the wayside. If he can’t see how great you are, maybe he should take off his sodding pirate’s eyepatch.’

Jennifer tried to butt in, but Cress was on a roll. ‘What you’re doing now is second-guessing how he might feel and being insulting to him and to you, and I won’t let you be sad about a rejection you haven’t had yet. Tell all those fears I can hear gnawing away at you to bog off.’

Jennifer did laugh at that and then stopped abruptly when Cressida said, sounding a little wavery, ‘If you don’t, Jen, how do you think that makes me feel? I’ve had to sit by and watch you hide, Jen; say nothing while you push people away, like those uni friends. I can’t let you do this with Matt. Not when I’m the one who—’

‘Cressida,’ Jennifer said, sharply, and there was silence; just two women either side of the Atlantic clutching at their mobile phones.

‘Bloody Hell,’ Cress said eventually, ‘you’re a worse drama queen than me.’

‘Crybaby,’ Jennifer retaliated.

‘Wet blanket.’

‘Trollop.’

Hysteria set in not long after that, neither of them sure
if crying or laughing was the thing they were doing. By the time Jennifer ended the call she felt her stomach muscles aching.

All right, Cress. I will focus on the now and not the future.

She drove home with the window down, only guilt at not telling Cress about accepting Alex’s invitation to the theatre marring her improving mood. She really wished she could replay that scene in the Blue Room. Alex was so crafty, saying he knew they’d only be going ‘as friends’. It had left her no wriggle room: if she’d refused to go, it would have made it sound as if they weren’t even friends any more. How could she do that after he’d stood by her from day one?

She reached Brindley and forced herself not to glance towards No. 3 Brindley Villas, but as she got to the end of the village there was Matt Harper standing on Peter Clarke’s bench, his mobile to his ear. Seeing him so soon after talking and thinking about him made her fist press on the accelerator and then hit the brake. He looked startled and lowered the phone, and she felt she had to do something, so wound down the window.

‘Are you all right? You look frozen,’ she called to him.

‘Just talking to my girlfriend.’

‘Of course, forgot the village is a blind spot for phone reception. They’re meant to be sorting it out. It’s OK again by the time you get along our track.’ She fluffed winding up the window, but apart from that made a clean getaway and refused to look in the rear-view mirror until she knew he was out of sight.

Back at Peter Clarke’s bench, she would have been confused to hear the voice on the other end of the phone say, ‘Girlfriend, am I now, my son? And there was me thinking you were
my
bitch.’

CHAPTER 17

Mack was beginning to feel that as much as he had always hated the ribbed glass in his mother’s front door, having it installed in No. 3 Brindley Villas would be a good idea. At least then every time his doorbell rang his heart wouldn’t jump and swoop until he opened the door and found it wasn’t Brenda on the other side.

This time it was Doug – a rather embarrassed-looking Doug.

‘I’ve been crap at every rehearsal,’ he said, ‘and I wondered if you could help me oot a bit. Finlay only has to tell you what to do once and you do it. Me, I canna get me head around it. Don’t suppose you’re free today?’

‘Well, I was thinking of doing a walk over the moors and down into Blanchland.’

Thinking about it, but not intending to rush out and do it. Not after that walk yesterday where I stood in a bog. And that was the best bit. The only reason I’m doing any walking at all is because some stupid bugger in the cast always wants to chat about where I’ve been.

‘I’d be really grateful,’ Doug said, his eyebrows jiggling about. ‘I’ll make you yer tea.’

When Mack agreed, Doug said, ‘Gan on then, marra, get your script.’ He peered over Mack’s shoulder into the cottage and wrinkled his nose. ‘We’ll go to mine. Does it always smell like this, or is that you?’

‘Why did you call me a marrow?’ Mack asked when they were driving away.

‘Daft shite. Marra … friend … did they teach ye nae English at school?’

They drove past the end of the track leading to Jennifer’s farm and took the narrow, metal bridge over the river at little more than walking pace before climbing steeply and then levelling out on a meandering road flanked by a low dry-stone wall. After about a mile there was a humped-back bridge over a stream, a sharp right turn and then they were heading down a bumpy lane, trees on either side. The trees gave way to grass and the stream to a pond, and Mack could see that what he had first taken to be discarded machinery were various sculptures – here a great bird, wings caught at the moment of lift-off, there a bunch of sunflowers, faces up to the sky. Doug pulled over near a two-storey stone house. Some way behind it was a large outhouse, also in stone, with double doors at the front flung wide open. It could have been a normal barn, but for the chimney up one side. There was a steady thump-thump of heavy-metal music and a different kind of thump, of metal against metal.

‘You have staff?’ Mack said, looking towards what he took to be the forge.

‘I call them “my lads”,’ Doug replied, his cheeks flushing red, ‘come on, come and have a look.’

Mack supposed that one day he’d find out what Hell was like, but Doug’s forge was a little foretaste. It seemed to be one hot, noisy, sulphurous-smelling place, and the smallest of Doug’s lads, dressed in leather apron and goggles, looked particularly demonic.

‘Hoy, turn it down a minute,’ Doug shouted and the music died away.

Doug gave him a quick tour. ‘Gas forge, coke forge, shearing machine, pillar drill, power hammer, oh, and anvil, of course.’ Mack stood and watched one of the lads take a bar of metal, glowing orange at one end, from the coke forge, and tap it to get the crust off. He began beating it with a hammer, moving it around as he did so. For something so judderingly noisy, it was almost hypnotic.

‘It’s more about rhythm than strength,’ Doug shouted.

‘I thought there’d be more sparks flying about,’ Mack shouted back and the expressions told him he’d said something daft.

‘Where you see sparks, it’s just been set up for the cameras,’ one of the lads said, his face grubby and sweaty. ‘If you’ve got sparks, it’s starting to burn.’

‘Be all pitted,’ Doug agreed.

‘OK, I see. And what’s that over there?’ Mack pointed to what looked like a big tank of water.

‘It’s a big tank of water,’ they said in unison and laughed at him.

Looking around at the heavy machinery, feeling the
heat and the noise, looking at the muscles on the lads, it all seemed like a very macho environment. Yet Doug produced these beautiful sculptures. Mack watched one of the lads take infinite care to create a twisted flower, heating up tiny wires in the forge for stamens.

‘We do the heavy stuff too,’ Doug explained as they emerged back into the welcome cool air outside, ‘but I really like all the experimenting that goes into the complex stuff, trying different ways to get something to work. Right, fancy a beer?’

In Doug’s kitchen with its huge flagstones and sparse, solid furniture, they practised a couple of their scenes and Mack did what he could to slow down Doug’s delivery and get him to breathe in the right places. He felt a surprising amount of satisfaction when little by little a line that had been incomprehensible suddenly fell clearly from Doug’s lips. He would have preferred it if Doug had not been speaking the line ‘But come what may, I do adore thee so’, just as one of the lads came into the kitchen.

‘Don’t worry about that,’ Doug said when the lad went back out. ‘He’s into bloody line dancing; he’s not got a leg to stand on.’

After another hour spent working on their movements, Doug clapped his hands together. ‘Time for a barbecue.’

‘Do you do it in the forge, somehow? All that fire and heat?’

Doug stared at him in a way which told Mack that what he had just said was akin to suggesting Doug had sex with
his own mother. He suddenly had a sense of how powerful Doug was.

Doug looked away from him as though that was the only way to calm down before saying, ‘Nah, we’re gannin’ up the beach.

‘Up the beach! But it won’t be light much longer. And … isn’t it too cold?’ Mack flapped.

‘Get away,’ Doug said, his good mood returning, ‘perfect conditions today.’

Short of clinging on to the table leg and refusing to budge, Mack had no choice but to get in the car. On the journey, he tried not to look as if he was sulking. To get some kind of silver lining out of the situation, he dropped into the conversation that he’d really like to have a look around Jennifer’s farm, but felt it was a bit pushy to ask. Doug called him a ‘daft shite’ again, and Mack knew that at some point Doug would now ask Jennifer for him.

By the time they got to the beach, the light was going and there was a gusting wind, but Doug enthusiastically loaded Mack up with blankets and hefted a great carrier bag and a windbreak into his own arms before leading the way over the massive sand dunes to the beach. It felt like a real trek before they got to the wide, firm sweep of sand, the breakers just visible rolling into the shore and a faint taste of salt in Mack’s mouth.

Why should I sit on a frigging cold beach to eat my tea when I could sit in a house in the warm? With a table?

As soon as the windbreak was up, Mack stationed himself
inside it and wrapped himself in most of the blankets. Doug seemed unbothered by the cold, keeping up a running commentary as he set up two barbecue trays and got them alight. ‘Over there is Lindisfarne. Now and then people get the tides wrong. Have to be rescued by helicopter.’

Mack made a note of that; just what he needed, to be on the local news dangling from a harness.

‘And further round’s where Grace Darling rowed out to rescue them sailors from a shipwreck. Her and her dad.’ Mack thought about that story and knew he wouldn’t have had the guts to do what she did in the face of a storm. No, he’d have been the guy interviewing the survivors, asking them how they felt seeing their fellow sailors smashed against the rocks.

As the darkness and the tide came in, Mack sensed that Doug was getting increasingly jumpy. It was there in the way he kept shifting position, first sitting on his backside and then his knees, and in the many reports he gave on the progress of the charcoal in the barbecues.

‘Are you all right, Doug?’ he asked at last.

It was as if he had removed a blockage.

Doug shook his head. ‘Often come up here when I get really frustrated, you know, about Pat.’

‘The postwoman?’

‘Aye.’ Doug’s open clown’s face looked misshapenly long in the flames licking at the barbecue charcoal. ‘You saw her in the pub that night, after the auditions. I’ve fancied her for ages, but whenever she comes near me it’s like
I’ve got an allergy: spasms, falling into things, over things; canna speak properly.’

Mack waited and counted the waves coming in. One, two, three.

‘Well, when I say I fancy her, it’s more than that,’ Doug stumbled on. ‘I think I love her.’

‘Love her? For how long?’ Mack felt more stupid asking that than when he’d been reciting Shakespeare.

‘A couple of years. Nae one else knows but Jen.’

Figures. It would be Jen.

‘You haven’t told Pat?’

‘Nah,’ Doug shot back, ‘divvn’t be daft. She’s way oot of my league.’

Mack listened to the waves again, choosing his words. ‘Why, Doug? I mean no disrespect to postmen … women … people, but why is she out of your league?’

‘Doctor’s daughter, went to uni. Was married to a doctor too. She’s divorced now, just does this job to get her oot and aboot. What would she want with me? I barely finished school. She’d think I was after her money.’

Mack didn’t get the opportunity to tell Doug he was looking at this all wrong, because Doug suddenly sprang to his feet.

‘When it all gets a bit much,’ he said, ‘I come up here and I get myself in the sea and it numbs me a bit, takes me mind off it.’

‘Get yourself in the sea?’ Mack yelped as Doug started to root about in the large bag. Something was thrown in his lap. It was a light on an elasticated headband, the kind
he’d seen potholers wear. ‘Get in the sea, in the dark. In the sea. The North Sea. In the winter?’