The Sister (51 page)

"I'll get you some butter for that," she said. Her expression echoed the grimace he'd pulled earlier. "It might make it a bit more appetising for you," she grinned. "Oh, and we saved you a portion of fruit salad . . ."

Miller shook his head, smiled and politely declined. He ate two slices of the dry bread, without realising that it was there, not just in case a Jewish diner turned up, but as a gesture to mark the first evening of the Passover. Ironically, it had been passed over by the rest of the men at the table in favour of traditional yeast bread rolls. It was all his knotted stomach would allow in any event, perhaps just as well, because a steady stream of interested parties approached him at the table, hoping to engage him in conversation; asking questions relating to his talk. He acquired a fistful of business cards, which he stowed in his pocket. The head teacher collared him for almost an hour before he managed to extricate himself from the conversation on the pretext of having to visit the toilet. When he returned, a number of the men at his table had disappeared. They'd either gone home, or drifted onto other tables. He engaged in sporadic conversation with those that remained, and they gradually whittled down in numbers, until only he and one other were left.

"Just waiting for the wife to pick me up," the other man volunteered.

"Was this the first time you've been back for the reunion?"

"No, I was here once before, years ago. To be honest, I don't enjoy things like this, but an old friend was supposed to show, and he didn't—" he stopped abruptly to answer his mobile.

"Okay, love I'll see you outside." He stood up. "I really had best make a move, it's been nice talking to you. Loved your speech by the way."

Miller stood, and they shook hands. He sat down and gazed around the emptying hall. An hour ago the drone of voices meant they had to raise their own to avoid being drowned out, but now they had to speak quietly or risk being overheard. He smiled at that. No one was having secret conversations here tonight. From what he could make out, they wanted everyone else to know who they were, what they were up to and how well they were doing for themselves.
I might give next year a miss.

He decided on a top up of red wine. Miraculously, there was still a drop left in one of the bottles, he'd only had half a glass all evening, plus what was left of a small beer, which now looked decidedly flat.

He was aware of a shadow moving into the periphery of his vision. Instinctively, he turned to look.

A stranger stood there smiling at him. "I tried to get here earlier. You don't remember me, do you?"

Miller scanned his face, trying to imagine what he might have looked like when he was younger. The residual colour of his hair was mid-brown, even reddish, but now mostly grey. His eyes were dark brown, sharp and intelligent looking. He was thinking how much he resembled Brookes as he imagined he might have looked were he alive today, except that Brookes had much paler skin and his hair was bright copper coloured, but the bluff face, square jaw and grin were uncannily similar.

"No, I don't, I'm sorry if I should. What's the name?"

"It's John Kennedy. I was a year younger than you."

Miller scratched his head. A slight crease pinched his forehead between the eyebrows. "No, I still haven't got you. Did you have a brother in my year or something like that?"

Kennedy offered his hand to shake, and Miller took it. He winced at Miller's grip. "What have you done to your hand?" Miller asked.

"Oh, it's nothing . . . I slipped tightening a bolt on my motorbike, scraped it on the garage floor. It
's fine, just squeezed it wrong that's all." Kennedy poured a drop of wine into someone's discarded glass and moved his chair closer to Miller. "Do you remember that time it rained three days solid? It was so bad that they let us into the school hall during lunch break." Kennedy saw the dawning of recollection in Miller's eyes. "By the third day of lunch time confinement we were bored out of our minds with listening to Lionel's piano rehearsals. You older guys used to agitate him - get in his light, or what ever. I can't recall exactly now, but it didn't matter whether you did or didn't with Lionel. If he dropped a note, and you were anywhere nearby, you got the blame, and he'd get incandescent with rage, banging around and scowling. The duty master always sent you to the other side of the hall - well away from him…do you remember?"

Miller was shaking his head at the returning memory. It lit his face with amusement.

"Then you casually walked up to the base of the steps, we all thought you were going to get on the stage…"

Miller joined in the recollection. "Let me tell you something. That's exactly what I was planning to do, but then I noticed the access door on the other side of the steps. Unless you walked right up to them, you never would have known it was there. Out of curiosity I tried the handle, and it opened!"

"And because I was the youngest," Kennedy recalled, "you had me looking out for the rest of you while you all went in."

"When we eventually did go in," Miller twirled the pale remnants of liquid left at the bottom of his glass, examining the patterns it made on the side of it as he reflected on the past. "It was far larger under there than it looked and so much
warmer
than you'd expect. In the gloom, down a few steps to another level, there was a light and another door. We heard voices coming from behind it, and crept further in. I noticed you had followed us. I was suddenly afraid that whoever had left the door unlocked - would return to lock it - and we'd be trapped!"

"Yep, you weren't too happy with me!" The two of them slowly shook their heads in disbelief at the follies of youth, both of them quietly remembering.

Kennedy drained his glass. Miller put his down. They were the last of the guests remaining. One or two waitresses were busying themselves clearing the last few tables.

After years of not seeing his long forgotten school friend, he wanted to make the most of it. Shrugging off his earlier tiredness, Miller found a second wind, and began speaking more enthusiastically. "It was so full of old school drama stuff, props and things, theatre swords and shields…"

Kennedy grinned.

"It was an Aladdin's cave to us back then . . ." Miller said. The years rolled back. He was a child again, yet thinking as an adult about how strange it was that you could live in the same town - the same few square miles as some of your old school friends, yet never see them again
.
Miller had hit his stride. "And when we crept closer to that door, we could see through the crack, where it had warped in the heat. Down below, I couldn't believe there was this place we never knew about before, but we could see the caretaker and that assistant of his skiving off down there, with their dirty magazines and ashtrays full of cigarettes. You could smell the smoke coming through the gap . . ."

"You tried to inhale it, as I recall." said Kennedy.

Miller frowned. "I don't remember
that
! But I do remember you couldn't hear what they were saying, because the noise of the boiler drowned it out. We'd always imagine they were plotting things, up to no good."
Then he had a further recollection, one that he was not absolutely sure about. "You went down that ladder once, didn't you?"

"Yeah, I remember that. It was for a dare, and I didn't hear them coming back . . ."

"That was terrifying, you had about five seconds to hide or they'd have caught you. I still don't know how you so quickly managed to find such a good place to hide under all those smelly boiler suits." They both laughed. "So
that
was how you managed to get in with us . . ."

Kennedy poured from the last of the bottle, sipped it, pulled a sour face and looked squarely at Miller. "Do you ever think about that accident?"

"Almost every day," he said lacing his fingers together, looking down at them. "It's not so bad at night now. I used to wake up in the early hours with it playing through my head, not always the actual incident, but some spin off related to it. It would always end the same though, with me drowning. That's when I'd wake up."

"Even now?"

"Yes, even now."

"Do you have a wife and family, John?"

"No, my career came first. I look around at the people I knew, nearly all of them married and then divorced. They have their kids though I suppose, but marriage? No, it wasn't for me. I'd have liked to have had a kid though. I regret that I didn't. What about you?"

"I never married either. I had a girl once, early on…" he chewed on his lower lip, "but I lost her."

"Lost her?"

"She was on a ferry; she fell overboard. They never found her."

"Jesus, Miller, how old we're you then?"

"Nineteen, maybe twenty . . ."

"Didn't meet anyone else?"

"You know something, after my friends died, and I eventually met her; I thought my life was turning round, going to be really good. Then, when that happened to her . . . the pain of that was a different pain, but I made my mind up. I wasn't going to go through it ever again. So these days, friends, relationships - they don't get so close."
Ain't no sunshine when she's gone, only darkness every day
. . . Their favourite song crept into the back of his mind. It always did when he felt wistful and was thinking about her. "What about you, have you got anyone special?"

"Well, I
had
someone . . ." He looked around the hall, pausing at the honours board, the crest with the school motto emblazoned beneath in Latin,
Strength through Courage.
One by one, the tables were denuded of their red cloths. Stripped bare like that they made him think of life and what's left when you lose everything that matters . . . something once so full, suddenly bare and empty.

He brightened suddenly, "Do you ever see any of the others?"

"You missed three of them, by minutes."

"Real shame, I'm glad I bumped into you though."

As reticent as ever Miller just said, "Yeah."

They continued to reminisce about old friends, teachers they'd both had. They moved onto their respective careers, realising how similar their chosen professions were. A short period of silence hung between them.

"Oh God, I've just remembered something else!" Kennedy suddenly exclaimed.

Miller's eyes lit up with expectancy.

"That day down in the basement beyond the changing rooms, there was that little office . . ."

"Are you talking about Kirk and that French mistress?"

"Well, yes … but do you remember that out of the four little unused offices, only the farthest away, had a well-polished handle. It didn't make sense; you'd have thought that the nearest office would have been the busier, more used. Anyway, we soon found out why. Getting a drink of water from the taps down there, always tasted so much better, like so many other things that are forbidden . . ."

"We both froze at the first cry we heard. She'd tried to stifle it; you could tell, but it came right out, like she was in pain."

"We looked at each other, scared stiff someone was murdering a woman down there . . . and after that, it was a soft moaning, and we still didn't know did we?" Both grinned widely as they recalled how they'd sneaked along the corridor close to the wall.

The metal studs on Miller's leather-soled shoes had clicked against the tile floor, so he'd slipped them off. The polished brass knob of the door had been difficult to grip with sweaty hands and operate quietly, but somehow they had managed to get the door open, and there they were, one head above the other, crouched holding the handle, not quite believing what they saw. Kirk had the French mistress on the edge of the desk. Her legs clamped around his back, and her ankles crossed above his bare white arse. He was thrusting furiously, and she turned her head from side to side, moaning. Something made her eyelids flutter open. She'd stared straight at them, invitation in her eyes, and a knowing smile on her lips. Sensing Kirk might see her staring and turn around; they'd both beaten a hasty retreat.

"After she caught me -
us
, looking … you know, every time I saw her after that, I got a hard on, and you know something - she knew it!"

"Now you're stretching things, John . . ."

"I'm telling you it's true, she asked me if my mother ever told me about never putting your handkerchief in your trouser pocket, then she poked it with her finger and said, "It
is
your handkerchief, non?" The look in her eyes Miller, she
knew.
It was the first time a woman ever touched me there, and to this day I've never forgotten it."

"I don't remember hearing about that before?"

"Well you lot were that bit older than me. I don't think I could have put up with the ribbing, so of course I never told you. Oh, what I'd give to be a kid again, eh?" Kennedy seemed troubled. Miller assumed the drink had caught him up in melancholia.

Miller pushed his chair back and stood. "You coming?" he said. Kennedy lingered.

"No, I think I'll just sit and savour the atmosphere a bit; I haven't been here for so long . . . It's like going back to church."