Silver Birches Page 8

  Distracted by kind concern, Jenny had turned her face in my direction at last, lips drawn back between her teeth, brows contracted with distress. She needn’t have worried. Expelling air noisily from my cheeks, I fluttered both hands in front of my body like a bird flying away — a dismissive gesture.

  “No, please, that’s nothing. Least of my problems. I’m quite glad really. It gives me a breather to think what on earth I can possibly say about — what you’ve just told me.”

  “Do us both a favor and don’t bother to say anything. Mind you, if you insist, I think I can supply you with the basis for a pretty orthodox script. I’ve got quite good at writing other people’s scripts over the years. Let me see, now... yes, likely as not, it would go something like this. First of all you tell me how privileged and honored you feel to learn I was so smitten by you. You honestly, honestly do. Then you’ll need to throw in a small white lie about remembering me perfectly well, and I guess you’ll have to dredge up some small but feasible attribute from the past to flatter me with. Other than adding a clear but subtle indication that you didn’t feel the same about me then and you still don’t now — just for safety’s sake, you understand — I reckon that’s about it.”

  As if by mutual consent we stopped walking, and facing each other for a second or two across the path, we burst into laughter at the same time. Ironically, I found myself struck by the thought of how easily any man might fall in love with the funny, bright-eyed Jenny who stood before me now, but several badly spooked herds of incredibly powerful wild horses fed on extra-strong equine stimulants would have had a job making me say so after that little speech of hers.

  “Well, I don’t think I’ll bother with any of that, then,” I said, touching my eyes with the back of my hand as we turned to resume our walk, the atmosphere between us miraculously eased by that shared awareness of absurdity.

  “Am I allowed just one other question?”

  “Go on,” said Jenny.

  “One of the things I honestly and truly do remember about you is that you seemed to be forever volunteering to do things around the place. I’ve got this mental picture of jobs like clearing up and making tea and chairs being shifted and all that sort of thing, and you were always there or thereabouts. Were you just an amazingly helpful type, or am I dreaming the whole thing?”

  “No, I wasn’t, not particularly. And no, I don’t think you were dreaming. It’s obvious when you think about it. You see, every time you volunteered to do anything I shot my hand up and volunteered to do it with you. I can see how it must have seemed to you that I was perpetually present. I suppose my silly fantasies included the dawn of romance rising slowly over the kitchen sink. In my dreams you would hold a dripping plate out toward me and I’d take hold of the other side of it, but just as you were going to let it go, you’d look into my face and think how nice it would be to take me out on Friday night. We’d be locked into one point in time, clutching that piece of Pyrex between us as a symbol of our newly discovered passion.” She swung her arms briskly and looked out toward the far horizon. “Let’s not talk about that silly girl any more. I’m me now.”

  “And you’d still like to get married some day?”

  “Of course. To a converted fireman who’s hung on to his body and his uniform. It would be nice to have sex just once before the Second Coming.”

  I did a little double-take of amusement and wonder. This was nothing like the Jenny that I hadn’t been able to remember.

  “So, I’d be intrigued to know — what’s your response to all those good people who reckon being single’s no problem because God’s grace should be sufficient for you?”

  Jenny snorted and kicked out with her small, booted foot at a stone. It went jumping and jittering along in front of us for a surprising distance before disappearing into the longer grass at the edge of the path.

  “I’m afraid I get a bit impatient when people drag individual verses out of the Bible and try to prove something from them. It’s like tearing a very small piece of canvas out of a masterpiece and claiming you can use it to tell exactly what the painter was trying to say. I don’t think anyone’s ever actually quoted that verse from Corinthians to me in connection with singleness, but you’re right. You do read and hear that sort of thing sometimes. If they said it to me I suppose I’d do what I usually do when people say silly things.”

  “Which is?”

  “I try to refer them back to Jesus. In this case I’d remind them what happened when Jesus was dying in agony on the cross and he somehow found the mental focus and energy to make sure his mother had someone to look after her when he’d gone. His grace wasn’t sufficient for her, was it? Not in the abstract, anyway. She needed someone made of flesh and blood to go and live with. You know, I can’t think why we even bother arguing about these things. Is God’s grace sufficient to feed the budgie while we’re on holiday? That’s not what grace is about, is it?” After a minute or so of silence: “What are you smiling at?”

  “Oh, I was thinking about your budgie, and then I was chewing over what you said back there about your continually volunteering for jobs at the same time as me being the solution to my question about why you always seemed to be working. You know, I’d never have figured that out in a million years. It reminds me of those games where you’re given a scenario that’s a bit peculiar and you have to work out how it came about.” I considered for a moment or two before making a decision. “Here, I’ve got one for you. Try this one.”

  “You haven’t forgotten our deal, have you, David?”

  Honestly! The whole point of slipping in through a side entrance is to avoid a fuss at the front door.

  “No, no, this is part of it. When I was thinking about the old days just now I had a sort of flashback to a time not long after Jessica and I got married. I think we’d probably lost close touch with everyone in the group by then. I was struggling and battling through my first teaching year, Jessica was working hard in her last year at East Anglia, and we were snuggled together like two happy little mice in this tiny terraced house on the outskirts of the magical city of Norwich. Oh, Jenny, we did love that house! The two of us spent most of our spare time cooing over it and petting it and moving things around in it and fiddling around with bits of it. We treated it as if it was a great big brick baby.”

  I swallowed hard for what must be, I told myself firmly, the first and very last time in this conversation. Fortunately, at this point, the path took an abrupt turn to the right, and our forward progress was punctuated by an unsteady-looking wooden stile set in a low, impenetrable hedge made up of that grizzly, thorny growth that doesn’t seem to mind crouching on the tops of remote hills, doomed never to look beautiful. Helping Jenny to climb the stile was an oddly disturbing experience. She took her glove off before climbing over. The act of taking her warm, living, human hand in mine after the things she had just revealed felt, in a confused and confusing way, like a second stage of courtship. Absurd. The second absurd thing to happen this weekend.

  On the other side of the stile our way continued in a dead-straight line directly through the center of a vast, bare field that must have held some kind of crop earlier in the year. The width of the path gradually diminished in a starkly geometric manner, until it was no more than a microscopic point on the far edge of the huge, flat expanse. It reminded me of a very simple line drawing my father had done for me when I was little to help me understand the basic principles of perspective. At the age of five or six I was so fascinated that I copied that little sketch out over and over again. And here it was in front of me. Up on top of the world under this enormous sky on an endless path in the middle of a beanstalk giant’s field, there was certainly a lot more space to work in than I might have thought.

  “I love these massive fields, don’t you? Carry on with what you were saying. I like a good puzzle.”

  “Yes, I like them too. Big fields, I mean. I was just thinking that myself. And puzzles. Right!” I clapped my hands together. “
Here’s your real-life problem. I’ll give you the background first.

  “One day Jessica said she was going to invite a college friend to dinner. Someone I hadn’t met yet. She was called Claire. Jessica was sure she and I were bound to get on really well because, apart from being very nice, this girl loved getting her teeth into a discussion, just as I’ve always done, tearing an issue or an argument to pieces, that sort of thing. In fact, Jessica said, Claire was one of the cleverest and most widely read students on the English course at UEA. Apparently she used to come up with these seminar papers that got the tutors nodding enthusiastically and left ordinary, mortal students boggle-eyed and feeling even more ignorant than they’d secretly thought they might be in the first place. Not that Jess would have been bothered by that, I hasten to add. I think, in a funny sort of way, she enjoyed admiring people. She made a lot of nervous souls feel a great deal better about themselves. Sounds silly, but she had a talent for it.”

  “I remember.” Jenny nodded.

  “Anyway, Claire duly arrives on the Friday evening or something like that, and, my goodness, what a woman she turned out to be! Tall and willowy and well-shaped without being skinny, long, dark silky hair, perfect complexion, and one of those very symmetrical, strong, intelligent faces. A big presence.”

  “And what was she wearing?”

  “What was she wearing? Goodness! Ooh, dear, let me see. It was a long time ago. As far as I can remember, a dark brownish roll-neck sweater and black shiny leather trousers. I think that was it. I’m pretty sure about the trousers.

  “The point was, not only did she look amazing, but every time Jessica or I said anything she listened as though we were propounding some complex theorem that could only be properly understood if you concentrated extremely hard. As you can imagine, it was quite flattering at first to have my inane comments treated with such grave and humble respect, but after a while it became more embarrassing than anything else. She’d sit with her head on one side, frowning and nodding as her huge brain sorted through the small change of my conversation, puzzling over the whereabouts of the gold nugget that surely had to be hidden away in there somewhere. It did get more than a bit wearing. She was so knowledgeable and so bright. And so infernally modest. It would have been something of a relief to be able to dislike the woman. History, literature, philosophy, current affairs, there didn’t seem to be anything she wasn’t up to speed on.

  “By the time we’d finished our meal around our tiny table in our tiny kitchen my tender young ego was feeling a bit bruised, to say the least. To be honest, quite a bit of the time I simply had not the faintest idea what she was talking about. I just nodded judiciously and produced those little humming tunes that make it sound as if you’re mentally sorting through a wide selection of equally valid responses before committing yourself to just one. You can only do that a limited number of times, you know, before coming over as a bit odd.

  “So, having eaten, we settle ourselves with coffee in our equally tiny lounge, and it’s late autumn, right? We’d had a burst of Indian summer all day while the sun was out, but now it had turned really cold. Really cold. And you know how dank and dismal unheated sitting rooms can be on autumn evenings. Well, we had no central heating in our darling Wendy House, but what we did have was an open fire and a basket full of logs and a bit of kindling that we’d brought back in a wheelbarrow from the wood down at the end of our road the day before. Jessica, perfectly reasonably, suggests that I light a fire to get us all warmed up. And I agreed, but almost immediately afterward — I changed my mind and refused.”

  “You refused.”

  “Yes. I used every excuse I could dream up to avoid lighting that fire in front of the magnificent Claire. I maintained that it wasn’t actually all that cold and a fire in the grate would get the room so hot we’d wish we hadn’t lit it. I claimed to be quite worried about the chimney needing a sweep before another fire could be lit. In the end I brought a piddling little hot-air convector thing down from our tiny bedroom, plugged it in and stuck it on the arm of Claire’s chair so it was pointing straight at her. And, of course, Jessica was staring at me all through this with that special blend of irritation and incredulity that married couples do so well when there’s company about. You see, she knew I was talking nonsense. She just didn’t know why. Why on earth, on a patently chilly evening, was I exhibiting this neurotic desire to either see our guest sit and freeze, or to direct a narrow blast of hot air straight into her face, when, without any trouble at all, I could have laid and lit a nice warm log fire under a perfectly safe chimney?”

  “So the puzzle is... ?”

  “Well, that’s it. Why was it so frenetically important for me to avoid lighting a fire in front of that woman? What was going on?”

  “Hmm, it wasn’t something as simple as you worrying that you weren’t very good at lighting fires, and not wanting her to see you make a mess of it?”

  “No, not at all. Though I say it myself, I’m actually a bit of a whiz at the old fire-lighting. It’s true that everyone in the universe thinks their particular method is the only sane and effective one, but no, it certainly wasn’t that. Look, these are the important clues, right?”

  I ticked them off on my fingers.

  “Clue one, I was young and not too sure of myself in most areas. Clue two, beyond anything I didn’t want to appear an idiot in front of this amazingly sophisticated, intellectual woman who seemed to know everything about everything. Clue three — a crucial one this — I was in my first year of teaching in a difficult school and getting very stressed each day, so I was pretty well incapable of tackling anything that threatened to stretch my mind. And clue four, when Jessica offered to get the fire going instead of me, there was no way I was going to let her do it either. There you are! Over to you. What was my sad little reason for not wanting to light that fire? Buy you lunch at the pub if you guess right.”

  “You weren’t just being mean with your logs?”

  “Nope!”

  Jenny narrowed her eyes and drew in a deep breath.

  “Hmmm... so... there was something you didn’t want this Claire to see or find out, because it would have made you feel silly. Correct?”

  “Correct.”

  “And she could only have seen this thing if you’d actually lit the fire. Right so far?”

  “Yep!”

  She nodded slowly and contemplatively before speaking again.

  “Where did you and Jessica keep your old newspapers?”

  I looked at her in admiration.

  “We kept them in a wooden box with a lid beside the fireplace, and — ”

  “And I’ll bet the amazing Claire’s conversation was peppered with references to this and that from the quality press, and in your box by the fire you only had — what? Daily Mirror, was it?”

  “Worse. The Sun. And worse than that. My brain and my confidence had got so addled and sapped by the strain of tackling those kids every day that, believe it or not, I’d even bought the odd comic on the way home. ‘Claire, may I draw your attention to a comment by Lord Snooty in this week’s Beano that positively cries out for political and philosophical analysis?’ Would’ve been less than impressive, wouldn’t it?”

  “She’d probably have laughed.”

  “Oh no, she wouldn’t. She’d have assumed that I was doing some very important research into the psychological and social significance of the tabloid press considered as an extension of the child’s comic genre. Gosh! I wish I’d thought of that at the time. It’d have been a lot warmer.”

  “And what did Jessica say afterward?”

  “Got cross. Laughed like a drain. Then we went up to bed with our little hot-air thingy and each other. We always laughed in the end, Jess and me did.”

  Jenny said softly, “And now she’s gone.”

  I swung the top half of my body sharply, involuntarily away from her. I didn’t want to agree with that. I was still with my wife in our little house in Norwich. At the center of th
is great open space on the top and in the middle of nowhere, walking the path my father had drawn, beside a woman I knew but did not know, how much did it matter what was true and what was tediously, painfully not, who was alive and who was dead, at least until I reached that tiny point at the far end of the universe where my lesson in perspective would end, and there would be nowhere else to go? The truth will set you free, but for what? Seminars on coping with loss?

  I cleared my throat. “One funny thing after Jessica died — well, not funny, but you know what I mean. Actually, no — it was funny. It was very funny. I suppose I just thought it ought not to be funny. Sorry, I’m blithering — getting incoherent. What happened was, I was walking along the High Street one day, and just as I was about to turn into my solicitor’s office, I ran into a friend — more of an acquaintance, I suppose. I hadn’t seen this bloke Chris for ages, and there was no reason to stop for more than half a second just to say — you know — whatever you say in half a second. But just as we’d moved apart he called out, more or less over his shoulder, ‘Jessica all right?’ And without thinking I called back — ‘Yes, she’s fine!’

  “Hah! So, as soon as I heard those words coming out of my mouth I thought, Oh, no! Do I just let him go, or do I give him the real answer, or what? So I said, ‘Actually, hold on a minute, Chris. When I said she was fine, what I should have said was — she’s dead.’