The beginning of everyth.., p.15
The Beginning of Everything, page 15
Another jagged flash of lightning rips across the sky above the castle.
“Wow, look at that. Amazing.” Thunder cracks again, booming along the valley, and there’s another flash, lighting up the gray ruins. It looks spectacular, the sky livid as a bruise.
“Right overhead now,” he says. “Aren’t you cold?”
“You can go back to the car if you like.” I grin at him and run back across the grass to the entrance of the car park, crossing the road and pelting along the pavement to the bridge. Everything looks completely brilliant from here; there’s an excellent view of the castle looming above the floodplain, the rushing black clouds, the inky water of the river jumping beneath the raindrops. I lean back on the railing and turn my face upward once more. The rain runs down my already wet cheeks like enormous tears, and I feel an immense sense of excitement and joy.
“Wait up,” says Gethin, splashing through the puddles. “You’re always running away from me,” he complains when he catches up, leaning on the rail beside me, looking into the water.
“Pfft, no I’m not.”
“You ran away the first time I saw you.”
We look at each other for a moment longer than is quite comfortable. The rain runs down his face, and I can feel it doing the same on my own. I lick water from my lips, and am very determined to not, in any way, imagine doing the same to him.
“Didn’t you?”
“Oh, that.” I flap my hand, dismissive. “You’re soaked,” I add, changing the subject. He ruffles his hair with his hands and droplets of water spray out between us.
“Pretty much. So are you.”
My dress sticks to my legs much more conclusively than it stuck to my back earlier, running with water. I pull it away from my body and attempt to wring out the front. It makes no difference, as it’s still raining heavily.
He pulls out his phone. “Drenched,” he says. He takes a photo, and another.
I stick out my tongue. “Oh, seriously, I must look a right state.” I drag a hand through my hair.
“No, you look…”
“Show me.”
“My phone’s not really waterproof.” He pushes it back into his pocket.
Thunder rumbles again, quieter this time.
“Oh, boo, it’s nearly over,” I say, and almost immediately the rain eases. I click my fingers. “Show me the pictures.”
He sighs. “So demanding.”
“Right?”
He pulls his phone back out, thumbs it open, and steps closer. I wipe my face and flap my hands, raindrops spinning away.
“There. See.”
“Good background.”
“Foreground’s not bad, either.”
I look at him. He’s looking at the picture, where I stand sodden and grinning, the castle behind me. It’s an okay photo.
“Want me to delete it?” he asks.
“No. You can send it to me.”
“All right.”
He thumbs the phone to show me the next one.
“Huh,” he says. I’ve got my eyes closed and look kind of…ecstatic, like a mad saint.
“You might need to delete that one,” I tell him. It’s not that it’s a bad picture—it just feels a bit…personal.
“I dunno, it’s kind of…I like it,” he says. He looks at me. “D’you hate it? I’ll get rid of it if you do?”
I shrug. It seems an overreaction to demand that he delete it. “Take one of both of us. You’re easily as wet as I am.”
“Okay. Castle in the background?”
We lean against the railing and he puts his arm round me. We push our cold, damp faces together, and he takes a picture, then another. My skin prickles at the proximity; I feel the heat rising in my chest. I ignore all this, and we dip our heads together over the phone to consider the images.
“Ha, we look ridiculous.” I laugh.
“This one’s good.”
“Now the sun’s out? Yeah.”
“You look like you’re having a great time.”
“Well. I am.”
“Good,” he says, serious. Again we’re caught in a moment of…something, before I move away and turn to look back at the castle. Within five minutes there’s a rainbow behind us and the black clouds have lifted, rolling away to the west. The road steams.
Gethin shakes himself like a dog. “I think there’s a towel in the car,” he says. “Come on.”
I patter along the road behind him, energized. I’ve been grinning so hugely that my face hurts.
“That was brilliant.”
“You’re not normal,” he says, and I laugh.
“You could’ve sat in the car. No one made you stay out.”
“I know. I’m not complaining really.” He opens the trunk. “I’m sure there’s—yeah, here.” He hands me a towel.
“Is it clean?”
“Of course.”
“Huh. Efficient.” I rub briefly at my hair. Being short, it doesn’t need much to stop dripping.
* * *
Back home, I have a shower and get dressed while he changes into dry things. It’s rained here, too—there are huge puddles everywhere and the garden sparkles. It’s warm again, although the air feels fresher.
“Even though it’s like twenty-eight degrees,” he says, “I feel I might need something cozy. D’you want some hot chocolate?”
“Ha. It’s more like ice cream weather.”
“Could have hot chocolate and a cold drink? There’s lemonade left from the picnic.”
“Oh.” I think about this. “That is quite tempting. Okay.”
“Yeah? Is it dry enough to sit in the garden?”
“I think so.”
“I’ll bring it out, then. And we can finish the picnic food.”
“Good idea.” I take the remains of the picnic out to the table on the patio and unpack what’s left. The cat from next door, a handsome gray creature, watches with interest from the roof of the coal shed.
Gethin comes out with the hot chocolate and sits down beside me.
“I was just thinking about how we used to have hot chocolate on Thursdays when I was young,” he says. “We’d have a bath and come downstairs to watch Top of the Pops and Tomorrow’s World and have hot chocolate. Probably only had that in the winter, I suppose, but it seems like it was every week.”
“We had baths on Thursdays, too,” I say, rather entranced by this coincidence. “Thursdays and Sundays.”
“You know, sometimes I think about my childhood,” he says, “and it seems like it’s impossible it can be forty years ago.”
“I know.”
“And some of the memories seem…nearer…than more recent things? Some of the time I spent with Vanessa seems longer ago. Some of that seems like a hundred years ago. Everything’s so different.”
I eat my sandwich, watching him. He stares down the garden. I can’t tell whether he thinks this is a good thing or a bad thing and I’m not really comfortable about asking.
“This time last year I could never have even begun to imagine the way everything is now,” he says.
“No.”
He turns to look at me. “I know that’s true for you as well; I’m not trying to hog the whole ‘wow, isn’t life weird’ thing.”
“Ha, no, I know. You’re just as entitled to reflect on the changes in your life,” I say pompously. “It’s probably weirder for you, isn’t it, because of…how did you feel, this time last year?”
“I was pretty miserable. Living in Abby’s spare room at the weekend, staying with my friend Justin during the week—it wasn’t great. I suppose maybe I’d been to see the house for the first time? It felt like it took ages though, finding somewhere. And six months before that—everything was even more different, and worse. Couldn’t quite quantify it, though. I kept telling myself it was weird to be so…unengaged in everything. You know, ‘your life is good and you’re lucky’ and all that made it worse, because I didn’t feel that way. I knew there had to be more, or something else, or…you know. I was worried that was it, though.”
“Mm.”
“Which is a horrible feeling. Sometimes I remember that, you know, there might only be another twenty years. Or less. And then…well, it’s terrifying, isn’t it, to think you might be miserable for loads of it. When did you decide you were leaving? Was that…I know you bought your tent and everything. Were you planning it for a long time?”
I consider whether I want to talk about this. I take a fork and stab at pasta twists.
“I wasn’t sure what to do. For ages…it’s not that I thought it was my fault, or not exactly. I’m not an idiot; I knew what he was doing. I was scared though.”
“I really hate to think of you being frightened.”
I raise my eyes to his face. I believe him; he looks…what—pained? I shrug. “It’s okay. I’m not frightened now. Or hardly ever.”
He frowns at me. “When are you frightened?”
I consider. “I have nightmares, sometimes. So I wake up frightened, you know. I’m not scared when I’m awake.”
“Okay. Good. You needn’t…you know I…if there’s anything you’re frightened of—would you tell me?”
“I shouldn’t think so.”
“Why not?”
“Not your business, is it?”
We look at each other for a moment. I feel I may have sounded a bit harsh or dismissive. “But truly, I’m not afraid. There’s nothing to be scared of.”
“Good. Well. I’d like to make it clear you could talk to me about it if you wanted. I realize you don’t want to. But if you did.”
I duck my head in acknowledgment. “Thank you.”
He sighs. “Was he nice to start with? I suppose he must have been.”
I wrinkle my nose. “Yeah. Not for very long, maybe. Long enough. I was always hopeful—stupidly—that, you know, he’d…that it would all be okay. Anyway,” I continue, “I’d rather not think about that.”
“No, okay.” He thinks for a bit. “You know you can invite them to visit, if you want to? Your family. Or your friends.”
“I was going to ask, actually, if you could recommend anywhere for people to stay. Noosha wants to visit.”
He looks at me. “She can stay here, can’t she? This is your home, Jess. Your friends can stay here if you want them to.”
“Oh.” I’m embarrassed. “You don’t want my friends here, though, do you?”
“Why the hell not?”
“Because, um…actually I can’t think of a reason. It just never occurred to me.”
“It’s not like there’s anyone in the front bedroom. Wasted space. You wouldn’t rather be in there? You could swap if you wanted.”
“Oh, no. No, that would…no. I like the box room.” I can’t really explain the sense of cozy security I get from my little bedroom. I fear it might sound rather pathetic.
“Okay. But you can certainly have your friends to stay.”
“Thanks.”
He shakes his head. “You don’t need to thank me.”
“Yeah, I do, though.”
“You pay to live here. You have rights.”
“Oh, well.” I’m embarrassed. “Okay.”
Chapter Fifteen
Gethin orders a print of the photo of us standing together on the bridge. He finds a frame for it and stands it on the mantelpiece in the dining room. I come home from work one day and there it is, among the other things: the carved wooden elephant he bought in Thailand, the fallow deer antler we found on a walk, the George VI coronation mug I bought for fifty pence from a charity shop.
I look at the photo for ages, the pair of us grinning at the camera, hair and faces wet with rain. It’s a good picture, a nice moment to have captured, and unexpected to see, because nowadays no one buys prints. I look at it and remember how I felt, our faces pressed together, his arm around me. I purse my lips at the Jess in the photograph. She doesn’t look like an idiot, but I know better.
“You got a copy of that photo,” I say later as we eat our dinner.
“Yeah, I thought it was a good one,” he says. “You don’t mind, do you?”
“No, of course not.”
“I remembered in one of the shared houses I lived in we had a whole wall of pictures of us—the housemates, I mean.”
“A whole wall might be a bit much,” I suggest.
He laughs. “What about if we had one blown up, you know, poster size.”
“I really don’t think I need to see a poster-sized photo of myself,” I say, slightly horrified.
“Ha. With faces bigger than our actual faces?”
“Let’s not do that.”
“No, you’re right, I don’t think I need to see my crow’s-feet at one and a half times real size.”
“Pah, you barely have any wrinkles, do you. And if you did, that would just be craggy.”
“I know craggy’s kind of a compliment,” he says, “but I don’t think I’d care to be described like that.”
“I don’t think you have that sort of face.” I look at him, considering. “Or not yet, anyway.”
“Happy to put it off, to be honest.”
“At least no one minds when men look older. I mean, I expect Vanessa has to look younger than her colleagues.”
“Yeah, she’s got a whole plan,” he says, reaching for another potato. “You know, a tuck here and a tweak there. Eyelids, chin.”
“What a ridiculous world.”
“I know. I don’t really think…well, it’s a personal thing of course, and there’s all sorts of pressure, isn’t there, with expectations and notions of beauty and everything. But getting yourself jabbed with poisons or sliced up for nonmedical reasons. I don’t like it. We had a big row about Botox once.”
“Really?” I don’t know why I’m so fascinated by insights into Gethin and Vanessa’s life together.
“Yeah. It was awkward. I mean, she was right that it was none of my business. But I didn’t like the idea, and it took me a while to get used to how she looked afterward.”
“Was it very noticeable?”
“No, I don’t think so, not really—not to anyone else. She did look…younger, I suppose. Smoother. I don’t know. The lines on your face are…I don’t know. It’s evidence of your life, isn’t it, laughing and frowning, good things and bad things.”
I nod. “When I was crying a lot my eyes used to swell up,” I tell him, “which never happened when I was younger. I used to wonder if you’d be able to see it on my face, how unhappy I was. It’s got to be aging, hasn’t it, being miserable.” I eat my last piece of tuna and mop up tomato salsa with my last potato. We had a debate about whether roast potatoes were a suitable accompaniment for this meal but luckily both agreed that roast potatoes go with more or less anything.
“You cried so much your eyes swelled up? Christ,” he says, visibly appalled.
“Yeah, but…I mean, I did cry a lot, but I think it was worse because I’m old. I’ve probably cried as much at other times. I cried quite a lot when my dad died.”
“Shit, of course. I’m sorry,” he says, “I feel like…”
“What?”
“I don’t think I can ever say the right thing.”
“God, I hope it’s not me making you feel like that. I wasn’t trying to do an ‘Oh, my dad died when I was a kid, Gethin, you heartless monster.’ ” I pull a face at him and he laughs.
“No, I didn’t…I wasn’t saying you were. I don’t know. What I mean is, I realize your dad dying was a terrible thing to happen, and I acknowledge that other bad stuff has happened too, like it does to everyone, but really what I always want to say is, that bastard, how dare he.”
“Now you’re calling my dad a bastard?” I laugh at him. “I know you’re not, I’m sorry. Mitch. Yes, he was a bastard, you’re right.”
“Mitch. You’ve never told me his name before.”
I sigh. “No, well. There we are. Mitchell…” I hesitate, suddenly worried, again, about giving the whole game away, although really, what would it matter if Gethin knew both Mitch’s names? He’s not going to find him and tell him where I am, is he? Of course not. “Mitchell Brooks,” I say. “It sounds like an estate agent’s or something, doesn’t it.”
He laughs. “It does. Or a trucking company.”
“Mitchell Brooks Logistics.”
“Yeah.”
“He wasn’t a trucking company though, sadly. He was, as you say, a bastard.”
* * *
Gethin’s throwing a party. A housewarming. It seems a bit late—he’s been here eight months, after all—but he was waiting for all the work to be done, and for the weather to improve. Now it’s really summer, he says we should entertain.
He mowed the lawn and I researched and then bought solar-powered garden lights. We put them up yesterday, and they look so lovely, I felt quite emotional. He asked me if I was okay and I said, “It’s so pretty,” and was horribly embarrassed to hear the wobble in my voice. Since it was dark, though, he couldn’t see that I was nearly crying. I worry sometimes about being overwhelmed by emotion. Several times he’s said or done something that’s made me have to bite my tongue or pinch myself. I don’t think he’s noticed, though. And the things are never anything spectacular—him getting me a better job didn’t make me cry. But my birthday; and when he bought me two big bars of Dairy Milk because I was having really terrible cramps. I suppose that was hormonal.
It’s the way he pays attention, I think, that makes me like this. I’d forgotten what it was like, when someone pays attention to what you say, learns things about you, and doesn’t use those things against you but instead uses them to make your life…more pleasant. He buys things I like if he goes shopping, remembers which brand of toothpaste I prefer, that sort of thing. None of it’s…it’s not like you could misinterpret any of it, think it had large or significant MEANING—it’s just kindness. I’ve spent a lot of time with hardly any kindness, and so the people who have been kind to me—Johnny, at least some of the time, and Gethin himself—that makes them stand out, doesn’t it.
