Boy on the Wire (3 page)

He looks up at the flat and there she is: Rachel, framed in the window. The light is behind her so he cannot see her face. He does not know if she can see him. He sees her head moving from side to side, as if searching, scanning the trees. She pulls back from the window and disappears.

He waits, still looking up at the window. He knows he has failed her. It does not surprise him. He should have realised before that what they had was a story, a fiction built on lies.

‘What were you doing?’ she asks when he comes back.

‘Fresh air.’

She says no more. She lets it go. He sees a look on her face, though. So much in that look.

Later that week he is working in his study. She, he thinks, is in the lounge. He can hear the television. It is late and has been dark for an hour. He leans back in his chair, then stands up, turns off the lamp and looks out of the window. He can see nothing.

He goes through to the lounge. She is not there. He calls for her but there is no reply. He goes into each room now, almost running into the last one. She is not in the flat.

In the lounge he looks through the window, cups his hands against the pane. He scans the trees below him. He goes to turn out the light and comes back to the window. As his eyes adjust to the dark, he sees a flash of red in the trees. He tenses. There again, an arm, a leg, the flash of a red coat – hers. And then, right behind it and to the left, in the shadows, a darker shape. He runs out of the flat and across the road and into the park. He stops near where he saw the coat and scans the trees. Nothing. He crouches on his haunches and looks through the hedge. He walks around it and onto the road running through the park. There is no one on it. The road seems to glow as if lit from beneath. He turns. He can hear his own feet on the tarmac. Silence. He is struck by this. There is never silence in London. Even in the quietest moments, the faint hum of life being lived elsewhere. It is as if time has stopped. He closes his eyes. He tries to be calm, breathes in and out. It doesn’t work. In his stomach a feeling, a sense he is being watched, a sense there are others who know everything about him, do not like what they see, and are watching what he does next.

He opens the door to the flat. She is there in the hallway. The red coat is on top of the others on the coat rack.

‘Where have you been?’

‘Out. Did you not hear me? I told you I was going for a walk.’

He hesitates. ‘Who were you with?’

‘What do you mean? I was alone.’

She walks into the bedroom and he follows.

‘I saw someone.’

She does not turn around.

‘Did you hear me?’

‘Yes, John, I heard you. You said you saw someone. What did you see, John, what did you see?’ She sounds tired, he thinks. He knows he cannot blame her, though he knows too he cannot stop.

She begins to take off her top. He watches her from the doorway. ‘When are you going to tell me what’s going on, John? This is not normal behaviour. This is me. You can tell me anything.’

He listens to her say this. He can hear the words. He knows their meaning. But he cannot speak.

She stands there in her bra, facing away from him, and he goes up to her. He puts his hands around her belly. She tenses beneath him. He can feel this. He leaves his hands where they are. She turns out of his grip, turns half towards him. ‘It’s late.’

‘That’s not what I meant.’

She does not reply but goes into the bathroom. He leaves the room then.

Later he comes and stands in the doorway and watches her sleeping. She is on her side of the bed, on the edge, turned towards the outside of the bed. She looks younger like this. Younger than when they first met.

He looks in the morning before he goes to work. There is a broken branch where he thought he saw the man. He wonders, briefly, if he saw him at all, not just last night but every night. He wonders if he has not imagined the whole thing.

And for three days he does not see him.

Then, it is a Friday in late August. The markets are quiet. It is a sunny day. He leaves the bank early and the cab driver drops him at the entrance to Battersea Park. He has not called Rachel. He wants to surprise her. There is a part of him, and for now this part feels as if it is winning, that thinks they can put this behind them, that thinks he, John, can forget what he saw, both over the last couple of weeks and twenty-eight years ago in those mountains on the edge of the Karoo.

John walks down the road through the middle of the park, past the bandstand and out through the gate on the other side. He goes up to the flat and calls for Rachel. There is no reply. He walks into the study and the main bedroom. The bed is made. The sun shines in through the open window and onto the bed. He sits down there in the warmth. It feels strange being at home this early on a weekday, as if something is wrong.

He calls her mobile but there is no answer. He is about to send a text when he remembers she told him she would be spending the day writing in the park. There is a café in the park where she would sit for hours at one of the tables under a giant oak tree.

He takes his jacket off, lays it on the bed, rolls up his sleeves. He goes out into the park to find her.

John does find her. He approaches the café from the side next to a lake and there she is, where she usually sits. She is facing him but does not see him. He is still some way off. She has her laptop open in front of her, but is talking to someone. A man. He has his back to John and he cannot see his face. He does not need to see it.

He stands still. Children ride their bikes past him, mothers push buggies. They look at him. He does not notice. The day has grown cold.

Peter gets up. John notices something on the table next to Rachel. It looks like a piece of paper. She is staring at it.

John moves forward and holds onto the fence that separates the lake from the path.

His brother is walking away. Rachel looks only at the paper. It is an envelope.

John has a choice. He can go to Rachel. He can run up to her and stop her reading the letter. He knows it is a letter. He knows it is not something she should read.

Or, he could go after his brother. He has a sense that, if he does not do this now, he will never catch him, will never be able to talk to him again. And though he does not believe it is for him to make this move, given the events of twenty-eight years ago, something still compels him. He watches Peter’s back disappear down the path into the trees.

He is frozen.

Then Rachel makes up his mind for him. She gets up and takes the letter. She does not open the envelope but carries it in her hand as she leaves the café.

He cannot let it out of his sight.

He follows her home. She does not see him. When she disappears into their building, he panics and runs across the road. A car hoots at him. He bursts into the flat a few seconds after her.

She stands in the hallway. The light from the window at the far end floods in and catches her. He is blinded. She stands there, hands at her sides.

‘It’s for you.’ She hands him the letter.

He takes it, feels the weight of it.

‘He looks so much like you.’ The words are unreal to him, so soft. With the noise in his ears he barely hears them.

A picture comes to his mind. He does not know why he thinks of this, why he cannot focus on what is happening in front of him. He hates himself for it. He is standing in the middle of a frozen lake in Siberia. It is silent. There is no wind. He has never experienced silence like this before. He opens his mouth to speak and his breath freezes as it comes out of his chest. It is so quiet he can hear the tinkling of his frozen breath as it falls to the ground.

She breaks the silence. ‘I miss you.’

He looks at her, still unable to speak.

‘I can’t do this any more, John. I love you but this is not how it is supposed to be. I am leaving.’

He goes up to her then, the letter still in his hand. He can feel she has not opened it. He puts his arm around her. Still he cannot speak, his breath frozen inside him. He holds her, but he cannot put both his arms around her because the letter is in one hand and he knows he should put it down and hold her properly, do this for her at least, but he cannot and she is lifeless in front of him, cold in his half embrace.

3

I am standing at Peter’s grave after his funeral. There is a line of blue gum trees in front of me. They are smaller and thinner than I remember.

The mourners are gone. I do not mean mourners. There was me, a priest and a few people from the funeral home. That was it. It seems Peter did not have many friends, though admittedly I did not put up a death notice and did not go out of my way to find people who knew him. There is something private about this, something that is between me and him. It may be selfish but selfishness is not what matters at this point.

I phoned the police from Heathrow to tell them this was going to happen. They said they would send a car to the house to check on him. I did not hear back. I tried again from the airport in Johannesburg. The person I spoke to was not aware of my earlier call but promised to call me back with information. By the time I got to Port Elizabeth my phone was dead and I had forgotten my charger. I could have used a payphone, but it would not have made any difference and I wanted to get to the house as soon as possible.

The police were too late.

I did all I could. I followed him out here from London, called the police, twice, rushed off to the house I hadn’t seen in eighteen years. I did what I could.

The plots are laid out in front of me. My mother next to Paul. Next to her my father. My parents’ names. I stare at the words. Neil. Sarah. They could be strangers. They could be anyone. Peter is laid on Paul’s left. It is good they are together, in spite of what happened. It was an accident. Peter could not have meant that to happen, could not have meant to push him; he would just have intended to give him a little fright. They were boys after all.

I wish I had brought something – for all of them. Flowers, anything. I get to my hands and knees. I begin pulling up the weeds on their graves, one by one. The ground is hard. I uncover glass, bits of crockery. I scrape at the sand and the weeds with my bare hands and it takes ages to clear it and by the end the tips of my fingers are bleeding. The graves are bare, though clean. It is something.

I struggle to think of these people as family. Paul and my mother died many years ago, my father when I was in my early twenties, and I had not spoken to Peter for eighteen years, though I did see him briefly in London just days ago. That I saw him there after all this time makes this seem unreal. In fact, if he came up behind me now and tapped me on the shoulder, I might not be very surprised.

I will come back here. Before I return to London, I will bring flowers. It is a small thing to do.

I have the key to the house in my pocket. I have not been back since that first day. Perhaps if I had been back, I would have looked up friends of his, invited them to the funeral. No doubt there is an address book somewhere. But I did not. It is done.

Innisfree – that’s what my father called the house. It was a joke. It must have been a joke. No verdant utopia. Rather a pile of red bricks set in soil so grey, so dry, it runs through your fingers like sand in an hourglass.

There was no jolt, no pang of longing when I saw the house for the first time. It was like looking at any other house. For a few seconds in fact, I wondered if I had ever lived there, if indeed this was a different house and any recognition merely a product of my imagination.

I am in no hurry to get back to the house. I do not drive straight there and instead take a detour. From my hotel room, where I’ve been staying since arriving in Port Elizabeth, I could see St George’s Park which I remember from my childhood. I drive there, park the car and walk up to the gates of the cricket ground.

There was a day with Dad, Paul and Peter. We went to watch a game of cricket. I do not remember who was playing. Eastern Province, most likely, but I do not remember their opponents.

I was keeping score. I used to love doing that. We went often and I kept all the scorecards, though, now I think about it, that one was lost a few days later.

There was a cup of Coca-Cola filled with ice. I placed it between my feet so I could mark a run with one hand, holding the scorecard on my lap with the other. I can see the shoes on either side of me – now, I mean. I can see them as if it is happening now. It is clear. Not shoes, sandals. I see the dust too, a splash where my own drink has spilled. The foot to my right, Paul’s, is brown, burnt by the sun. Half of the nail is missing: a bicycle accident. I had forgotten that. It is strange how these things come back, not just this memory but other things too. Other things I have forgotten or thought I had forgotten.

A wicket falls, and Dad, Peter and Paul jump up and I do too, and as I do, I kick the cup and it falls onto the seat of the person in front. He turns around. Dad has to apologise. He makes me apologise too. I remember the blood in my cheeks, the prickles at the back of my neck. Peter pushes me and sniggers.

I realise this day would have been just before Paul died. It was the last time the four of us were on our own – the men of the family. Three men, one boy, it felt at that moment.

I close my eyes to try and recapture the vision of the foot. I watch me as a boy sit down and look to the right, but the foot has gone. I have lost sight of Paul. I can no longer see him, no longer conjure him up.

There was a time I could conjure him up easily. I remember a dream I had shortly after he died. It’s funny how I struggle to remember many real events from that time, but a dream is still vivid.

I was lying in bed. It was one of those dreams in which you think you are awake but cannot be. I was lying in bed and he came into the room. It was dark, but I knew it was him as soon as he came through the door. I lay there and he came up to me and stood right next to me. I could have touched him. His right side was facing me so I could not see the crushed half of his skull. But I knew it was there.

I was ill, I remember now – feverish. A dog had bitten me a few days before. Just a scratch, I think. Perhaps it was not that.

He looked at me and in the dark I could see there was no expression on his face. It was blank.

He was beautiful. South Africa in the 1980s. You tried to be men but that was the word that came to me: beautiful, this dead boy. My brother, the boy I wanted to play with, the boy I wanted to be. I almost cried.

He stood there looking and after some time I wanted him to go, I did not want to look at him any more, did not want him to look at me and remind me he was dead. I pushed the blankets off and put my feet on the carpet and stood up. He was right in front of me. I could smell him. The smell of water. I tried not to look at him.

I shuffled to the right. He followed. Then to the left. He kept pace with me. I tried to trick him by moving one way and then rapidly in the other, but I could not get rid of him. He penned me in. I remember this dance. I remember it going on for the whole night. It seemed like an eternity.

I was eight. Having suffered the trauma of losing a brother in an accident I witnessed, it is no wonder I had nightmares.

Back in the car I head down a road called Park Lane. It takes me back momentarily to London, to my life there. I spent a lot of time on Park Lane and in the hotels there. A different world. The person who did that, who sat through those meetings, seems a stranger to me.

Port Elizabeth is a grey city. Coming back was not what I expected. There are parts I don’t recognise, but mostly it is as if I have never left. There are bumps in the road I feel I remember. Trees that must have grown but look the same. The same restaurants – or, they look the same. Over everything a film of dust. I think that if I could scrub it off, the city would match what I remember from my childhood: the sparkle, the newness that I felt for much of the time, until Paul’s death cast a shade over it.

In the streets and the shops, the hotel, the few restaurants I have been into, there are only strangers. I thought maybe I would recognise one or two people from my teenage years. But either they have left or changed so much I cannot recognise them. I do not belong here any more in this familiar city filled with strangers. The echo of home.

I have been picked up and placed in another time.

I look in the rearview mirror. There are no cars in the road. There are some parked at the side, but nothing moves. Everyone is at home asleep in front of the television on this Sunday afternoon. I have grown used to London. It is never quiet there. Never quiet enough to lose yourself in your thoughts.

This emptiness was something I noticed when I arrived. Walking through the airport, my footsteps echoed in the halls. There was no traffic on the roads. The houses next to Peter’s seem empty. The first house is an old bungalow and it has its windows boarded up. The house on the other side looks empty too, and I cannot see the house opposite from the road.

Perhaps if I stay, I will come to feel differently, get to know this place again, love it even. But there is no chance of that. I will go back to London – though, it is true, I have somewhat burnt my bridges there. My wife has left me. I will be fired from my job very soon, if it hasn’t happened already, as I have not told them why I am not at work. Still, I can find another job and it is not like I need the money anytime soon.

I smell the tarmac. Another thing that is the same. The smell of the place.

I drive past my old school. When I get close, I look over at the buildings across fields. They are cream and brown, smaller than I remember. There is an area at the side. It is covered in tar now. I played there during breaks: with marbles, spinning tops. It was covered in gravel and red dirt. I remember the dust on my black shoes. I drew lines in the dirt on them. The shine beneath the dust. I stop the car and get out.

I am surprised I know the way so well, the way we used to drive, the road we turned into to get up to the main road, the Cape Road. I remember, I can picture, my mother behind the steering wheel. Always her. Dad was at work.

The details come back: the dust, the roads, the lines on her face.

It was always my mother driving. This was the same after it happened too. After Paul died, it was the same. Always my mother, as if nothing had happened – for a while at least.

I would watch her. When it was my turn in the front seat, I would watch the bones of her fingers around the steering wheel, her lips held tight together. She was not someone who did this as a matter of course, not an ungenerous woman, but she was a very careful driver.

I sometimes thought she was angry with us, with me, for some reason. Perhaps this was only after Paul died. She seemed angry all the time. I suspect this was just a child’s imagination, however. Sad, yes. She would not have been angry with me.

In this vision, if that’s what to call it, I turn my head and see two other children in the back of the car. They look at me. They have smiles – no, I will call them smirks – on their faces. They have been whispering to each other. Somehow I know it is about me. I turn slowly back and face the road again.

A car turns the corner further down the road. For a time it is our car. It is our car and I have been left behind at school. I think that if I run fast enough I could catch it at the next light, catch it and grab the handle and tug at it and they would let me in.

This place has had a strange effect on me. Memories have returned. That is not unexpected of course, but it is the way they return. I see things and sometimes wonder if they are real. I see people and wonder if they are in fact here in front of me, or if they are ghosts, figments of my imagination. I would reach out and touch them but I doubt that would sit well with them if indeed they are real.

I am sure this feeling will pass. I know what causes it. Half a life lived here, half a life somewhere else, a return, and with the return the awakenings of a time past. It is like jumping into a mountain pool. The silt is disturbed but it will settle again soon enough and it will be like nothing ever happened.

A flower from a jacaranda tree falls on my arm. I pick it off and crush it between my fingers.

It is darker now. A few houses have lights on. As I walk past one on my way back to the car, a dog rushes up, barking. There is a fence and the dog hurls itself against it but cannot get through. Something stirs in me at the sight of this animal. I stand and watch as it grows more frantic. A light comes on at the side of the house and I walk away quickly.

Back in the car, I come to a point where the road forks and I turn left. The houses here are set further back from the road. There are no streetlights any more.

I open the windows as I drive. I can see leaves framed against a black sky. The trees smell like dust. A smell of a home I once had but which now I don’t know and which does not know me.

It hit me as I stepped off the plane – the smell of the place. I stopped at the top of the stairs until the person behind me asked me to move.

At the airport I gave them my British passport. My South African one has long since expired and I have never wanted to renew it. It felt like I was doing something wrong. I was expecting the woman who looked at my passport to take it with her, walk out of the booth and up to her supervisor. She would point and they would both stare. The exile returns. Who does he think he is?

Outside the gate to the house, I park the car, get out and look down the drive at the house. I close my eyes and remember the rooms: the hall, the lounge, dining room, study. Upstairs, too. I focus on one room: the bedroom that leads to the attic. The details are clear: concrete floor, a dark patch in one area, wooden beams, fresh splinters on one.

The lights are off.

I do not go in immediately. The keys are in my pocket and I feel the shape of them. I look around me. There is no one else here, no one on the road. From here I cannot even see a neighbour’s house, let alone someone inside. I do not feel alone, though. Possibly, here, I never could. I find myself wishing I did feel alone.

I sit against a tree for a time, not waiting for anything in particular, just waiting. My hands rest on leaves and I burrow into them a short way. I would like to go further in, pull a blanket of them over me. I picture myself digging through the leaves, sand, rocks, slowly burrowing my way towards the house. If I made enough tunnels, dug them close enough to the surface, then perhaps cracks would begin to appear in the walls of the house and the roof and then the whole thing would collapse. I, somehow not crushed by the weight of it, trapped nonetheless by the walls, buried deep in soil.