Life After Joe (9 page)

He shrugged. “Well. You know Marnie.”

“No, I don’t. I only met her a handful of times before you left. Where is she?”

“She’s at home.”

Home.
Leaning forward, I propped my elbows on my knees and ran both hands through my hair. I knew this would make it stick up like electrified wheat, but it helped me to think, to begin to get some fragile grip on what the fuck was going on here. “Okay,” I said wearily. “Okay. Here’s what I think is happening. If I’m wrong…” I tailed off, choking a bit. My chest felt dry and sore. “If you want to stop me at any point, go ahead. Marnie’s at home. You haven’t told her you’re here. You’ve brought…just enough clothes to get by for the night and your spare toothbrush, nothing she’s actually gonna notice is missing. If things go all right here, well and good. And if not—if it all goes tits up, you’re going to pick up your rucksack and go quietly home. To Marnie. Is that right?”

A terrible, hard-edged silence descended, weary and tarnished as the light. “Come on, Joe,” I said. “Whatever you tell me, I’ll believe it. You know I will. So make it good.”

He lifted his head. He had been staring at the hearthside rug, where so much had gone on, but now he looked at me. His eyes were dry and empty. He said, hoarsely, “You don’t understand, Matt. I thought it was right, but…I can’t even fuck her.”

Walking out was easy: I only had one small rucksack of my own. Picking it up, I fished in my pocket and tossed Joe my set of keys. He didn’t try to catch them but flinched from them, and they clattered down onto the hearth. I thought he might follow me, but he did not. The street was deserted, painted in coloured lights, beginning to be hushed with snow. I didn’t know what time the Metros stopped on Christmas Eve, but now was the time to find out. I ran.

***

I got no response to my pounding on the Quayside flat’s door, and reluctantly—Aaron’s privacy seeming doubly sacred now—I let myself in. I hadn’t thought much about it at the time, but he’d placed a lot of faith in me, hadn’t he, giving me my own key on the second day of my stay with him, as soon as he could get one cut. A nice return I’d made him for his trust.

I scanned the flat’s sparse rooms. It barely took a minute to establish Aaron was not just out, but gone. Unlike Joe, he’d taken things he really needed for a proper stay, and I wondered—sick at heart, unable to stop myself—how pleased Rosie would be to see him. Home for Christmas after all…Turning on my heel, I walked out.

I realised halfway down the corridor that I had no idea of where I was going, and slackened my pace. A dull blade of loss began to push its way under my heart. I tried his mobile number for the nineteenth time and got nothing. Well, I wouldn’t answer to me either, in his place. His last sight of me, I had been clasped in my ex-lover’s arms, or maybe leaping about laughing like a bloody chimp on the wall, paying no attention to his retreat, his sudden, total disappearance from my world, an instant of time I would happily have traded the rest of my life to recover.

A lock clicked down the corridor behind me, and despite knowing Aaron’s flat was empty, I spun round in stupid hope. A stocky man in his midfifties was lugging what looked like a huge navy kit bag out through his front door. He locked up behind him, shouldered the bag and set off towards me. As he drew near, he gave me a vague but friendly smile. “Evening. You all right? Looking for someone?”

No harm in trying. “Er, yes. Aaron, who lives a few doors down from you…I don’t suppose you know where he is?”

“Aaron West? Works for Sunsol Oil? Yeah, I ran into him on my way in. Said he was going out early for the Christmas shift.”

“On the…on the rig?”

“Yeah. Me too, worse luck.” He hefted the kit bag, grinning. “Mind, the pay’s spectacular. Triple time. Can’t turn that down, not with my brood. Can I give him a message for you?”

“Yes. Yes, please.” I thought fast. What the hell could I say? Just the news that he’d gone back to work instead of the house in the suburbs had lifted my heart, but then again, his work was two hundred miles away on a speck of metal in a dark, howling ocean. Maybe I was more unbearable even than I’d given myself credit for. “I keep trying his mobile, but…”

“Oh, he’ll be on the chopper by now. I’m going out by the second one. You’ll be lucky if he gets a signal once he’s on the Kittiwake too. Still, anything I can tell him for you…”

I decided on formality. Maybe Aaron didn’t want his colleagues to know that his feckless, ungrateful gay lover was running about seeking any last desperate chance to put things right. “Okay. Thank you. My name’s Dr.—”

“Dr. Barnes?” I blinked at him. Before I could open my mouth to say no, he set the heavy kit bag down. “Ah right. The new medical assistant. I get it. He was meant to meet you and escort you out, I bet. Oh, that’s typical Westie—great guy, the best, but if it’s not about hydrogen fuel-cell tech, it doesn’t really register…Well, don’t worry. I can give you a ride. Is that all your kit? Did you have your stuff sent out ahead?”

I gave a kind of affirmative grunt. I heard it with astonishment. What the fuck was I doing? My new friend—Dave Wycliffe, he told me over his shoulder, lugging his bag off the floor once more and heading towards the lift—didn’t give me a chance to insert another word edgeways, and I rode in the slipstream of his chatter all the way down to the ground floor and into the car park. When I was sitting in the passenger seat next to him, I finally allowed myself to realise my intentions. My blood ran hot and cold at the same time. Christ…I’d end up shot or tied up on the next boat for G Bay…

Wycliffe was starting the engine. He glanced across at me. “You all right, son? Been out on the rigs before?” I shook my head, unable to trust my voice. “You’ll be fine. It’s the chopper ride you want to worry about. Fucking horrible.” He seemed to find this hilarious and roared with laughter as he gunned the car out onto the road. “I hope they pay you lads triple time for the Santa shift, as well.”

I had to say something. “Is that why Aaron—Mr. West…Is that why he does it? For his family, like you?” I immediately flinched and regretted it. Calling him
Mr. West
didn’t make the question any less personal, any less likely to come from a stranger. But Wycliffe didn’t seem to find it odd—burst into laughter again. “Family? Westie? Not very likely, Doc.” He leaned forward, squinting against headlights, then eased into the traffic stream flowing south to the High Level Bridge. “Not your family man, so to speak. I don’t know what you’d call it these days—the politically correct term.
Confirmed bachelor,
shall we say. Nice enough lad, though. Don’t know how he gets away with it, with all us roughnecks out on the rig, but nobody messes with him, anyway. What about you, Doc? Wife? Kids?”

I didn’t have the strength to invent any. Mercifully, before I had to explain the incurable nature of my own bachelor status, he had pulled a photo off the dash and started telling me about Mrs. Dave and his many offspring, and after that I only had to listen.

The guard at the Baltic Road docks checkpoint was unimpressed with my frantic search for Sunsol ID in the pockets of my jacket and jeans. I didn’t think I was doing too badly, considering I knew I’d never find it. Putting a good deal of worried sincerity into the act. “I’m sorry to keep you waiting. I…”

“ID and appointment note,” the guard repeated for the third time, his head stuck through the wound-down passenger window. A sense of total unreality swept me. Whatever I was playing at, this was the end of the game. I opened my mouth to hurry it along. But Wycliffe leaned suddenly in across my lap. “Oh, come on, Finch,” he said. “Don’t be an arse. This is the new medical boy. Westie was supposed to pick him up, and the dozy sod’s forgot all about him and gone off. Probably got his papers too.”

I mimicked relieved surprise. “Oh God. Yes. That’ll be where they are. I gave them to him the other day, and…”

“All right, all right.” The guard gestured forward, clearly bored of the exchange. “Go ahead, Dave. Merry fucking Christmas to you.”

The car bumped over pitted tarmac. Around me, I began to see vast industrial shapes emerging from the darkness. I didn’t know what to expect of an oil company’s shore terminal, but perhaps the Kittiwake’s new AMO was expected to be pretty green, and the good-natured Wycliffe, having run out of family to describe, contented himself with pointing out the various processing towers and storage units along our route. My mind was floating somewhere up among the arc lights that illuminated the whole bleak, superscaled scene, but I found myself trying to retain some of the names and functions. In case I need to make polite conversation later on, I thought, a bit hysterically, and decided I should add in some good manners at this point. “It’s very good of you to bring me down here, Mr. Wycliffe. I’d have been stuck otherwise.”

“Dave,” he corrected me, slowing up as we passed a flat expanse of concrete behind wire fencing. “No trouble at all. They’re lucky to get a decent medic out on that old tub. Well, there she is—your chariot for the night. AS332 Super Puma, pretty reliable…” He paused, face twisting oddly, then shook his head. “Most of the time. Looks like they’re warming her up. We’d best get moving.”

I followed Wycliffe through what felt like miles of neon corridors and into a locker room, where he sized me up with a glance and tossed me the kind of coveralls I recognised from TV programmes as a survival suit. I dragged it on with fingers almost too damp and numb to do the job and had to stand, looking into the middle distance, while he pulled tight for me its various straps. Any minute, I knew, I would either wake up or this charade would end. Wycliffe, no matter how friendly and obliging, would see through my impostor’s shell, which had grown up to encase me almost without my realisation or consent. I’d ridden out here on the tide of his assumptions…“All right?” he said, after showing me how the life jacket worked and how to find the whistle that was sure to draw rescue down on me straightaway, if we ditched in the boundless black maelstrom of the North Sea. “You’re a bit of a funny colour. I’ll give Westie a good talking-to for leaving you to look after yourself…Come on. I can hear her powering up.”

When we emerged onto the apron on the far side of the block, I realised that the helicopter I’d seen from the road was about five times the size I’d thought, a monster of black and yellow steel, its rotors conspiring with the wind to create a roar like the end of the world. I fell back involuntarily. Wycliffe turned, grinning. “Not ridden one of these bitches before?”

“No.” I reckoned I’d better say something professional, and racked my brains. “Did a bit of evac training with the hospital, but…” That was good. It happened to be true as well, and I shut my mouth before my voice could falter.

“Well, you’re still not quite dressed for it.” Wycliffe dived back into the glassed-in office and returned a second later with a bright orange oilskin like his own. “Put that on. Right.” Other men were gathering around us, about a dozen of them, though I’d almost lost the ability to count. They were glancing at me: Wycliffe was yelling my assumed name and status. Then he grabbed my arm. “Okay, Doc, we’re off. Duck your head right down and take a run for it.”

I could say no. I could lay down the charade right here. The hot water I would be in, the humiliation would be as nothing compared to the fear climbing up in my throat. I gave it a second of thought.

And that fear was nothing, was dust in the face of losing Aaron. Of living for even one night with the knowledge that he thought himself rejected. Every instant he thought I was passing in Joe’s arms, in the warm, well-lit flat where I had tried to take him home, burned on my skin like a brand. Wycliffe, taking my stillness for a paralysis of fear, pulled me forward. “Christ, you are a rookie, aren’t you? Get your bloody head down and run!”

***

The flight took an hour and a half. After the first ten minutes or so—the brief exhilaration of ascent, which even in these circumstances was a breath-stealing kick—I closed my eyes and focussed on getting from one breath to the next without freaking out and demanding to be put back down. The wind seized us in its fist. For every blow it dealt, I felt the pilots slug it back, and every impact jarred straight through my spine. Even strapped tight to my seat, it was like being a pebble kicked in a tin can, and I was grateful that my position near the tail kept my clench-jawed terror hidden from most of the dozen other men making the trip. For a while they yelled at one another cheerfully over the roar of the engines. Then the storm increased, and even the most stalwart fell into a thoughtful silence. Dave Wycliffe, seated next to me, who had given my white-knuckled hand a friendly pat or two during our ascent, turned his attentions to the black window, where rain lashed the glass as if hurled from a bucket.

I was alone. In a space between the worlds. Behind me was a harbour where I could still find shelter if I capitulated to Joe, accepted him for what he was. In front of me—only unknowns. I had flung myself out into the night. I felt my grip on reality begin to slide, a plunging loss of bearings and identity. If this frail craft went down, I would drop untraceably into the void. What the fuck was I? A flicker in the dark yearning hopelessly towards another, which perhaps had forgotten my existence by now.

The helicopter jounced violently and tipped to the side. I experienced some tiny, distant relief that mine was not the only gasp extorted by the movement. It had wedged my hip against the bulkhead. Slowly I became aware of a pressure, a small angular shape, trapped between my skin and the metal.

Oh, Aaron.
My throat closed at the thought of him. Half convinced every pitch of the craft would be its last, I undid enough zips and straps on the survival suit and reached inside. It was an awkward stretch into the pocket of my coat. With trembling hands, I withdrew the little cardboard box and eased it open.

Broad, plain, heavy. Warming in my hand with a weight like a kiss pressed to the palm. I closed my fingers round it, tighter and tighter, until I could feel its circle burning deep into my flesh. I would never put it on—not unless he put it on me. I clutched it like a star, as the storm raged harder and the rotor blades began to wail for purchase on the air.

***

“Take it easy with him, Jens. He’s had a rough trip out, even by my standards.”

I raised my eyes from the concrete. There was an almost infinite stretch of it beneath my feet, and it was not moving. Almost infinite—in the far distance, between gigantic scaffolds and towers made of girders and chains, I could see an edge. Beyond it, darkness. A hand was clenched tight on my elbow, and I suddenly remembered the lurch of my guts as the chopper dropped through nothing, and the thud of heavy impact. Being unable to unfasten my belt, and hands reaching to do it for me. A crowded struggle down some metal stairs.

“You’re telling me. We had the rescue boat ready to go. Who the hell is he?”

The man in front of me was dressed from head to toe in orange slicks. In one hand, he held a clipboard protected by a plastic bag. He was marking off the names of the crew as they disembarked. I had thought it wet and windy back at Baltic Road. I’d had no idea. Here, the gale arrived in flying wedges, each one accompanied by a blast of horizontal rain. I could hardly breathe. The man holding me up—Dave, I remembered—was obviously experienced in making his lungs and his voice work in spite of it. “Barnes,” he bellowed cheerfully. “The new medical assistant. Bloody Westie was meant to bring him out. He forgot him. Dr. Barnes, this is our ops team leader, Jens Larsen.”

“That’s nice,” Larsen yelled back. “I’m not surprised Aaron forgot, Dave. Barnes isn’t due out for another two weeks. So like I say—who the fuck’s he?”

“What? He said he was…” Suddenly the grip on my elbow disappeared. I staggered, feeling the platform yaw, a muscle memory of flight. Wycliffe had his hand in the air and was beckoning someone over the heads of the dispersing crowd on the helipad. “Hang on. There he is. West! Over here!”

He was in front of me. He strode through the flow of men heading in the other direction, and I saw how they parted for him. I remembered him as I had first seen him—black leather and tight-fitting vest—and I remembered how he looked in early mornings, wandering around the flat with a T-shirt on over his pyjama bottoms, smiling and holding out an arm to me even though we’d just spent the whole night entwined. He was alluring, welcoming or forbidding just as he chose, and out here…out here, plainly it suited his purposes to be a sheer granite cliff. I saw in an instant why he never had any trouble from his coworkers. And he was, as always, devastating. He made the ghastly waterproofs look tailored. His short black crop was plastered down with rain. He had his usual crown of stars, the silver hairs picking up lights from the gantries. His face was stripped of all expression, a pure pale mask. You would no more mess with him than with the churchyard statue of some avenging angel. His eyes came up to meet mine.