Falling Into Heaven Page 8

  What furniture he salvaged from the divorce was already in place in the new house, all part of the service from the obliging estate agents. That first night he unpacked his clothes from the cases he had brought and arranged them in the pine wardrobes that lined his bedroom. On the table by the side of the bed there was a paperback book, lying with its pages open as though someone had put it down for a moment and was coming back to it. The film of dust on the gaudy cover showed that it had been there for some time, and it wasn’t to his taste.

  He walked up to The Maltsters, the second pub in the village, and ate a meal on the patio on the small quay where three boats were moored, their owners somewhere in the pub presumably. The evening was slow to draw in and he was in no hurry to leave, seeking out a third pint to prolong the feeling of being with people. Isolation didn’t yet quite fit him as comfortably as he had hoped it might.

  In the Maltsters toilets he pulled a small packet from his pocket and drew a couple of lines on the side of the washbasin. The drinks had made him reckless, the new life giving him false optimism.

  ‘What the fucking hell are you doing?’

  There were two of them, local men, condemnation written into their frowns. One of them wiped the powder to the floor, while the other grabbed Ben by the shirtfront. ‘You’re the new bloke, aren’t you? This isn’t London. We don’t go in for this filth round here. Fuck off out of it.’

  Ben shuffled back down the lane to his house. The keys seemed to resist his fingers at first, and as he leaned against the door fumbling for entrance he was sure he could hear someone inside. Eventually the door succumbed and as he shut it behind him he heard an echo of noise upstairs. He ran up the stairs with the bravado of the slightly drunk but of course there was no one there. It was only later as he flopped onto the bed and attempted sleep that he saw the pages of the upturned book had been moved on about thirty pages or so.

  Zoë was special and that was his inner reason in continuing to see her. He had sat beside her on the grass in the garden that August night and found himself telling her secrets and showing his thoughts as never before. He had never opened up with anyone the way he did with her that night; and although he didn’t realise it until it was too late, he never did with her again either. She realised it and saw the limitations of what they shared but was content to accept them for a while. If he had known there were imperfections in the affair he would have been mortified. She was his soul mate he told himself, the one he had searched for all his life. This was his justification in deceiving Teresa, who was in any case, so occupied with Timothy, their son, that she was happy as things were. Not that she knew about Zoë, not at first.

  The other distractions over the years she suspected but could accept if they didn’t have a name. To her close friends she referred to them as his ‘packet of sweets’. So long as they were rationed so that he didn’t get fat on them she allowed him his dalliances. When it seemed as if he was getting serious, and she always had a marvellous instinct based on his behaviours, she would move into retention mode and he would become confused about what to do. When he was like that it was never easy for him to be as decisive as he needed to be at work and so the early afternoon liaisons ceased, the late nights catching up on the figures became less necessary. Naturally the atom bomb of bonds she held, the final card she had to play if needed was Tim. No amount of silk beckoning or soft senses was a substitute for his son.

  With Teresa’s parents in Australia, and his parents both already dead it was shattering when Timothy was hi-jacked by the cancer, so swift and deadly. There was no support system to bolster Ben and Teresa and they struggled to help one another. At three Tim had a natural strength to fight and the treatment seemed to be working miracles. It dragged on for months, and a birthday shared with the nurses and doctors at the hospital was a strange highlight of the year.

  So well was the treatment progressing that he treated himself to a clandestine evening with Zoë, telling her again he loved her and dismissing from his mind her enigmatic smile that was her usual response to his sincerity. When he got back home very late Teresa was waiting up for him, her face a blank mask of revulsion, sorrow and confusion. He knew things had gone badly wrong. Tim had died.

  Ben was far more distraught than he imagined he would be. He broke down at the funeral and had to be supported by friends. Later at the house he fortified himself with a few lines and muddled through but the way Teresa stared at him stayed with him for weeks. The look was the last thing he saw at night, and Tim’s face was the first he saw in the morning. He hoped when he moved to Devon that might change, but of course it didn’t.

  The second day at the new house and he woke with a surprisingly clear head. He dressed in some old clothes and began to work in the garden. Occasionally boats drifting past would hoot at him and he waved abstractedly. He would hear occasional voices in the lane, or from nearby gardens although on the whole he was as isolated as he had hoped he would be. There was solitude and it was peaceful; but he felt more hemmed in than he had ever done.

  The garden had been well planned at some stage but was overgrown. He started hacking away in the bed nearest the house, clearing thistle and nettle. Beneath the verdant foliage there were the fresh green leaves of fuchsia plants, his father’s favourite.

  Back in the house he was surprised to find the kettle coming to the boil as he couldn’t remember having put it on. He made some tea and sat in the back room looking over the garden. Some post sounded through the letterbox and amongst the few envelopes was a letter from his solicitors. More details and the nisi, the disturbance to his single-minded state an intrusion that lasted the rest of the day. He felt invaded, as if the purpose of the isolation had been sullied. It all gave him too much time to think, to brood, and the memories were all still too fresh to be comfortable. When he needed to find solace in his work even that was dragged away from him.

  His directors were politeness personified as they asked him to attend the impromptu meeting in the boardroom. There were murmurs of discontent amongst his team because of his frequent absences during the afternoons. They understood his requirements but this amusement had taken on the dimensions of a second career. Then there were the accounts. The long positions and the breaks didn’t tally, could he explain? They were aware he was going through an acrimonious divorce and these times could be difficult. Perhaps a leave of absence while matters clarified themselves. No? Well if he insisted they bring up the matter of his…medication. They were sympathetic when a manager needed a prescription fulfilled, but possibly his own needs were not satisfied at the local pharmacy and might be of interest to security. Naturally if he saw things their way there would be a handsome compensation package, dependent upon the net position in accounts obviously, but there were pension rights to be maintained and they would not shirk where those were concerned. Their advice was to take it easy, get away from it all. His desk was cleared for him.

  After the dismissal he had initially missed the thrills and fear of the office life. He would still travel up to the City and walk around the centre, breathing in the pollution but lapping up the noise and the crowds.

  The timing of the meeting with Zoë was unfortunate. She was pre-occupied which under normal circumstances would have made him irritable; that night it made him maudlin.

  ‘Do you realise you didn’t even kiss me when we met tonight?’ she accused him.

  They were sitting in a twelfth floor hotel room in Kensington, sipping Vouvray and with a second bottle already opened. She was curled on the bed but not in invitation, while he sat hunched in an armchair.

  Images of Tim had plagued him all week but today, even as the apologetic directors had cast him out into the wilderness, his son’s face had dominated his mind, as if a zoom lens had suddenly been switched to maximum and the control kept pressed down.

  ‘I can’t stop thinking about him…’

  Her face softened into something more like an appreciation of his needs. ‘Of course not, it will b
e a dreadfully long process…not something you’ll ever get over…time heals…’

  Gradually her voice seeped into the wallpaper of the room and he was no longer aware of her words, just the soft sibilance of the tone and volume. He began thinking about Teresa and how he needed to leave her. If he was ever going to recover from what was happening to his life he needed to be with Zoë.

  ‘What was that? Sorry I missed what you said.’

  She tutted impatiently and poured herself another glass. He noticed she hadn’t taken off her shoes. ‘You weren’t listening. I said I might not meet up this weekend.’

  ‘But we always have the weekend.’

  ‘No we don’t. Not really, not all of it. You still ring home, you still bring work, and you still do what you want to do.’

  It seemed strange that he could remember the conversation word for word, although it had been their last real meeting. As he muddled around in the garden of the new house he played the words over in his mind, wondering if there was a way he could re-arrange them to suit him better.

  Neither the house nor the garden was overlooked but throughout the afternoon he constantly felt as if he was being watched as he worked. He cut the grass, took the clippings around the side to a compost tip, and when he returned a few moments later the electric line to the mower had been moved a couple of feet from the position he had left it. After the incident in the pub he had woken feeling a little nervous in case the men had reported him, or intended to come round and see him. They wouldn’t have moved the lawn mower though, more likely kids messing about.

  He took his shears and had a walk around the fence perimeters of the garden, front and back, but it wasn’t that large and didn’t take long. There was no sign anyone had been in to disturb him.

  Pubs didn’t seem a good idea that night so he drove into Dartmouth late afternoon and stocked up from a supermarket. When he got back he unpacked in the kitchen and made a meal, which he ate in the sitting room watching television. Tired, he must have dozed off because he found himself jerked awake when his glass fell out of his hands and hit the floor. The TV channel wasn’t the same one he had been watching he was almost certain.

  Teresa announced she was suing him for divorce on the same day he found out Zoë was seeing someone else. He knew what Zoë’s routine was and discreetly followed her as she walked from her office to a local wine bar. The man she kissed intimately was younger than Ben, more Zoë’s age if he was honest. He didn’t look as if he would be straddled with the baggage of dead son’s or have a wife somewhere in Surrey, or have been sacked from his job or even indulge in drugs, unless the occasional aspirin counted against him.

  He arrived morosely home to find Teresa with a man she introduced as her solicitor. The conversation was stilted but civilised; by then he was past caring. The people and the events were crowding in on him and he needed to get away, to escape.

  The house by the sea was his escape, his salvation. No one knew where he was; no one there knew his past. He could rid himself of the drugs, the memories and begin again. Eventually he would feel alone there, and then the re-emergence could truly begin.

  The last morning he woke late and walked casually along the lane just for the fun of it. He reached the end where the road forked and turned back. A few people nodded and two mumbled good morning in genuine pleasure at seeing him. The sky was clear and the sun was warm, raising his spirits into a semblance of optimism.

  When he got back to the house he opened the door and smelt perfume; familiar and evocative. She was sitting in the room at the back looking into the garden.

  ‘Zoë!’ he said in wonder. ‘What are you doing here?’ Despite himself he was delighted to see her.

  She smiled in a way that made his stomach churn and raised her fingers to her lips. ‘I’m not really here.’

  He thought he understood, having enjoyed enough clandestine meetings with her to know when she had slipped away from where she should have been. ‘That’s wonderful. I’ll get us a drink.’

  The wine was in the kitchen. The woman in there turned her neck and shoulders to see who had come into the room but kept her body facing the work surface where she was filleting some fish. ‘Fresh caught this morning,’ she said.

  ‘What the hell are you doing here? I’ve sent the nisi back – isn’t it bad luck to see each other before the absolute comes through or something?’

  She smiled and pointed to the ceiling. ‘Quiet or you’ll wake them, it was a long journey.’ She frowned, ‘Oh, and I’m not really here of course.’

  The stairs took him up to a narrow landing from which led the bedroom doors and the walkway through to the bathroom. They were in his room, his mother reading her book; its gaudy cover smeared with her fingerprints in the dust, his father staring out of the window, waving to someone.

  ‘Hello, dear,’ his dead mother said brightly. ‘I know we shouldn’t be here, but you’ll always have us…you know that don’t you?’

  His father glanced away from the window as casually as if they had met only hours earlier. ‘We’re always here for you, son. Don’t mind us.’

  It suddenly dawned on Ben who his father might be waving to in the garden. He ran outside and onto the lawn. There was a boy at the edge of the garden, feet dangling in the river, dangerously close to falling in. ‘Tim,’ he heard himself yell. ‘You shouldn’t be there.’

  Tim turned to him, momentarily frightened, then he grinned and waved. Ben looked behind him, back towards the house. Zoë and Teresa were setting places at the wooden table on the patio; his parents were leaning out of the bedroom windows waving at Tim. Other doors and windows were opening, the side gate moving, as his solitude and his sanity tumbled into a crowd of memories that would haunt and contain him as they whispered in the night and prodded him during the day.

  CALLING DOWN THE LIGHTNING

  Clancy took out his glass eye and set it on the bar. ‘That’s what the fecking Troubles cost me, so don’t you go spouting that United Ireland rubbish here!’

  The eye trick was Tim Clancy’s party-piece and one I’d seen him perform many times before. It was guaranteed to stem the fiercest rhetoric and make the staunchest Republicans go weak at the knees. The two young turks this performance was directed at were no exception. One of them went stark white as the blood drained from his face and he staggered to the door, the other dashed for the toilet, his hand clamped over his vomit-filled mouth.

  ‘Go easy on them, Tim,’ I said. ‘They’re only kids.’

  ‘Then it’s time they learned a few facts of life,’ Clancy said, winking his empty eye socket.

  ‘Oh for God’s sake, Tim, put it back in!’

  Clancy grinned hugely and scooped up the eye from the bar. ‘You’re too soft, Bernard,’ he said, but did as I asked.

  When I took on the pub I knew there was a large Republican contingent that used the White Hart as a local, but then this was a predominantly Irish area of London, and these people were passionate in their beliefs.

  I’d always made it clear that I would only tolerate so much and would come down hard on any troublemakers. My own political beliefs were well documented. With a Catholic mother and a Protestant father I spanned the divide with a dextrous display of political fence sitting. It didn’t make me the most popular landlord in the area, but I held the respect of most of my customers, and the local constabulary tended to leave me alone, so I was fairly happy.

  At least I was until I met Siobhan.

  I’d been having a lot of trouble keeping staff. The worst thing about employing youngsters was the fact that they viewed working behind the bar of a pub as just a short-term way of making some pin money, and soon, often within months, they were ready to move on. I couldn’t really blame them. Bar work is very tiring and poorly paid, unless you have your own pub, and even then the rewards are slight for the number of hours you have to put into it. But I suppose it’s something you’re either cut out for or not; and I’d never tried any other way to make a liv
ing.

  I was down to just two staff, and things were getting desperate. I’d placed an advert in three of the White Hart’s windows for bar staff, and even gone so far as to give the details to the local job centre.

  It was early on a Monday morning. The weekend had been busy – so busy in fact that I had gone to bed on the Sunday night without stacking the shelves for the next day. It was something I never usually did, but I’d been run off my feet the night before and the thought of dragging crates up from the cellar and stacking bottles had little appeal. Consequently I had to rise an hour earlier that morning.

  Monday morning and the first frost of winter had coated the cobbles of the back yard with white, and I shivered in my shirtsleeves as I stacked the crates of empty mixer bottles ready for collection. The girl seemed to appear from nowhere.

  ‘I’ve come about the job,’ she said, a soft burr to her voice – Roscommon or Longford I guessed... even Galway at a pinch.

  ‘And isn’t it more common to use the front door?’

  She shrugged. ‘I heard you working, and the gate was open. I could have been knocking at the front for an age and you would have never heard me.’

  There was a twinkle in her gentle brown eyes and a slightly mocking chuckle in her voice. She was slim with long chestnut hair that fell loose to her shoulders. She was wearing a burgundy cardigan over a cream silk blouse, a black skirt that just covered her knees and sensible flattish shoes. She was very pretty and I could see immediately that, so long as she could do the job, she could become one of the White Hart’s greatest assets.