THREE STORIES

Alan Dent

A BRIDE'S MOTHER

POLAROIDS

COMPANY

THE BRIDE’S MOTHER           

            Fiona Bates was in a fluster because it was her daughter’s wedding day. They’d agreed the reception would be at home, the mother being on her own and pinched by a low income and rising prices. The day before, she cooked the beef, dressed the salmon, composed the trifle, filled the ageing fridge with the quartered pork pies, the triangular sandwiches and the coleslaw, prepared to her own recipe. The wings were attached to the dining table inherited from her brother. It would be a buffet, with paper plates and plastic cutlery which, although it disappointed her, the event happening only once, or so she assumed, practicality had to prevail. She was relaxed about the matter of space. The Maples was ample for seventy guests. The two “reception” rooms, as she had fallen into calling them, in harmony with the estate agents, were broad and long, the breakfast room a comely square and the converted kitchen, which ran the width of the house, could accommodate thirty easily. Then there was the garden. Gladly the forecast was for dry and warm, the garden furniture could seat a dozen, and no doubt people would be happy to stand on the lawns or wander to the far end where the lilacs and rhododendrons made a barrier.

            The house had been hers for sixteen years by agreement with Bill, her “ex”, who had signed it over in return for exemption from support payments. Her solicitor had advised otherwise.

                        “As it’s the matrimonial home, Mrs Bates, your ex-husband can’t force you out. You’re secure until your youngest reaches eighteen.”

Though Fiona understood the principle perfectly, she attended to her anxiety. She knew Bill for a cheat and a chiseller. To be turned out on the street with three children to care for. She wouldn’t allow the possibility. He put up no resistance, though he did rehearse what the lawyer had said and aver he had no intention of pushing for the sale of the house. On divorce, he had shrugged at the equal division of the estate; Fiona had the children with her, he was content to let them stay in the house, which remained in both names.

            She heard Bill was sharing a damp flat with a former colleague. His chest had always been bad in winter, often forcing him to bed for a fortnight. His rattling cough seemed almost an accusation. She couldn’t expunge the lingering belief, installed when she was a child of less than school age, that afflictions of the body were a punishment for badness. An ill-ventilated, humid space would surely worsen things, which was no less than he deserved.

            She met him the day war in the Falklands was declared. Like her, he was appalled, which added to the attraction of his charm: he was one of those men who talk unaffectedly to women and have no need of directness. Though he said nothing which might have indicated romantic interest on that first occasion, she went home sure he was already keen. He came from less favoured circumstances. Her father was a bricklayer and not shy of hard work, but his deafness hampered him. He lost his hearing suddenly at the age of eight, and was sent to the deaf school, which he hated because it set him apart. The teachers were kindly and he made progress, but he liked to be among hearing lads. A keen footballer and cricketer, the small pool of talent among others like him, left him thwarted and he was liberated when he imposed himself by skill and camaraderie in the best teams in the town. Her mother, born like her father in the mid 30s, had no qualifications but once her children were in school, found work in a jewellers in the shopping centre, which suited her appreciation of fine things. They were a provident couple, paid off the mortgage as soon as they could and saved for the inevitable “rainy day”.

            Bill’s family was chaotic. His father was a drinker and gambler whose aversion to domesticity didn’t prevent him fathering four. Though a skilled man in the engineering industry, he had lost several jobs; the family’s income fluctuated and even when handsome was frittered. The house wore an air of neglect, and Mrs Bates, often shabbily dressed, was seen coming home with two heavy bags of shopping, her shoulders stooped and her eyes downcast.

            Nevertheless, Bill was easy-going, friendly and warm-spirited. He denied his teetotalism was a reaction to his father’s indulgence: he didn’t like being intoxicated and preferred an espresso to a pint. In the pub, he would drink a bitter lemon or a lime and soda and responded laughingly to his mates’ ribbing. Though only twenty, he’d set up his own little café where he prepared the food himself, waited tables, cleaned up and through energy and organisation needed to employ only one part-time waitress. At catering college, he’d been first in his class. His certificate was framed and hung in his bedroom.

             One thing which disturbed Fiona from the start, was his eye for a pretty woman.

                        “I’m only looking,” he would say to her reprimands, “anyway, she’s lovely. Don’t tell me you don’t notice a good-looking bloke.”

                        “I don’t make it obvious.”

                        “Would you rather I did it on the sly?”

                        “I’d rather you didn’t do it all.”

                        “That’s expecting too much.”

            They rubbed along for four years during which she was never certain she wanted to marry him but impressed by his enterprise and ambition and grown used to his presence, added to the absence of any compelling replacement, was unable to let him go. When she told him the fateful news, he responded pleasantly.

                        “Well, we’ll get married then. Or set up house together. Whichever you choose. The café’s doing well and I’m sick of paying rent. I can get a mortgage. We can afford a nice place, Penwortham or Fulwood.”

            She chose the semi in Crookings Lane, at the quiet end close to the golf course and the river, their first daughter was born a month before the third consecutive Tory general election victory and Fiona took a year off from her job in the council finance office, to which she would return only when she was on her own and could no longer work in one of Bill’s three cafes.

            The ceremony was to be at Lune Street Methodists, because that was Fiona’s grandmother’s church and she had taken her to the morning service as a child. It had always seemed a fine occasion, the people in their best, the men in dark suits, the women topped with hats that were taken from the upper shelf of the wardrobe for no other purpose, the booming of the male voices in prayer, the vicar presiding from the pulpit as if he knew the truth of the world, the lovely hymns and the friendly people. Though she had dismissed religion in her late teens, the white stone of the exterior, the dark timber inside, the weight of a hymn-book in her hand, even the tedious sermon, reminded her of the sweet hours with her grandma, and the treat afterwards, an ice-cream or a bar of chocolate.

            Fiona had made two trips into town in search of a dress, but nothing she tried pleased her like what she used to buy in Speights. On the bus home, her dispirited mood was lifted when she remembered the mauve, low collared item she’d bought for her nephew’s wedding. It was still hanging in its protective covering, at the far end of the rail, never thought of. Surely it wouldn’t fit her now. How much weight had she gained? She was quick up the stairs. She laid it across the bed. Oh, there was no doubt it was quality. How much had it cost her? Bill had shaken his head. She slipped out of her cheap Debenham’s skirt and blouse and stood side on to the long mirror. The pout of her stomach disappointed her. She pulled it in and wondered if, once zipped, the fabric would hold. To her surprise and joy, the cloth clung to her without straining at her bulges. She turned one way and another, the thought coming to her she was still sufficiently womanly , still attractive; why should she be on her own? It would have to go to the dry cleaners, but it was simple enough not to have gone out of fashion, and the superior fabric and cut were unmistakable. A shadow of guilt crossed her mind: shouldn’t she have something new for Emily’s wedding? But who would know it wasn’t ?

            Jacob’s friend Joe, whose father ran a heating firm, borrowed a family Mercedes to take them to the church. The protocol was set aside: Fiona, Emily and the bridesmaids arrived together. Jacob and his brother Adam, his best man, were already in the church. Among the passers-by who paused to watch the bridal group emerge from the car, a man lingered in the entrance to St George’s shopping centre, apparently unimplicated and unnoticed. Fiona adjusted her hat and smoothed her dress. Samantha, her elder sister walked Emily down the aisle and gave her away. Jacob was dapper in the morning suit hired from Moss, but Fiona noticed his tie was slightly awry. The day she met him, when he arrived at the house in his overalls, she disliked him. He was a bustling, energetic man, skilled with his hands, muscular and unapologetic about his appetites. He sat on the sofa next to Emily without a thought for his grubby workwear, and though it was true the suite was threadbare in places, she thought, all the same, after all. It had taken a long time and much effort for her to change her view somewhat. When her boiler was condemned on its annual service, he fitted a new one. For years, the bathroom door had needed lifting towards the hinges to close properly. Jacob removed it, fitted new hinges and it swung to and open with ease. Water began to ooze between the pedestal of the toilet and the tiles. He humped a new one up the stairs and fitted it in an hour. None of this was done out of a desire to ingratiate. Jacob would have obliged a neighbour; but Fiona was unable to sustain entirely her negative feeling in the face of gratuitous favours.

                        “His best man could have told him his tie was skew-whiff,” she whispered to Samantha.

            Jerry Park had a deep voice and spoke slowly, as if everything he said had been inevitable for centuries. Fiona attended more to these qualities than to the vows, but when Emily repeated them in her piping tones, she had to dab a tear. To have and to hold, from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer…to love and cherish till death us do part..She had repeated the words herself, thirty-four years earlier, self-conscious before the little assembly. On the church steps confetti had been liberally cast onto her hair, her dress, her bouquet. It was, at the time, the best day of her life.

            The bits of coloured paper fell in a gentle storm over Emily. The photographer, a young man dressed as if he was a guest which annoyed Fiona, riled her more by his importunity.

                        “If you could stand here. That’s it. No. You at the back. Marvellous. Now move a little closer to one another.. Big smile everyone.”

He insisted on a set of shots before the church doors.

                        “How many does he need?” said Fiona to Jacob’s mother, who laughed off the remark.

                        “I’m sure he knows what he’s doing. He’s a professional.”

Fiona was inclined to answer he was a professional pain in the backside, but her thoughts were on the reception and her buffet, and she blenched from introducing a tone of grumpiness.

            All the guests gathered in The Maples, she uncovered the food.

                        “Help yourselves, everybody. Drinks are in the kitchen, wine, beer fruit juices, mineral water. There’ll be a champagne toast after the speeches.”

            She kept a judicious eye on what was being eaten and was disappointed to see the salmon was virtually untouched.  Her sister was installed in the corner of the three-seater sofa holding a plate adorned with sandwiches, two quarters of pork pie and a little enclave of coleslaw.

                        “How are you, Briony? Wasn’t it a lovely service.”

                        “Oh, one hundred per cent. Emily’s dress, to die for, honestly Fiona she looked gorgeous.”

                        “I know. Have you tried the salmon? I thought of you when I was dressing it. I remembered you’re partial to fish and there was a full salmon at Gary’s fiftieth, wasn’t there?”

                        “That’s right. It looks delicious. I’ll have a bit later, but to be fair, I was hungry as a donkey. These egg mayonnaise are smashing.”

                        “Tuck in. That was my second attempt at the mayonnaise, the first went haywire. I think I added the oil too fast.”

                        “I’ve done that before today. You didn’t throw it did you? You can always make it work.”

Fiona was sightly put out to hear she could have rescued the initial batch.

                        “I couldn’t be bothered. Easier to start from scratch.”

            A ball had been discovered, Fiona had no idea where, and a petty footie game started on the main lawn, Adam exhibiting his skill in keepie-uppies before letting the little kids kick and run. A red-haired boy of ten or so lofted the white orb which floated and plopped into the flower bed where it flattened some of the oxeye daisies, the lad running after it and trampling the rest. Fiona went discreetly to inspect her bruised blooms.

                        “Little bugger,” said Jacob’s father, “I’d give a him a good telling off if I were you.”

                        “The children have to play, don’t they,” she said with an excusing little laugh, casting another regretful glance at the damage.

                        “They can play without ruining the garden. No respect. Who is the little devil anyway?”

                        “I don’t know,” said Fiona, and seeing the father-in-law’s plate was almost bare, added, “would you like me to get you some more food, there’s a lovely salmon.”

                        “I’m more of a beef man, to be fair. I’ll have a few more slices of that and a bottle of Old Peculier. I can serve myself, you’ve enough to do.”

            The red-head was thrusting aside the gentle, pink displays of Fiona’s hydrangea, his feet on her aubretia.

                        “I’ll get the ball for you,” she called.

                        “Noah, get out of there!” a woman’s strident shout rang out.

                        “I’m lookin’ for me fuckin’ ball.”

                        “Get out o’there. Now! And mind your language.”

            The intervention had no more effect than a plea for mercy from a tyrant, the boy delving deeper into the bush, squashing more definitively the violet petals he was unaware of.

                        “I can’t do anything with him,” said the mother, drawing hard on her cigarette, “I’m sure he’s ADHD or Asperger’s, one o’ those anyway. Noah ! Pack it in now before I come and get you.”

            The boy lifted his sullen face to the woman.

                        “Well, where’s me fuckin’ ball?”

                        “What’s your relationship to Jacob?” asked Fiona, as if the child hadn’t spoken.

                        “I’m his cousin, on his mother’s side.”

            For a second, Fiona reflected that she was sure cousins weren’t be invited to the reception, only to the evening disco.

                        “’Scuse me, I’m just going to see everyone’s getting fed.”

            The speeches took place in the kitchen, the patio doors pulled wide so the overspill could occupy the flags. Given the absence of the bride’s father, Samantha opened, graciously thanking everyone for their presence, praising Fiona for the fulsome and appetising catering, adopting an especially indulgent and caressive tone for the bridesmaids, wishing the young couple a long, productive and happy union and ending with a note of sadness on having to take second place in her little sister’s affections. The guests applauded, cheered and whistled. The football sailed over their heads and crashed into a trio of long-stemmed glasses on the island.

            Jacob, who had no skill with words and addressing gatherings, confined himself to generous comments about Emily’s mother, his own parents, his best man, and brought a lump to sentimental throats when he declared his bride the loveliest girl in the world and promised to love her forever and make her as happy as she deserved.

            It was left to Adam to introduce the customary levity. He told the story of the first car he and his brother bought together, an end-of-its-life Fiesta whose ignition had failed and had to be parked on a hill or bump started, and whose driver’s door would fly open unexpectedly; of the camping holiday in the Langdales when the biblical rain began the instant the final tent peg was hammered, leaving them floating and having to take shelter in the Old Dungeon Ghyll, from which they were expelled at four a.m. after “late tasting”, blathered and incoherent, into the King Lear storm to spend the night in the Mini; of the time Jacob took it into his head to make the family a spaghetti bolognaise and finding no tinned tomatoes in the cupboard substituted a bottle of tomato ketchup; of his brother’s first girlfriend who invited him to her home and made him a cup of Earl Grey tea, on tasting which he remarked, “There’s something wrong with your water.”

            Everyone agreed it was a splendid address and Adam, his responsibility over, abandoned himself to Newcastle Brown and slouched, his collar undone, on a plastic chair under the apple tree.

            By four, the assembly was beginning to thin, and the salmon was still more than half intact.

                        “We’re going to make tracks, love,” said Briony. “Gary wants a nap before the evening do. No stamina these days.”

                        “Take some of the salmon with you, you can pop it in the fridge and have it tomorrow. I’ll wrap a piece.

                        “No, no, don’t bother. We’ve freezer full of God knows what.”

                        “It’s no bother. Hang on. You like salmon don’t you, Gary.”

                        “Aye, I have to say, I’m partial.”

            While her sister went in search of kitchen foil, Briony gave Gary a look which made him dread the evening. If he could stay at home. There was footie and boxing on the telly. He could hang his uncomfortable suit in the wardrobe, slob in his corner of the sofa with a couple of cans of Boddingtons, and nod off if the game was slack.

                        “Here we are,” said Fiona.

            She hacked free a heavy section of the neglected fish, wrapped it tightly in the silver and held it out to her sister like a priest offering the wafer to a communicant.

                        “Grab that, Gary. See you later, love.”

            There were no more than a dozen remaining. Fiona tidied plates, wiped the kitchen surfaces and took a few sandwiches for herself, having been too nervous and busy to eat earlier. She sat at the round, imitation wicker table on the patio. Samantha strode across the lawn, her long reach hampered by the dress which encircled her ankles. She sat opposite her mother and set her champagne glass, in which there was a little pool of golden liquid, between them.

                        “Guess what Mrs Bellis told me?” she said, leaning her long, slim torso forward and stroking a blonde wisp from her cheek.

            Mrs Bellis lived five doors from The Maples and had been very kind to Fiona when her marriage had collapsed. Bill, like all straying spouses, had assumed he could conceal his affair, which he thought a bagatelle. His greedy male eye had noticed the curves and delicacies of several of the girls he employed as part-time waitresses. What restrained him was only fear of a possible rejection. A hand on the backside of a sixteen-year-old who complained to her parents might bring an angry father, and though he had no qualms about his ability with his fists, it was damage to his business which made him anxious. To become known as the groping café proprietor might deter the youngsters who gathered at the weekend and during holidays and the older habitués might boycott in sympathy.

 Flirtatious, suggestive, provocative in her dress and postures, Abigail anaesthetised his concerns. To his first relatively innocent touches, she responded with batting eyelids and giggles. The customers gone and the door locked one Saturday as the two of them cleared up, he wrapped his arm round her waist and reached up to caress her breast.

            “Bill,” she said, “what are you like?”

How Fiona knew she could never have specified, but as everyone, was able to say “I just did”.

            “My husband has left me,” she declared to Mrs Bellis, after she had expelled him. She knew the old woman and her husband were charitable, always willing to help those in need and especially motivated by children, perhaps because they had none of their own. They were practical in their generosity, looking after Emily and Samantha if Fiona wanted to go out, willing to keep an eye on the house for a weekend.

Now widowed and ninety-three, Mrs Bellis continued in her sympathetic efforts, serving tea and toasted teacakes at the Methodist playgroup twice a week and supporting good causes from what she thought of as her plentiful pension. Every Sunday, at six , Fiona carried to her door a plate of roast dinner.

            “What?” said Fiona.

            “Well, I don’t know if she’s right. Her eyes aren’t brilliant, are they. But she says dad was outside the church.”

Fiona stared at her daughter and tried to summon up the image of her ex among the arrivals. She hadn’t spotted him which surely meant he couldn’t have been there. For a moment she was inwardly still, but anger seized her so she might have a violent outburst.

            “Where?” she said. “I didn’t see him. No one else says they did. If he’d been there someone would have told me.”

            “Across the road, in the entrance to St George’s. She says he was leaning against the wall as everyone arrived.”

Yes, that would be just like him. She felt violated. He had invaded her space, transgressed on her privacy. What had he come for? To spite her. What was Emily’s wedding to do with him? He had forfeited his right to an interest. Her daughters belonged to her. It had always been her conviction that mothers had prime rights over children. She thought of the effort she had made over the food and the preparation of the house, an effort energised by devotion, while he, what was he but a cheap philanderer? What she had noticed first about the girl was a slight turn in her left eye. Her pale skin and the indeterminate shade of her mousey hair gave her an unhealthy hue. Fiona regained a little dignity from her not being a undisputed beauty, emitting effortless charm, yet at the same time, that her husband’s opportunism had landed on such an unworthy object galled her. She had confronted her rival in the café at the end of a Thursday afternoon. The teenager had shrunk into herself a little, chewed her lip and said nothing. Bill had appeared from the cellar. She had thrown at him the ring worked off her finger with some difficulty. He tried to follow its course as it bounced among the tables on which the chairs were upturned. These ugly memories subverted the beauty of the occasion. It was her day. A tiny objection asserted itself: Emily was the bride. Yet she couldn’t retreat from her conviction. Everyone would remember the fine spread which had all but exhausted her straightened budget. For years, people would remark on how splendidly she had married her daughter, even if the house bore unconcealable signs of neglect.

The pub was a big, architecturally uninspiring building by a roundabout on the main road south, but it was able to offer pie and chips at reasonable cost. Adam’s friend Kyle, who was trying to make his way in the genre, presided as DJ. A hundred and fifty had been invited. As she slid from the back seat of the taxi, Fiona surveyed the car park.

            “It would be just like him to turn up and mingle,” she said to Samantha.

            “I don’t think so, mum. Anyway, what harm did he do? He just wanted to see Emily go into church. She is his daughter after all.”

            “And what kind of father is he? Falling for the first floosy to bat her eyelids at him. He isn’t even a grown up. And he’s ruined my day. I don’t know how you can have any sympathy for him, Samantha. All the work I put in. I looked forward to it for so long. Ruined.”

            “Emily doesn’t know, and I don’t think she’d be bothered if she did.”

            “Bothered? I’d make sure she was bothered.”

The expansive room was dark and noisy. It was impossible to hold a conversation. The pie and chips were served at nine, people queuing with expectant paper plates and plastic knives and forks . The food, the drink and the dancing drew almost all the focus. Emily, out of her wedding dress and engineered into a slinky red low-cut number with slits along each thigh, was the centre of attention and amply provided with gin and tonics, Cava, and spiced rum, she flopped from friend to friend, relation to relation in blissful self-abandon. Fiona jigged on the dancefloor to three tunes she favoured, but by ten felt it right to leave the last two hours to the youngsters. The taxi driver asked whose big day it was and if she’d had a good time. She tipped him a pound.

If Samantha didn’t come home, she would be alone. The table bore the remnants of the food, the salmon still substantial. There’s was plenty of tidying to be left for the morning. Regarding herself in the long mirror, she judged the dress a success and slipping it to  her ankles, pulled in her tummy and thought once more she was not yet beyond desiring; but the thought of Bill, lurking like a thief or a murderer, invaded her mind and maddened her. She pulled the unwarmed sheets around her. “Ruined” she said to herself. “It was my day, and he ruined it.” 

POLAROIDS

 Duckworth, young, took naked, polaroid photographs of his girls and women. None was a girlfriend, as he failed and failed again to achieve the desired status of boyfriend. Mark Edmondson, who was in his form, at fourteen took up with Emma Baines, like him, sporty and diligent. They attained a certain parochial celebrity as a couple. Duckworth was baffled by the pleasant relations which prevailed between them. They were frequently together, the teachers smiled on their romance, it was said their parents were delighted by the liaison. Edmondson was a friendly, modest type who Duckworth got on with well ,though they were far from close. Early to mature physically, he was taller and more muscular than most of his peers and to his physique added skilfulness which made him captain of the rugby and cricket teams and county champion at long jump and middle-distance running. Oddly, he wasn’t a footballer, lacking the ability to run with the ball at his toes, while Duckworth was a nippy forward who played for the school and the local Rovers. Edmondson and Baines were married at twenty-one, while Duckworth, though he had experienced physical intimacy, had yet to establish a relationship with a woman.

Often, ruminating on his youth, the image came back to him of the athlete and his girl walking Crow Hills Road on the way to school. It excluded him. Painfully, he recalled that at fourteen, while his classmate was almost a man, he was a skinny boy six inches shorter, four stones lighter and though blessed with a modicum of prowess, not thought of as a sportsman. Far worse was his failure with girls. Not that he wasn’t fancied. He had a certain cuteness and charm, and his crooked smile and big brown eyes didn’t go unnoticed. Yet beyond the excitement the curves and delicacies of the girls aroused, he could find no territory on which to meet. Edmondson seemed to possess some secret. He and Emma Baines knew one another in a way which stumped Duckworth.

He married at thirty-nine a woman of thirty-three who saw him as a good enough potential father. They had three children in four years, two girls and a boy who went to university and gained professional jobs: Sally a primary school teacher, Grace an accountant and Luke a civil engineer. They moved away, Luke to Sydney where he said he could earn more and the life was more relaxed, the girls to the south-east where the opportunities were greater. At fifty-seven, Laura died of breast cancer. It had been a liaison which, for a while, had abated loneliness, but over time he had come to feel, his children beyond dependence on him, his wife had little need of him. The experience of long years of singlehood, during which he might have had six or seven brief affairs a year, was reawakened in memory, and he began to feel he hadn’t attained a real relationship with Laura.

The anticipation of freedom in retirement had eventuated in a fair portion of isolation and loneliness. Early release from the finance office of the borough council when Laura died seemed like the promise of a new life. Brimley, who he’d worked with for more than a quarter of a century, frequented dating sites, linked up with women in distant towns, had holidays in Greece and Italy with two, but failed to find the love and endurance he was seeking. But he had never been married. Casual liaisons attracted Duckworth. He could enjoy the solitude and independence of his home, but at the weekends have the company of some interesting and charming woman. The first lived in a caravan in Borrowdale. He drove up on a rainy Friday evening. The interior was lit by an arrangement of candles, some tall and slender, leaning from the top of twisted brass sticks; others, no more than tealights; but every surface which could accommodate a waxen flame was occupied. It struck him at once as perilous. Veronica, a gypsy scarf tied to her thick, black, fussy hair, her sixteen stone bulk interposed between the window and the table, would have been hard pressed to extricate herself had the curtains or a throw caught ablaze.

            “Do you like my candles?” she said by way of introduction.

            “Yes, I don’t mind them.”

            “These are perfumed,” she said, pointing to a cluster by the hob. “Can you smell them?

            “I can. Delightful.”

She told him her life story, how she’d grown up in poverty in the north-east, married at sixteen a lad who joined the merchant navy never to be seen again; pregnant and abandoned had turned to prostitution, for which, she hoped, he wouldn’t blame her and had turned her life around by getting a degree in graphic design from a London college. At the revelation of her past as a sex worker, Duckworth was ready to flee, but the rain had become a storm which rocked the mobile home, lashed the windows and dashed his hopes. She opened a bottle of Pinot Grigio and had finished three glasses before he’d had more than two mouthfuls. The second bottle exhausted with equal speed, she took out her tobacco tin, papers and little block of resin.

            “No thanks,” he said to the offer of a drag.

Determined to escape, he excused himself and ran to his car at ten, but the wheels span in the mud. He turned off the engine and resigned himself to a night in the reclining seat, but Veronica loomed out of the darkness, a vast waterproof draped over her head and shoulders and insisted he come back into the warm. All his thoughts were of how he was to avoid intimacy.

            “Help me fold down the bed,” she said at two a.m.  “it’s quite roomy.”

            “Oh, I’ll be all right in the chair. I don’t want to intrude.”

It was her place and she was not to be controverted. The bed made, she began to peel off her layers. Duckworth took refuge in the tiny toilet to emerge only when he heard her snoring. He lay atop the duvet fully clothed and waking from his fitful dose at five, heard neither rain nor wind. He slipped from the bed, out of the door, found half a dozen bricks piled by the step, jammed three behind each rear wheel and skidded and slid his way to liberty.

Though Veronica was perhaps the most unnerving of his dating site encounters, it dawned on him at length that there was a reason most of the singles were single, a realisation which engendered painful self-examination. A week in Corfu with a couple of dozen fellow searchers after soulmates, left him acutely depressed. Brian monopolised every conversation with talk of war gaming, Christine barely uttered a word but prayed loudly before meals.,Jim’s mobile was loaded with photos of his vegetable garden, and Sarah carried everywhere a machine which, she claimed, could pick up brain waves and rectify personality disorders. He’d imagined a relaxed group, sunshine, walks on hot sand, laughter and light-heartedness and, surely, one woman at least whose chemistry would match his own. He was in a doldrum for weeks and a question haunted him:  what about himself did others find so off-putting as the glaring peculiarities he ran up against in the others?

Whatever it might be, it wasn’t of recent origin. The puzzle was that he hadn’t found insuperable barriers to sex. Why had those girls and women been willing to go to bed with him, but not to establish a loving liaison? If he’d had a friend to confide in, someone he trusted and could rely on, he would have asked his opinion directly.  Once a month he met up for a drink and chat with Catterall, his immediate superior at the town hall. He was congenial because they shared interests in football and snooker, though Duckworth hardly played the latter, and the swift two hours smoothed the sharp edges of his solitariness; but he couldn’t have shared his inner conflicts. He regretted his brother who died in a car accident at forty-five. Would he have been able to tell him? Perhaps he could have hinted and Jeff, being in tune with his emotions, might have intuited.

The light was fading and his kitchen, poorly illuminated on the brightest day, began to make his mood more sombre. He moved to the living room which hadn’t been decorated for twenty-three years and whose familiarity both reassured and appalled. How could he pass the time? Once, he had attended to the news out of a sentimental desire to be a good citizen, but there seemed to be more and more glamorous young women presenters who reminded him of his condition. Nor did the bulletins bring him the sense that he could make a difference. He had done nothing more than cast his vote, but always with a conviction of full responsibility: it was one vote only, but everyone had to take the matter seriously. Issues of life and death were at stake. Now, he had the sense that voting itself had somehow been degraded. He cast his ballot into a void. He could stomach the broadcasts for no more than two minutes.

In the corner of the sofa, watching the occasional dogwalker and wondering if one evening, out of the blue, someone might knock on his door, an idea came to him. On top of the bookcase, by the rear window at which hung the curtains he couldn’t be troubled to wash, were his old photo albums, bulging envelopes and plastic bags. He brought the little, metal, white three-step ladder, stained by small spills and slops, from the kitchen and making a little space, opened and set it stable. Dust fell into his eyes and made him sneeze as he reached up. Did he need everything? He was unable to remember. The whole collection piled on the floor, he took a green album to the sofa and flicked. There were pictures of his mother, himself and his brother as children, his cousins, the house where he grew up, a few of his father, including one in a strongman pose in swimming trunks. Recollection delayed him. No doubt there were many more: his teenage years, the holidays in the Lakes and Cornwall with his mates. He returned to the corner and attempted rough triage. At length he discovered a picture of a smiling girl of sixteen or seventeen, naked from the waist up on a bed, a poster of Bryan Ferry behind her. He sat down once more and pulled the wad of photos of miscellaneous sizes from the bursting envelope.

The girl’s name returned to him rapidly. Judy Partridge. As far as he could recall, there was a sole assignation, in her house, on an afternoon. Her father was a doctor and they lived in a fine detached place with five bedrooms. He hadn’t seduced her. There was kissing and fondling and the photo, after which she dressed and he had to leave. Was that the only occasion? Yes, he was sure; but he had run into her many times in The Cedarwood, The Fleece, The Theatre. How strange. And where was she now and what had she done with her life? He experienced an intense urge to tear up the image. He had no right to it. Yet it was his. He set it on the cushion and continued.

A series of photos showed a very pretty girl with auburn hair and a remarkable figure. Mostly they were relatively tasteful. She was smiling and conveyed intimacy; but one or two were crude. He felt slightly ashamed. How old must he have been? Twenty, and she eighteen. All the same, it was extraordinary to have them at his age. These were not like pictures of strangers in magazines or online, this was Caroline Newman. He met her at a party in Fulwood where he went with Ged Foster and Ed Lucas. She wore linen in bright colours, loose tops, long flowing skirts and carried a fabric bag adorned with multiple little mirrors because she had lived in India for a while where her mother worked as an academic. It had been an intense, very brief business. Perhaps no more than a dozen occasions before she revealed she had a serious boyfriend and cut all contact. Fascinated by her loveliness, he sat in bemusement. Why had she flirted and enticed him? He was at a loss.

Some of the girl’s names came back to him with difficulty. There was the robust, forward lass who had walked home with him from The Lamb, invited him in as her parents were away, stripped off and thrown her arms around him. Jane. But her family name evaded him. He remembered the embarrassment and disappointment of prematurity. Diane Griffin he had known through church and the youth club. The youngest of three girls, she flourished in the lee of her sisters who were more serious and burdened. Their first assignation had been on Hurst Grange Park, close to The Aspels where she lived. Her father, a dark-haired and browed Scot held an important position in social work, and the family were stalwarts of the Congregational. It must have been summer for she was wearing a thin cotton dress. His hands on her waist brought into his mind the picture of her slim hips and the flat expanse of her belly. The dark had fallen. They were among the trees, she with her back against the bark of an oak. No doubt it was still standing. He was surprised when she didn’t discourage his lifting her dress. How many times? Four or five. What happened? She began to turn cold, he thought he remembered, but it would have been no good. He had no feeling for her beyond the tight desire for her body.

Older women began to appear. It seemed he had made an attempt at chronology. Mrs Dewhurst (Patricia was it?)  who gave him a lift to his flat after a finance department Christmas dinner, turned off her ignition and sat in expectation. Once only, starting in the kitchen and ending on the living-room carpet. Office relations were re-established without a word in January. Edmondson drifted into his imagination. Presumably, he was still married to Emma. Long ago, he heard they had two daughters. Emma had probably been his only lover. Duckworth turned from the polaroids and looked into the thickening darkness. Would he have liked that? Supposing he had taken up with Sally Foy who thrust a valentine’s card into his hands at the youth club when he was thirteen or fourteen. She was a striking girl with short black hair and piercing brown eyes. Small, slim and agile, like her elder brother who Duckworth admired, she was at ease on a sports field. Yet he had felt nothing for her except the usual raw, physical attraction. Perhaps he should have persevered. Was that what Edmondson had done? Had he been more or less blank in his response to Emma but had gone along with things conventionally? He couldn’t believe it. They had been mirrors for one another. Was that the clue? Egoisme à deux , as he’d read somewhere. Wasn’t love supposed to be escape from self?

There were no pictures of the girls and women he’d been infatuated with. Julie Roscoe a clerk in the finance department, who walked through the office in her Scholl’s flip-flops, her hair brushed to shining perfection down to her waist, the gentle bobbing beneath her skirt a torment. Hilary Larner, the one girl with whom he’d felt emotional harmony, who had rejected him after three assignations leaving him with a burden of affection he couldn’t quell and which, even now, brought him pain.

The images began to weary him, in spite of the extraordinary beauty of the young bodies and the peculiarity of having them to stare at, in spite of his age. He was ready to return them to their dusty corner when he pulled free a picture of a girl he didn’t recognise. She was clothed in tennis whites, but her knees were spread and her flimsy underwear awry. Her expression gave no hint of conscious display. She was looking to her left, as if into a distance, and her face was lit by a spontaneous smile. He perused her for a minute trying to identify where the photo was taken. She appeared to be on the wooden slatted bench of a pavilion. The edge of a window frame was a few inches from her head. There were two clubs where he’d played regularly: the one belonging to the church, where he was a member, and the larger and more prestigious Baron’s which had four courts and better players. At sixteen or seventeen he’d played there often as a visitor because the better competition improved his game, but he remained a member of his first home because he captained the team and was the undisputed men’ champion.

Surely it was at one of these he’d snapped her; but how could he have done it without her consent? To whip out a camera just at the moment of revelation would have been impossible, and had she not been willing, she would have protested and he might have faced ugly consequences. She must have agreed, perhaps in advance, because he seldom took his camera when he went to play tennis. How odd that he might have arranged it with her, but he could see no other explanation.

He focused on the background. It was surely the church club. He was sure there was such a seating arrangement. He must have been on the veranda, a few feet from her. She must have posed. Yet, she succeeded in looking natural and innocent. But who was she?

He began to run through mentally all the girl members. She had an athletic look. Perhaps she was one of the regulars, one of the best. He could retrieve a dozen or so names but none matched the picture. She could have been a visitor, but then why would he have taken the picture? He could find no explanation.

He replaced all the pictures bar this one, which he took to his bedroom and propped against the little pile of unread books atop the chest of drawers by his bed. That night he dreamt of a parade of girls and women who undressed and disappeared into the clouds or were swallowed by the earth. He was playing tennis. His opponents were two overweight, middle-aged women, naked but for their shoes. He walked into the pavilion. A girl lay sprawled on the table at the far end. He approached her and asked her name. She laughed and evaporated. A policeman appeared, put his hand on his shoulder and took him to the station. He produced hundreds of photos of naked women. Duckworth denied knowing any. He was locked in a cell with a girl in tennis kit who spread her legs and smiled. He took a photo.

It was his habit to nip into the Black Horse for a daily pint. The bar staff had got to know him and pulled before he reached the bar. He was sliding, by the use of his right thumb, his light blue debit card from the tight pocket of his black, leather card wallet when his eye was caught by a young woman in the mirrored recess beyond. His heart gave a little spurt. He passed the chip over the machine proffered by the barman who asked if he wanted a receipt. “No, that’s fine,” he said, shaking his head. The thought had sprung into his mind that she was the young woman in the photo. He took a sip of his Guiness. The notion was absurd. The image was forty years old or more, the girl he now eyed as she approached the bar, no more than twenty.

She looked in his direction as she waited. He nodded and smiled and her face opened into a delightful picture of youth, nubility, possibility and affection.

                        “Can I get you one?” he said.

                        “No, thanks. I’m all right.”

                        “Indeed you are, but it would cheer me up to buy you a drink.”

                        “I’m buying a round,” she said and twisting her slender upper body whose rounded breasts were held in a hugging white, sleeveless top, indicated the two friends seated on the upholstered benches.

                        “I’ll treat all three of you.”

                        “Oh, there’s no need, honestly,” and the girl brushed a wisp of auburn hair from her right cheek.

                        “Barman,” said Duckworth, “the drinks for these girls are on me.”

He blenched a little when he saw the tally, but held the plastic over the Wi-Fi sign as if he had inexhaustible funds. The girl thanked him and with a nervous laugh carried the three glasses to her companions. Duckworth felt it politic to pause for a moment. As he did, he wondered where he had stored his polaroid, but quickly dispatched his effort, landing on the obvious advance of the mobile phone. The images he’d recently looked through began to flit through his mind. He sauntered round the bar and took the few steps towards the recess, carrying himself with slow dignity, smiling benignly.

                        “Mind if I join you, ladies?”

The obvious discomfiture of the women sent a little shock wave through his nerves, but it was exactly that, over the decades, he had been adept at defying. It brought back to him, momentarily, the awkwardness he’d felt about taking the first photographs. He had needed to insist they were for his consumption alone and to engage in flattery: such extraordinary charms must be preserved for posterity. To his aid had come what he perceived as the girls’ willingness to pose because it fulfilled a lurking fantasy of attention. Oddly, into his mind flitted the memory of a girl who’d protested, “I’m not big enough”, and who he’d reassured by recycling what he’d heard from one of his more educated friends: sublimity should not be confused with magnitude.

Exchanging embarrassed glances, the women sought to ignore him. The one he had spoken to sat in the middle, the others pressed in close. Duckworth sipped his pint, looked around him as if their aloofness didn’t touch him, and after remaining silent for two minutes, intervened.

                        “I suppose you think it’s a bit strange of me to sit opposite you like this. But I have a professional interest.”

They didn’t look at him or reply. He shifted on his seat, sitting more upright and folded his arms across his chest.

                        “I’m a photographer, girls. Always spying out a good subject. If you’d be interested in having your photos taken, I have contacts in the world of fashion modelling.”

                        “No, thanks,” said the girl on the left flank turning to meet his eyes with her own challenging stare. “We’ve got jobs.”

                        “Of course. I wasn’t suggesting you hadn’t. Only what I can offer is very lucrative. Fifty thousand for three days filming and repeat fees. That’s when they use the advert again and you get the same payment.”

                        “Shouldn’t you find your models through agencies?” chipped in the right flank.

                        “I do, but a photographer is always alert to what is exceptionally attractive.”

The trio giggled and huddled closer.

                        “That’s not us,” said the middle. “You should see her without her make-up.”

                        “He should see you in the bath,” said her companion, “he’d have a heart attack.”

They drank up quickly, one leaving two fingers of liquid in her glass. Duckworth searched for something he might say to retain them.

                        “I can give you my number,” he said, taking his ageing mobile from his pocket, “in case you change your minds.”

But they gathered their bags and jackets and were gone.

Over the next weeks, Duckworth became obsessed with the idea that the unknown girl would appear and accuse him. She must now be in her sixties. Why shouldn’t she still be local? She might meet him in a supermarket aisle, or on the bus. What were the chances she remembered? And, in any case, he had the only copy. He could deny it. He recalled he’d sometimes taken several shots and let the girl have some. Supposing she had one. If she were to go to the police. He’d committed no crime. She was a willing participant. She was of age, or at least he assumed so.

He sat in his living-room with the photo in his fingers straining to recall the subject and the circumstances. How could he have snapped her without her permission? But then why didn’t he remember? He was sure he hadn’t had sex with this girl. Perhaps that was why her name was lost to him. What reassured him about the others was his knowing who they were, that he had been intimate with them, that they consented. The photos were mementos of shared intimacy. No one could reproach him. The stray, however, seemed a silent rebuke.

Stepping out of bed to visit the bathroom at three a.m., his left foot slipped on something. He spread his fingers and probed the floorboards, stripped at his deceased wife’s insistence, reluctant to turn on the light because it would prevent him getting back to sleep. He felt the shiny surface. The photo had slipped from its perch. He replaced it, feeling, against his refusal of occultism, it might be an omen. On waking, he resolved to burn the troublesome item.

He took it to the kitchen, turned on a gas ring and held it by the corner, but couldn’t resist one last look. What a lovely young girl. That was not the smile of someone ill at ease. She was carefree, full of life and promise. Had her exposure been inadvertent? She swung aside her knee without thinking and the gusset slipped. He happened to have his polaroid and took his chance. It made no sense. He turned off the gas.

After breakfast he recovered a section of cardboard from the recycling, lay the photo on it, drew round the perimeter with a pencil and cut out the shape. The 31 into town was five minutes late. He couldn’t recall if there was a picture framer in the centre, checked his mobile and walked down Fishergate Hill to Strand Road.

                        “I want a frame to hold a picture this size,” he said, handing the card to the assistant.”

                        “Do you have the picture, sir. I can put it in the frame for you?”

                        “No, I can do that.”

He called in at the library café for a flat white. Glancing up from his cup, he saw a young woman taking her seat. The globes of her buttocks in her tight jeans brought swiftly into his head the image which would soon sit in the frame. He put on his glasses to examine her face, as if it might be the lost, unknown girl.

At home, before he unpacked the few items he’d bought on the market, he slipped the photo into its home, cleared the dusty heap of books from the chest, and set it firmly in place. When he stood beside the bed each night, before turning out the light, or got to his feet each morning, there she would be.

By dint of looking at her, day after day, he came to convince himself she might have been his lost love. Those whose names and circumstances he recalled, he’d failed with; but this one, being mysterious, could have been different. His girlfriend. It occurred to him as he was pulling on his fading trousers, the morning of a day when he would meet Catterall, that he could take the picture along.

                        “My girlfriend from many years ago. You can see the kind of relationship we had.”

He took it from its spot and examined it, rubbing away a fine coating of dust with the pad of his thumb. No. Perhaps Catterall would get the wrong idea. All the same, he was disappointed. Such a picture was surely proof of how he could attract and keep a woman.

A stroll into town, he decided, would do him good, especially given the mildness of the day. He set off at a brisk pace but, his breathing accelerating, slowed to moderate. At his age, he reasoned, a two- mile walk was enough. The thought that he was into the last quarter of his life slackened his mood. He reassured himself: he was still vigorous, his hearing was fine and though the optician had warned of encroaching cataracts, that was a routine matter now. A young girl, perhaps eighteen or nineteen, leaning on the bus shelter smiled as he passed. No need yet for a little blue pill. A hundred metres later the troubling doubt arrived that perhaps his slow gait and his grey hair alerted her pity. Why else would a fresh-faced, slender, fair-skinned lass smile at a man of his age? He pushed up the little incline of Fleetwood Street and felt his thighs tighten. That, he reflected as he began to pant, would do his heart good.  He turned off Bow Lane to weave his way behind County Hall. A car door slammed and a man stepped into the road before him. At once, he recognised the build and demeanour of his old classmate who he hadn’t seen for fifty years. Could it really be that long? His efforts at internal arithmetic were subverted by the urgency of making contact. But was it really him? Yes, that strong stride, the square shoulders, the head held slightly backwards.

                                    “Mark!” he called and quickened his pace.

The man turned and looked puzzled. That he hadn’t recognised him instantly bothered Duckworth. Had he changed so much or registered so little? Across the ten metres between them, he was assaulted by the fear he wouldn’t be recalled. He would have to try to jog his old passing pal’s memory and might make an utter fool of himself, walking away unrecognised.

                                    “Nice to see you,” said Duckworth, “after all these years. Remember me? Ducky. We were in the same form.”

                                    “Oh, yes.” said Edmonson, the friendly smile Duckworth had liked when they were boys lighting his face, “I didn’t recognise you for a minute. How are?” And they shook hands.

                                    “I’m fine. And you? Emma,well?”

                                    “Yes, she’s okay.”

Duckworth smiled and nodded looking into his old acquaintance’s narrow, brown eyes, but seeing a young girl on a pavilion bench, her throat stretched, her hair cascading, her mouth open in a glorious smile and her knees tantalisingly apart. Edmondson’s much stronger hand brought a sense of inadequacy. He hadn’t lost his athletic power. No doubt Emma too had retained her sporting build. Duckworth had heard, some years earlier, they had two children. He ought to ask about them. But another question was forming in his mind, one it was impossible to utter without unburdening himself of terrible loneliness and failure. He shook the other’s hand as vigorously as he could.

                                    “Good to see you,” he said, forcing his smile. “Yes, good to see you.”

COMPANY

Last to leave the office, Rogers set the alarm and pulled the blue, wooden door behind him. The evening had turned colder than he imagined, which impelled him to his new Audi and its first-rate heating; but at the same time the orange streets lights, the cars making their way round Winckley Square and out of town, ignited that lonely, early-evening feeling which encouraged him to seek out company. On the new kitchen work-surface was the plastic tub of home-made chicken korma he’d removed form the freezer before turning off the Today programme and leaving at seven thirty. The recipe was his own and often praised. It was his pièce de resistance, offered to all his guests, who, after the explanation of his sourcing the ingredients and the long and intricate details of preparation, didn’t dare but declare it beyond compare. That he was looking forward to it, that he would delight in consuming it alone at the kitchen table with warm naan, cucumber and yogurt and a glass of Tiger before taking to his top-of-the-range, white leather sofa to find something mildly congenial on the television, didn’t quell his urge to seek out conversation. Finding himself on Fishergate, he experienced a moment of confusion and flatness. Where should he go? Where was he likely to find someone who would listen? That he might bump into an acquaintance was too remote a possibility. Perhaps in the Golden Ball or The Black Bull. But he didn’t want to drive to his home territory. There was a frisson about the anonymity of town pubs.

The Black Horse was quiet. The barman, in his early twenties, heavily-built with blondish hair to his shoulders and a black t-shirt emblazoned with Tokyo Blade, was polishing glasses. Standing at the bar, alone, was a man of seventy in a Crombie, a collar and tie, well-polished shoes, his heavily gelled hair combed back from his creased forehead. He turned his stiff neck towards Rogers, drew on his cigarette, gave a barely perceptible nod and uttered a phlegmy monosyllable which struggled to escape his throat and which the new arrival took for a greeting. Pulling  upright having exerted himself with some floor-level task, the barman brushed his hair from his face and set his hands on the pumps.

                                    “Yes, sir?”

                                    “A pint of Unicorn.

                                    “Unicorn, no problem.”

He reached for a glass from a high shelf.

                                    “Quiet tonight,” said Rogers.

                                    “Yes, usually is at this time, mid-week. Might liven up later.”

                                    “Are you on till the bitter end, no pun intended?”

                                    “Ha, ha. Yes, till closing time tonight.”

                                    “You’re full-time, then?”

                                    “No, I’m a student. This helps to keep my debt below a hundred grand.”

The full glass with a good head sat tantalisingly on the mat as Rogers presented his card to the device. He thought of the korma, diligently placed, now defrosted and waiting to be heated, of the naan in the cupboard ready to be placed on the middle shelf of the oven, of the Tiger nestling next to the semi-skimmed in the door compartment. At the first sip he wondered if he should confine himself to one. A second wouldn’t push him over the limit. He could linger for an hour or ninety minutes.

                                    “What are you studying?”

                                    “Physics.”

The man in the Crombie coughed ferociously, the mucus in his throat rattling like a loose bolt in an engine.

                                    “Science wasn’t my forte. Are you at the university?”

                                    “Yes.”

                                    “What year?”

                                    “Postgrad.”

                                    “Ah, what are you researching?”

                                    “Quantum entanglement.”

Rogers took another sip and raised his chin. His study of science had ended with O Level and in the following forty years he had paid no attention. He’d spent most of the day dealing with the trusts that were part of a wealthy client’s probate. His method of deciding how much to charge was to observe a prospective recruit’s footwear. A shabby pair of trainers indicated a low fee, a new pair of Loakes, the maximum. Moxham was most definitely in the latter category. His demise from a rare abdominal cancer at seventy-two meant lucrative if repetitive effort. Though much of the routine could be passed to secretaries, trusts had to be carefully scrutinised. Once, he’d enjoyed the detail, but having handled so many, they now seemed no more demanding than the housework and gardening. He eyed the student, who was wiping and stacking glasses. He understood something which to Rogers was a complete mystery. Yet he had been educated at some expense. His father, who had started work as an assistant in a jeweller’s shop, had come to own four of his own, and though neither educated himself, nor evincing any interest in intellectual life, had relished sending his sons to Stonyhurst. Confessing no religious affiliation, Catholicism was as welcome to him as Zoroastrianism, if it was associated with advantage.

Rogers had been a day-boy from the age of eleven. His primary education had been at Brabin’s Endowed. The move to an all-male environment had disappointed him slightly. There was a softening provided by the presence of girls which he registered retrospectively by its absence. Nevertheless, he soon adjusted. The idea of his privilege, of an innate superiority realised in the elitism of the establishment, compensated. The humanities were his field. At the end of his first year, he was top in history. His English results were always excellent and though he wasn’t among the very best linguists, he held his place in the top sets. If there was humiliation, it was  sport and science. In the former, he saved face by feigning enthusiasm. He fielded at long leg and hoped the ball would not come near. He ran the line at rugger and though he struggled in last on every cross country he lingered under the cold showers and spoke loudly of the invigorating power of a good run. But science was his shame. He chugged along in the middle at maths and even gained some pleasure from simple algebra, but his brain rebelled at the idea of protons, neutrons and electrons. They were mere words. He might never have seen Walpole or Pitt the Younger, but he could imagine them. How could he bring a picture of potential difference into his mind? The idea of an electrical current couldn’t come to life like the idea of Queen Anne or the East India Company.

 As for chemistry, what did a proton look like? How did we know neutrons exist? No one dared ask such questions of George Sanderson, the bearded, old teacher who disdained boys who didn’t grasp his subject. An ion, he explained, is an atom which has lost or gained electrons, a statement which required Rogers to conceive simultaneously  three mysterious entities. Sodium has a mass number of twenty-three and an atomic number of eleven. Rogers had no idea what sodium was and the numbers seemed perversely gratuitous. He wanted to call out:

                                    “How do you know? Maybe it’s seventeen and three.”

The choices permitted in the third year (as it was called in his day) ridded him of physics, but he was forced to continue with biology and chemistry. Plants and animals he could understand, but what was an enzyme or a ribosome? No matter how many times he read the definitions, they continued to mean nothing. He secured a D in biology and Unclassified in chemistry.

The young man behind the bar understood the secrets of the physical world. Rogers shifted a little uneasily on his spot. The unnerving idea which had flitted through his mind many times, of being surrounded by processes of which he knew nothing but on which his life depended, slithered into his consciousness.

                                    “The law is my field,” he said, setting down his glass.

                                    “What’s your specialism?”

                                    “Probate.”

The word which had once sounded clever, which rang in his ears like a peal of approval, seemed suddenly inadequate. The affairs of the dead. Mostly routine. The trick, of course, was to advise on the drawing up of the will, to keep it simple. Best of all was to have himself appointed as executor, a practice unfavoured by the Law Society but which he pulled off remarkably frequently. He was tempted to boast of it.

                                    “Well,” said the server, “ people will die, we can be sure of that.”

                                    “Yes, I suppose certainty is your stock-in-trade.”

                                    “Not at all. We physicists are baffled by the universe.”

The admission produced a little surge of upward feeling in Rogers. It had always struck him that science was the enumeration of categorical truths. His own arena rested on interpretation. The law was the law, but ambiguity could never be expunged. He’d heard of the puzzle of dark energy and suchlike, but he hadn’t registered that it overthrew intelligibility.

                                    “All the same, where would we be without you?”

                                    “True enough. You wouldn’t have a satnav in your car for a start.”

                                    “I suppose not,” said Rogers, wondering why.

The solitary next to him went to the side door, leaving his drink unfinished.

                                    “Gone for a fag,” said the barman.

                                    “All day, more or less, I’ve been working through the entanglements of trusts.”

He thought batting the scientist’s term back to him sharp-witted, but the employee evinced neither amusement nor admiration.

                                    “I see you’re a music fan,” said Rogers.

                                    “Yeah.”

                                    “I don’t know the group. Rock?”

                                    “Heavy metal.”

                                    “Appropriate for a physicist. You listen to what you study.”

                                    “More for chemists, in my opinion.”

During his articles, Rogers had a girlfriend with a taste for jazz. A legal executive she worked in the office beside his and the sight of her tall, heavy frame, her wide hips and shoulders and the sound of her somewhat grating falsetto, day after day, working on his unrelieved nerves, drove him to invade one Friday afternoon and announce:

                                    “I’ve got tickets for the Odeon tonight. Would you like to come, Tracey? We could have a meal after.”

Rather stunned, she looked up from the papers she was inspecting, and standing behind her desk replied:

                                    “I wouldn’t mind. If it’s a nice film.”

He knew as he sat beside her in the dark and she hauled popcorn into her mouth and sucked up Cola like a municipal dredger clearing drains, he’d made a mistake, but he persevered à contre coeur,  because he enjoyed it being known he was attached and she was at least company.

Her father played the saxophone and was famous in the local jazz arena. Tracey tried to follow him and could bang out a few halting chord progressions on the piano, almost mastering Autumn Leaves and Fly Me To The Moon. Introduced to gigs in pubs across the region, Rogers sat in bemusement and boredom as guitarists, keyboard players and drummers performed solos which numbed his ears. Years earlier he’d attended classical concerts in the hope Bach and Shostakovich would awaken recognition; but he found himself dozing through the second half and apart from the odd, sweet melody was left with nothing he could remember. Tracey found promotion with another firm. His musical tastes descended to whatever was popular and catchy. He had a particular liking for Abba.

                                    “Do you play an instrument?”

                                    “Guitar.”

                                    “In a band?”

                                    “Yeah. Five of us.”

                                    “What d’you call yourselves?”

                                    “Artaud’s Angels.”

                                    “Named after someone?”

                                    “Artaud. You know?”

                                    “Vaguely.”

The old barfly shuffled back to his station, coughed as if his lungs had turned to water and raised his glass.

The name meant nothing to Rogers. He’d almost finished his pint, the joy of its cool bitterness in his throat an invitation to abandon. He thought of the lonely box of curry in his darkened kitchen.

                                    “Same again, please.”

A quintet of women entered, their voices gay with shared pleasure, babbled charmingly about where to sit and colonised the far recess, one of them returning for the drinks. She was, Rogers estimated, about twenty-five. He stole a glance at her left hand and saw the rings. She was one of those women his mother would have called common, like the children she discouraged him from playing with. She had a strong handsome face, with full lips, high cheek bones, arched eyebrows and big brown eyes which caught the light; but what most ignited his interest was her hair, auburn streaked with blonde, brushed back, cut to just below her ears but a little longer behind and seemingly light, as if floating. She shot a look. Her gaze was unabashed and gave his heart a little prod. He turned at once to his fellow drinker, as if he was worth looking at.

                                    “They often come in mid-week,” said the barman when she had rejoined her friends.

                                    “Oh, regulars.”

                                    “Fairly. The one who bought the drinks teaches art at the uni.”

                                    “Does she? That’s a surprise.”

                                    “Eh?”

                                    “She doesn’t look like an academic.”

                                    “Well, she’s an artist, isn’t she? Lived in Paris for a while, fluent French speaker. And St Ives. Sculpts like Barbara Hepworth.”

                                    “Really,” said Rogers, who recognised the name.

The chatter and laughter floated through like a sudden warm breeze on a chilly day. The old man coughed, swigged and ordered a refill.

He shifted his post a little to the left so he could pilfer sly glances at the women. The artist threw back her head and laughed uninhibitedly. Her exposed, wide throat sent a shock through him which elicited an instant counter: no doubt she was common. Though the notion didn’t tally with her status, it emerged from his feelings. Slowly there coagulated the idea that it was a matter of the artistic temperament. Artists were unreliable, dreamy types, unfitted for regular work and responsibility. He considered the work he’d done that day. Proper work. Work that had to be done. It was some time since he’d visited the Harris. The painting he favoured was Pauline in the Yellow Dress. A portrait was always easy to appreciate. Abstract work he thought more or less a pretension. Yet he wasn’t attracted to galleries. He’d queued for the Impressionists in London but the crowds, the slow progress, the gathering little ache in the small of his back, sent him in search of food and a chair.

His second almost finished, the women were still in their enclave, their voices as appealing, the gusts of laughter as welcoming. A third was a risk. A half? But he felt the order would give him away. He turned the glass on the mat in his fingers and resisted quaffing what remained. One of the women came to the bar. She was short and stocky, her lips were thin and her eyes not much more than slits. He recognised the town’s accent which identified her as one of those his mother would have disdained. Against his better judgement he said:

                                    “Sounds like you’re having a good time in there.”

                                    “We are.”

                                    “Livelier than out here, anyway.”

                                    “That’s why we’re in there.”

                                    “Girls’ night out?”

                                    “Have you noticed any men ?”

A gurling cough erupted from the quiet drinker.

                                    “I believe your friend works at the university.”

                                    “We all do.”

                                    “What’s your job?”

                                    “Student liaison.”

                                    “Ah. Interesting?”

                                    “Pays the bills.”

                                    “That’s the man thing.”

                                    “Who’d be employed otherwise?”

                                    “I work in the law,” he said at once feeling foolish.

She looked obliquely, picked up the tray and turned her back.

The derisory remains of his pint couldn’t provide  much longer the excuse for not leaving. The women were twenty years younger. At their age, might he have been out on the town mid-week? He’d played table tennis in the church hall every Wednesday; some Fridays he’d visited three or four pubs with Lucy and Graham, his best friends at the time. Lucy had qualified and found work with a firm in Altrincham so they’d moved and then got married and little by little contact had dwindled to a Christmas card and then to silence. For a year or two he would meet Kevin O’Hare for a drink and a chat, in The Blue Bell or The Old Black Bull, but then they’d fallen out over the Shakur file.

He took a final gulp.

                                    “Thank you,” he called to the barman, as if he was as unburdened as the chatting, laughing women. “See you again.”

“Cheers, mate.”

Rogers was slightly offended by the farewell. He descended the two steps onto Friargate and looked to left and right. The image of the box of chicken korma seeped into his mind but no longer bringing with it associations of comfort, security and relaxation. There was nothing for it but to drive home. As he set off, the rush of high female laughter reached him. The oldster had just followed him and at once began to cough uncontrollably and bring up gobs of phlegm which he spat with gusto onto the pavement.

Clicking the button which illumined his cars’ lights brought a moment of reassurance. He settled himself on the white, leather seat. Forty-six thousand two hundred and sixty. His brother had advised second-hand, no more than twenty thousand on the clock, because of the depreciation on new; but he wanted to own what no one else had. He found himself wondering, absent-mindedly, what the art teacher might think of riding in his passenger seat.

The traffic had thinned. He negotiated Winckley Square gently. The lights had illuminated and there was a fairy charm about the dark trees and the invisible inner space. He was reluctant to leave the town behind but there was no welcome for him, nothing which compelled him to stay. Passing the railway station, he began to think about tomorrow’s work and seeing himself at his desk, intent, serious and senior brought a minor uplift. The trusts would occupy most of the morning. He might try the new Italian on the corner of Lune Street for lunch, but who could he invite? Shearing used to be up for a pizza and a glass or two, but he was getting close to retirement and commercial property wasn’t as lucrative as in the old days, so he was busier, more exhausted, less willing. What matter? He could sit alone. What was the forecast? It might be mild enough to eat alfresco, watch the world pass by. The students there were on the streets now, their Newman College or University lanyards their badge of honour. The befuddling thought invaded his mind that they all needed jobs. How could so many be accommodated? What would they do? AI? Things he knew little about?

The Fleece went by on his left. Penwortham was a busy nightspot these days. He could park up and try one of the little bars; but he’d had two pints and was hungry. His delicious curry was waiting for him. He could close the door and shut out the world. What was better than to be in your own home, to be your own master? He turned into his drive. Myra, his neighbour, got out of her Nissan. The rear door opened and her teenage son appeared, in yellow and grey football kit. He was, by all accounts, a scientific brainbox destined for Oxford in a week or so. A second car arrived which he recognised as Doug’s parents and before he’d closed his door, a third. He paused: Myra’s bother, wife and two daughters. Despite his better judgement, knowing how easily a splash of sauce could stain, he decided to hang up his jacket but keep his trousers, shirt, collar and tie. The curry in the microwave and the naan in the oven, he poured the golden beer into a stub-stem glass. Through the party-wall came the loud voices, the whoops, the calls, the gunfire laughter. The front door clanked. More guests. He might turn on the radio and drown it out, but he was drawn to listen. On his plate was the irregular island of yellow, the white mound of thick Greek yogurt in which little pellets of carefully diced cucumber lay hidden, and the mixture of chopped red onion and twice-sliced cherry tomatoes drowned in lemon juice. Unquestionably one of his best. He mopped with the last nub of naan. The sweeps of ochre had begun to dry before he took the plate to the sink. The glass was empty. Another? To delay in the kitchen, the sounds from next door barely penetrating to his living-room, he decided on coffee. The moka pot gurgled and spluttered. From an upper cupboard he took one of the small, white, china cups from the set of six, five virtually never used, but eschewed a saucer. Though he was trying to lose some of the girth from his belly, he added two spoonfuls of brown sugar.

The little oak table was empty. He curled his fingers around either side of the cup to enjoy its warmth. Doug’s mother’s piercing tones, calling something he couldn’t quite decipher, followed by a general hubbub of raised voices, gave way to a cheer. That the boy was being congratulated pleased him. He too, once, had been feted for his exam success and his acceptance at university. That it was so long ago didn’t fit with the feeling of it having happened minutes earlier. It was more alive in his mind than the events of the day which weighed dully on his sensibility while the moment of his success, applauded by his family and celebrated with  friends, ran like a drug through his nerves and elevated his mood.

They’d been ten on his floor in the first year. Two he knew for certain were dead, one he suspected might be. Jim Flowers sent him a card at Christmas: his wife was a surgeon; two sons, both doing well. The others he’d long lost contact with and Pauline he’d heard nothing of since the day they left. A college porter had asked him, after the results had been posted:

                                    “And Miss Capstick, how did she go on?”

                                    “Two-two,” he’d replied.

                                    “Oh, and she was sure she’d failed.”

By then they’d ceased talking, a scant eighteen months after their first intimacy. His room because she shared; but had she not? Her auburn hair hung on her white shoulders. The electric wall heater gave off enough light for the symmetry of her form to strike him. Her thighs flashed in the semi-darkness as she skipped to the bed and slid under the white sheet and orange counterpane. There was a day when they walked by the lake and ducked beneath her favourite tree. The great, black arms of the sycamore held the foliage over their heads and when it began lightly to rain not a drop fell on them. There were bright sunshine and wilting heat when she appeared in the library in a hooped white and blue t-shirt, low cut to display the cleavage which tortured him and shattered his concentration on contract law. It occurred to him they’d never eaten out together, nor spent a weekend away, nor cooked for one another. The bitterness of the coffee was present like an echo. He rinsed the empty cup and set it upside down on the drainer. Another cheer exploded and dispersed.

He closed the lounge door but left the curtains open. Dog walkers might pass, perhaps some kids on their bikes. He had no idea of what he wanted to watch, flicking through the hundreds of channels in the expectation of something interesting. At length, he settled on the BBC running news but after no more than two minutes was watching the window and reviewing the events of the evening. The old man drinking alone, coughing up the damage of a lifetime’s smoking, yet dressed as if for an occasion, had intruded on his modest enjoyment. Why hadn’t he encountered someone congenial? Chance. Like that which had brought he and Pauline together. From towns hundreds of miles apart, they had converged on a course in law, belonged to the same college, bumped into one another in the bar and become unlikely lovers.

Some years earlier, he’d handled the probate for a woman whose husband died of a heart attack at forty-six. It was unusual for him to establish social contact with a client, but in an effort to convince himself he wasn’t physically incompetent, and in the anticipation of company, he joined a bowling club and discovered she was a member. Their beside-the-green chats progressed to encounters for coffee which rose to assignations and, in the way of things, love-making. Her insistence her daughter and son, both beyond twenty, shouldn’t know, gave the relation a furtiveness which though initially intriguing, became a burden. On her dressing-table was a framed portrait of the deceased. Rogers put on and took off his clothes in front of his factitious grin. The carefully timed and sometimes hurried visits to each other’s houses began to become routine till he found he had lost any small affection for her he might have had. The business finished, he was eager to get away till one evening she protested.

                                    “Won’t you even have a coffee? You haven’t been here half an hour.”

                                    “I need to get some papers ready for the morning.”

                                    “Well, you know what they say. No leisure, no love.”

The word hadn’t passed between them. Her use of it clashed with his feeling. Though he felt his ghosting was unfair, he couldn’t rise to anything better. Since then, he’d be celibate.

Professionally, he thrived. Senior partner, he was grossing over two hundred. His mortgage was paid, he took at least three holidays a year, the more exotic and expensive the better. The Gambia, Peru, Bali, Martha’s Vineyard, Morocco, China; he was able every autumn or spring to impress the dwindling band of those willing to listen. He’d almost reached the limit of his pension pot. His reputation for probate was unsurpassed. His attention was caught by something outside. He craned. A woman passed slowly, tugging at her sniffing dog. He recognised her as number fifteen. A young couple with no children and two expensive cars. Though they’d never spoken and he didn’t know her name he felt an irresistible urge to engage. She looked up as he opened the door.

                                    “Nice evening.”

                                    “Yes,” she said, then pulling still at the dog whose nose was alight with interest, “come on, you. Come on.”

Myra and Doug’s party had migrated to the living-room. He must say goodbye to Luke. Would they object if he knocked now? He closed the door and put on the sneck. Sima Kotecha was on the screen but the news seemed at once boring and intrusive. Once, he had found it in tune with his mood, but now it might be a bulletin from a distant planet. He switched channels, trying to find a film, but nothing ignited the sharp blade of interest which he used to discover. What was his favourite film? Sorting through them in his mind they became a blur. The Godfather, Saving Private Ryan. Oddly, they appeared to belong elsewhere. The idea filtered through that he might never have seen them, or that he had in some other existence. He got up suddenly and left the room. Form his kitchen window, the garden was black, the maple before the field a huge, imposing shadow.  He turned the key, jerked down the handle and pulled the plastic door wide. The inrush of cooler air helped to settle him, but his heart was pounding, he felt a flush coming to his cheeks as he had when unable to answer simple questions in science classes and patches of sweat were appearing on his shirt.

He stepped onto the premium imported granite patio. All the neighbours and his colleagues had been invited to the party held to celebrate its completion and had listened politely to his explanation, sipping Pinot Grigio or Sauvignon Blanc as the sun went down. There was no doubt it was the most expensive patio in the avenue but its value had lost, for the moment, its sustaining power. He descended to the lawn and walked to the rear fence beyond which were fields for five miles leading to the river. Something rustled in the undergrowth to his right. A hedgehog? A rat? He retraced his steps and closed the door. Resting his palms on the fence, he peered into the blackness. He could feel his heart knocking heavily. The bizarre question came to him: why was his heart beating? He gripped the fence hard and in spite of himself a cry issued from him, a howl which rose above the treetops and disappeared into the night. At once, he was struck by the anxiety that someone might have heard. Could his shriek have reached the gathering next door? What excuse could he find? He’d slipped and banged his head. But they’d want to tend him. He rushed indoors, locked, stripped and without cleaning his teeth got into bed. His heart wouldn’t calm. His head filled with anxious images. Would Myra and Doug soon be knocking at his door? Might they call the police? Would another neighbour stop him and say, “I heard a terrible noise from your garden the other night? Was someone injured?” In his hypnogogic state, his mind was invaded by swiftly altering images: a science lab where a heavy metal band was performing; a group of women of enormous size laughing at him as they flew into space; a motorway where he was overtaken by small, old cars; papers piling up to make walls he was unable to break through.

He woke at four bathed in sweat, showered, brushed his teeth and changed the sheets. His heart was no longer beating ferociously. Unusually alert and ready to face the day, he couldn’t go back to bed. He vacuumed upstairs and down, cleaned the bathroom, disinfected the kitchen work surfaces, made bacon, eggs, toast and coffee and set off for the office at six thirty. He slipped the key into the blue door, disabled the alarm, sat at his desk and began work on yesterday’s unfinished trusts. His secretary arrived at eight.

                                    “You look like you’ve been here all night,” she said.

                                    “You know me, Olivia. Always in control.”

He was last out that evening. The night town was inviting, but he drove home slowly, parked on the drive and sat silently in his seat for an hour before opening his front door. He’d forgotten to take something from the freezer. What would he eat? Someone knocked.

                                    “Hello, Doug.”

                                    “Hello, Nigel. Okay? We heard an odd noise from your garden last night. Anything wrong?”

                                    “No, not a thing. Probably kids. They come over the fields, you know.”

He closed the door and the terrible thought came to him that the television would be dismal and he would have to improvise a snack. All the same, nice of Doug to call. Yes, he could rely on Doug and Myra. For sure.