In a Good Light (27 page)

She gave an exaggerated sigh of impatience. ‘Of course I'll write to you, Esther. Anyway, you must come and stay as soon as we're settled in.'

On the first point Penny kept her word, though it was another four terms before I had an official invitation to visit. I assumed that they hadn't forgotten, but that the business of settling in must be more subtle and protracted than I'd imagined.

Penny's favoured form of communication was the postcard. She obviously had a big box of them, depicting masterpieces of twentieth-century art. Sometimes, when she had plenty to recount, she would fill two or three, and fire them all off at once. When news was thin I might receive a simple exhortation to keep my pecker up, or a quotation intended to inspire, or possibly baffle.
We think in generalities, but we live in detail
(Whitehead).
It is a great art to saunter
(Thoreau). I kept these pinned to my bedroom wall, text side down, as I found the pictures – Kandinsky's spiky abstracts, and Rothko's throbbing abysses of red and black – more to my liking. My favourite card of all was the one that said:
Why don't you come down for the weekend of 24 Feb? Catch the 6.40 from Paddington on Friday night and I'll meet you at Exeter St David's. Bring warm clothes and something suitable for a party. P.

I prepared a short speech in defence of the scheme before I showed the note to Mum, but to my surprise she agreed immediately. Perhaps she thought early exposure to the pleasures of university life might motivate me to work harder at school. (My latest report had alluded to my tendency to doze off in class, a revelation that had caused some raised eyebrows at home.)

‘What about your paper round?' was her only objection. ‘You can't let people down.' I had inherited the round from Christian when he had moved on to caddying and other more lucrative jobs. I was sure it was the six a.m. start that accounted for my doziness in the afternoons, but there was no alternative until I was old enough for a proper Saturday job in Boots – then the pinnacle of my ambitions.

‘I'll get Dawn to stand in for me. She'll do it,' I said, with desperate optimism. It wouldn't have occurred to Mum that Dawn lived too far away to make this viable. In her view a five-mile walk before breakfast was just what teenagers needed. Dawn herself was not so easy to convince, and had to be brought round with exorbitant promises of future favours.

‘Christian never once let me down,' the newsagent observed wistfully, when I explained the switch.

‘I know,' I said. ‘He is perfect.' And she gave me a sharp look, as if to say,
Don't get lippy with me, young lady.

Dad ran me to paddington. It was dusk, and he didn't want me getting lost in the underground in the rush hour and missing the train.

‘Make sure you're in a carriage with another woman,' he advised, as we said our farewells at the barrier. I don't think he'd set foot on a train since coming back from his National Service. As I opened my purse to show my ticket, he whipped out two ten-pound notes. ‘One for you and one for Christian,' he said. ‘Give him our love.' His lips skimmed my cheek. He still had hold of my overnight bag, which he'd insisted on carrying from the car, though it weighed next to nothing, and seemed unwilling to relinquish it.

‘Well . . . goodbye. Thank you for the money,' I said, when
I'd repossessed the bag. We were in plenty of time, and my seat was reserved, but the impulse to run for a train is almost overpowering. All around us people were in a hurry, rushing home from work and the city. This, and the mingled roar of arriving and departing trains echoing up into the great, blackened vaults above, seemed to infect me with the same sense of urgency, and my feet were almost twitching with impatience. But I remembered Thoreau, and with a great effort of will, sauntered the length of the platform, until I found my carriage, earning some curious looks from my fellow travellers, who nevertheless appeared to slow down slightly as they passed through my forcefield.

I gave Dad a last wave as I boarded, then the door slammed shut behind me and I thought, Yes! I'm alone. My seat was in a corner of a long carriage, with tables and a central aisle running the length of the train, and nowhere for Dad's imagined predators to hide. I put my coat and case on the luggage rack and slid open the window ‘for ventilation without draughts' as the notice advised, with splendid precision. I kept my handbag on the seat beside me to ward off other passengers. It contained everything I needed for the journey: purse, now twenty pounds fatter, palm-sized sketch pad, pencil, rubber and sharpener,
The Mill on the Floss
(the next volume on Penny's reading list), and a Mars bar. There was something immensely comforting about a well-stocked handbag.

At the first tug of the train's departure, I felt a sudden surge of euphoria that made my face break into a grin. To be setting off on a long-anticipated journey, with money in my purse, and everything good still to come: this was perfect happiness.

The Mill on the Floss
and the sketch pad didn't get a look in until Reading. For the first half-hour I just sat gazing out into the darkness in a daze of contentment. Then I remembered that I ought to be making more of the experience, so I went to the loo, and then the buffet car, where I bought a cup of tea to go with my Mars bar.

Somewhere outside Taunton, while I was struggling to keep my eyes open over
The Mill on the Floss
, because Penny was sure to ask how far I'd got with it, I noticed someone walking up the central aisle. I didn't pay much attention, just enough to absorb that he was wearing a backpack and a Walkman, and holding an apple in his teeth. I put my head down for another assault on the long description of St Ogg's, flicking through the pages in dismay to see how much I'd have to read before I hit on any dialogue, and gradually became aware that the person in the Walkman had stopped beside my table.

Damn. He's after my spare seat, I thought, refusing to oblige him with eye contact, when he tapped me on the shoulder and said, ‘Esther?'

I gave a twitch of surprise, bringing up one knee and smacking it on the metal bracket underneath the table, so it was through watering eyes that I recognised the face of our former house-guest, and not-quite-cousin.

‘Donovan!' I exclaimed in astonishment. ‘What are you doing here?'

Now that he'd taken the apple out of his mouth and I was looking at him properly I could see he hadn't really changed at all: those surprising green-glass eyes were the same, but his features had lost that slightly pretty look they'd had in childhood. He was taller than Christian now, and just as broad – a fully grown bloke, in fact.

‘I thought it was you,' he said, dumping my bag on the table and sliding into the seat beside me. A strong smell of cigarettes came off him as he sloughed off his backpack. He pulled down his headphones and there was a loud metallic guzz of synthesisers while he fumbled for the off switch. He glanced around. ‘Are you on your own?'

I nodded, nonchalantly. The seasoned traveller. ‘I'm going to Exeter to see Christian. He's at the university.'

‘Oh, that's nice. What's he up to, then?'

‘I don't really know. He never says. He's studying maths and computers. I expect I'll find out more this weekend.'

‘What about your mum and dad?'

‘They're still the same. You know.'

‘Yes.' He grinned at some memory, and then looked serious again. ‘They were very kind to me, and I never thanked them properly,' he added. ‘Give them my love, won't you?'

‘Of course.'

‘Actually, better not. It might eventually get back to Mum that you saw me. And then she'll want to know where I was going.'

‘Where are you going?'

‘To visit a friend near Taunton. I've been staying with Dad and Suzie for half term. Mum thinks I'm still there.' He took a bite of the apple.

‘Oh. Why mustn't she know?'

‘Because she doesn't
approve
,' he said, in a world-weary tone. I wondered just how degenerate this friend would have to be to deserve the disapproval of someone like Aunty Barbara.

‘Is he a criminal?' I asked.

‘It's a she, actually,' said Donovan. My eyebrows went up involuntarily. This put rather a different complexion on the
matter. ‘Mum doesn't like me seeing her, because she's ten years older than me, she's married and she's my teacher.'

‘Ah.' I didn't know whether I was supposed to be sympathetic or shocked by this revelation, so instead I said, ‘How is your mum?'

‘She's all right, actually. When she's not moaning at me about something or other.' He offered me the clean face of his apple, but I shook my head. ‘She had a cancer scare two years ago, and although it was really bad at the time, it seems to have completely cured her depression.'

Now I really was shocked. How could he mention his own mother and cancer – even a phantom cancer – in the same breath, with such composure. ‘But she's okay now?' I pleaded, faintly.

‘Oh yeah. It was nothing major. Just a dodgy mole. She has to keep out of the sun now. She just uses it as an excuse to wear ridiculous hats.'

I couldn't help laughing at this, then felt guilty. ‘Does she still do acting?' I asked.

Donovan shook his head. ‘Deep down I think she still dreams . . . But she has got a job. She does voice coaching at one of these private stage schools for performing brats. She seems to quite enjoy it.'

‘That's good. Mum and Dad will be so pleased. Except I can't tell them I bumped into you,' I remembered.

‘No. If you wouldn't mind.' Having finished the apple, core and all, he brought out a packet of ham sandwiches from the backpack and offered me one. It looked rather unappetising: a few moist membranes of translucent gristle in greasy white bread, but I accepted to be friendly. When he had disposed of his half with a few bites, he produced a crushed packet of cigarettes and took one out, twirling it
and tapping it on the table, and finally putting it in his mouth unlit. Several passengers, including myself, stiffened visibly. The carriage was a non-smoker.

‘It's all right, I'm not going to light it,' Donovan announced cheerfully to the company in general. ‘I bet you wish I'd never sat here now, don't you?' he said to me, grinning. I returned his smile but didn't contradict him. ‘I nearly didn't,' he went on. ‘I had to walk up and down here a couple of times to check it was you because you always had your head in that book.' He picked up
The Mill on the Floss
and started to read the blurb. ‘Is it any good?'

‘No,' I replied. ‘It's really dull. She's supposed to be a literary genius – George Eliot's a she.' For this I was treated to a withering look. ‘Well, anyway,' I went on, flustered. ‘I can't get into it at all. It's probably just me.'

Donovan opened the book and began to read, his forehead ploughed with concentration. After a minute or two, he slumped forward, snoring. ‘No, it's not you. It's completely turgid,' he said, decisively, and before I could stop him he stood up and posted it through the open window, where it was instantly sucked away into the darkness.

He roared with laughter at my look of indignation. ‘You can't do that,' I protested. ‘That's a Penguin Classic.' This made him laugh all the more. ‘And it's not even mine. It's Penny's,' I wailed.

‘Who's Penny?'

‘Christian's girlfriend. She's trying to civilise me.'

‘Are you very uncivilised then?' said Donovan, looking at me with fresh interest.

‘I suppose I must be. She has got very high standards.'

‘She sounds like a bossy old cow.'

‘No, no. She's more like a fairy godmother.' It was hard to describe Penny's strange brand of perfectionism-by-proxy to someone who hadn't experienced it.

The train slowed to a halt, and sat, still throbbing and whining for a few moments before the engine cut out, leaving us suddenly becalmed. In the blackness outside a few distant points of light were reflected in the scatter of raindrops on the window.

‘How old are you now?' Donovan asked. I had already calculated that he must be seventeen or thereabouts.

‘Fourteen. Fifteen in June.'

‘Hmm. You seem older.'

I expanded like a tulip, then it occurred to me that only a child would be pleased by such a remark. I began to consider at what age it might lose the force of a compliment. At twenty-one it would be neutral, I decided. The tide would start to turn at twenty-four. By twenty-seven it would be a downright insult. Twenty-seven. The age of Donovan's still-married teacher ‘friend'. This line of thought led me directly to sex. An image of adulterous liaisons in the school stock cupboards rose up before me. Perhaps she was waiting for him now, on the marital counterpane, in black satin camiknickers, Chinese love balls at the ready, while her husband was conveniently absent – at a political rally perhaps, or visiting an elderly aunt.

These reveries were cut short by a sudden exclamation of annoyance from Donovan; he knelt on the seat and leant right across me to peer out of the window, cupping his hands against the glass to block out the light. One knee was pressing against my thigh and his shirt was trailing against my cheek. Overlaid by the cigarette smoke was another, less familiar smell: not sweat exactly, but something slightly feral.

‘Sorry,' he said, clambering back again. ‘Where are we, I wonder?'

The woman opposite lowered her
Catholic Herald
. ‘Just outside Taunton,' she said. The lights in the carriage flickered off and on. People were starting to fidget. ‘There must be a blockage up ahead. Someone's probably fallen on the track.' She raised her paper again, snapping it open.

Donovan and I exchanged a conspiratorial snigger at this unnecessarily gloomy prediction. He was growing impatient at the unexplained delay, drumming a three-two rhythm on the table-top with his fingertips, shifting about in his seat, and tapping the table leg with one foot. This aimless fiddling led him to my depleted store of amusements. He flipped open my sketch pad and began to browse through the contents. There was a series of drawings of my left hand, a three-pin plug, a bunch of keys, an onion and an apple core, all executed in my obsessively representational style.