In Too Deep (2 page)

What was there to say to that? Air is a peculiar medium in that, sometimes, it can actually conduct pain. When she risked a glance at me and then hurriedly averted her eyes again, I could do nothing else except lean in and kiss her cheek. Her skin masked some inner furnace.

‘I've never told anyone about my dreams,' she said. ‘Or about the abortion. Even my fiancé doesn't know. But I don't want any secrets between us. It's best that you see the worst of me. I won't blame you if you want to run away.' I laid my hand high on her back, between the poking fins of her shoulder blades, and rubbed as softly as I could. She seemed very frail; the nubs of her backbone could be felt clearly through her skin and the thin cotton of her blouse. The moment lay hard between us, and then, in abject surrender, she turned and just folded her body into my embrace. I could tell that she was crying only by the feel of her breath pulling harshly through her back, and I whispered sounds that were designed to soothe and made the sort of promises that recognised boundaries, that settled for compassion rather than absolution, telling her that it was okay, really, that neither of us were perfect, but that maybe we could be perfect together. Maybe, in time, we could even work out a way for me to be a part of those dreams. ‘I love football,' I said, which was true.

I waited until she had boarded the train. It was late evening, not yet dark, but with that belt of dusk that settles on July evenings of a certain vintage and seems to hold its ground for hours. She had business that needed attending, she said, pulling a tried expression. The business of breaking a heart. Her fiancé would be upset, of course, but he'd cope. She didn't want to hurt him, but what they had together was comfort rather than joy, fun but without the fireworks. Maybe he'd even feel some relief, she said, but the words were wishful rather than certain. After all, they'd been engaged seven months, and they'd still not gotten around to fixing a date yet. She hoped that he wouldn't hate her for what she was doing, but if he did then she'd just have to find a way of dealing with that. I watched her while she scribbled down her telephone number on a piece of scrap paper, and I took the number, read it once, then folded it into my wallet. There was plenty of room in there, she remarked, and we both laughed at that. Then the train came, and we stood at the carriage's door for as long as we could, kissing, holding hands and making promises about the things we'd do that night, and tomorrow, and in all the years to come.

Ten minutes later my own train rattled into view, and I boarded with the few others who were waiting, found a mostly empty carriage near the back and sank down into a double seat. I didn't want to think about how it would be for her as she arrived at her fiancé's door, but the image of that scene wouldn't let me be, so finally I just gave up and basked in it, seeing the apartment or house door open and his smiling, surprised expression at finding her there. Maybe an outstretched arm taking his weight against the door's jam. I winced as I imagined him leaning in to kiss her hello, and wondered if she would let him do that or if she would turn her face away in a gesture that told him everything even before the brutal glut of words had loosed themselves in her throat. There was no telling how he would take the news, though devastation seemed a likely enough reaction. And at least half of that was my fault, probably even more than half. After all, I had made the running, I had waded uninvited in to someone else's life. I tried to watch the flashes of passing, dusk-laden landscape streaking past the window, the city's boroughs thinning so gradually out to grand swathes of countryside and then filling up once more into the next pocket of town, but the world seemed different, smaller somehow, and more washed-out. My mind was in a state of turmoil, and refused to focus. Little unrelated details of the day kept flailing at me, snagging like barbed hooks and then tearing painfully away.

Maybe this was part of the reason why I failed to sense the danger. My apartment was across town from the station, close to a mile of walking. There were taxis waiting around in the little yard behind the platform, but the sky held a few small cracks of light yet and I was probably thinking that the walk would do me some good. I had just entered a side street when two men closed in. I'm not sure how I had failed to notice them but it took less than a second to survey my situation and recognise it as dire. A knife flashed, the sort of blade that threatens the wise and plunders the stupid. One of the men had gotten behind me somehow and there was nowhere to run, nothing to do, but give them what I had and hope they'd have the sense not to go spilling blood.

After they had run away I leaned against the wall. The bricks were cold and damp, despite the time of year, with a thin, greasy sheen of mould. They had taken all my money, over a hundred pounds, but more than that, they had taken my wallet, too. The cards could be cancelled, and that was an irritant but a relatively straightforward process, a well-enough trodden path, I suppose, given the kind of world we live in today. And the wallet, of course, could be replaced, even if it did have the sentimental value of being the very same piece of leather that my father had given to me on my eighteenth birthday, packing into its folds a wisp of straw from that year's nativity crib. Good luck, he said that was. He had put a lot of effort into straightening out the wrinkles of his accent, but his Irish blood still bubbled to the surface on occasion, superstition and sentimentality being the main triggers. I suppose my birthday had called for both barrels. ‘Keep the straw tucked away there and your wallet might never be overflowing, but it will never be empty, either.' He had been right about that, the way he was right about a lot of things that never made sense to me, though there had been plenty of days since when that piece of straw must have found it pretty lonely going, trapped inside that sweaty leather with nothing but pennies for company.

The only thing of real value had also been taken, the scrap of paper with the inky scribble of her telephone number, the most precious thing in my entire world. The wallet was out of my hand before I had even realised what I was losing. I tried to call after my muggers, wanting to tell them that they could take the money and the cards if they wanted but to please, for Christ's sake, just give me back the piece of paper. It could have meant nothing to them. But they were already running and probably thought that I was simply calling for help. Or maybe they just didn't care one way or the other. I remember nothing at all about them apart from the staring, heroin-fevered eyes of the one who waved the blade, the sort of eyes that could never be moved to mercy, not once the hunger for a fix had taken over. I don't need anyone to tell me that I should be down on my knees giving thanks to God for the fact that they chose to leave me with my life, as insignificant a thing to them as the withered piece of straw that they'd find book-marking the tens and twenties.

But I don't feel like being grateful, because I can't believe that God had much of a hand in what happened. I mean, what kind of God would tease a man with a glimpse of heaven and then kick him tumbling and screaming back down again into the depths of a despairing hell? Those who hold with religious beliefs like to explain misery away by saying that we all have our crosses to bear, but I find it difficult to accept that, at twenty-five years old, the peak of my life was to be represented by something as seemingly inconsequential as a scribbled number on a scrap of paper.

That was eleven months ago. I've passed the time since doing what anyone in my position would have done: I rode the train every morning and evening, and lay awake nights dredging my memories for some tiny, vital snippet of information that I may have overlooked. But, so far, it's all been to no avail. I can picture her exactly in my mind, down to the most minute of details, and I have even made a considerable job of recreating the subjects of our rambling discussions. We talked about everything, and yet we talked about nothing at all. It was a shock to realise that she had made no mention of her address, or where she worked. She had never even offered me her surname. These revelations, when stated in such bald terms, seem to make light of my claims that what had flashed between us was anything as deep as love, but we are talking about mere words, not rushing pulses and chasing hearts. Love is like trying to create fire or water from thin air, the very same sort of magic.

I can't bear to imagine the terrible things that must be running through her mind; that perhaps I suffered an accident or, worse still, that I changed my mind. I suppose she must think that I've run away because of what she told me, but the truth is that actually I love her all the more for that. Not for doing what she did, of course, but for her willingness to confide in me, to make me feel that there was nothing we couldn't tell one another, no matter how terrible. It is difficult to live with the knowledge that, even though I didn't mean to, I have hurt her by not being in contact, but if I think too much about such things I'll never have enough strength to keep searching.

My life is focused on finding her. I ride the train every morning and every evening, and at weekends I traipse around the charity shops that are scattered across the city, telling my story to the volunteer workers, any who will listen. Some have mentioned that they think they know who I mean, a girl, yes, who likes records, dark-haired and thin, though my intense descriptions don't spark much of a response in their eyes. I leave them my name, address and phone number, and they take pity on me and say that, okay, if someone wanders in professing an interest in Sinatra records they will pass the message along. I want more than that, but I thank them for the little they give. So far, I've had no luck.

Possibly the most galling thing is the fact that I actually read the phone number before folding it away in my wallet for safekeeping. I've tried everything short of hypnosis to bring it back to the surface of my mind, but the few times that I thought I had it the phone rang out or the number I dialled wasn't valid. Hypnosis is an option, I suppose, if a bit of a last resort.

She remains stubbornly real in my mind, and yet I can't help but feel a whisper of doubt. Ghosts are real, too, and dreams, but real in different ways. My lowest ebb comes when, overwhelmed by loneliness and desperation, I reach for the telephone book and call up the first person I find that matches her name, and while listening to the line buzzing with the anticipation of my call I squeeze my eyes shut, because miracles feel more conducive to such a darkness. I've succumbed to this a hundred times, two hundred, trusting to fate that on one of these occasions the voice that answers will be hers. But doubt has grounded itself in the fact that, after almost an entire year of searching, I have yet to find a single trace of her existence.

All my hopes are pinned now on next month. The day is circled on my calendar, and I've planned exactly how I will recreate that first meeting. Our anniversary. I'll stand in the same carriage on the train, the very spot if I can find it, and I will get off at an early stop and wander the streets, sit and drink coffee, maybe even cappuccino. Finally, I'll sit on our bench in the park. I keep telling myself that she'll be there too, somewhere along the way, looking for me. The world is just too small a place for something as big as love to be kept apart for long. While there's life, there's hope.

It was late in the afternoon when he entered the café. He paused in the doorway and waited for his eyes to adjust themselves to the gloom, then he raised a hand to the waitress, turned and went back outside. After a minute or so, the waitress followed him out. She was tall and young, very pretty, with her dark hair pulled back in a way that fully accentuated the sharpness of her cheekbones and the rich green of her eyes. She considered him as he sat before her and quickly dismissed his chances, and after that she became distracted. He looked up at her as he ordered, waving away the offer of a menu and settling instead for a glass of the house red, but she had seen all she wanted to see and refused to meet his eyes. She just scrawled down his order on a small notepad, nodded and sauntered back inside.

Well, he decided, as he watched her retreat, maybe she wasn't all that beautiful. She had a little upturn to her nose, a quirk that probably had all the boys swooning now, while her flesh was still young, but which would turn ugly in a hurry once the wrinkles set in.

He was glad of his overcoat. He put his hands in his pockets and sank down inside the collar. This was not the weather for sitting outside. It was dry, for now, but the air was sharpened by a cold breeze that swept in waves down along the river and, overhead, the restless sky moiled layer upon layer, muddy spools ghosting beneath a steely veneer. There would be snow by morning, maybe even by nightfall. The few other patrons had all elected to accept the sanctuary of the café, but he preferred it out here, despite the cold. All the keenness of the morning had faded, giving ground to a kind of stupor. The imminent closing in of evening would bring with it a second wind, that tumbling darkness so rich with whispered promise, with murmurs of love, adventure and the thrill of the hunt, but for him none of those things could compete with the empty yawn that so defined Montmartre during late afternoon. He found this stretch of day to be most soothing, comfortable in its own lack of expectation; contentment, he had learned, lay in the still moments.

When his wine came he didn't bother to look at the waitress, or even to speak. He was finished with all of that now. She set the glass down on a folded paper napkin, muttered something that he didn't quite catch, probably some exhortation to enjoy, and then she was gone again, in a hurry to be inside. He sat, legs crossed, and turned the glass with slow care, around and around. The table's yellow-flecked formica surface squealed resistance, stopping only when he helped himself to a sip. Good or bad was all the same to him, wine was wine and he'd never honed his palate to any level of expertise. All he knew was that its taste suited him, and that if he put away a sufficient quantity of the stuff he'd get to where he needed to be.

A woman was watching him. He noticed her almost as soon as he had sat down; she took up one edge of a bench just across the street, her frail posture nervous nearly to the point of apology as she hunched over a ragged paperback novel. While he waited for his wine to arrive he had surveyed the street; his eyes had noticed her and then passed her by. Now, when he looked again, in the same casual manner as before, he was startled to find that she was watching him. Her novel was still in place, wedged open in her lap with the encouragement of a book-marking thumb, but, for now anyway, it was forgotten. For a moment, he began to question whether or not she was watching him, wondered if perhaps she had simply fallen into a trance that just happened to lie somewhere off in his direction, but when he raised a hand in greeting, the friendliest gesture he could think to make, she stirred and looked hurriedly away, and the panicked sharpness of her reaction removed all doubt. From all the way across the street he could feel her embarrassment. A few minutes passed, but just when it was beginning to seem that she had finished with him, there it was, another quick, daring turn of the head, another risked glance, and this time he was ready for her. He rose a little from his chair and beckoned to her. She seemed to stiffen, probably trying to decide whether to acknowledge him or to run away. Then, abruptly, she flopped her book shut and stood.

She had a lithe way of moving, a dancing walk that was all toe and hardly any heel, and she flitted across the road, judging the flush of the traffic and stuttering from lane to lane. As she drew closer, certain details began to emerge. He saw that she was young, a little older than the waitress perhaps, but still a distance shy of her thirties. She was small and frail, with narrow shoulders, thin limbs and a pale oval face made haggard by inner things. He stood when she drew to within a few yards and tried to smile away her uncertainty. ‘Please,' he said, making his voice as soft as it would go, ‘won't you join me?' She paused and glanced around, looking either for an excuse or a reason to escape, then lowered her eyes in small surrender. Feeling his heart beating more quickly than it had in a long time, he pulled out a chair for her, the gentlemanly thing to do, and she sat, perching almost weightlessly on its edge.

Now that they were close, there seemed less to say. He studied her, carving her details into his mind; the anxious pull of her thin lips, the nose that seemed too wide for her face, its hammered-down bridge broken almost to perfect flatness with her cheeks, the tiny furrows that grooved the paper-thin skin of her high forehead. Her hair had been badly cut, falling to shoulder-length in uneven ropes the colour of washed-out sand and leaning thickly out from the sides of her head, and her clothes were cheap and possibly second-hand, all coarse wools and ill-matched flannels. Unkempt was the word that described her best. If there was beauty in evidence then it had to be largely imagined, yet for all of that he knew in his heart that it was there.

They ordered more wine and filled the silences with sips and tiny blushing smiles. There were things that he thought of asking, but didn't, because whatever it was that they had found between them was finely balanced and a wrong word now could very well tip everything out of synch. He decided to let her take all the risks and confined himself to straight answers and insignificant small talk.

She too was hesitant with words. She held her glass in spindle-thin fingers and spoke in a small, cracked voice into its rim. When the words came, asking him about what it was that he did, where he lived, where he was from originally, the airy effort of them flared her broad nostrils and caused her upper lip to sink a little. On anyone else in the world that detail would have weighed as resolutely ugly, but on her it didn't seem that way at all. In fact, after ten minutes of stilted conversation, he felt something shift inside of him and he knew that he would long forevermore to hear that voice. She had come to Paris from the south, she said, waving away the need to mention exactly where. Paris wasn't all she'd hoped it would be, but it wasn't so bad either. She worked mornings in one of the bigger used-book-shops along the West Bank, had a small bed-sit that she could just about afford, and liked to fill her after-work hours with walks through the city. ‘There are some perks to the job,' she said, raising the novel that she'd been gripping the entire time. The corners of her mouth curled when she said that, and he nodded and smiled too, though he detected a sadness in her that he wanted more than anything to just kiss away. The novel's cover was pale yellow and blank now that the embossed words had worn to nothing. He decided that with a closer look he could probably have made out the title, or at least the author, but suddenly it seemed better not to know.

Somehow, an hour passed. The evening had taken on the bruised tinge of dusk and without even realising, they had drawn closer together. He cleared his throat, suddenly realising that her face lay mere inches from his own; so close, in fact, that he believed he could feel the press of her breath against his cheek.

‘It's getting late,' she whispered, and she glanced up at the sky and shuddered. Grasping the opportunity, he reached out and laid his hand on hers, closing his fingers gently over the backs of her knuckles. Her flesh felt very cold, and he wondered if she would feel this way all over.

‘Can I walk you home?' he asked, and she hesitated, drained the last of the wine from her glass, then nodded.

‘I'd like that very much,' she said.

They walked through the evening streets, she linking his arm, their bodies drawn together against the chill of the late hour. Walking, and perhaps being spared the need to meet her eye, he felt more inclined toward talk than he had all day. Words welled up inside of him and spooled from his mouth in curls of fog, gossamer-hued and delicate. His voice felt choked down to a murmur, but set strangely free; he spoke of things he had never told anyone. Not quite outright, because he wasn't yet ready for that, but enough to suggest the hidden truths of his life. Mostly about the war and how difficult it had been for him, how he had prayed to find some sort of understanding in the whole sorry mess, pleading with God to grant him the strength to carry the weight of all that he had seen and done. As he spoke, he watched the traffic drift by, considered the dark corners and alleyways, and all the shuttered windows that caged in so many other lives. Beside him, he felt his companion tighten her grip and occasionally nod her head in answer to the ebb and flow of his confessions, silently urging him on, wanting to know him inside as well as out. This woman who, just hours ago, had been a stranger, now felt like the person he knew best in the entire world. The stories they swapped were merely background colour; what they had discovered in one another ran to great depths. It was not the exposing of secrets that mattered so much, because the true mercy was in the listening. He talked of the war, not needing to describe the carnage because some things were understood, and then, with even greater care, ventured on to other things.

When they reached her building, she broke gently from him, found her keys and opened the door. He stood in the cobbled street, patiently considering the silent, crumbling façades of the neighbouring buildings, the splintered plaster, the exposed grey and yellow stonework, the faded flaking paint on the doors and window frames. He waited until she stepped into the dimly lit hallway, then obeyed the silent invitation and followed her up the three flights of stairs, climbing slowly to keep pace with her and talking all the way, unable to stop now, as if the silence waiting to fall might ache with too harsh a judgement. Somewhere deep inside of him a dam had broken and the muscles of his throat twitched in spasms against the lurching torrents. From the war, he drifted on to other things, following an order often without reason, the subjects suddenly rearing their heads and just as suddenly dissipating.

She opened the door of her apartment and led him inside, urging him to sit while she made a pot of coffee. The apartment was small and sparsely decorated. Without wanting to be seen to stare, he registered a bed, a worn-out armchair and a little kitchenette consisting of stove, sink, fridge and a single cupboard. One wall was bare brick, powdery yellow, the sort of thing that would have been distinctly fashionable if done intentionally, but all the others were decked out in a pale-coloured paper that had given up its pattern probably generations ago. Paperback novels piled up in leaning stacks from the floor just beneath the window, the obvious explanation for the damp, mouldy smell that weighed down and choked the air. While his mouth rambled on, he stared transfixed at the gaudy covers of the books, noting the rearing horses of throwaway westerns and the butch, bare-chested men and scantily clad damsels in distress of serial romances. Across the room, she filled the kettle and set the water to boil, but continued to listen to what he had to say, nodding her head in all the right places, urging him on with little humming sounds whenever he began to wane.

The coffee seemed to staunch the flow of his words. She sat beside him and they sipped in silence. The coffee was a precursor, cleaving the next couple of hours' schedule in stone, and neither of them felt quite sure how to act or what else to say. They sipped, rabid for the heat and nervous about what would follow. Finally, she set down her cup and, without saying anything, stood, turned ever so slightly away into profile and began to undress. He watched her until she was more or less halfway through, a part of him wanting to smile at the determination that pinched her face, the rest of him wanting to sweep her up in his arms. Once she was naked to the waist, it began to feel almost unseemly to stare. Trembling inside, he pulled off his tie and slowly undid the buttons of his shirt.

When he was naked, she took his hand and led him to the bed. The sheets felt cold, and for a while they fumbled with one another, all gasping breath and uncertain grunts. She seemed almost too delicate to touch. Lying there on the bed, her wide pale eyes surveying everything, she could have been a child. Her body was rail thin, disturbing in its seeming fragility, ribs and hip bones jutting up through the vague film of her skin. With a feather touch, he let his hands caress the scant breasts that lay splayed flat against her chest, his fingers plucking at the small, hard, unripened berries of her nipples.

‘I know you,' she whispered, as he kissed her. ‘I know who you are.' Her hands stroked his shoulder blades and traced the ripples of his spine down into the small of his back, and her hips pushed at him, calling for some response. But there was some obstacle in the way, some blockage in his mind. He kissed her cheek, trying to buy time or maybe to apologise, then pressed his face down into the pocket of her neck so that he could hide his tears. Feeling the heat of those tears against her skin, she raised her chin, making the fit a snug one. Blood pumped in her veins; he listened to its rush against his ear and tried to imagine the heaving of oceans.

‘Don't worry,' she sighed, comfortable beneath his weight. ‘It happens. But the world goes on spinning, and there's always time to try again.'