Lighthouse (12 page)

Some time later, he was woken by the security light at the back of the pub flashing on, glaring through the curtains. He got out of bed to look outside, reaching the window and drawing aside the curtain just as the light went off again. He stood in darkness, listening to the wedding reception still going strong down below.

He opened the window, appreciating the cool night air. He wondered whether there was anyone out there, in the garden, but he could not see a thing – there was not much light from the moon – and he could not hear anything due to the noise from downstairs. He stood there for a while looking out at the night, his duvet-warmed feet growing cold on the bare floorboards, before he caught the smell of cigarette smoke coming in through the open window. After a minute, the security light snapped on again and he saw Angela in her wedding dress, watched her crossing the patio and disappearing through the back door. Anticipating her now coming to bed with the cigarette smell on her skin and in her hair and in her mouth, he closed the window and drew the curtain again.

He got back into bed, meaning to lie awake and wait for Angela but instead falling asleep. He woke with no idea what time it was or if Angela was with him. It was dark, and it was quiet, the reception finally over. He reached across to Angela’s side of the bed, half-expecting to find it empty, instead feeling the mound of her body beneath the covers, touching her skin which was still cold from having been outside. He whispered, ‘Are you awake?’ but she did not answer. He went back to sleep.

In the morning, they had breakfast in the dining room. Futh took a small continental breakfast from the buffet and went to sit at a table with his father and Gloria. He poured a cup of coffee for himself and one for Angela, but he did not start eating, preferring to wait for Angela who had wandered over to the cooked breakfasts. Turning to look for her, he saw her standing talking to Kenny. Angela, glancing up and seeing Futh watching her, made her way back to the table without a breakfast. Kenny turned back to the buffet, filling his plate.

‘He’ll be hungry,’ said Gloria. ‘He didn’t get here until all the wedding food had been cleared away.’

‘I didn’t know he was coming,’ said Futh.

‘Of course he came,’ said Gloria. ‘He wouldn’t have missed this for the world.’

Kenny came to the table and sat down with his full English breakfast. ‘I don’t get this at home,’ he said, picking up his knife and fork.

‘You would at my house,’ said Gloria, but Kenny ignored her, cutting into his sausage and egg.

Futh began to say to Angela, ‘This is Kenny,’ but he was interrupted.

‘They’ve already met,’ said Gloria. ‘They met last night.’

Futh said, ‘They met before last night,’ and Angela looked surprised. ‘You met at the university open day,’ he added.

Kenny, forking a piece of black pudding, wiping it in the spreading yolk of his egg, said, ‘Do you remember that, Angela?’

She nodded, but gingerly, as if it hurt.

Futh said to Angela, ‘I’ve known Kenny since infant school.’

‘We were neighbours,’ said Kenny. ‘He pissed himself in my bed.’

Futh broke open his croissant and looked with annoyance at the way it fell apart, at the brittle, greasy flakes covering his fingers and his plate.

Angela seemed dazed. She pushed her black coffee away without drinking it, putting her forehead in the palm of her hand.

Futh looked up and said, ‘You should have come to bed when I did.’

Angela, without taking her head out of her hand, said, ‘Yes.’

When everyone had finished, Kenny took out his cigarettes and offered them around the table. When Angela declined, Futh, thinking that smoking was something she had learnt to do in secret, said, ‘Have one.’ He was more than happy for her to have the occasional cigarette. It would be months before he came to dislike the smell of it on her.

Looking confused, she said, ‘I don’t smoke.’

Kenny lit up and Futh excused himself, wanting to call the taxi company to make sure that the taxi was not going to be late.

When the taxi came, late after all, it was raining again. Futh held his coat over Angela’s head as they hurried from the pub to the waiting taxi. They got in the back and Futh opened his window to smell the rain. After a few minutes of riding along like that, Angela leaned over and closed it and Futh caught a whiff of Kenny’s cigarette smoke on her. He sat there in his damp coat looking out at all the rain and it was, he thought, a bit like the night he and Angela met at the motorway service station.

The honeymoon was dreadful – they had delayed flights and lost luggage, twin beds and upset stomachs, bad weather and arguments about Angela having to do all the driving, and then the hire car broke down.

‘It was bad,’ Angela told people afterwards. ‘I’m not sure you could have a worse holiday.’

With the exception of their honeymoon, for which Futh was responsible, Angela took care of all their holidays. Even at Christmas, it was Angela who arranged for them to visit her mother, her father, his father, and Futh just went with her. Last Christmas, though, for the first time, they made separate arrangements and Futh went alone to his father’s flat, which was really Gloria’s flat, chosen for its proximity to Kenny and his family.

Futh drove over on Christmas morning. He had only been driving for a few months, had only ever driven to and from work, and never in the snow, which had fallen unexpectedly overnight. Angela had been picked up by her brother after breakfast and taken over to her father’s house. Futh, leaving soon afterwards, found that his car refused to start in the cold weather, so he took Angela’s. Searching for a scraper with which to clear the windscreen, looking in the glove compartment, he found a small towel. He took it out and found it all crusted up. He sniffed it and put it back, clearing the windscreen with a credit card.

He could not see how to change the heater settings and a fierce jet of initially ice-cold and then increasingly hot air blew directly onto his toes as he drove up the empty motorway.

Gloria let him in with a smile. ‘Come in out of the cold,’ she said, taking the hat from his head before he was even through the door, slipping his coat off his shoulders, unwinding the scarf from around his neck. When the front door shut behind him, the hallway seemed very narrow; the space in which he stood, between the closed door and Gloria, seemed rather small. He felt naked without his outerwear on.

Gloria turned and led the way upstairs, her scent trailing behind her, and Futh followed.

In the living room, Gloria guided him past the dining table – already set with place mats, cutlery, wine glasses and crackers – to a seat on the sofa beside the roaring log fire. She filled a tumbler from a jug of mulled wine on the coffee table and pressed it into his hand. He took a few medicinal gulps of the piping hot wine and then leaned forward and put the glass down. Gloria topped up her own glass and sat down beside him, slipping off her mules and crossing her legs towards him, poking playfully at his leg with her big toe. He looked down at her bare foot, her hot-pink nail varnish.

‘Your father’s in a bad mood,’ she said.

‘Ah,’ said Futh. ‘Where is he?’

‘He’s in the kitchen.’

‘I should go and say hello.’ Futh leaned forward again, preparing to stand.

Gloria, putting her hand, her honeysuckle-pink fingernails, on his thigh, said, ‘No, you shouldn’t.’ Futh, after a pause, during which he picked up his glass again and took another scalding swig, settled back into his seat. Gloria’s fingers plucked at his trouser leg, tugging at a loose thread. ‘You’ve nobody looking after you,’ she said.

Futh glanced at her. Firelight glinted off her oversized earrings. He looked away. Already he was feeling sedated by the mulled wine and the heat, pickled and roasted like his father’s pork hocks. Once more he went to stand up, got to his feet and went to the window.

Outside, everything was buried under inches of snow. Futh leaned his forehead against the cool windowpane and watched a boy building an igloo in a back garden, the boy’s breath visible in the cold air.

‘Come back over here,’ said Gloria. ‘It’s lovely and warm by the fire.’

Futh stayed where he was for a moment, gazing out, as if he had not heard her. Then, lifting his head and turning away from the window, he walked back to the sofa. He sat down where he had been and Gloria returned her painted fingertips to his thigh. She moved her face a fraction closer to his and said, ‘You look so much like your father.’

‘I’m not like him at all,’ said Futh.

‘You’re more like your mother,’ said Gloria.

Futh watched the fire blazing in the hearth.

‘She left very suddenly, didn’t she?’ said Gloria. ‘She just disappeared.’

‘Yes,’ said Futh, ‘she did.’

There was a thud behind them and Futh looked up to see his father standing there with oven gloves on his hands, a roasted chicken on the dining table.

Gloria lifted her hand from Futh’s leg and wrapped it around her glass. Standing, slipping her feet into her mules, she went to stand beside Futh’s father, saying, ‘That looks lovely,’ but he was already walking away again.

He returned with a dish of vegetables and two bottles of wine. One bottle was almost empty and he poured the last inch into his glass, drinking half of it before raising the dregs to nobody in particular. ‘To family,’ he said.

Gloria sat herself down, straightening her cutlery and laying her napkin over her lap. Futh came over from the fire and took his place at the table. His father uncorked the other bottle of wine and emptied it into the three large glasses. He carved the chicken while Gloria dished out vegetables.

Futh took his plate and his father said, ‘So Angela’s leaving you.’

‘We’re separating,’ said Futh, lifting his cutlery, ‘yes.’

‘What did you do?’ asked his father.

‘What?’

‘Why’s she leaving you?’

‘I didn’t do anything,’ said Futh.

‘She got bored,’ said his father.

Gloria reached over and gave Futh’s leg a consolatory pat and a squeeze.

Futh put down his cutlery and stood up. He was closer to the window but went to the fire, crouching down in front of it and picking up the poker.

‘Some women,’ said Gloria, ‘don’t appreciate what they’ve got.’

Futh, stoking the still-raging fire, said quietly to himself, ‘And some people don’t know what’s theirs and what’s not.’

He did not hear his father moving from the table and crossing the room. He only knew someone was standing behind him when he was pulled up by his collar, turned around and smacked. He dropped the poker and it fell at his feet, its red-hot tip singeing the carpet. His father returned to the table. Futh picked up the poker, put it back where it belonged, followed his father back to the table and sat down.

They pulled their crackers and put on their paper hats. Gloria got a paste necklace in her cracker and wore that too, and they listened to the Christmas service on the radio.

After lunch, a rug was moved from another part of the room and placed in front of the hearth, covering the scorch mark made by the poker. ‘There you are, you’d never know,’ said Gloria, turning back the corner of the rug with her foot to take another look at the blackened carpet, poking at it with her bare toe.

His hangover is getting worse. Futh, drinking more water, wishes that he had thought to pack aspirin. He thinks about showering but just gets dressed instead, putting the lighthouse in his pocket and applying new plasters to his messed-up heels before pulling on his thick walking socks and, steeling himself, his boots. Then, zipping up his honeymoon suitcase and leaving it by the door ready for transfer, he sets off.

He walks two miles just looking for an open bakery. It is almost midday before he begins the day’s hiking.

His route takes him across cornfields and then into forest. It is late August, almost autumn, harvest time, but for now the leaves are still green and there are blackberries on the bushes. The undergrowth is busy with mice and lizards and the air is full of darting insects nipping at him.

There are rain clouds gathering and the darkening sky and the forest canopy make it feel like dusk even in the early afternoon. Here and there, he emerges into daylight, coming to viewpoints overlooking the Rhine. It is possible to see a long way, to see miles of river and railway track, boats and trains on their way to Koblenz or Bonn, or further, to Cologne or Düsseldorf, or further still towards Rotterdam and Utrecht and the North Sea. But he is not looking, is unable to think of anything except how much his feet hurt.

When he rests, he feels his feet throbbing inside his boots. He knows that his plasters have come away, but if he takes off his boots he does not think he will ever put them back on. He continues on his way, the path returning him to the gloomy forest.

He walks ever more slowly as the afternoon wears on. The path seems never-ending but the viewpoints have tailed off. In the fading light, Futh, with everything but a torch in his backpack, begins to feel that the path might now be taking him deeper and deeper into the forest and that he might never find his way out. He could believe that the trees themselves were, in the darkness, shifting and spreading around him, to enclose him, to keep him there. He can barely see where he is treading, cannot tell what it is that his boots sink into here or what cracks beneath them there. At one point, he stops and considers turning back, remembering something he has read about deep-sea divers getting confused about which way is up, thinking that they are surfacing even as they dive deeper. But he ploughs on, and finally the trees thin out and he emerges from the forest into the twilight, returning to civilisation, and the streetlights are coming on to light his way.