This Must Be the Place (55 page)

‘The boxes,’ I say to her now, standing there in her wellingtons. ‘Yes. That would be great.’

We step through the front door, down the steps. The night is crisp, cloudless, the trees black and still against the glimmering sky.

Next to me, she shivers. ‘Feels like frost,’ she says, ‘doesn’t it?’

We crunch our way across the gravel, past the car (whose provenance I would still be interested to know) and over the path to the barn.

‘Watch your step,’ she says to me, as if I don’t know this terrain, as if it wasn’t me who laid these flags, as if I don’t think about this place, these paths, these borders, this sky, every day, as if I don’t map this place in my head every night as I am falling asleep in Manhattan.

In the barn, which smells as it always has, of dust and hay and bicycle oil, she waves an arm in a curve. ‘There,’ she says.

We are facing an entire wall of boxes, of tea-chests, of suitcases, one of which I recognise as the holdall I brought with me on spring break all those years ago. Is it possible that it still holds the ashes of Grandpa? Eminently so.

‘My God,’ I say.

‘I know.’

‘I had no idea how much I left here, how much I—’

‘I tried to tell you.’

I turn away and see, behind me, a tangled mass of children’s vehicles. There is the tiny blue-framed trike Ari used to circle the house on, when I first got here. There is the yellow bicycle I taught Marithe to ride, holding the back of the seat, until I felt the surety of her balance and was able to let go. An old buggy of Calvin’s, covered with thick layers of dust.

‘You know,’ I say suddenly to Claudette, and I need to make my apology, I need to look her in the eye and say sorry, but what comes out is something quite different. ‘You have done such an amazing job with them. You really have. They are so lucky to have you.’

These words have an unaccountable effect on Claudette. She looks astonished, then confused, then floored. Then her eyes brim with tears, which spill from her lashes, down her cheeks. I reach out and, with the very tips of my thumbs, I brush the tears away.

‘Oh,’ she whispers, bowing her head, ‘why do you always do that?’

‘Do what?’ I say, and I step towards her, closing the gap between us.

‘It drives me crazy.’

‘What does?’

‘Your ability to … to … say the thing I least expect you to say.’ She tosses her hair back off her face and glares at me. ‘It’s – it’s very disconcerting … I mean, I get myself to a place where I know how I feel about you and then …’ she is shouting now ‘… then you turn up, out of the bloody blue, looking all … all …’ She gestures at me with a violent shovelling motion.

‘All what?’

‘All nothing!’ she yells, and gives me a shove in the chest, which makes her, not me, stagger backwards towards the bike-and-scooter tangle. ‘And then you go and say something like that.’

‘Why shouldn’t I tell you what an incredible mother you’ve been? Those kids wouldn’t have had a chance without you, without your—’

‘Stop it!’ She puts her hands over her ears. ‘Just stop it. I don’t want to hear it.’

‘OK,’ I say. ‘I won’t breathe another word about your mothering skills.’

‘Good.’

‘Superlative as they are.’

‘Daniel—’

‘Can I say one more thing? If I’m allowed?’

She shuts her eyes. ‘If this is about Marithe going to school, then I refuse to—’

‘It’s not about Marithe going to school.’

‘Oh. What is it, then?’

I take in a lungful of the barn’s dusty, chill air and I think about the glistening white of the salt desert, the way the lakes threw back images only of the sky above, how the landscape still held the form of its aquatic prehistory. ‘I owe you an apology,’ I say. ‘I’m sorry for everything,’ I say. ‘I’m sorry for going off at the deep end, for leaving you to cope with everything, for dropping out of your lives for a while there.’

She regards me from across the barn throughout the length of this speech, her fists buried in her jacket pockets.

‘Most of all,’ I say, ‘I am sorry for being cavalier with our marriage. I regret that more … more than I can say. I am so sorry.’ I open my hands to her, as if the apology is an object that could be contained within them.

Claudette looks at me for a moment longer. Then she gives a short nod, the kind you might give to an acquaintance, seen from across a street. Then she turns and, for the second time that evening, my ex-wife walks out on me.

She leaves the bikes, she leaves the barn, she leaves me, sliding through the gap in the doorway, her footfalls biting down into the gravel as she goes.

It won’t surprise you to hear that it takes me a while to collect myself. I look at the bikes, the scooters, the handles of Calvin’s stroller, where patches were worn bare by the grip of our hands. I cast my eye over the cliff-face of boxes. I fiddle for a moment with the latch of the barn door.

When I finally do step outside, the night has changed, moved on. Clouds have blown across the moon, obliterating its shadowy light, and a breeze is gusting in the tops of the trees, so I don’t see Claudette until I almost trip over her.

She is sitting on the front steps of the house, a hood covering her head, her jacket wrapped about her.

‘I don’t suppose,’ she says in a low voice, ‘you have a cigarette, do you?’

Despite myself, despite everything, I laugh. ‘You’re asking me for a cigarette? You?’

She shrugs. ‘I just had this strange urge for one and I thought maybe—’

‘I’m afraid not,’ I say, and I lower myself down to sit next to her. ‘I don’t smoke.’

It is her turn to laugh. ‘Really?’

I shake my head. ‘Nope.’

She is still laughing. ‘You gave up?’

‘I did.’

‘Completely?’

‘One hundred per cent.’

‘I can’t believe it,’ she says.

‘Neither can I, sometimes.’ I sigh, button up my coat, look at my watch. ‘Well, I should probably—’

‘I’ve been thinking,’ she interrupts, in a rushed voice.

‘Oh, yeah?’

‘About the boxes.’

There is a pause. She stretches out her fingers, laces them together, clears her throat.

‘There are rather a lot of them,’ she says.

‘That’s true.’

‘It occurred to me that it might … take you a bit longer than we thought. To sort through.’

‘It might.’

‘Maybe …’ she begins, then stops.

‘Go on,’ I say.

‘Well, I don’t want to … I mean, I know you’re busy … you probably need to get back to New York quite soon …’

‘Not particularly,’ I say.

‘Well, it’s just an idea but you could, if you wanted to … if you felt like it … change your flight.’

I half turn to look at her but she bows her head so that her hair forms a curtain around her face.

‘My flight?’ I say.

‘Just so you have time to go through all that stuff properly. A day or two.’

I make a show of considering this idea but in truth my head is filled with a tornado of sound, of confusion. ‘It’s a possibility,’ I manage to get out.

‘The kids would like it,’ she continues. ‘Having you around for a while.’

‘I guess.’

‘You could … stay in the village, I suppose … in—’

‘A B-and-B?’

‘Yes. Or maybe it makes more sense to …’

‘To what?’ I say, and it’s taking all my willpower not to reach out and seize her, to grab her arm and say, really? This is happening? Are you saying what I think you’re saying?

‘Stay here.’

‘Here?’ I almost bark.

‘In the house. There’s plenty of room, of course, and …’

‘And?’

‘Well, you could get on with the boxes more easily, couldn’t you?’

‘Oh, the boxes, yes. I suppose I could.’

I make a show of looking at my watch, trying to ignore my heart, which is pulsing at such a rate that I’m sure she will be able to hear it.

‘It is getting kind of late,’ I say, in a thoughtful tone.

‘It is,’ she says, without looking at me. ‘Maybe you should call the airline.’

‘Maybe I will.’

We sit side by side, our hands in our laps, and the mountain is one side of us, a dark, protective shape, and the village is far below us, pinpricks of light glittering and fracturing through the night. Somewhere behind us, an owl sends out its lilting, vowelled cry. Claudette shivers. ‘I’m going in,’ she says, standing up, the hem of her coat brushing against my face. ‘Are you coming?’

‘Yes,’ I say. ‘I am.’

Footnotes

¹
Daniel arrives, nine minutes late. Facial expression tense, gloomy – worse than this morning.

²
It would, but only for a few minutes, after which it would be worse.

³
Untrue. It’s been nine months, ever since he was given a spy set for Christmas. Contents: binoculars, notebook, fingerprint-dusting kit, pen with invisible ink, torch, morse-code booklet. Also, a disguise of glasses and a false moustache but Niall gave this to Phoebe, who put it on her stuffed Dalmatian, where it remains to this day. Christmas, it should also be footnoted, was when it became possible to hear his parents talking back and forth, downstairs, when Niall was in bed, often in the kind of raised voices that he and Phoebe were not allowed to use.

⁴
Daniel turned off radio and said: huh.

⁵
Good things about Daniel #1: he is always pleased to see you.

⁶
Likes: the board, the desk-affixed pencil sharpener, the science lab, the periodic table, school trips. Loathes: lunchtime, recess, sports.

⁷
Good things about Daniel #2.

⁸
The clinic nurse? Or Niall’s mother? Uncertain.

⁹
This is not something Niall can do with other people, except maybe Phoebe but she doesn’t count because she’s only six and tells everybody what she’s thinking all the time.

¹⁰
PADDU for short.

¹¹
Other impossibilities include: sit on upholstery or carpet, pet an animal, wear underwear from regular stores, sleep in beds other than your own, go on sleepovers or playdates, remove your gloves, use soap of any kind, lie or roll or fall on grass, take part in any grass-based sport, swim in a swimming-pool, swim in seawater, eat food with your fingers, touch trees or flowers or leaves.

¹²
A mixture of antiseptic paste, antibacterial ointment, paraffin and steroid: Niall asked them and they told him.

¹³
One who works against a black background; Niall saw one once at an arts festival.

¹⁴
Written by his students at Berkeley. Daniel says that most of them haven’t even grasped the basics of sentence construction but that there is always the occasional diamond in the rough. That, he has said to Niall, is what I’m there for. The diamond? Niall asked. The occasional diamond, Daniel had clarified.

¹⁵
Good things about Daniel #3.

¹⁶
Too much central heating is one of the things that makes eczema worse. Others triggers include: dust, detergent, laundry or cleaning products, animal dander, nut and nut derivatives, egg, dairy, soya, perfume, flour, grass, soil, sand, pollen, saliva, latex, wool, synthetic fibres, paint, glue, leaves, seeds, wood smoke, petrol, felt, shellfish, the seams of clothing, the labels of clothing, fabric trim, chlorine, polyester thread, soft toys, rope, firelighters, plastic cutlery, elastic.

¹⁷
Niall has been reading about methods of mind control. He is putting it to the test here.

¹⁸
He decides to give up all mind-control experiments.

¹⁹
Niall’s mother calls it ‘Daniel’s impulse-control deafness’. Niall has no idea what this means.

²⁰
The more serious result of scratching. If the skin is broken, the naturally occurring bacteria on the body gets in, multiplies, and the eczema becomes infected. It’s not fun to have or to treat, as Niall has discovered many times.

²¹
Like that of an astronaut, Niall has often thought, or perhaps a cowboy just come down off his horse.

²²
With Chris, who likes to eat sundaes and chat on the phone about passive-aggressive people.

²³
One of Daniel’s favourite phrases of all time.

²⁴
Daniel has had five pairs in the last year.

²⁵
In later life, Niall will realise it was legal paper, which implies that the woman was employed in that capacity.

²⁶
The end.