For the first time I saw her forget her lines. The role she must have chosen to play with me faltered, couldn’t hold. Like an actress remembering who she really is in the middle of a performance, she froze. I saw real pain. It made me want to hold her. But she reassumed a kind of composure.
‘It was that night,’ she said. ‘The night he died.’
I waited. She was in a place of her own. No one should interrupt her there. She retracted her closed lips and contrived not to cry.
‘He phoned in the early evening. Charlie was out. He phoned from a pub. The pain in his voice was awful. I knew then. I knew how bad he was. I spoke to him for a long time. Till his money ran out. But I could’ve gone to him. I could’ve helped. Maybe if I had, it wouldn’t have happened.’
She glanced at me and away, as if she couldn’t bear to face herself in my eyes.
‘No, Ellie,’ I said. Her first name came naturally out of the moment. ‘No. Don’t think that. He was probably too far out by then.’
‘But why didn’t I? Jesus, sometimes I hate how sensible I am. What did it matter if it was awkward to explain to Charlie? Or if people saw us? Scott was going to die.’
‘You didn’t know that.’
‘Maybe not. But I’ve thought about that phone-call a lot. I think maybe it’s typical of my life. It’s what I do. Scott was the most authentic thing that’s ever happened to me. Easy to accommodate he wasn’t. But he was real. I’ve thought perhaps that’s what bothered me. I wanted him but not the disturbance he caused. And the phone-call sometimes seems to sum it all up. I gave him as much space as wouldn’t disturb the routine of my evening. It’s what I do. What’s wrong with me?’
Perhaps we choose our fears, I was thinking. We frighten ourselves with the smaller things so that the bigger things can’t get near enough to bother us. Perhaps Ellie Mabon chose the fear of breaking the pattern of her life to avoid confronting one of the biggest fears we have — the fear of feeling. Let go the reins on that one and where might it take us?
‘What did he say that night? Can you remember?’
‘It’s not the kind of call you can forget. He wasn’t talking about the weather. But it wasn’t too coherent either. Mainly what I remember is the pain. Most of it I could only half-understand. Oh, it was terrible.’
‘Can you remember anything?’
She thought, staring at the grass in front of her.
‘Where would you start? It was all so confused. Something had happened recently. I know that much. I don’t mean just us breaking up. That hurt him enough. But something else. Something had happened recently. That almost destroyed him. He had always told me the only faith he ever had was in people. And I think that was gone.’
‘Happened here? In Graithnock?’
‘I don’t know. It was recent. It happened to somebody he knew. So maybe it happened here. Somebody he admired very much. Because he kept saying, “The best of us. He was one of the best of us.” The person he was talking about must have died.’
‘Does the man in the green coat mean anything to you?’
‘Who is that?’
‘I’d like to know.’
‘He used that expression.’
‘In what context?’
‘I think he said it was the man in the green coat all over again.’
‘But you don’t know who he is?’
‘No idea. But I’ll tell you something. Whatever had happened made him hate Dave Lyons. He had never liked him much. But he was so angry with him that night.’
And so angry with Fast Frankie White. I found it difficult to make a connection between the Dave Lyons I had just met and Frankie White. I asked her if she had heard of Frankie. She hadn’t.
‘Dave Lyons,’ I said. ‘You know him?’
‘No. I know of him. Scott had spoken about him.’
‘Did Scott still seem to be in touch with him?’
‘As far as I knew he was. He seemed to be lumping him along with two other people that night. As if they were all together. It was something that happened — when he was a student, I think. One of them was a name I’d never heard him mention before. Blake, I think it was. Andy Blake? He said a strange thing about him. “Physician, heal thyself,” he said. The other man he didn’t name. He just said I had seen him, but I didn’t know him. He said I had seen him all right. Don’t worry about it. It was all like that. He was telling me and he wasn’t telling me. It was weird.’
‘But what did he lump them together for? Was it something they had done?’
‘I wouldn’t know. I honestly think that’s all I can tell you. Believe me, I’ve gone over that call in my head a hundred times. Look. I think I’d better be going. We’re going out tonight. I’ve got to get ready.’
I couldn’t imagine what else she could do to make herself look better. I took out my cigarettes. She didn’t smoke. Hardly anybody did these days. I would soon be in quarantine.
‘Do you know where Anna is just now?’
She shook her head, looking up at the trees.
‘We weren’t that close.’
‘Listen. I really appreciate what you’ve done. It’s meant a lot to me. I can imagine how sore this has been for you.’
‘I doubt it,’ she said. ‘I really did care about him, you know. You know what I said to him when we split up? “I’m saving both our lives.” That’s what I said. That’s irony, if you like.’
The wind had risen. I smoked and listened to the leaves and watched some cows in a field. In this place where Scott had been and wouldn’t be coming back, I learned his absence again. It was a lesson from a bad teacher who taught by rote, not caring how well you understood it. You didn’t have to understand, only to know. Ellie Mabon put her arms round her shoulders and shivered.
‘Well,’ she said. ‘I’d better be going.’
I looked at her and nodded. She smiled and pointed to the ground behind the cars. There were tread-marks on the grass.
‘Those,’ she said. ‘They’ll always remind me of Scott. Him and me here. I wonder how long they’ll last. What is all this about for you really? I mean. What is it you’re doing exactly?’
‘I don’t know exactly. I suppose I’m trying to make my own peace with Scott’s death. I suppose this is how I do it.’
‘How do I do it?’
She started suddenly to cry.
‘Damn,’ she said. ‘Will you hold me one time for him?’
I crossed and held her. It was a small, chaste ceremony of mutual loss. Her hair in my face gave off a melancholy sweetness. Clenched to her, I felt the tremors of her body, how the edifice of beauty was undermined from within with deep forebodings. In the embrace I experienced our shared nature — so much questionable confidence containing so much undeniable panic. That was me, too. Some of my colleagues and bosses liked to say I was completely arrogant. They misunderstood the language of my living. Arrogance should be comparative. Humility was total. Faced with simplistic responses to life that tried to fit my living into themselves, I was arrogant. I seemed to meet them every day and I knew I was more than they said I was. But when I sat down inside myself in the darkness of a night, I knew nothing but my smallness. I knew it now and shared it with hers.
She subsided slowly, sighed and moved away. Her mascara was spiked with tears. She sniffed.
‘Where is it you’re living anyway?’ she said in a watery voice that suggested the tears had invaded her larynx.
‘I’m in the Bushfield Hotel tonight. I might still be there tomorrow night. I don’t know.’
‘If there’s anything else I can think of, I’ll ’phone you there. I’d like to help you if I can.’ Her voice was submerging. ‘Oh, God.’
She fumblingly opened the passenger-door and leant inside. She came out with her handbag and put it on the roof of the car. She went back inside and brought out a dispenser of quickie cleansers, from which she pulled a handful of connected, wet tissues. She put the dispenser on the roof of the car as well. She stood, breathing deeply and trying to make sure her tears were over. She wiped her face carefully, especially around the eyes. She opened her handbag, took out her compact and checked her face. She finished off wiping it clean and threw the dark-stained tissues away. She very carefully put on her make-up. She took more tissues and wiped the heels of her shoes. She put the stuff back in the car, closed the door and went on tiptoe to the driver’s door. She looked at me. She was Mrs Mabon again.