Cadwallader stood with his back to the window, leaning against the sink units, conscious of the curve of the moulded laminate against his buttocks. He crossed his arms and then uncrossed them quickly. Glancing expectantly at his wife, he tried, unsuccessfully, to think of something to say.
'It's time you left,' she said, 'It's two past already.'
A heaviness pulled at his guts as his spirits sank even lower.
'I thought maybe a quick cuppa before I go. As it's my birthday.' He wanted to sound casual, but his voice came out pleading, like a sad child.
'Please, Simon, you know what we agreed. He'll be here soon.'
'Oh, I see. He's coming here today, is he? On my—on a Sunday.' As he spoke, whining and hurt, he could see her face harden, her eyes flashing with sudden anger.
'Where and when I see Geoffrey is none of your business,' she said, 'And it wasn't me that started all this, was it?'
Cowed by her anger, he looked down at his shoes. His mouth set in a frown, like a schoolboy resenting his punishment.
'Was it?' she hissed.
Again he didn't reply, aware that his silence was confirming his guilt. Her reproach bore down on him, crushing him. After a long silence he looked up, feeling silly and shamed.
'Right then,' he said, 'I'll just say goodbye to the kids.' He could see his daughter through the door to the living room, sitting on a cushion three feet from the television, staring zombie-like at a gyrating pop singer. 'Laura, darling,' he called, 'Daddy's going now.'
'Bye,' the girl said, not turning from the flickering screen.
'No goodbye kiss?'
He waited, but she showed no sign of having heard him. Another small stab of pain jabbed into his chest. He crossed the room and bent to press his lips to her long yellow hair. She seemed to ignore him, but then lifted her face briefly to plant a perfunctory kiss on his proffered cheek before turning quickly back to the television.
'Bye-bye, sweetie,' he murmured to the back of her head, 'See you next week.'
'You won't find Alex,' said his wife, as he came back into the kitchen, 'He'll be over the road. Ian's got a new computer game.'
Sensing her growing anxiety for him to be gone, he picked up his jacket from the back of the kitchen chair and, keeping his eyes fixed on the white melamine of the table, pulled it on.
Sundays were always bad, but this one, his birthday, had been worse than most. Naturally, he hadn't expected anything from his wife, but he had been shocked by the children's indifference. A cheap card from Alex, probably bought that morning by Stephanie from the newsagents at the bottom of the road, and a scrawled picture from Laura, five minutes of half-hearted effort, bad even by her standards. And then a few hours wandering around Legoland, acutely aware that his sole contribution to their pleasure was as the provider of funds. He remembered the same day in previous years—the attention, the affection, the presents bought with carefully saved pocket money, the meticulously drawn birthday cards. The contrast was brutally stark.
'Right then,' he said, fighting to keep the misery out of his voice, 'I'll be off. I'll see you next Sunday, usual time.'
As he spoke, Stephanie seemed to remember something. She turned to the living room door, calling above the pop singer's warbling. 'Laura, you haven't given Daddy his present.'
'It's on the sideboard,' said the girl, without enthusiasm.
'She's made you a present,' explained Stephanie, 'I'll just fetch it.'
Cadwallader waited by the back door, slightly cheered that his daughter's indifference was less complete than he had thought. Something at the corner of his vision caught his attention: a flash of white in the doorway to the living room. It was a large white rabbit, looking up at him with blank, pink eyes. Its ears were erect and its fur glossy and unnaturally brilliant as if recently washed and tumble-dried.
'Here you are.' His wife came in from the hall and handed him a small package crudely wrapped in what looked like recycled Christmas paper. Inside was a small medicine bottle, brown glass with a black plastic screw-top. Holding it up to the window, he could see it was filled with a turbid liquid.
'What is it?' he asked, genuinely puzzled.
'Perfume. Actually after-shave, as it's for you.'
He unscrewed the top and sniffed at the bottle. It had an aromatic smell, strangely familiar.
'Squashed geranium leaves,' explained Stephanie, 'It's a new fad at school. She made about two pints of the stuff last week—I had to put the poor plant in my bedroom, before she reduced it to a bare twig.'
Cadwallader smiled and, up-turning the bottle onto his forefinger, dabbed the liquid behind each ear in a mock-female gesture. Stephanie watched him, unsmiling, her expression anxious and irritated. She glanced up at the clock.
'Please go now, I don't want a scene.'
He felt his tiny bubble of pleasure burst.
'Thank you for the present, darling, it's lovely,' he called, slipping the bottle into his jacket pocket.
'OK.' The girl replied without turning round.
As he opened the back door, Cadwallader remembered the rabbit.
'Oh, I nearly forgot to ask. Her new rabbit, what's its name?'
'Loofah.'
'Loofah? You mean, like a bath sponge?'
'Exactly. Like a bath sponge.'
'I don't get it.'
'She had a bath sponge in the shape of a rabbit. A pink one. You bought it for her, two Christmases ago.' More reproach, implicit in her tone, for not remembering the pink sponge. 'She called that "Loofah" too, if you remember—and now she's got a live version.'
'It's a silly name,' he said, defensively, 'Why couldn't she call it something normal—like Flopsy or Thumper?'
'It's Laura's rabbit and she can call it what she wants. Anyway, I happen to think that Loofah is a very imaginative name.'
'Well, whatever. But I don't think you should have it running round the house. It's not hygienic.'
'What are you talking about? The rabbit's in the garden. It never comes into the house.'
'Stephanie, it was right there, in the living room. I saw it myself.'
'Then what's that?' she said, looking out of the back window.
He moved back into the room and followed her gaze. The rabbit, dazzling in the grey light of the autumn afternoon, was sitting in the middle of the lawn, looking straight at him.
'Laura,' his wife called through to the living room, 'It's time to put Loofah back in his hutch. He's been out long enough.'
'I'm telling you the rabbit was in the house, sitting right there—I saw it when you went to get the present.'
'Then he must have a key for the patio doors,' she said. 'Now, Simon, will you please go. If you won't stick to our agreement, I'll have to get the solicitors involved—and neither of us want that, do we?'
Cadwallader unlocked the driver's door and then turned back to look at the house.
It wasn't much—a three-bedroom detached house in a modern estate on the edge of Rickmansworth—but it had been the centre of his life for five years. He had decorated it himself, fitting out the bathroom and installing the new kitchen units. The flower beds he had laid out were flourishing. The Norwegian maple he had planted on the front lawn—and had watered lovingly through two summers of drought—was beginning to look like a real tree, standing clear of its now redundant stake, its trunk thickening and branches spreading.
And now this house that had once been his: what was it? Home to a woman who held him in contempt and to two children who were quickly forgetting who he was.
He scanned the little close of neat suburban homes, each surrounded by a pocket-handkerchief of carefully tended garden, each struggling in vain to proclaim individuality: the grand front doors with brass fittings, the carriage-style porch lights, the mock-Jacobean leaded windows. He remembered how he had come to despise these pretensions, how he had felt suffocated by the primness and general vacuity of the place. He had wanted to escape from it all, to get away. Anyhow, anywhere, just away.
And so he had gone. Leaving haus frau Stephanie for the arms of an exciting new partner, escaping suburban pettiness for the promise of limitless freedom, he had turned his back on this cosy little world. At the time that had felt so completely right, his path having the sharp clarity of a spiritual epiphany. Now everything had changed: this world was turning its back on him as firmly as he had turned his back on it—and that didn't feel quite so good. Because for all its prim cosiness and its smug security, it didn't seem so bad now—not now that his life was bereft of all vestiges of cosiness and security. Even the dull roar of the M25, the eternal background to life on the estate that had once so irritated him now sounded more like the purr of a friendly cat.
Shivering in the brisk wind, he felt the first spatterings of a cold drizzle on his face. He opened the car door, fumbling with his keys. Then, as he slid into the driver's seat, a new misery struck home like a knife in the gut. He should have told her today, if only because of the mortgage payments. Soon all that would remain of seven years’ work would be a few items of obsolete hardware and three boxes of promotional tee-shirts in the company's rather lurid livery. Because somehow, in the midst of a boom in the software linkage systems market, he had managed to drive his once-thriving business into the ground.
The A412 was depressingly quiet for a Sunday afternoon, and in no time he’d be back to his cold, poky Uxbridge flat, empty now of the new woman, his palace of freedom turned prison of loneliness. But feeling like he did, he couldn't face it just yet. Seeing the children had unsettled him more than usual. He needed time to collect himself and prepare for the grim wretchedness of the flat.
There was the possibility of stopping for a drink. The analgesia of the alcohol had appeal, but the pubs he passed did not. The first had been crassly modernised and was now the haunt of local toughs, drinking bottled lager and radiating aggression like gamma rays. The 'Whip and Collar' was usually OK, but at this time it would be full of happy families finishing off their Sunday lunches: not the place for a domestic pariah. There was nowhere else before the motorway.
He thought briefly about going back into the town centre, but he hadn't the energy to turn the car. And so he drove on, gripping the wheel and staring straight ahead, clenching his jaws against the rising tide of misery. Soon he had left the outskirts of the town and was approaching the motorway access roundabout, sucked forward by his own lassitude.
Suddenly something snatched his eye, a dazzle of white in the grass verge on the right. For a moment it fixed him, the shaft of brilliance piercing his brain like a silver blade. Then without warning his hands spun the wheel, swerving the car across the road in front of an oncoming BMW. He stamped the brake in a desperate reflex and the front left wheel bounced onto the verge. The car shuddered to a halt as the BMW screamed past, bellowing outrage. The whiteness vanished into the tall grass; it could have been a rabbit, but he wasn't sure.
Cadwallader was breathing hard. The car was slewed across the entrance to a small lane and the engine had stalled. He lifted his hands off the wheel: they were trembling. He felt a warm flush of self-pity. Was there nothing, not even his driving, that was safe from his own lunacy?
As he stared up the lane, letting the misery wash over him, recognition clicked into place: he'd been here before, with the children. There was a path at the end that led up to some woods beside the motorway. He started the engine and pulled forward. Although battered by the ceaseless roar of traffic, it would do for a time-killing stroll.
Cadwallader pulled up onto the verge and turned off the engine. For a long while he didn't move but sat slumped over the wheel watching the fine drizzle settle on the windscreen.
When he did get out of the car, he felt instantly cold in the chilly easterly wind. He leaned across to the passenger seat and picked up the ski hat and scarf that he hadn't needed in the morning. His shoes, fawn slip-ons with absurd little zippers down the front, were unsuitable for November rambling, but then he wasn't going far. Despite himself, he grinned. The shoes were obviously old man's shoes, hand-me-downs from his ageing father. His wearing them was somehow vaguely symbolic, although of what he wasn't quite sure. He locked the car and headed up the lane, hat pulled down and scarf wrapped up to his chin.
His vision quickly blurred as the drizzle settled on his glasses. And although it wasn't late, the dim light was already fading. Enclosed by the hedges, the lane was in near nocturnal darkness. He began to walk faster.
As he emerged into the open, a track led off to the left to pass through a tunnel under the motorway spur road: this was the route leading to the woods. The road itself ran straight ahead, plunging into a scrappy copse some fifty yards further on. He had intended to follow the track, but he now saw something in the trees, a flash of red. Pausing briefly, he was held by the sudden colour and then set off towards it, making a diversion despite the inexorably advancing darkness.
What he had thought was a copse was in fact a clearing where the road ended, pitted hard-core surrounded by twisted damaged trees. There was a wire fence at the back, behind which the motorway thundered, blind, oblivious and eternal. Straight ahead, up against the fence, stood a derelict fire engine. Huge and imposing, it was bizarrely out of place. Its massive engine lay half-disassembled on the ground beside it like the guts of a disembowelled beast. The ladders were missing, but the white hose reels were still intact, as were the water units, a mass of brass pipe-work and spigots. To the left of the fire engine was a decrepit caravan, chocked up on bricks with its wheels missing. It lay in a sea of detritus: Calor gas canisters, a doll's pram with a torn hood, two rusting bicycles and an electric cooker.
Then, in front of the caravan, he noticed a child, a small girl: he hadn't seen her at first, in the fading grey light. He had assumed he was alone, and the sight of another person gave him a strange, shivering shock. She was his daughter's age, thin and pale, with dark hair hanging about her face in damp straggles. Apparently oblivious to the rain, she sat on a stained mattress with her arm around the neck of a large black dog, a greyhound cross of some sort. Neither the child nor the dog moved nor made a sound. For a moment he was transfixed by the stillness of their gaze, filled with a growing unease. Then he turned and walked quickly back along the road as if fleeing from some nameless danger.
The track was heavily pot-holed and, especially in the deep gloom under the spur road bridge, he had to take care to avoid puddles. After this the way rose steeply; it was still rough walking on thin soles, but dry. At the crest of the ridge the track turned sharp left to run along the top of the motorway cutting. There was now no barrier from the road and the monotonous roar intensified.
Out of the lee of the ridge he was exposed to the full bitterness of the wind. Shivering, he thrust his hands into his jacket pockets. He felt something: the crumpled wrapping paper of Laura's present. But there was no sign of the bottle. He stopped, checking the inside pocket and then his jeans. Nothing. There was another uprush of self-pity; he had lost it already, his only birthday present, the only sign, paltry though it was, that any creature on earth was aware of his existence. He touched the skin behind his left ear and then held the finger under his nose, smelling the residual perfume of the geranium leaves. For some moments he stood staring at the pitted concrete of the path, gutted by sorrow.
After a hundred yards or so, at the start of the woods, the track joined a narrow farm road that swung in from the left. He walked slowly now, like a mourner at a funeral. Why had he let all of this happen? this was the big question. For he had let it happen, watching blankly, like a rabbit in the headlights of a car, as the whole thing fell apart. His marriage and his children and his home, and now his business, each slipping through numbed fingers and crashing to the cold concrete floor.
It was strangely peaceful in the woods. The stately beeches soared skywards like gothic pillars, their branches meshing over the road like vaulting. The manic roar of the traffic, though undiminished in intensity, seemed to lose its relevance in the cathedral calm. The air here was still, though he could still hear the wind in the high branches of the trees, far, far above. As he walked the tree trunks loomed out of the half-light, vast impassive sentinels, aware of his presence though indifferent to it.
Whatever it was that had done for him, it had crept up on him like a murderer in the night, unnoticed and unrecognised. It had led him away from the path into the dark, dark forest, where he now stumbled blindly forward with a quiet panic screaming through his skull. He stopped and stared up at the swaying branches far above, clawed silhouettes against the grey sky. He felt suddenly severed from his life and a strange calm flooded over him. A scrap of floating seaweed swept along by the currents and tides, carried by the blind forces of the ocean, he had lost control of his life.
He reached a junction which he did not recognise; he had come further than he intended. The road itself swung right, heading out of the wood, back into the fading light of the afternoon. An unmetalled track branched off straight ahead, leading on through the trees. Cadwallader followed the road, feeling suddenly exposed as he left the sanctuary of the woods.
After fifty yards, the road crossed a single lane bridge over the motorway. Here the roar reached a manic crescendo, the scream of the engines and the thunder of tyres on concrete like a never-ending onrush of enraged beasts, bellowing their fury into the gloaming. He stared down at the two-way river of light—white flowing towards him, red away—which stretched to infinity, winding away over the distant hills like a luminous snake. The brief peace of the cathedral had dissolved in the corrosive acid of misery. He had lost everything, every single thing that had mattered to him, and in return he gained nothing but anguish. And now he was trapped; even if he saw a way out the mess, he knew that he wouldn't have the strength to take it.
So what now? He hadn't got a clue.
Leaning forward against the metal parapet, he allowed himself to sink into the endless flow of lights, relaxing into his misery as into the arms of an old friend. In a strange way he liked it here, flowing with the lights, his thoughts numbed by the incessant roar. Perhaps he could stay forever, gazing down onto the motorway, shielding himself from pain until death finally carried him away.
'Don't jump.'
Although the voice was smooth and soft, like velvet, he heard her clearly above the traffic noise. And oddly he was not surprised, as if he had been expecting her. He turned slowly.
A girl approaches from the far side of the bridge, further away than her voice had sounded. She comes towards him slowly, gliding across the tarmac, watching him with half a smile in her eyes. Small and slim with flowing dark hair, she is barefoot and wears nothing but a light gown of a shimmering white that flows around her body and thighs like molten silver. She is surrounded by warm brightness, a pool of sunlight, which moves with her.
He has a vague feeling of knowing her, she seems so familiar, and yet he is certain that he has never seen her before in his life. For some reason he cannot fathom he is also certain that she was expecting him, waiting for him here at the bridge.
She stands close in front of him and he is enveloped in her capsule of light; he feels the sun-warmth on his skin, he sees the colours that are too bright, the light that shimmers, undulating and dream-like.
'I wasn't going to,' he says quietly.
She smiles up at him and puts her face to his neck, as if smelling something. She sighs, closing her eyes. Then, without warning, she reaches up to him, slides her arms around his neck and pulls him forward, locking her lips onto his. At first he hesitates, holding back, but a fuzzy warmth trickles through him. He closes his eyes and flows into her. Inside him icy concretions of angst and misery slowly begin to melt, softening and falling away. He holds her waist, pulling her slim body against his, and then time stops.
After an era, or possibly two, she pulls back.
'Come,' she says, and taking his hand, leads him across the bridge, back towards the woods. He walks beside her, swimming in her travelling pool of summer.
In the woods it is warm and dry. The trees they pass are in full leaf, clothed in the emerald green of spring, and dappled sunlight filters through the foliage. Is this how it's supposed to be? he thinks vaguely as she leads him to a patch of soft grass. They are surrounded by the tall, green trees, shimmering in the sunlight and the gentle breeze. She kisses him again and pulls at the tie of her gown which falls open and then off her shoulders.
She lies down on the grass, pulling him down with her. He is dimly aware that he is no longer wearing his jacket or his sweater. She swirls around him like mist, the feeling and sight of her body blending with the velvet heat in his brain. Her hands slide over his skin and into his soul, her limbs encircle him and he is sucked down into her, floating and flowing away.