When The Road Darkens

"Faithless is he that says farewell when the road darkens." (J. R. R. Tolkien)

September 2005

The flamenco red Peugeot 307 quivered in the wake of a heavy goods vehicle, plunging them into sudden darkness. Giles woke startled, freeing the unopened bottle of Evian squeezed between his thighs. A nervous glance at the speedometer confirmed the truck had been pushing a hundred. 

"Stupid bastard" muttered Steve, eyes unflinching from the road.

Giles was unsure if he meant him or the driver. He picked up the water then reached instinctively for the jade ring on his small finger, twisting counter-clockwise.

They travelled down the M3 motorway for almost an hour, the silhouetted London skyscrapers shrinking in the rear view mirror with the pale sunrise. Progress was effortless for most of the route, but near the Portsmouth turn off, monstrous container trucks began to materialise, forming solid impenetrable lines, also bound for the ancient port.

Steve insisted on setting off early, an idea depressingly prudent and one that meant Giles, neither a morning person nor a hardy traveller, suffered a night of fitful sleep. On waking and against his doctor's advice, he had double-dosed and broken the routine of his medication to avoid interrupting the journey. The side effect, this current wave of nausea, was far easier to bear than Steve's impatience.

Yawning, he prodded a forefinger towards the black power button on the radio but stopped and flinched back. Had he been driving alone, a soothing classical music channel would have provided solace but Steve favoured the commercial stations with their loud popular tunes, illiterate disc jockeys and uninspired advertisements. So they had agreed to silence.

His attempts to introduce conversation faltered as Steve fended questions with short monosyllabic responses, affirmatives and negatives, or a plain grunt.

Not for the last time during the weekend, he longed for the companionship of Alan.

Pulling a lever, the seat reclined and closed his eyes, trying to centre himself by the steady engine thrum and imagining soft strains of a distant melody he later recognized as Vaughan William’s A Sea Symphony. If this was a foretaste of the week to come he would have to buy more books.

With depressing clarity, he recalled just how little he and this gruff American had in common. Except, of course, the sweet, funny, wonderful… 

He bolted upright, a sudden thought cutting through him like a crosswind.

"Anna?"

"In the trunk. With the luggage."

He exhaled and settled back again. Apart from a smooth morning crossing, he prayed the French customs officers were not at their punctilious best.

************

August 1997

“I need a pee. Stop somewhere up ahead.” Alan, fidgeting in the back, slouched forward into the gap between the front seats and pointed to a small lay-bye further down the country lane.

Beside him, Giles put down the map and groaned. “We're less than ten minutes away. Can't you hold on?”
“No, but I can piss out the window if you like?”

Steve obliged by pushing a button on the dashboard to open the electric window on the rear passenger side.
Anna slapped his shoulder. “Don't encourage him.”

They were doing this for her, the drive to St. Chinian, a tiny village on the outskirts of Béziers, where her grandmother grew up. Since childhood she had coveted a dream of seeing the place described so vividly to her in bedtime stories. Sitting on the balcony of her room that morning, sipping Jasmine tea and coolly assessing the day, she made up her mind. She slipped into her Chinese silk gown and with Steve still sleeping, crept down to the kitchen to sweet-talk the hotel chef into creating an imaginative picnic for their lunch. Languedoc delicacies such as goose patés, lemon blossom oreillettes, pélardon and Roquefort cheese, olives, creme catalan and red apricots from Roussillon stuffed the wicker basket full to bursting. All complemented by two chilled bottles of local Muscat. She knew how to get what she wanted. What man could resist the promise of open skies, French fare and a road trip?

Right at that moment, however, she felt something more wonderful, just having them all together, getting along. She made up her mind.

"Come on, let's stop. I need to stretch my legs too.”

Steve was already pulling the car over. Alan leapt out and was away like a midnight cat, disappearing over a turnstile into thick bushes.

As soon as Anna stepped out and smelled the earth-scented air, she knew St. Chinian would have to wait. A gentle incline rolled the fallow field down to the edge of a river, meandering along the base of the valley and on all sides surrounded by a luxuriant mélange of meadows. Like an open book, assorted green and brown shades of patchwork spread out onto each page with a curly bronzed binding running through the middle. Defiant, a lone chestnut tree stood alone in the field, an island in a sea of rough grass. Ann leant over the turnstile and spotted a dirt track that carved its way along the hedgerow down to a willow tree at the rivers edge.

Giles alone had reservations. “Aren't we trespassing? I don't know the country code over here. Is this a public right of way?”

“It'll be fine." She reassured him. "If anyone comes, we can simply plead ignorance. Can you do that in French? Or as a last resort we can set Alan on them.”

Nodding at Steve and Alan ahead, happily bouncing down the path, carrying the straw hamper and kicking a soft brown leather ball, she knew Giles would acquiesce.

The four of them lay in the shade of the weeping willow, its branches trailed in the river's current like the caress of delicate fingers. Her head cradled in Steve's lap, Anna peered up at the bursts of sunlight through the wispy branches dancing in the gentle breeze. The wine and fresh air had made her a little drowsy, but she forced herself to stay awake and bask in their company.

Almost as soon as they settled, Alan, ignoring Giles' protests, stripped to his underpants and jumped into the river. It shimmered enticingly cool with the midday heat and had she been a stronger swimmer she might have joined him. She had a suspicion Steve wanted to but when questioned, he simply shook his head and kissed her forehead. He leant into the trunk of the willow, playing absently with strands of her autumnal hair and chatting occasionally with Alan, who perched on a rock in shallow waters by the shore. Giles lay on the tartan blanket, knees pulled up, facing the sky, squinting into the travel guide she had bought in Bordeaux. The weekend had been better than she expected. Steve was not entirely comfortable around Giles and she would openly admit to being a little edgy with Alan's bursts of boisterous energy. Together, however, everything fit into place, like a beautiful jigsaw puzzle. All the people she loved.

The weekend had been her idea. She discovered the away-weekend in the window of a local travel agent and had easily persuaded Giles to follow up. With unexpected enthusiasm, Steve had set about planning the route from St. Malo, making sure to include her request to stop at Bordeaux on the way. She wanted to visit the Cathédrale Saint-André, where King Louis VII married Eleanor of Aquitaine. Eleanor was her hero, queen of both France and then England, following her later marriage to Henry II, and a woman of both power and substance. History remembered her as the Eagle, because she stretched out her wings over two kingdoms. Whenever dinner conversation turned to the lack of influential women in history, Eleanor was Anna's trump card.

"All people ever think about when you mention Bordeaux, is wine. Most people don't even realise the region was under English rule for almost three hundred years. From mid way through the eleventh century. There's so much more to Bordeaux than wine. Look at the architecture, the Saint-Seurin Basilica for example."
She pointed to the front of Giles glossy book, ignoring the disinterested audience.

"Wine's pretty good though." countered Steve.

"Anna's right. They've got a decent football team. They played Spurs in a friendly in March '89 at White Hart Lane." Alan lay at the opposite end of the rug from Giles, drying his legs off with his tee shirt.

Anna, exasperated, threw a plastic cup at him.

Steve laughed and said. "You're kidding? The English ruling the French? How the hell did that last so long?"

"Tax free wine." Giles was listening after all.

"Shut up!" Alan picked up Anna's cup and threw it at him.

"No, he's right. How did you know, Woody?" said Anna.

Giles flicked the page and said. "I just read it. Listen. After Henry II married Eleanor of Aquitaine, he wanted to cement relations with local businessmen in Bordeaux so allowed them tax-free trade with England. Business literally flowed - who writes these things - and the region boomed as Bordeaux became the cheapest imported wine in England."

"Makes sense, I suppose. The French got rich while the English got pissed. Give me a pint of beer any day." Alan crumpled his shirt into a ball, a make-do pillow.

"Heathen." Giles tidied the cup onto his own.

"That's why you love me." Alan leant over and kissed him, before lying down again.

Anna loved watching them, like bookends on the rug. She glowed inside to see Giles happy and settled. The day he introduced Alan she thought he was playing a joke. Undoubtedly good looking, the younger man's unkempt blond hair, youthful complexion and casual indifference, not to mention his passion for sport, seemed the antithesis of everything that was Giles. Together they worked though, together it felt right. Smart and Scruffy, Steve called them and somehow, he got on better with Giles because of Alan. Everything was perfect. The time was right.

"Steve." She smiled into his eyes. "Shall we?"

He tilted his head, puzzled for a moment then grinned and nodded.

"If you want. Go for it."

She sat up again, picked up an empty bottle of Muscat and clanged the side with a metal fork.

"Okay boys. Pay attention please."

"Oh God, no more history lessons." Alan put his hands over his ears and pulled a face.

"No more history lessons. This has to do with the future."

"Ah, the undiscovered country, from whose bourn no traveller returns." Sometimes Alan surprised them all.

"That's Hamlet. And it's about death, not the future." Giles corrected.

"Same difference."

"Excuse me. Someone is trying to make an announcement here." She became serious. "What would you say if I told you Steve went down on one knee last night?" She sensed Giles staring at her.

"That he lost a contact lens?" Alan was having too much fun. He gave Steve a sideways glance. "Or were you up to no good, you naughty, naughty..." Giles sat up and clamped a hand over Alan's mouth. He turned to Anna, grinning and said.

"Scout's honour?"

She nodded, smiling back. "Scout's honour. Wanna be a bridesmaid?"

Late in the afternoon, as deepening sun stretched shadows across the field, Anna lay back quoting from Rupert Brooke's famous war poem.

"If I should die, think only this of me. That there's some corner of a foreign field that is for ever England." She opened her eyes and smiled up at Steve. "This is it. This is where I want to be buried."

"Hush. Don't say such things." Steve waved a fly from her face.

"No I mean it." She sat up and studied them seriously. "Promise me. This has been the most wonderful day. If I go before either of you, promise me that you'll bury me here."

"You are funny."

"Promise?" It was more a demand than a question.

"Okay, okay. We promise." Giles smiled at Steve. "Odds are you'll outlive the lot of us anyway."

Later, as they decided to pack up and continue the journey, Alan volunteered to take the car keys and fetch rubbish bags while the others washed plates and cutlery in the river. He had been gone a while.

“He's listening to the car radio.” Giles handed a plate to Anna who was kneeling in the shallows. Steve sat on the bank next to her, drying them. “He's such a creature of habit. Thank goodness the hotel had chocolate milk. Did you see his face this morning when he couldn't get an English newspaper? He thinks the world will stop if he can't read or hear about it.”

They were not aware of Alan's presence, standing over them. Anna looked up and realised something was wrong. Giles beat her to it.

"What's the matter?" She sensed the concern in his voice.

"I've just been listening to the car radio. I can't believe it."

None of them would ever forget that sunny day at the end of August, the day the Princess died.

 

************

November 2002

Subliminal supermarket melodies washed over Giles like an opiate lullaby.

Low fat milk. Yakult. Pink grapefruit juice. He arranged provisions carefully and, with a sudden wave of empathy, realised how lost they appeared at the end of the huge shiny cart. His hand reached out for chocolate milk and froze.

“Shit.”

At school, Giles excelled at algebra, Latin and trigonometry and since leaving had never used any of them. No teacher had ever taught him anything useful, the things that mattered in life, like understanding how to complete a tax form, or how to recognise love; or how to deal with grief. Why had nobody taught him about grief, the most alien of all human emotions?

He pushed the trolley into a deserted aisle and found long shelves of brightly designed cereal boxes. He never ate cereal. Colours merged and names on the packets became gibberish.

With Alan hanging onto life Giles was fine, he busied himself keeping his partner alive, even with the swarm of desperation buzzing in his ear when nothing he did seemed to help, even as the latest drugs proved ineffectual and the illness conquered within a matter of months. Even as he sat nearby, watching helpless as his love transformed from a sprite to a spectre while the world of supermarkets and soap operas continued in ignorance outside the hospice window. He kept busy and busy meant moving. Despite his obvious pain, Alan clung to his humour, his last breathless, bronchial words were. “When you're ready -- to join me -- I'll be at -- the bar -- I'll keep -- a seat -- warm-- for you.”

And then the world stopped.

Everything lost meaning. No more arguments about driving to the game on Saturday, no painful miles spent finding a particular public house, even though he, Giles, desperately needed the toilet. No Sunday morning, waking to the beautiful warmth along his spine and an arm thrown carelessly around his waist. One day, when a young female employee came to him in floods of tears, asking for an afternoon off because by accident she had set the washing machine going with her kitten inside, asleep in the sheets, the mask he wore nodded, but inside, he wanted to slap her and shout in her face. 'How dare you mourn something so trivial?'

Another cart clanged against his and sent a shudder through him. The owner, a large middle-aged woman barely acknowledged him. "Oops, Sorry." She muttered, hurrying past, affirming his growing belief that he was becoming invisible.

Day by day, he learned to deal with the pain of grief. At first, it was hard. He sensed Alan everywhere, clothes in wardrobes and cupboards, toothbrush in the bathroom, worn track shoes discarded by the front door, even the smell of his body in the pillows on the bed.

He joined the queue at the checkout and looked around. The only person who appeared to register him was a small girl sitting in a trolley, rubbing red sweets around her already stained mouth.

Once, while making tea, a programme in another room ran a football advertisement and hearing the roar of the crowd he knew, without any doubt, at that moment Alan sat curled up on the settee, eyes glued to the set. Yet he had stood frozen to the spot for ten minutes, a mug clamped in his trembling hands, scared to go back into the room in case he was wrong. Each time he was wrong, a dark, downward spiralling inertia overtook him, a dry sob caught in his throat.

"Three pounds twenty five. Do you have a club card, love?" The checkout girl held out a hand but stared through the large pane to the outside world, onto the busy street.

No." He placed money in her palm and she turned her attention to the register without once making eye contact.

He barely remembered Anna being there, but still relived watching in mute horror, sat on the edge of the bed, as she boxed up Alan's belongings and took them away. The only way is to accept it, let it become a part of you, she said. Keep yourself busy, others said. It will heal in time.

They all were right. But words mean nothing in times of grief, when things most precious lost, can never again be found. Why had his teachers never taught him that?

Another part of him welcomed the news of his own illness.

Outside, anonymous hums and clamour of the traffic muffled his thoughts, as the glass exit doors shushed closed behind him.

************

July 2005

Steve stood in the centre of the spare room.

She was right again. Last night this pale shade of blue, powder blue she called it, looked too dark. Artificial lighting made the single brush stroke above the window appear too severe, too stark and once he had finished a wall, he was convinced.

“Look again in the morning, in natural light. It'll be perfect.” She balanced halfway up the stepladder, one hand gripping the top and the other reaching into the far corner with a paint roller. Steve smiled at the thought of her, in her red sweat pants and one of his old baggy soccer shirts. Even in the midst of such a mundane task, she appeared wonderfully coordinated. They finished just after midnight after which they shared a hot shower and then gentle, careful sex. He had to be delicate with her, now that she was expecting their child. He wondered a little guiltily if it was right to find sex even more erotic this way.

That morning, feeling her presence shift the mattress as she sat on the corner, he opened his eyes and saw her fully dressed in a warm yellow anorak. He accepted a mug of steamy tea. Waving the glossy flyer for The Mousetrap, the long running West End mystery play, she said.

“Don't sleep too late. I'm going to pick up the tickets first thing, from the half price booth in Piccadilly. It opens at nine.”

He laughed. Pregnancy cemented her resolve to do as many of the things she always wanted before the baby arrived. Weekend breaks like those enjoyed in Prague and Budapest were out of the question this far into the pregnancy, but there was a whole list of other things she could still do.

“Then I'll go on to Doctor Oswald's for the scan.” Anna's father had insisted on them using the septuagenarian Harley Street specialist and family friend, who had supervised the delivery of Anna thirty-three years before.

“Are you sure you don't want me to come? It's the rush hour, the trains will be packed.”

She prodded him through the duvet. “You've got work to do, daddy-to-be. Don't try and pull a fast one. We need this finished today. The carpet and cot are coming tomorrow morning.” She fiddled with her hair. “And Giles is coming over tonight for dinner.” She pecked him on the cheek as she left.

“Oh. okay.” He tried to sound cool but in truth he was getting irritated with Giles' frequent, often random, visits. It had been so much easier when Alan was still around.

An hour later, as he finished the last wall, the phone rang. He thought it would probably be Anna. It was Giles. Steve was a little surprised, he hardly ever phoned when Anna was not there.

“Steve? Are you watching television?”

Absently, he flicked on the bedroom set.

“-- not known how many casualties there are at the moment."

"I am now." Steve stared at the screen. "Christ, that's terrible. Shit, when did this happen, Giles?"

Before Giles could respond, a newscaster's voice came on. "-- I repeat, at 08:50 this morning a bomb exploded on a southbound Piccadilly line train from King's Cross to Russell Square. We'll bring you more details as they come in."

Steve wondered for moment why Giles had gone quiet at other end until he heard him say.

"Steve, where's Anna?"

*****************

September 2005

Turning into a side road off the main road away from Cazouls-Lès-Béziers, they found the field easily, running down to the river Orb, the solitary chestnut and the familiar willow leaning into the brownish current. The day was very different from the one he remembered years before, grey brooding clouds sprinkled light rain into the air.

Beneath the tree, Giles pressed play on the portable compact disc player and softly, gently, masked at first by the sound of wind and leaves rustling around them, Sicilienne from Fauré's 'Pelléas et Mélisande' began to inhabit the air. Steve unscrewed the lid of the urn and gently emptied the contents, the remains of Anna, into the hole in the ground. In the corner of the field that would be forever Anna. As the soprano's voice swelled to its lonely, haunting conclusion, Steve finally broke. At the funeral, he had been sombre, but tearless. Now the months of self-imposed silence melted away and he sobbed unashamedly. Giles was at a loss. The sight broke him too. He reached over and hugged him. It was the first time they had ever touched.

Steve voice was muffled against his shoulder. "We don't get much in this life. And what we do seems to be over so soon. You are the only family I have now and I can't help thinking you'll be leaving soon."
So that was it.

Giles hugged him once then pulled away and began to shed his top and khaki trousers, walking towards the river.

Steve composed himself and looked up, “What the hell are you...”

But Giles was not listening.

This suddenly felt the right thing to do.