it’s beautiful.’
‘Makes you feel dwarfed by the futility of it all.’
‘Well, I suppose it has a poignancy, but that’s quite a bleak way of looking at it …’ Colin glanced across as he was speaking and thought he could see tears glistening on Duncan’s cheeks in the staccato glare of the street lights as they headed to the centre of the Island. He was about to stop the car and comfort him, when out of the corner of his eye he saw him wipe his face. The boy began talking, the moment had passed.
‘Tom saw him at the Albert Hall in April. Said it was amazing.’
‘How’s your brother doing?’
‘Really well. He’s got a job at the Telegraph. Sports desk.’
‘He did English?’
‘History.’
‘That’s it, and Nigel’s doing English?’
‘Yes. Finishes next year.’
‘Any idea what you might like to do?’
‘English, but I don’t want to copy Nige.’
‘You wouldn’t be copying him. Lots of people do English.’
‘I just want to get on to the mainland. I don’t really mind what I do.’
‘Do you mind where you go? Are you thinking of Oxford?’
‘Mum and Dad are pushing that. But, you know …’
‘Your brothers went there, so you’d like to find somewhere new?’
‘Kind of.’
‘What about Cambridge?’
‘Dad and Grandpa went to Oxford, so it wouldn’t go down too well.’
‘I’m sure they’d be proud. As a Cambridge man, I can tell you it’s every bit as good as Oxford. Although there are other options. Oxbridge is obviously fantastic, but some people can find it quite a lot of pressure. Doesn’t suit everyone.’
‘Did you enjoy it?’
‘Bits of it. Most of it.’
‘Why did you come here?’
‘The Island? I met my wife. And it’s a beautiful place.’
‘I suppose so, it’s easy to forget that.’
‘We’ve just gone from golden cliffs and roaring seas through autumn copses and winding valleys. And look at those stars. Won’t see many of those in a big town on the mainland. Whereabouts are you?’
They were approaching St Martin’s village.
‘It’s a left after the church, then the second right.’
Silence descended again after the flurry of rapport. The mention of his wife had led Colin to wonder whether Paul Simon was singing about him, a ‘poor boy’ compensating ‘for his ordinary shoes’.
‘Just here’s fine.’
Colin pulled up outside a large granite house.
‘Thanks for the lift, sir.’
‘No problem. Duncan …’ The boy turned back after getting out of the car. Colin wanted to know whether there’d been more to Duncan’s comments about futility than the usual adolescent feelings of isolation in an indifferent universe, but how to ask?
‘… your bike.’
They hauled it out of the boot in silence.
‘Thanks, sir.’
‘See you tomorrow.’
As Duncan wheeled his bike up the path to his house, Colin got back into the car. He watched the boy push it into an annexed garage with a final wave. He had seen the boy home so he was safe now. But Colin would need to keep an eye on him.
He looked at the clock on the dashboard. Seven thirty. He’d stormed out of the flat at half past five. Not much of a statement, being away for two hours. He needed his angst to settle: he didn’t want to go back and say things he might later regret. He needed to work out his feelings. He didn’t know what to say. Rob was married to his wife’s best friend: an end to contact could not be justifiably demanded or practically enforced. They were supposed to be lunching at the de la Hayes’ on Saturday – would he refuse to go? Deep down he knew he had to be the bigger person and let it go, but he needed to spend a few more hours stewing, to let the anger and remorse boil out of him.
Also, childishly, he didn’t want to see Emma yet because he wanted her to worry about him, to be the first to apologise when he walked through the door. He should go back when she would have begun to worry, but he shouldn’t stay away so long that he appeared pig-headed or as if he was trying to induce panic.
He started the car. How to kill time? He thought of dropping in on a friend, but he didn’t want anyone knowing his business. He sometimes thought that a Venn diagram of all the interlocking relationships on the Island would have no more than three circles.
He headed down to St Catherine’s Bay, where more than half a kilometre of broad granite breakwater reached out towards France, sheltering a mix of fishing boats and pleasure cruisers. The breakwater was unlit, but the moon lifted everything out of the darkness. He got out of the car and walked to the end, where he stood listening to the gentle lap of the water on the leeward side, he thought of what Duncan had said, about looking at the sea and the sky and forgetting the Island. It was a clear sky – the cold silver stars flickered as brightly as the warm golden lights of Carteret eleven miles across the water. A distant constellation, that’s dying in the corner of the sky. Such should be his anger at the fact that ten years ago Emma had slept with someone he didn’t care for; a faraway fading rage. He took succour from the solitude. He walked up and down the breakwater three times, then headed home with his sense of proportion restored. He would talk to his wife; he would talk to his pupil.
Friday, 9 October 1987
The atmosphere was even tenser in the morning.
Colin had arrived home ready for reconciliation to find his wife had also gone out. He thought he had timed his return just right, at the cusp of where her worry at his having walked out might have turned to anger at his self-indulgence. Their senses of culpability would coincide: as his anger fell and hers rose they could have settled on mutual blame. Now it was his turn to sulk. He moped around and ate a ham sandwich while half watching an episode of Dynasty – it served as a diversion from the tastelessness of the ham and the problems with his marriage. He remembered there was a new episode of Blackadder on BBC2, but it failed to lift his mood and he turned it off before the end, then
