Anyway, in the days after that talk in the churchyard, I did what I could to put it behind us. I behaved towards both Tommy and Ruth as though nothing special had occurred, and they did much the same. But there was always something there now, and it wasn’t just between me and them. Though they still made a show of being a couple – they still did the punching-on-the-arm thing when they parted – I knew them well enough to see they’d grown quite distant from each other.
Of course I felt bad about it all, especially about Tommy’s animals. But it wasn’t as simple any more as going to him and saying sorry and explaining how things really were. A few years earlier, even six months earlier, it might have worked out that way. Tommy and I would have talked it over and sorted it out. But somehow, by that second summer, things were different. Maybe it was because of this relationship with Lenny, I don’t know. Anyway, talking to Tommy wasn’t so easy any more. On the surface, at least, it was much like before, but we never mentioned the animals or what had happened in the churchyard.
So that was what had been happening just before I had that conversation with Ruth in the old bus shelter, when I got so annoyed with her for pretending to forget about the rhubarb patch at Hailsham. Like I said, I’d probably not have got nearly so cross if it hadn’t come up in the middle of such a serious conversation. Okay, we’d got through a lot of the meat of it by then, but even so, even if we were just easing off and chatting by that point, that was still all part of our trying to sort things with each other, and there was no room for any pretend stuff like that.
What had happened was this. Although something had come between me and Tommy, it hadn’t quite got like that with Ruth – or at least that’s what I’d thought – and I’d decided it was time I talked with her about what had happened in the churchyard. We’d just had one of those summer days of rain and thunderstorms, and we’d been cooped up indoors despite the humidity. So when it appeared to clear for the evening, with a nice pink sunset, I suggested to Ruth we get a bit of air. There was a steep footpath I’d discovered leading up along the edge of the valley and just where it came out onto the road was an old bus shelter. The buses had stopped coming ages ago, the bus stop sign had been taken away, and on the wall at the back of the shelter, there was left only the frame of what must have once been a glassed-in notice displaying all the bus times. But the shelter itself – which was like a lovingly constructed wooden hut with one side open to the fields going down the valleyside – was still standing, and even had its bench intact. So that’s where Ruth and I were sitting to get our breath back, looking at the cobwebs up on the rafters and the summer evening outside. Then I said something like:
‘You know, Ruth, we should try and sort it out, what happened the other day.’
I’d made my voice conciliatory, and Ruth responded. She said immediately how daft it was, the three of us having rows over the most stupid things. She brought up other times we’d rowed and we laughed a bit about them. But I didn’t really want Ruth just to bury the thing like that, so I said, still in the least challenging voice I could:
‘Ruth, you know, I think sometimes, when you’re in a couple, you don’t see things as clearly as maybe someone can from the outside. Just sometimes.’
She nodded. ‘That’s probably right.’
‘I don’t want to interfere. But sometimes, just lately, I think Tommy’s been quite upset. You know. About certain things you’ve said or done.’
I was worried Ruth would get angry, but she nodded and sighed. ‘I think you’re right,’ she said in the end. ‘I’ve been thinking about it a lot too.’
‘Then maybe I shouldn’t have brought it up. I should have known you’d see what was happening. It’s not my business really.’
‘But it is, Kathy. You’re really one of us, and so it’s always your business. You’re right, it hasn’t been good. I know what you mean. That stuff the other day, about his animals. That wasn’t good. I told him I was sorry about that.’
‘I’m glad you talked it over. I didn’t know if you had.’
Ruth had been picking at some moulding flakes of wood on the bench beside her, and for a moment she seemed completely absorbed in this task. Then she said:
‘Look, Kathy, it’s good we’re talking now about Tommy. I’ve been wanting to tell you something, but I’ve never quite known how to say it, or when, really. Kathy, promise you won’t be too cross with me.’
I looked at her and said: ‘As long as it’s not about those T-shirts again.’
‘No, seriously. Promise you won’t get too cross. Because I’ve got to tell you this. I wouldn’t forgive myself if I kept quiet much longer.’
‘Okay, what is it?’
‘Kathy, I’ve been thinking this for some time. You’re no fool, and you can see that maybe me and Tommy, we might not be a couple for ever. That’s no tragedy. We were right for each other once. Whether we always will be, that’s anyone’s guess. And now there’s all this talk, about couples getting deferrals if they can prove, you know, that they’re really right. Okay, look, what I wanted to say, Kathy, is this. It’d be completely natural if you’d thought about, you know, what would happen if me and Tommy decided we shouldn’t be together any more. We’re not about to split, don’t get me wrong. But I’d think it was completely normal if you at least wondered about it. Well, Kathy, what you have to realise is that Tommy doesn’t see you like that. He really, really likes you, he thinks you’re really great. But I know he doesn’t see you like, you know, a proper girlfriend. Besides …’ Ruth paused, then sighed. ‘Besides, you know how Tommy is. He can be fussy.’
I stared at her. ‘What do you mean?’
‘You must know what I mean. Tommy doesn’t like girls who’ve been with … well, you know, with this person and that. It’s just a thing he has. I’m sorry, Kathy, but it wouldn’t be right not to have told you.’
I thought about it, then said: ‘It’s always good to know these things.’
I felt Ruth touch my arm. ‘I knew you’d take it the right way. What you’ve got to understand, though, is that he thinks the world of you. He really does.’
I wanted to change the subject, but for the moment my mind was a blank. I suppose Ruth must have picked up on this, because she stretched out her arms and did a kind of yawn, saying:
‘If I ever learn to drive a car, I’d take us all on a trip to some wild place. Dartmoor, say. The three of us, maybe Laura and Hannah too. I’d love to see all the bogs and stuff.’
We spent the next several minutes talking about what we’d do on a trip like that if we ever went on one. I asked where we’d stay, and Ruth said we could borrow a big tent. I pointed out the wind could get really fierce in places like that and our tent could easily blow away in the night. None of this was that serious. But it was around here I remembered the time back at Hailsham, when we’d still been Juniors and we were having a picnic by the pond with Miss Geraldine. James B. had been sent to the main house to fetch the cake we’d all baked earlier, but as he was carrying it back, a strong gust of wind had taken off the whole top layer of sponge, tossing it into the rhubarb leaves. Ruth said she could only vaguely remember the incident, and I’d said, trying to clinch it for her memory:
‘The thing was, he got into trouble because that proved he’d been coming down through the rhubarb patch.’
And that was when Ruth looked at me and said: ‘Why? What was wrong with that?’
It was just the way she said it, suddenly so false even an onlooker, if there’d been one, would have seen through it. I sighed with irritation and said:
‘Ruth, don’t give me that. There’s no way you’ve forgotten. You know that route was out of bounds.’
Maybe it was a bit sharp, the way I said it. Anyway, Ruth didn’t back down. She continued pretending to remember nothing, and I got all the more irritated. And that was when she said:
‘What does it matter anyway? What’s the rhubarb patch got to do with anything? Just get on with what you were saying.’
After that I think we went back to talking in a more or less friendly way, and then before long we were making our way down the footpath in the half-light back to the Cottages. But the atmosphere never quite righted itself, and when we said our goodnights in front of the Black Barn, we parted without our usual little touches on the arms and shoulders.
It wasn’t long after that I made my decision, and once I’d made it, I never wavered. I just got up one morning and told Keffers I wanted to start my training to become a carer. It was surprisingly easy. He was walking across the yard, his Wellingtons covered in mud, grumbling to himself and holding a piece of piping. I went up and told him, and he just looked at me like I’d bothered him about more firewood. Then he mumbled something about coming to see him later that afternoon to go through the forms. It was that easy.
It took a little while after that, of course, but the whole thing had been set in motion, and I was suddenly looking at everything – the Cottages, everybody there – in a different light. I was now one of the ones leaving, and soon enough, everyone knew it. Maybe Ruth thought we’d be spending hours talking about my future; maybe she thought she’d have a big influence on whether or not I changed my mind. But I kept a certain distance from her, just as I did from Tommy. We didn’t really talk properly again at the Cottages, and before I knew it, I was saying my goodbyes.
PART THREE
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
For the most part being a carer’s suited me fine. You could even say it’s brought the best out of me. But some people just aren’t cut out for it, and for them the whole thing becomes a real struggle. They might start off positively enough, but then comes all that time spent so close to the pain and the worry. And sooner or later a donor doesn’t make it, even though, say, it’s only the second donation and no one anticipated complications. When a donor completes like that, out of the blue, it doesn’t make much difference what the nurses say to you afterwards, and neither does that letter saying how they’re sure you did all you could and to keep up the good work. For a while at least, you’re demoralised. Some of us learn pretty quick how to deal with it. But others – like Laura, say – they never do.
Then there’s the solitude. You grow up surrounded by crowds of people, that’s all you’ve ever known, and suddenly you’re a carer. You spend hour after hour, on your own, driving across the country, centre to centre, hospital to hospital, sleeping in overnights, no one to talk to about your worries, no one to have a laugh with. Just now and again you run into a student you know – a carer or donor you recognise from the old days – but there’s never much time. You’re always in a rush, or else you’re too exhausted to have a proper conversation. Soon enough, the long hours, the travelling, the broken sleep have all crept into your being and become part of you, so everyone can see it, in your posture, your gaze, the way you move and talk.
I don’t claim I’ve been immune to all of this, but I’ve learnt to live with it. Some carers, though, their whole attitude lets them down. A lot of them, you can tell, are just going through the motions, waiting for the day they’re told they can stop and become donors. It really gets me, too, the way so many of them ‘shrink’ the moment they step inside a hospital. They don’t know what to say to the whitecoats, they can’t make themselves speak up on behalf of their donor. No wonder they end up feeling frustrated and blaming themselves when things go wrong. I try not to make a nuisance of myself, but I’ve figured out how to get my voice heard when I have to. And when things go badly, of course I’m upset, but at least I can feel I’ve done all I could and keep things in perspective.
Even the solitude, I’ve actually grown to quite like. That’s not to say I’m not looking forward to a bit more companionship come the end of the year when I’m finished with all of this. But I do like the feeling of getting into my little car, knowing for the next couple of hours I’ll have only the roads, the big grey sky and my daydreams for company. And if I’m in a town somewhere with several minutes to kill, I’ll enjoy myself wandering about looking in the shop windows. Here in my bedsit, I’ve got these four desk-lamps, each a different colour, but all the same design – they have these ribbed necks you can bend whichever way you want. So I might go looking for a shop with another lamp like that in its window – not to buy, but just to compare with my ones at home.
Sometimes I get so immersed in my own company, if I unexpectedly run into someone I know, it’s a bit of a shock and takes me a while to adjust. That’s the way it was the morning I was walking across the windswept car park of the service station and spotted Laura, sitting behind the wheel of one of the parked cars, looking vacantly towards the motorway. I was still some way away, and just for a second, even though we hadn’t met since the Cottages seven years before, I was tempted to ignore her and keep walking. An odd reaction, I know, considering she’d been one of my closest friends. As I say, it may have been partly because I didn’t like being bumped out of my daydreams. But also, I suppose, when I saw Laura slumped in her car like that, I saw immediately she’d become one of these carers I’ve just been describing, and a part of me just didn’t want to find out much more about it.
But of course I did go to her. There was a chilly wind blowing against me as I walked over to her hatchback, parked away from the other vehicles. Laura was wearing a shapeless blue anorak, and her hair – a lot shorter than before – was sticking to her forehead. When I tapped on her window, she didn’t start, or even look surprised to see me after all that time. It was almost like she’d been sitting there waiting, if not for me precisely, then for someone more or less like me from the old days. And now I’d shown up, her first thought seemed to be: ‘At last!’ Because I could see her shoulders move in a kind of sigh, then without further ado, she reached over to open the door for me.
We talked for about twenty minutes: I didn’t leave until the last possible moment. A lot of it was about her, how exhausted she’d been, how difficult one of her donors was, how much she loathed this nurse or that doctor. I waited to see a flash of the old Laura, with the mischievous grin and inevitable wisecrack, but none of that came. She talked faster than she used to, and although she seemed pleased to see me, I sometimes got the impression it wouldn’t have mattered much if it wasn’t me, but someone else, so long as she got to talk.
Maybe we both felt there was something dangerous about bringing up the old days, because for ages we avoided any mention of them. In the end, though, we found ourselves talking about Ruth, who Laura had run into at a clinic a few years earlier, when Ruth was still a carer. I began quizzing her about how Ruth had been, but she was so unforthcoming, in the end I said to her:
‘Look, you must have talked about something.’
Laura let out a long sigh. ‘You know how it gets,’ she said. ‘We were both in a hurry.’ Then she added: ‘Anyway, we hadn’t parted the best of friends, back at the Cottages. So maybe we weren’t so delighted to see one another.’
‘I didn’t realise you’d fallen out with her too,’ I said.
She shrugged. ‘It wasn’t any big deal. You remember the way she was back then. If anything, after you left, she got worse. You know, always telling everyone what to do. So I was keeping out of her way, that was all. We never had a big fight or anything. So you haven’t seen her since then?’
‘No. Funny, but I’ve never even glimpsed her.’
‘Yeah, it’s funny. You’d think we’d all run into each other much more. I’ve seen Hannah a few times. And Michael H. too.’ Then she said: ‘I heard this rumour, that Ruth had a really bad first donation. Just a rumour, but I heard it more than once.’
‘I heard that too,’ I said.
‘Poor Ruth.’
We were quiet for a moment. Then Laura asked: ‘Is it right, Kathy? That they let you choose your donors now?’
She’d not asked in the accusing way people do sometimes, so I nodded and said: ‘Not every time. But I did well with a few donors, so yeah, I get to have a say every now and then.’
r /> ‘If you can choose,’ Laura said, ‘why don’t you become Ruth’s carer?’
I shrugged. ‘I’ve thought about it. But I’m not sure it’s such a great idea.’
Laura looked puzzled. ‘But you and Ruth, you were so close.’
‘Yeah, I suppose so. But like with you, Laura. She and I weren’t such great friends by the end.’
‘Oh, but that was back then. She’s had a bad time. And I’ve heard she’s had trouble with her carers too. They’ve had to change them around a lot for her.’
‘Not surprising really,’ I said. ‘Can you imagine? Being Ruth’s carer?’
Laura laughed, and for a second a look came into her eyes that made me think she was finally going to come out with a crack. But then the light died, and she just went on sitting there looking tired.
We talked a little more about Laura’s problems – in particular about a certain nursing sister who seemed to have it in for her. Then it was time for me to go, and I reached for the door and was telling her we’d have to talk more the next time we met. But we were both of us by then acutely aware of something we’d not yet mentioned, and I think we both sensed there’d be something wrong about us parting like that. In fact, I’m pretty sure now, at that moment, our minds were running along exactly the same lines. Then she said:
‘It’s weird. Thinking it’s all gone now.’
I turned in my seat to face her again. ‘Yeah, it’s really strange,’ I said. ‘I can’t really believe it’s not there any more.’
‘It’s so weird,’ Laura said. ‘I suppose it shouldn’t make any difference to me now. But somehow it does.’