Ronnie laughed, from his seat. ‘I told you he’d be back. Didn’t I tell you?’
My mother opened her arms, and I sank into them.
Alice told me about the route she used to take. ‘My whole life,’ she said, ‘this run. This line, these tunnels, they’ve existed for so long. Not these exact tunnels, but adjacent is sometimes the same as the original, don’t you think?’ The train stopped, and people disembarked, and more boarded. Each time I stared, to see the faces and hear the voices.
‘Nothing beats the original,’ my old tutor, Sean, said, ‘though God knows this city tries: constantly self-imitating.’ Sean died of old age, a peaceful passing that made those of us at his funeral somehow envious: his was, we agreed, as if we were all cricketers, a good innings.
‘You don’t like London,’ I said to him, almost under my breath, a phrase I had recited a hundred times or more in the years that I knew him.
‘And you blame him?’ My cousin, Vanessa. Long hours spent playing in Alice’s garden, when she was in her middle age, and Vanessa and I were, for a time, all each other had. Vanessa took scissors to her own wrists, but those scars weren’t visible: in that carriage, she was in her twenties, footloose and free of those fancies that people seem so eager to be free of.
‘Not everybody feels like you do, you know.’ Arnold, the first boy I ever loved, cancer of the insides, a spread that lost all track of its origin point.
‘And not everybody is quite so contentious.’ Samir, from the school I once taught in, while trying to make ends meet between novels. Colleague, first reader, friend, infection that rendered him first slightly stilled, then completely static.
‘Don’t remember Gregory much, then, I take it?’ Adelle, agent, dedicated smoker who overcame the odds of the smoker’s lot and died, elderly, in a crash.
‘As much as I need to,’ Ronnie said. Cutting through them all. Ronnie, who died because – as he said in the letter that he left his friends, which we all gathered around to read in the week following his death – he loved too much. His smile was pervasive, able to somehow commit to whatever situation we found ourselves in: that same smile, somehow consistently appropriate. Even then, with my impending.
I pulled him to one side. ‘How did you deal with this?’ I asked.
‘The parade? I decided that everything’s a parade now. One big to-do.’
We left the city, or the innards of the city. The part that feels as though it’s inescapable when you’re inside it, and then so alluring as to be almost unreachable when you’re not. The built-up gave way to the suburbs, the built-down: two-storeys, bungalows, flats above shops. Comfort and ease; the love handles of my city.
A memory, of Alex poking my sides, before I got ill. Telling me, ‘Well, this is a new addition.’ My stomach, his finger sinking into pink flesh. ‘Nobody told me we were expecting.’
‘I don’t know why you stayed with him,’ Ronnie said, reading my mind.
‘I didn’t ask you,’ I said. Maybe I spat my words, defensive, because Ronnie looked affronted; but still, his lovely smile essentially formed his face for itself.
‘You lived out here, didn’t you?’ he asked me.
‘Once. You didn’t.’
‘Thank God. I died before I could pretend that I wanted to.’ Snark, smirk.
‘I did actually want to, you know.’
‘You didn’t know what you wanted.’ His smile changed. Have you ever seen somebody who looks so happy, suddenly so sad? Or maybe not sad, but withdrawn; understanding, empathic. ‘It’s funny, this. Leaving somewhere. Moving on. The past, going into a place you haven’t been yet.’
The train stopped. Hayes and Harlington. Last stop before Heathrow.
Ronnie looked to the doors. My father, definitely him this time, standing there. In the hat that he used to wear, the perfectly pressed suit. His lip a line, a crease, in an otherwise creaseless face.
‘I’ll leave you two alone,’ Ronnie said. He squeezed my arm, near my wrist; and Alice waved at me, and my mother kissed my cheek. Everybody else faded away, until there was just me and him, him and me, in this carriage, thundering past the houses, on its way.
‘I lived in a house near here,’ I said to him. He sat opposite me, and he did that affectation with his trousers: hitching them slightly, so that they didn’t catch on his socks; so that a glimpse of his ankles could be seen, below the braces on his socks. ‘The first time that I moved in with somebody, it was here.’
‘Nice enough area,’ he said. ‘I remember coming here when you were a kid. There was a shop. For your models.’ I used to build Airfix models. A Sopwith Camel with my grandfather, who saw them during the war. Glue on my fingers, and I would peel it off in what felt like sheets. My father watching us, somehow envious of the relationship I had with him. I didn’t know who he was more jealous of. ‘How long’s this line been open, then?’
‘A year or so,’ I replied. He nodded. Information, not good or bad; just useful. ‘I loved him,’ I said. My father didn’t blink.
A pause, as pregnant as any I have ever experienced.
‘It’s different,’ he finally said. ‘Than what you expect.’
‘What is?’
‘Where you’re going.’ He moved to stare out of the window, pushing his face to the glass so that he could see along the track as we followed a bend.
‘Did you have this?’
‘Everybody has this.’
‘So who was at yours?’ I felt petulant. As if, if I kept him talking, maybe I could stay alive for longer. Maybe I could prolong the inevitable; the succumbing.
‘Oh, you know. Your Uncle Jackie, he was there. My friends. Some of the boys from the Rose.’ He took his hat off. His hair a fine dusting. ‘Your grandfather.’
‘What did he say to you?’
He examined the insides of his hat. All the secrets of life, in there. ‘He said that he didn’t care what we’d never spoken about. He said that it didn’t matter, in the end.’ He stood up. I distinctly remember it: his standing as punctuation, perfectly timed with the train’s arrival; the slowing, the coasting, towards the airport’s station. ‘That’s what I would say, Gregory. I’ve read your books. I like to think that I know the measure of you.’ The train stopped in a tunnel, briefly. In the dark, waiting for a platform; for an ending. Good to know that some things never change. ‘We should go,’ he said.
‘I don’t know how I feel,’ I told him.
‘I don’t think you should know.’
I followed him, off the train, and to the platform. Through the windows, I could see something ill-defined: a person, a man, left on the train. Sitting very still in his seat, waiting to be found. And when that body was found, it would cause a delay. I felt guilty then, in that British way that we feel guilt for our actions altering the lives of those we don’t know; but then the trains would run to schedule again, and all would be well.
Alex would be called to identify, because there was only really one number in the body’s telephone that mattered; and he would stand back, hand over mouth. Surprised, but not surprised. He would say that I was a friend of his, I’m sure.
It didn’t matter.
One day, he would die: and he would have his own parade. His own things left unsaid; his own regrets.
I wondered if I would be called upon to visit him; and if I would, then, refuse.
My father’s stride, through the station, towards the exit. I watched him, slightly behind. I felt myself younger, then; in my twenties.