Chapter Nine, ‘Maria’
I went home after everything. We did lose the whole town in the end, and quite a lot of people, too, but that doesn’t matter now. I don’t think I could count on two hands the number that were left, but I can guarantee that none of them want anything to do with me.
Well, anyway. Here, I get to pretend and play at the nice, safe things in life, and I can imagine that I’ve always been here. It’s the first time I’ve ever wanted to stay somewhere for good, and I end up getting a job at the local hospital doing odd bits of admin. I don’t get paid as much as I’d hoped, but I quite like the idea of sticking around.
Nobody asks me about the war.
I take a path into the fields at the weekend because I can’t bear to be indoors; I drive out towards the New Forest and the air is sweet; the bracken and gorse are all around me and I breathe it in. I find myself spinning into blue when I look up at the clouds.
This place, I had to learn again. For the first time, I have something that’s mine, whole and truly, and no one can ever take it away from me. I always knew it like the back of my hand, but there were certain details that I hadn’t remembered: distances between towns, so that what I’d thought to be a forty minute journey turned out to be a quarter of an hour in the car. My accent changed back, too. I’m proud of that. I could never make my tongue fit over the words properly after we moved, and so I never said the right thing in the right way: the mongrel speech of someone who very obviously doesn’t belong. That’s not true anymore, as long as I stick to the kind of story that people like to hear.
I end up meeting someone as I walk under the woods. I pass some of the bluebells that are always springing up, and then I’m out on the other side and into another field, and she’s ahead of me. I try to ignore her hair, her shoulders, her grin. I already know what she’ll expect from me – a functioning person, a pleasant smile – but there’s nothing I can do about that: I barely smile back, and keep my eyes focused on the gravel track between us. When I do raise my eyes, it’s with a hard squint against the sun.
“Alright?” I don’t expect any conversation back, and I wave a bit as you do to inoffensive strangers, but instead of giving the same and walking on, she stops and actually answers my question. I told you she’d do something like that.
“Not bad.” She swings one arm up over her forehead in protection against the sun and screws up her face at me, smiles like she hasn’t seen me in a long time. I want her to stop all this, this familiarity. I can’t bear to look at her, but I do. She’s wearing pink, and it matches the brightness of the blue above us. “Quite nice out today, isn’t it?”
We get to talking. I can’t remember half of what she says.
Good, I think: this is a woman I won’t have to think too much about. She can do the talking, and I won’t have to say a single thing about myself. I learned not to do that a long time ago.
I watch her face and all the little movements, and there’s a strange warmth about her. I hate it – I force it away, push it right down before it chokes me, but I can’t get rid of it completely and the feeling sticks in my throat.
She reminds me of Emily.
It’s with a miserable wonder that I watch her eyes dance, so I decide to surrender for the afternoon and let her play along—she’ll never reach me, even if she tries. Look at them, there again, those eyes that are trying to search me out – they already know that there’s something to find, but I’ll never give her the satisfaction. She’ll know as much about me as I know about her, and we’ll go our separate ways once this is done. I look into her eyes once more. That’s it, that’s what I’ve been looking for – they flicker with raw joy, tangible humour, and so do her eyebrows, and so does her whole face – little indents of thought that flutter and spark, that side of self-deprecation as she scratches her neck…
Real life happening right in front of me. I can’t remember if I ever looked like that.
At some point she touches my arm, and I don’t know why she does it. I jolt back, until I realise that she’s confused and expecting a response: I repeat the gesture, and I laugh to reassure her, and I’m so, so alone.
But I already know what to do. I ask her out to one of the local pubs, and we talk a little bit about ourselves while we’re still standing there, but after one of us gets tired from the sun, we end up walking there straight away. I’d never have done this sort of thing back home. Her name is Maria, and I sing a little song with her name to make her laugh as we cross the last field into the shade.
THE END