The Deal
‘I think,’ said Mrs Fraser, Cleo, his old friend, ‘you spend too much time alone.’
They were talking on the long coach journey back to York. Teachers’ privilege had given them the front seats, the kids hyped up on service-station snacks or sleeping off all-night card games, the stagnant air barely breathable for the smell of wet trainers and inadequate deodorants. ‘I would love to be alone,’ said Michael, over the tinny rattle of thirty mobile phones. ‘Aren’t you desperate to be alone?’
‘That’s not the same thing. Come to us for Sunday lunch.’
‘I’m sorry, I’m out.’
‘All weekend?’
‘I’m walking.’
She narrowed her eyes. ‘With people?’
He shrugged. ‘I like being by myself.’
Work aside, he was always by himself. Natasha had moved back to her parents’ place near Durham nine months before, seizing her opportunity between lockdowns as if rolling under a descending metal shutter. In her absence, he found it hard to be at home for any length of time. A neat and pleasant two-bedroom terrace house with a new side return, she had left enough of her possessions to keep it comfortable but he could never quite escape a feeling that something had gone missing, as if he’d been visited by neat and courteous burglars.
Of course, something had gone missing, and though he lived alone, it was always in her presence. Weekends and holidays were particularly hard so he had taken to setting out at dawn to remote spots to walk himself into exhaustion. To Cleo and his colleagues, there was something masochistic about these expeditions, medieval almost, the head-down trudge through wind and rain and fog. ‘I think it’s weird,’ said Cleo. ‘Where are you actually going?’
‘In a circle usually. I park the car. I walk away from the car. When I’m far enough away, I walk back to the car.’ Cleo sang Chic’s ‘Good Times’ and Michael laughed. ‘I like it. Clears the head.’
‘A clear head. I want a clear head too,’ said Cleo. ‘I should come with you.’
‘Maybe,’ he said warily.
‘I could bring Sam and Anthony.’ Anthony was their son, thirteen now. Michael had watched him grow up. ‘We could make a trip of it!’
‘Perhaps,’ he said, and hoped that this would be enough, because it wouldn’t work with other people there. The solitude was the point and nowhere he had walked was ever unpopulated enough. Perhaps Cleo would forget the idea. Already, she had turned and was shouting the length of the coach. ‘Please don’t stand on the back seats. Please just leave the lorry drivers alone!’
And that, he hoped, was that. Somehow, he got through a brutal winter break, returning to his parents’ home at their insistence, to be cheered-up with an exact recreation of Christmas from 1997, the same dry food in super-heated rooms, the same decorations and films on TV, a bottle of advocaat that was literally the same. The unspoken policy on his wife’s absence was not to speak of it so that this was Christmas in a parallel world where he’d never married. There was no antipathy: his parents had loved Natasha very much, had seen her bring their son to life, but they didn’t have the words to talk about it. Probably just as well, Michael thought, lying in the same teenage bed. Truly, this was a Festival of Melancholy, and he’d left like a teenager too, fleeing at the earliest opportunity to go and walk in the rain instead. ‘Shall I come with you?’ his dad had offered. ‘I’ve got my boots.’ Michael preferred to go alone.
On the first day of the new term he was called to Cleo’s office. Though she’d joined the school after him, she’d always been the ambitious one and now addressed him from behind the deputy head’s desk.
‘How was Christmas? Shit get wild?’
‘Midnight mass, sherry, Queen’s Speech—’
‘Caning it again. No wonder you look shattered.’
‘Thank you. So do you.’
‘Unfortunately, you can’t say that to me,’ she said, rapping the desk between them. ‘It’s a rank thing. We’d hoped to see you on New Year’s Eve.’
‘Yes, I was going to come, but the TV’s always so good—’
‘Michael—’
‘I’m sorry, it’s not a big festival for me.’
‘What are the big celebrations in your life, Michael?’
He knew this tone too well, the voice she deployed when talking to a promising kid who was not fulfilling their potential. But he was forty-two years old. Cleo was his friend, they’d been on holidays together, first the four and then five of them when Anthony was born, and while it was touching to be looked after, it was humiliating too. He let his eyes drift to the window, yelps and screams from the playing fields below. ‘I’m fine. I had a nice break, very quiet, very peaceful.’ He’d had a panic attack on Boxing Day, had gone to hide in his dad’s shed to steady his breathing.
‘Did you speak to Natasha?’
‘I did, briefly, Christmas Day. We had a nice chat.’
‘She said it was like talking to someone on a prison visit. Through one of those screens.’
‘Well, that’s my brand of chat.’
‘Okay. Because I just wanted to know that you’re all right.’
He was not all right but that need not concern anyone. ‘I’m absolutely fine. I’m just not ready for company yet. That’s allowed, isn’t it?’
Cleo sighed. ‘Come for dinner on Saturday.’
‘Can’t, sorry—’
‘Friday—’
‘I can’t Friday. Early start.’
‘Lonely walk?’
‘I’m going away for a few days, yes.’
‘Okay, we’ll come with you!’
He laughed. ‘No.’
‘I won’t wear these shoes. We won’t eat your horrible sandwiches—’
‘I like being on my own.’
‘Fine, we’ll follow behind. Shout conversation at your back. We’ll invite people!’
‘I’m not quite ready.’
‘I think you are.’
‘Can you just … overrule someone on how they’re feeling?’
‘It’s pastoral care.’
He looked back to the window. ‘I’m grateful but not this time.’
She leant forward, sensing an opening. ‘Ah, but another time!’
‘Maybe.’
‘After Easter, second week of holidays, nice big walk.’
‘Possibly.’
‘Okay. It’s a deal.’
‘Is it a deal if I don’t want to do it?’
‘Yes. We’re all going away together in a big fun group.’
‘You’re only deputy head.’
‘A matter of time. There, it’s decided.’
This was the crux of it. For Cleo, the solution to a problem lay in the presence of other people, while Michael depended on their absence, and while the kindness of a friend was a precious and touching thing, it could also feel like an imposition. ‘All right,’ he sighed, ‘when the days get longer.’ Earth’s tilt and its orbit around the sun made this inevitable but he’d have time to think up an excuse before then.