Chemistry and Other Stories Read online

  CHEMISTRY AND OTHER STORIES

  BY THE SAME AUTHOR

  In the Place of Fallen Leaves

  In a Land of Plenty

  A Revolution of the Sun

  Wake Up

  Blenheim Orchard

  Landed

  Disputed Land

  In the Light of Morning

  The Horseman

  The Wanderers

  The Redeemed

  For Jane, Greta and Stewart, West Country comrades

  CONTENTS

  How to Tell a Short Story

  Blue

  Harvest

  Fidelity

  Invisible Children

  Chemistry

  Hunters in the Forest

  Brothers at the Beach

  Rapture

  Generation to Generation

  Blood Moon

  Cinema

  Through the Tunnel

  Author’s Note

  About the Author

  How to Tell a Short Story

  Jane came back from the bar carrying a glass of white wine for me in one hand and a Campari and soda in the other.

  ‘I’ve got an idea for a short story,’ I told her.

  ‘Finally,’ she replied. ‘A short story. After all those endless novels. Thank you, God.’

  ‘It’s a good idea.’

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘A lad begs his dad to lend him the car,’ I began. ‘The dad makes him promise to be careful, not to drink anything, the lad’s only recently passed his test.’

  ‘I like it,’ Jane said. ‘As a reader, I’m thinking: this car is going to bring trouble. It’s a smoking gun.’

  ‘Don’t you mean a loaded gun?’

  ‘A smoking car. Smoke pouring from the engine, at the side of the road.’

  ‘I was thinking more in terms of a terrible accident than a simple breakdown.’

  ‘You would.’

  ‘The poor father, his guilt, the mother accusing him, “Why did you let our son borrow the car, you fool? You killer.” The after-effects on the marriage. On siblings.’

  ‘Yes, Timmy, that’s your kind of story. But all sorts of other, less drastic things could happen. Maybe the lad gives someone a lift, or agrees to drop something off for some dodgy character. He’s stopped by the police. Arrested. The drug dealers—’

  ‘Who said anything about drugs?’

  ‘Okay,’ Jane said. ‘Arms dealers. They think he’s going to spill the beans, even though we know he knows nothing. They reckon he’s a grass. A snitch.’

  ‘He comes out on bail.’

  ‘A marked man. And not just him. Since you always want to bring your stories round to families. His whole family are in danger!’

  ‘It’s a perilous situation for everyone.’

  Jane sipped her Campari. I drank my wine.

  ‘To be honest,’ she said, ‘I prefer love stories. Couldn’t he borrow the car to impress a girl? Or better, a boy?’

  ‘You incurable romantic.’

  ‘It all goes wrong. Maybe they drive into the night, the car breaks down, miles from anywhere, they lose each other, there’s all sorts of fraught incidents but in the end it all goes right.’

  ‘Sounds great,’ I said, ‘but can we get back to my story? I want to tell you about the terrible accident. The whole point’s about how I describe it. In forensic detail.’

  ‘Like The Pier Falls?’

  ‘Sure. You remember that awful pile-up on the M5 a few years ago?’

  Jane grimaced. ‘He’s just passed his test and you’re going to send him up the motorway?’

  ‘H’m. You might have a point.’

  ‘I need a smoke,’ Jane said. ‘I think there’s a beer garden.’

  I got us more drinks and joined her outside, where she was rolling a cigarette.

  ‘I’ve been thinking,’ she said.

  ‘It’s probably the nicotine.’

  ‘I haven’t inhaled yet. Look at me. I haven’t even licked the paper.’

  ‘Just the prospect of nicotine set your nerves jangling, brain racing.’

  ‘Yeh, whatever.’ Jane lit her rollie, exhaled and said, ‘Let’s go back to the set-up. The car’s great, but the dad and his lad, that’s such a cliché, Tim. A man and his precious vehicle; boy racer, can’t help himself. Bound to be trouble. Too obvious.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘But I like the car. Let’s think a bit more about the people and their relationship.’

  We sat in silence for a while. I opened a packet of peanuts I’d bought. Jane smoked.

  ‘I suppose we could make the lad a lass,’ I said.

  ‘I’ve got it!’ Jane said. ‘We make the lad a nineteen-year-old girl. But she’s the one with the car. It’s hers and she’s lending it.’

  ‘She’s lending her car to her out-of-work father? Remember Raining Stones? When the girl gives her dad a fiver?’

  ‘Ricky Tomlinson, yeh.’

  ‘That scene. It kills me, even now, just to think about it.’

  ‘It’s good.’

  ‘I think it’s one of my favourite scenes in cinema. Even though Ken Loach—’

  ‘Don’t start criticising Ken Loach, for fuck’s sake.’

  ‘Okay. All right. No need to get antsy.’

  ‘I’m just saying. Leave him out of it.’

  ‘Okay,’ I agreed. ‘So, maybe a daughter and her father … ’

  ‘Grandfather.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The girl lives with her mother and the mother’s father.’

  ‘I could go with that. But I do actually need a sibling too, maybe the girl has a brother.’

  ‘A stepbrother. It’s a blended family.’

  ‘Possibly.’

  ‘But the stepfather’s buggered off.’

  ‘Just like the father did.’

  ‘No, the father topped himself.’

  ‘Jesus, Jane.’

  ‘Now I think about it, the grandfather is not the mother’s father, he’s her father-in-law.’

  ‘The girl’s father’s father or the stepbrother’s father’s father?’

  ‘No need to be facetious, lovey. I’m just trying to help make your story more realistic. A bit less middle-class happy family is slightly unhappy about something. What did Pawel say about your fiction?’

  ‘That was years ago.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘He said that I do understand stories are about conflict, it’s just that mine are about conflict between nice people and nicer people.’

  ‘Ouch. Did he really say that?’

  ‘It was five novels ago. I’m over it. So, this girl’s got her shiny, cool Mini, that she’s very proud and protective of, but Grandad wants to borrow it. Why?’

  ‘To impress some old floozy, of course. Or better, some old chap. At the age of eighty, Grandad’s coming out. In a pink Mini.’

  ‘You and your bloody love stories. Okay, so the old dear lives a few miles up the motorway.’

  ‘Please, Tim,’ Jane said. ‘Don’t kill these two lovebirds off. We’ve only just met them.’

  ‘Best time to kill them off then, before the reader gets too attached.’

  Jane frowned, nodding. ‘Wait. I like that idea, that the reader develops feelings just as Grandad develops feelings. You might want to rewrite the beginning with that in mind.’

  I shook my head. ‘This is not a romance, Jane. I’m sorry. Grandad borrows his granddaughter’s—’

  ‘Or step-granddaughter’s—’

  ‘—pride and joy, a pink Mini, and sets off … ’ I paused.

  ‘Yes,’ Jane said, ‘I’m with you. Carry on.’

  ‘Hang on,’ I said. ‘If Grandad dies in a shocking car
accident, it’s not such a terrible thing as if a teenager dies. It won’t destroy the family.’

  ‘Mum would be a little sad but also relieved,’ Jane agreed.

  ‘One could almost say that the girl’s loss of her precious car would be a greater tragedy, or have a greater impact, than the death of this old man.’

  ‘He had a good life,’ Jane said. ‘A good innings.’ She lit another cigarette. ‘I see him as a cricketer in his youth, actually. Dashing in white flannels. On the village green.’ She spotted me looking askance at her and said, ‘Flashback scene. In the TV version.’

  ‘You want to option it?’ I asked.

  ‘I know someone who might,’ she said. ‘But it needs a bit more … ’

  ‘More what?’

  ‘Romance,’ she said, laughing. ‘I need a wee. I’ll get another round.’

  While Jane was gone, I rolled a cigarette, telling myself it was for her. When she came back, I told her I’d had a breakthrough. ‘The old boy’s got a secret,’ I said.

  ‘You mean apart from his sexual orientation?’ Jane asked. ‘Good. Secrets in stories are good.’

  ‘If he reveals the secret, it will cause him pain, shame, disgrace, but he’ll be rewarded with money, which he wants to give to his daughter-in-law and step-granddaughter and step-grandson.’

  ‘And he needs a car for this?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, though I was bluffing somewhat. I mean, he could have taken public transport, I imagine, or a taxi, or hitch-hiked. ‘He drives out of town,’ I resumed, ‘to a large country house. There he asks to see Lady Whatsit, landowner. She graciously invites him to her drawing room. Coffee and biscuits are brought. He tells her that as a young man he was an assistant gardener here, and he had a clandestine affair with the Duke’s daughter, impregnating her with … Her Ladyship with whom he now speaks.’

  Jane stared at me, clearly sceptical.

  ‘You wanted romance,’ I said.

  ‘That was romance?’ she asked. ‘A fumble in the greenhouse between a gardening lad and an aristocrat lass?’

  I ignored her and continued. ‘Her Ladyship is outraged, and throws him out. As she does so he offers to take a DNA test to prove it. That gives her pause. She watches him drive away—’

  ‘In the pink Mini.’

  ‘On the way home, he’s involved in a terrible accident.’

  Jane groaned. ‘You just won’t let it go.’

  ‘It’s okay,’ I said. ‘No gruesome detail, I promise. But a young man passes the scene of the accident – lights flashing, sirens blaring – he sees a body covered up beside this mangled pink Mini, and tells his mother what he saw when he gets home.’

  ‘Don’t tell me,’ Jane said, ‘his mother is Her Ladyship.’

  ‘Precisely,’ I said. ‘Her Ladyship rushes to the kitchen, where she finds the cook about to wash up. Just in time, she grabs the coffee mug the old boy was drinking from, and sends it off for DNA analysis, during which time she finds out from newspaper reports of the fatal car accident who he was, where he lived.’

  ‘Meanwhile the family are grieving.’

  ‘Right. They have a funeral for the old boy.’

  ‘Tell me the girl gets a new Mini. The old one was insured, right?’

  ‘Sadly, no,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry, Jane. It was only insured for the girl to drive. In fact, the only way she avoids prosecution for allowing an uninsured person to drive her car is by claiming that her grandfather stole it.’

  ‘That’s really sad.’

  ‘It is.’ We sat in silence a moment, absorbing what it must mean to tell the world your deceased grandfather was a common thief. I guess we were both a little inebriated by this point. ‘So now,’ I continued, ‘the girl and her mother, and maybe stepbrother, are bereaved and impoverished.’

  ‘And carless,’ Jane said, with feeling. She loves her old yellow Polo.

  ‘But it’s okay,’ I assured her. ‘Because Her Ladyship, who’s fabulously wealthy, gives them a great wad of money.’

  ‘They’re family.’

  ‘No, they’re not, actually. The DNA test came back negative. The old boy and Her Ladyship are unrelated. Maybe her flighty mother was also having a thing with the butler. But she was touched by the story, by his love for her mother, and by his death.’

  ‘Although,’ Jane said, ‘the story might not have been true, right? He might have been an old fraudster. I mean, who’s telling the story anyway? Is the narrator reliable?’

  ‘That’s a good question,’ I said. ‘We’ll come to it. Meanwhile, Her Ladyship sends her son round with the money.’

  ‘The son who saw the aftermath of the car accident?’

  ‘The very one. He knocks on the door. The girl answers. Their eyes meet. And that’s it. Coup de foudre.’

  ‘Too obvious,’ Jane said.

  ‘Love at first sight is never obvious!’ I objected. ‘And we never tire of it.’

  ‘I mean the girl is too obvious,’ she said. ‘It should be the stepbrother.’

  I laughed. ‘You don’t give up,’ I said.

  ‘Who, by the way, to add a further authenticating complication, is trans.’

  ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘I can go with that. So now we have: the mother is no longer poor, the girl has a new car, the boy – the transgender stepbrother – is in love. It’s a good start.’

  ‘A start?’ Jane said, horrified. ‘What do you mean, a start? That’s an ending to a short story if ever I heard one.’

  ‘Do you mind if I smoke your cigarette?’ I said. ‘I’m beginning to think it’s a novel. Wait till you hear Chapter Two.’

  ‘Oh, good grief,’ she said.

  Blue

  He knew he’d died at three o’clock in the afternoon of Wednesday, July the 29th, 1988, the moment he woke up in the room that he’d come to hate. He hadn’t left it for two months now, and he was wearily familiar not only with every object – with the thermometer in a glass beside the lamp and the heavy chest of drawers and the dark, forbidding wardrobe – but also with the quality of light and shadow according to what time of day it was; the way the room expanded and contracted as the ceiling joists shrank at night and swelled during the day; and how sound changed at different times so that in the morning his voice was dulled and barely reached the door, but in the dark the room became an echo chamber, his daughter’s name, Joan, rebounding off the walls and returning to him from many different directions.

  He was familiar with all these things but none of them interested him, as he declined in the starched sheets, propped up against a backrest of awkward, misshapen pillows that his daughter regularly thumped and plumped up with a ritualised but desolate enthusiasm, as if doing with them what she wished she could do for her father. He’d gradually lost his huge rustic appetite until it had become a torment to swallow even the soups and junkets she prepared in the liquidiser, and he lost weight with inexorable logic until the once robust farmer was a skinny wraith whose ribs were showing for the first time in fifty years.

  The pain moved around his body like a poacher in the night searching for a vulnerable deer in the pinewoods. It had first attacked him in his heel, reappeared in his neck, then after a six-month respite erupted from deep cover in his back, to roam up and down his spine with sporadic, intense malevolence. He knew (and so did everyone else) that it had to be lung cancer, since he’d smoked sixty untipped cigarettes a day since the age of fourteen; so why the hell didn’t it just eat up his lungs and have done with it?

  The pain was what had wrecked him. Joseph had always thought he was impervious to pain and his grandson, Michael, had grown up in awe of his grandfather’s disdain of both the occasional accident and the regular discomfort that beset the life of a farmer. When he gashed his hand or banged his head he only bothered to use his handkerchief if the blood was making too much of a mess of everything. And when they’d unclogged the field drains the previous February, while Mike was whimpering like a child from the cold, his grandfather thrust his arms in
to icy mud as if oblivious to reality.

  But this pain was different: it gripped him in its teeth like a primitive dog, and there was neither escape nor end to its torture. He felt nauseous. He fantasised heating up a kitchen knife and cutting out whole afflicted chunks of his own flesh, that that might bring relief – but he couldn’t even reach the stairs. Dr Buckle prescribed ever-changing drugs of increasing dosage, until the pain was dulled and so were all his senses and he found himself withdrawing into a small space where there was no sense and no sensation, only a vague disgust with the faint remaining evidence of a world he’d once inhabited with force and command.

  Joseph Howard knew he’d died at three o’clock in the afternoon when he woke from his inconclusive nap and he looked around the room with a sharpness of vision that made his mind collapse backwards through the years, because he’d refused to wear spectacles and hadn’t seen the world as clearly as this since his fortieth birthday. He could read the hands of the alarm clock without holding it three inches in front of his face, he could make out each stem and petal in the blue floral wallpaper, and the edges of things were miraculous in their definition, lifting away from each other and occupying their own precise space instead of merging into a dull stew of objects.

  He pricked up his ears and heard a voice outside calling, and although it was too far away for him to make out the actual words he could recognise, beyond any doubt, the tone and inflection of his grandson, Mike. And even more remarkably, when another man’s voice answered, from even further away, he knew that that was old Freemantle’s grandson, Tom.

  It was then that he realised, too, that the pain had gone. His whole body ached with something similar to the symptoms of flu, as if his body had been punched in his sleep; but it was such a contrast to the agony of these last months that he felt on top of the world. He got out of bed and stood up, and the blood drained from his head and made him feel woozy, so he sat back down to get his balance. Yet it was actually pleasurable to come so close to passing out. It made him recall the one time he had ever fainted, as a beansprouting adolescent in the farmyard, the world suddenly losing its anchorage and swooning deliriously out of control.

  Joseph had finished dressing and was tying his shoelaces, with an infant’s concentration, when his daughter came into the room carrying a mug of weak tea. ‘Father!’ she cried. ‘What on earth’s you think you’re doing?’ She rushed around the side of the bed but he took no notice of her until he’d finished, and then he sat up and looked her in the eyes and said, ‘Joan, I feels better and I’m getting up.’ Then his smile disappeared and he studied her face with a scrutiny that she found unnerving, taking in the crow’s feet and the puffiness around her eyes and the small lines at each side of her mouth, and he said, ‘You’re a good girl, Joan.’