The Cold Winter 13. The Island

Something all men have to learn, sooner or later, is not to take their woman for granted. I never realised that it would hurt so much to lose you, because I never thought that I would. You were always there, you always had been; I can�t remember the time before we were friends. It was just like having a little sister, but it was so much more, because we didn�t fight with each other, and we didn�t have any friends who were more important than each other, and protecting you from school bullies and bossing you around made me feel like a man, even when I was eleven and you were nine.

I�m sorry I was so miserable with you the other day, up at the house; I was angry with myself for being unable to resist coming to see you. And with you, for having been here for days without trying to see me. It seems incredible that you don�t remember the same things as me. With Kate around, it�s been impossible to forget you.

I know for certain that if you had left a year earlier, I would have got over it. I would only have missed the you that I had known, and not the person you would have grown up to be; and I wouldn�t have regretted the way my world would have been so different if you had stayed. Not many people find themselves, a lifetime later, face to face with the path they might have taken.

You were my shadow and my pet and my playmate, for how many years, seven? I was married to Emma for nearly twice that long, and of course I could never, ever mention your name to her, but� well, that�s not this story. I�m sorry if I ramble on a bit, but I�ve never said any of this to anyone before, and as you can probably tell, I�ve thought about it a lot.

I don�t know why you were always such a soft target for the bullies. I remember once you taking my detention with me, because you didn�t want to go home on the bus on your own. It didn�t do you any favours, having me to hide behind, because you just got it worse when I wasn�t there, never learned to stand up for yourself. They were jealous. I told you that, but you never believed me. It must have been so hard for you when you left, maybe that�s why you�ve forgotten; you just don�t want to remember. Or you�ve been to so many new places, seen things, met people, and weren�t stuck with the same landscape every single day of your life, places that constantly remind me of you. Your horizons are so broad now, that I must be nothing but a dot, if I feature at all. We were growing out of being playmates, that summer. It wasn�t a sudden change in either of us; I just gradually became aware that you looked different, and you looked differently at me.

I have a photograph of you in my head. You were standing in the water, by the jetty, one evening. You can�t have been working that day, because you were wearing a dress. It was like a pinafore, it buttoned all the way down the front, and you were getting the hem of it wet, even though you held it bunched up around your knees. Your hair was untidy, straggling around your neck, and your skin was brown from being outdoors all summer. You didn�t know I was leaning against the wall of the big shed, watching you, but I knew what you were doing, standing in the shallows with the soft mud oozing in between your toes, watching the late afternoon sunlight sparkling on the water.

Do you remember how we used to camp on the island? We took your dad�s tent, and my mum would give us food, and we rowed across after closing time and made a fire, and sat up late just talking for hours, while the shadow of Leas Hill crept across the lake. The island at night was like our own kingdom, a great big den that no-one else was interested in, and we had to clear all the evidence of ourselves away each morning and get back to the boat landing before it opened.

We didn�t spend as many nights there, that last summer, I think because Sally seemed to disapprove, and we had to keep on her good side, to keep our jobs. Our parents didn�t care, didn�t seem to notice what we were getting up to. Your mum and dad were mostly preoccupied, of course, and I was old enough to look after myself.

Sally left us to lock up that night, and after she�d gone, you rowed us over to the island in Lily, because she was always your favourite boat. I�ve still got her, but she�s not in use anymore. She must have been fifty years old then, so she was well ready for retirement. We dragged her high up on the beach, so you wouldn�t worry about her floating away, and pitched that old tent in our usual spot, where no-one would be able to see our fireplace from the shore. I built us a fire, but I didn�t light it, because the air was still so warm that it stuck to our skin. It was too hot in the tent, so we spread our tarp out on the grass and piled our sleeping bags on it, to lounge on until it cooled down a bit. You lay on your back, looking out for the first stars, eating leftover sandwiches from the caf�, and joking at me for bringing them, for being the hunter-gatherer. I said it was going to rain, and you gave me one of those sarcastic looks that I don�t think you ever used on anyone else. I always think that you were more yourself when you were with me, and I was more myself. I feel like I�ve forgotten how to express myself, the way I did with you.

I joined you on the tarp, and you named the constellations that you could see above us, as if I hadn�t taught them to you. The sky was watery blue, and felt so heavy and vast; and there were streaky clouds over Grayrigg, and we were both ignoring the fact that that was usually a sign of a change in the weather.

You smiled at me, and it was the most natural thing in the world, to lean down and kiss your mouth. You know I�d never kissed anyone before, but something inside me was telling me that I wanted to be that close to you, closer than we�d ever been. I wanted to taste you and touch you, and tell you something that I just didn�t have the words for. And I was seventeen and you were wearing a thin dress and stretching yourself out on the grass, and giving me some sort of a knowing look. We grew up in the split second before our lips touched, that moment when we knew what it meant.

And then great, slow drops of rain fell from nowhere, and we untangled ourselves as though we were surprised to find ourselves tangled, and grabbed the tarp and the sleeping bags and threw it all into the tent. We didn�t speak to each other, we just did what had to be done to keep everything dry, and then we were underneath the canvas with all our stuff in a heap, and there was a dark growl of thunder in the next valley, and we lay next to each other. Your eyes were shining and your breathing was audible even over the rainfall, inches away from our faces through the open door of the tent.

I stroked your face, and kissed you again, and you wrapped your thin little arm around my neck and kissed me right back. I�m not going to describe it all in pornographic detail to you; for goodness sake, Nell, you were there. I can�t believe you have no memory of it. In all these years, have you never thought once about how you lost your virginity? Nights I�ve gone to sleep remembering how fragile your body felt underneath mine, how soft and warm your skin was, and the look of absolute adoration in your eyes. I felt like you belonged to me completely. You were mine. When I hear soft rainfall on grass, and during summer storms, I think about you.

The thunder and lightning went on for most of the night, rumbling round and round the lake, as if we were the centre of the storm. I asked you if you I had hurt you, and you just nodded and clung to me, and we didn�t talk much, we just lay there in each other�s arms, being part of each other and part of everything around us.

I rowed us back in the morning, because you were hopeless. You were in a daze, smiling and sleepy, and we couldn�t help touching each other. All the same things that we normally did had changed overnight, so that your fingers, that had brushed against my skin a thousand times before, were suddenly charged with electricity so that they made the hairs on my arms stand on end. The half hour when you went home to wash and change was endless, even though I had plenty to do, to open up before Sally arrived. By the time she got there, we were sitting on the end of the jetty eating bacon sandwiches, and we wondered if she could see the change that we had gone through in the night.

That was our last day working together, and we spent it in blissful ignorance of the fact that the future we had glimpsed in the night was going to be over almost as soon as it had begun. We must have driven Sally scatty, taking our breaks together so that we could sneak into the shed to kiss, and the tourists were queuing at the hut with no-one to help them in and out of the boats for five minutes.

At the time, I hated it being such a long day, but now I�m glad. It was frustrating as hell, you in your shorts, your legs all brown, shooting me smiles full of meaning, your whispered promise that we would take the tent out again that night. You were full of quiet happiness, and I resented having to work all day, when I just wanted to grab you and hold you so tight that I was breathing for both of us.

Finally, Sally closed the gate, and no-one else could come in. She offered us a cup of tea while we waited for the last two boats, but we suddenly found an urgent chore that we had to see to, in the boatshed. We slammed the door and the pent-up laughter burst out of us, and we leaned against Annette, the new fibreglass boat, that I�d winched up to the roof out of the way. We calmed ourselves just far enough to start kissing again; you tasted of hot summer and clear fresh water. I know I was running my fingers up inside your t-shirt, and you were stroking my neck, and I remember you whispering into my mouth even while I was kissing you. And that�s it. That�s all I can tell you.