Eric Brown - Kéthani

That night I finished a long shift making deliveries to the Onward Station high on the moors, and I was in need of a pint or two in the company of the usual Tuesday night crowd.

It was a balmy summer’s evening, and the clientele of the Fleece were making the most of the weather and drinking in the lane. The main bar was almost empty, but for the regulars: Ben and Elisabeth, Jeff Morrow, Dan Chester my colleague, Doug Standish, and Khalid.

I carried my pint over to their table, sat down, and stared around at my friends. They were quiet. “You look as though you’ve just got back from a funeral,” I said.

They said nothing, and I thought for a second that I’d committed a terrible social gaffe, and they had been to a funeral.

Jeff just shrugged, uneasy. Ben and Elisabeth looked away. I smiled. “What’s wrong?”

Khalid said, “I think it’s my fault, Richard,” and fell silent.

Jeff said, “You can tell us, Khal. We’re friends, you know?”

Elisabeth caught my gaze and pulled a worried face.

Khalid was sitting at the end of the table, his pint untouched before him. He was usually immaculately turned out, clean-shaven and dapper. Tonight he was unshaven, his hair dishevelled. His gaze was remote.

From time to time he fingered the implant at his temple, absently.

He looked up at each of us in turn.

Only then did I think to myself: I’m not going to like this one bit…

He cleared his throat and said, “Zara’s leaving me.” He looked at his watch. “In fact, she’s probably left already.”

Doug Standish said, “My God.”

Elisabeth took Khalid’s hand.

I murmured something along the lines that I was sorry. More than that, I was shocked. I liked Zara. She taught English at Jeff’s school in Bradley, an attractive, intelligent woman in her early forties. She and Khalid had always struck me as a loving and devoted couple.

Khalid stared at his pint. “Things haven’t been going well for a while. We haven’t been communicating. She was… cold, remote. I thought it was…” He shrugged and looked helpless. “I don’t know what I thought. Then last week I… I confronted her. She admitted she was seeing someone and… and she decided to move out.”

We sympathised, with all the useless old platitudes that come to play in these situations.

Khalid fell silent, obviously not wanting to say anything more, and we changed the subject. Conversation was forced for the rest of the evening. Khalid downed his pint, and I bought him another, then a third and a fourth.

At eleven-thirty the others made their farewells and left.

Khalid finished his pint and looked at me. “How about a drink back at my place, Richard? I have some bottled Landlord.”

Khalid lived in a coach-house a few doors down from the Fleece. It was a big place, with a front door that opened straight onto the pavement. Khalid, key in hand, paused before the door, and took a deep breath.

We stepped into the cold house and I settled myself in a sofa while Khalid fetched the beer. It was a large, comfortable room, with white walls, ancient black beams and a big brass-cowled fireplace.

Then I noticed the sculpture.

Khalid entered the room and stopped. He stared at the sculpture, his expression folding. I thought he was about to weep.

The carving, in dark, polished wood, showed two figures, a man and a woman, entwined in an intimate embrace.

A Post-it note was affixed to the woman’s out-thrust buttock. Before Khalid snatched it up, I read: Khal, I couldn’t fit this in the car. I’ll be back for it later. Zara.

He looked at me. “We think we know people, don’t we?”

I smiled sympathetically and took a long swallow of ale.

Khalid slumped into an armchair. “I was happy with Zara in the early years. She was perfect. We fitted. I always thought I wanted to spend the rest of my life with this woman.” He shrugged, regarding the bottle in his hand. “I assumed she thought the same. Then things started going wrong. A couple of years ago… I sensed a shift in things, how we related. She was keeping something back. I thought it was a phase.”

I shook my head. His words released unpleasant memories. Six months after the coming of the Kéthani my wife, Barbara, had left me in acrimonious circumstances. Even though our relationship hadn’t been working for years, and the split was inevitable, it was still painful. I could imagine the anguish Khalid was suffering.

He looked up. “When I confronted her, she said she’d met someone at the study group she went to on Tuesdays, and intended to live with him. He’s an artist. A sculptor.”

I glanced at the entwined figures without making it obvious: of course, now that I looked closely, the naked female figure in the arms of the male was Zara.

Khalid saw my gaze and laughed. “She bought this about six months ago. She put it in the bedroom. I mean, Richard, how bloody cruel can you get?”

The silence stretched. I wanted to say something, but nothing seemed appropriate.

He went on, “I tried asking, again and again, what I’d done wrong, what was wrong with our relationship. The frustrating thing was, she refused to talk. She simply said that she was sorry, that she’d fallen out of love with me, as simple as that. She said we had nothing in common any more, we didn’t communicate. And then she met… Simon, he’s called.” He wept, pressing the back of his hand to his mouth in a bid to stem the sobs.

Then, quickly, he apologised, and I smiled and shook my head and told him how it had been with Barbara, all those years ago. It was the early hours before I dragged myself home.

But I recall the last thing he said to me before I left. “Richard, I never realised that love could turn to so much hatred.”

Life continued.

We met in the Fleece every Tuesday. Khalid was there in body, but not in spirit. He seemed to inhabit some far-off realm. Usually eager to take part in any discussion, these days he was silent, unwilling to be drawn on any topic. He would nurse his pint and stare into space, emanating an almost palpable air of misery.

I called around one day to find him slumped in an armchair, staring into the empty hearth.

“It’s only me,” I called from the hall on finding the front door open. “I’ve brought this back.” I indicated the hammer I’d borrowed weeks earlier.

“I won’t stay,” I went on, seeing him in the chair. But he protested.

“No, stay a while. Coffee?” He seemed eager for company.

“The hell of it is,” he said a little later, “that everything reminds me of Zara. This house, the village.”

“Have you thought of moving? Selling this place, I mean?”

He shook his head. “To be honest I’ve been so low that I can’t shift myself to do anything. I’ve thought about selling up, but that’d be as good as admitting defeat. I keep thinking that the pain will stop, in time. But if anything it only gets worse.”

I indicated the place beside the hearth where the sculpture had stood. “I see she’s taken it away.”

“She hasn’t been back here,” he said, bitter. “I had to take it round to Simon’s place. I never really realised how easy it would be to murder someone and think nothing of it.” He looked up at me. “You’re shocked, I can see. I went round to his studio and told him I wouldn’t be needing the sculpture, thanks. He was so damned reasonable about things that I wanted to hit him over the head with it. The terrible thing is, Richard, that I feel I could be violent towards Zara, too.”

I nodded. “Have you seen her since…?”

“Once, by accident.”

“Don’t you think it’d make things easier if you could still be friends?”