Danuta Reah - Only Darkness

He bought the first round, bringing the drinks over to a table, and dropping a packet of salted peanuts in front of her. ‘You need to get something inside you,’ he said, pushing his chair away from the table as he sat down, and hooking his foot over the rung of another. Debbie felt shy, as though she didn’t know what to say to him in this new context, but he didn’t seem to notice anything, and talked casually about the pub and how it had been the place where the police used to drink, when he was in the force. ‘More crimes got solved at this bar than at the station,’ was how he put it. He seemed more relaxed in this atmosphere, and Debbie asked him a bit about his life in the police force. He made her laugh with some stories of the things he’d seen and the people he’d met, and then he asked her about herself, moving on to her parents, her childhood, her current life and her plans for the future.

Debbie found herself talking about her father, something she didn’t often do. ‘He was a miner,’ she said. ‘It was in the family, kind of thing. His father was a miner as well. He used to spoil me rotten.’ Rob sat there quietly, watching her as she talked. ‘He couldn’t cope when they closed the pits down. He got paid off, but he couldn’t get another job. He used to hate the way the people down at the job centres talked to him.’ She paused. She wasn’t sure about the next bit.

‘What happened?’ He was sitting close to her, listening.

‘He died … It’s some time now.’ But Debbie could remember what it felt like, believing he hadn’t cared enough, thinking that he had chosen to leave them. She still felt angry about it. She wanted to change the subject. She realized that, though they’d been talking for a while, she still knew very little about Rob.

‘You’re not local, are you?’ she asked.

He shook his head. ‘I’ve lived round here for years, but no, I was born in North Shields. Lived in Newcastle while I was growing up.’

‘What brought you to Moreham?’ It seemed a strange place to come, to Debbie.

‘Nothing. I came to Sheffield to work.’ He still seemed relaxed, but Debbie was aware that he was stonewalling her questions, that he didn’t want to talk about himself.

She tried another tack. ‘You said you weren’t planning to stay at City. Where next?’

He was looking round the room, watching the other drinkers at the bar. ‘Nothing planned. But City has only ever been a temporary thing. You ought to be thinking about moving on as well. It’s no place to get stuck.’

‘I like it.’ Debbie recognized his ploy to turn the conversation back to her. ‘I like the students and I like the work. I am looking for something else though – but only because of what’s happening.’ She tried again. ‘Would you go to another college, or what?’

He laughed. ‘No, I’m not planning a career in college security. I don’t know yet, something. Do you want another drink?’

‘My round.’ Debbie reached for her purse and found it contained her travel pass and fifty pence. She went red. ‘Oh, God, I ask you for a drink and I haven’t got a penny on me.’

He thought it was funny. ‘I’ll ask you next time I’m broke. Don’t worry, Deborah. Come on, what do you want. I’m buying.’

‘OK, thanks, I’ll have the same again. But next time …’

When he came back from the bar he smoothly took charge of the conversation again. ‘Your father wasn’t an old man, was he?’

Debbie shook her head. ‘He was fifty-five when he died.’ She thought Rob was watching her, but he was looking across towards the bar, frowning slightly, as though he was thinking something over.

‘What is it that makes you so angry about it?’ His question was so unexpected that she felt winded. The response was forced out of her before she had time to think about his right to ask it.

‘Everything. All of them.’ She felt her face flush. ‘He thought it was his fault, you see. He was a pit deputy and he thought he should have joined the strike.’ She looked at Rob, uncertain whether to go on. ‘It wasn’t his fault. He voted to strike. He was Catholic,’ Debbie explained. ‘His mother’s family were deep-dyed Irish Catholics. So he felt guilty.’ She thought about it again. ‘They just threw them out, made them feel useless. Oh, there was good redundancy, but Dad didn’t want that, he wanted his job, he was proud of it.’

He leant towards her, his arms on the table. ‘And what happened?’

‘Nothing happened. He got cancer. Lung cancer. He’d had a cough for a while. But he wouldn’t do anything about it. We could tell, me and Mum, that he wasn’t well, but he just didn’t seem bothered. By the time they found it he was too far gone.’ She sighed. It had been an awful death.

‘You were his only daughter?’

‘His only child.’ Debbie smiled. ‘He wasn’t a practising Catholic by the time he met Mum. That was something else he felt guilty about.’ She shook her head. ‘It’s not something I really understand.’

‘No. It’s not something I know much about.’ That was the first personal comment he’d volunteered.

She told him something about the stories her father used to tell about the priests and nuns, and her Aunt Caitlin’s house in County Cork with its holy pictures and statues.

‘You didn’t get all that?’ he asked.

Debbie shook her head. ‘Like I said, he’d given up Catholicism by the time he met Mum. She wouldn’t have had any truck with it anyway. It was something that happened when he was a teenager. His sister, she was only a baby, she died. She was only about three months old, and she hadn’t been baptized. She’d been ill. My grandmother, apparently she believed that the baby wouldn’t go to heaven because it hadn’t been baptized, and she was just destroyed. My father said that he realized then he didn’t believe a word of it any more.’

He went on watching her after she’d finished, unnervingly silent until she saw that he hadn’t been paying attention, was thinking about something else. His face looked tense, distant. He shook his head. ‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘I just thought of something.’ He checked his watch. ‘I’ve got to go.’ She felt a stab of disappointment. His glass was empty. He waited while she finished her drink. ‘Are you on the train?’ Debbie nodded. ‘I’ll walk down as far as the bridge with you. I’m going that way. When’s your next train?’

A bit fazed by the sudden change, Debbie scrabbled in her bag and checked her timetable. ‘It’s in ten minutes.’

It was nearly seven as they left the pub, and the town centre was quiet. A cold wind was blowing now, buffeting against the buildings, pulling Debbie’s hair out of its pins and combs and whipping it against her face. They didn’t talk as they walked towards the river. The station lights came into view, and they stopped at the crossing. ‘I go this way,’ he said. He looked over towards the station. There were people going in. It looked quite busy. ‘Will you be OK from here?’

‘Yes, fine.’ Debbie checked her watch. ‘I’m early.’ She had nearly seven minutes before the train arrived, assuming it was running on time. She looked at him. The wind had blown his hair about and he’d turned his collar up against the cold. His face was half in shadow. She shivered.

‘You’re frozen,’ he said. ‘There’s no warmth in that.’ He touched the collar of her mac. ‘Here.’ He unwound the scarf he was wearing from under his coat and wrapped it round her neck. His good humour seemed to be back. He caught hold of one of the tendrils of her hair that had escaped from its confinement and tucked it behind her ear. They looked at each other in silence for a moment, then he said, ‘You’d better get that train.’ He waited as she crossed the road, then turned and walked away towards the river. She could hear her train on the line. She hurried to the station entrance, and an hour later she was standing in her kitchen, feeling unaccountably depressed.