Pat Barker - Border Crossing

Lauren, he discovered from Roddy and Angela who kept in touch with her, was living with somebody called Francis. This happened so quickly it was obvious that Francis had been waiting in the wings. But at least Lauren’s desire to enjoy her new life unencumbered expedited the divorce. Only when he had the piece of paper in his hand did Tom start to feel free.

Winter closed in, icy winds blowing flurries of stinging snow off the river. The pleasure of pulling on an old, warm, well-trusted sweater became nightly more apparent. The time came when the evening’s talk drifted into silence, and it seemed merely silly for Martha to go home. They took the relationship one day at a time, neither of them assuming it would necessarily last, though they did suit each other, physically and in every other way, surprisingly well.

Gradually life settled into a new pattern. All around Tom’s street, shops, restaurants and hotels were springing up. Even the river changed. The crumbling jetties and quays were demolished, paths laid, trees planted. One night, looking over the railings at the place where shopping trolleys used to go to die, Tom saw what he took to be a large rat lolloping along the bank. But then he realized it was too big, and anyway rats don’t lollop. Another shadowy creature joined the first. He glimpsed wet hair roughed up into spikes, a moist nostril questioning the air. Otters. He could hardly believe it. Otters on the Tyne.

Throughout all this time, Danny neither wrote nor phoned. Martha had news of him occasionally, though only indirectly, through his new probation officer. Tom wasn’t surprised by his silence. This, rather than any ‘gimmick’ of throwing cassettes on to a fire, was Danny’s way of burning the tapes.

But then one day, without warning, he saw him again. Tom had gone to the University of Wessex to give a talk on the Youth Violence Project. He arrived in the late afternoon and, after leaving his bag in the hall of residence where he was going to spend the night, was taken straight to the teaching block.

The lecture theatre was large, with the platform raised well above the auditorium. The lights were too bright for Tom’s taste, and at first he couldn’t see the audience at all, except as a blur of faces. Gradually, his eyes adjusted to the glare and he thought he saw a familiar face at the end of the second row on the left.

Danny. Or a young man who looked Hke Danny. He couldn’t be sure.

He sat, sipping water, listening to the introduction, working out how good the acoustics were, how good the microphones were. When he stood up to speak, he gazed around deliberately for a second, trying to see into the darkness of the auditorium, but he couldn’t. The figure remained shadowy, elusive. As soon as Tom began to speak he forgot about him, in the need to make contact with this large, intent, but, at seven thirty in the evening, inevitably jaded audience.

The talk went well. He’d given similar talks many times before, and could do it, now, almost on automatic pilot. When the time came for questions, he asked for the house lights to be raised, and there, unmistakably, was Danny. He’d been almost sure, but even so the sight of him was a shock. He stumbled over the answer to the first question, but recovered quickly.

After the questions, there were glasses of wine on a table in the foyer. Tom talked to various people who asked questions or made comments, aware all the time of Danny, who was leaning against a notice-board, a backdrop of many-coloured pieces of paper forming a jigsaw round his head. A rather aggressive young woman with dead black hair accused Tom of patronizing the people he spoke about. He’d given the entire talk, she said, without once seeming to be aware that there might be people in the audience who’d been in young offenders’ institutions. Tom explained courteously that he’d made no assumptions at all about the audience, beyond their willingness to listen.

‘You’re just exploiting them,’ she said, her nose-stud popping out with the force of her convictions.

‘I didn’t think he was exploiting them,’ Danny said, coming up to join them.

‘How would you know?’ She stared Danny in the eye, then, when he didn’t blink or move, turned on her heel and strode away.

‘She did six months for dealing,’ Danny said. ‘It’s her main claim to fame round here.’

Tom looked round, and realized that the audience was drifting away. He said goodnight to his host, who was worried he might not find his way back to the hall of residence.

It’s all right,’ Danny said. Til show him the way.’

They went out into the gardens. A few hundred yards away the student bar was full of lights and music. People sat at tables outside, or spread out on to the grass, testing it before they sat down.

Earlier in the evening there’d been a shower of rain, enough to release the smell of lilacs from the bushes behind them. Danny reached up and caught a branch, sending a cascade of raindrops over his face and hair.

‘How are you?’ he asked, before Tom could speak.

‘Pretty well, and you?’

‘Not so bad.’

No explanation for his long silence, but then none was required. They had slipped back into the intimacy of their first meeting.

‘Whereabouts are you on your course?’

‘Finals this year.’

‘And then?’

‘I’m doing the MA in writing. It’s been a bit of a rush getting a portfolio together, but Angus has been very good.’

‘Angus MacDonald? You got in touch?’

A stab of jealousy that amazed him. He would have said he was incapable of such a reaction, and yet jealousy was unmistakably what he felt. Just as Martha would be jealous when he told her about this meeting. He thought about it, and decided to be amused. It was Danny’s gift.

‘I went on one of his courses,’ Danny was saying. ‘Very salutary.’ He didn’t say how.

Tom turned to look back the way they’d come. The lights in the teaching block were being switched off, one by one. Against the night sky, the building looked like a huge liner sinking, the lights, first on one deck, then another, going out, until everything was dark.

I won’t ask you your new name,’ he said, smiling.

‘No, better not. I’ve made up my mind about one thing though.’ He was looking towards the bar with its crowds and music. ‘If it happens again, I won’t run. There has to be a time when you say: “No, I’m just not running any more.’

Tom nodded. ‘I think that’s right.’

‘Well.’ A shadowy smile. ‘It’s been nice seeing you again.’

‘How are you, really?’

‘I get by.’ He hesitated. ‘I don’t fight her now. She’s got a right to quite a few of my brain cells.’

They’d come to a fork in the path. ‘You’re over there,’ Danny said, pointing. ‘Keep on the path. It brings you right round to the front door.’

They shook hands. Tom watched him walk across the grass to the bar. As he reached the terrace, a group of people sitting at one of the tables called out a name that Tom convinced himself he hadn’t heard, and Danny went over to join them. One of the girls kissed him. A young man threw a proprietorial arm across his shoulder. Tom wondered if either of them knew who he was.

But no. Danny would have learnt to take what he wanted and keep a safe distance. There was no limit to what Danny might learn.

And that’s the way it has to be, Tom thought. He was looking at success. Precarious, shadowed, ambiguous, but worth having nevertheless. The only possible good outcome.

The smell of lilacs was overwhelming. Tom closed his eyes for a moment, shutting out the sight of Danny and his friends, and saw instead, with almost visionary clarity, a woman with white hair walking down a garden path, five or six cats following her, their tails raised in greeting. She lifted a handful of dry cornflakes to her mouth and ate them, peering into the sun she could hardly see, enjoying its warmth on her face.