Nicholas Royle - First Novel

The trolley is wheeled back into the kitchen and I swivel to look at Erica. She turns at the same time and our eyes meet for an awkward moment. I look down and my gaze snags on her amber pendant. She has large breasts. The clingy material of her pale-blue top wraps itself around one of them like a promise. I have to tear my eyes away.

‘Are you married?’ she asks suddenly.

‘Kind of.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘She died,’ I say. ‘She’s dead. Or she’s enjoying eternal life, depending on what you believe.’

At that moment the two waitresses arrive at our table with their trolley. On it are two plates covered with the same silver domed lids. The girl with the ponytail and cheekbones places mine in front of me while the other waitress, a middle-aged woman with short, dyed blonde hair, serves Erica. Then they each delicately grasp the nipple-like handles and their eyes meet. On a signal invisible to us they swing, bend and lift in one fluid movement. All it lacks is someone to say ‘Ta-da!’ in an ironic tone of voice.

‘I’m sorry,’ says Erica as the waitresses withdraw, and she sits forward to communicate sincerity.

I look back at her and don’t know what to say.

‘Who does work there?’ I ask eventually.

‘Where?’ she says, taking my non sequitur as a sign that she may start to eat.

‘In the Pyramid.’

‘Mortgage people. Business and personal banking. Smile.co.uk. Computer banking, training. All sorts. Why are you so interested? Are you a bank robber?’ she asks before closing her lips around a piece of salmon caught on the end of her fork.

‘No, more of a grave robber. You know, like Howard Carter.’

‘Howard who?’

‘Never mind. The Pyramid offers the promise of eternal life. I’m interested in that.’

‘Who isn’t?’ she says, tipping wine into her mouth.

‘I have a particular interest in it,’ I say.

There’s a pause before she apologises again and then there’s a further pause while we both eat.

I see that she has finished.

‘Shall we get out of here?’ I say.

‘I thought you had to write a review.’

‘I’ve seen enough.’

We cause a bit of a stir by paying on the way out. The staff handle our sudden desire to leave with tact and aplomb; it’s among the remaining diners that we detect the lightest of tuts and softest of glares.

‘A short walk?’ I suggest, heading away from the car park down Ringway Road. I watch the little houses on our right. The waitress with the ponytail will return to one of them later. She will down a glass of vodka, neat, then strip to her underwear and crash out.

On the left is a small layby where before 9/11 you could park to watch and listen to the planes thundering overhead. The landing lights loom over the fence on our left, burning in the darkness, casting a gauze of yellowish sparkles into the night sky above the road. I take hold of Erica’s arms and pull her towards me. I place my lips on hers. At first she neither yields nor resists, then she softens, but I feel nothing. I move my head to one side, while still holding her close to me. In the sky above the Moss Nook Industrial Area on the north side of the road, twin white lights can be seen growing steadily larger and brighter. At that distance they will have passed over the Pyramid and be approaching Cheadle Royal. Erica tries to say something, but her mouth is pressed against my shoulder, her voice muffled. I can hear the plane now. It’s a medium-sized passenger aircraft, a 737 or an Airbus 320. I can feel Erica squirming beneath me, trying to get free. The plane flies overhead, its deafening roar filling my ears. I turn my head to watch it overfly the landing lights and I release my hold on Erica.

From the layby you can’t quite see touchdown, but you can hear it. The sudden exhilarating explosion of reverse thrust. The application of speedbrakes. The squeal of rubber on tarmac.

I look down. Erica is straightening her clothes. She seems upset.

‘I’ll take you home,’ I say and turn and lead the way back towards the restaurant.

Several cars remain in the car park as we leave it, turning left to go back the way we came. The streets are quiet, splashed with pools of orange light. In the car neither of us speaks. When I look to the left to check for traffic, I see her face reflecting the glow of the city in the night.

As we approach Northenden I think about taking a short detour to Marie Louise Gardens and driving from Dene Road West into Mersey Road by going straight across Palatine Road without stopping. At this time of night there would be very few cars on Palatine Road. We would be unlucky to be hit. I stop at the lights at the end of Church Road. Right for Deane Road West, straight on for Kenworthy Lane. Either or.

The light changes to green. I sit there undecided. Erica’s eyes are on me; she’s wondering why I don’t move forward. Eventually, as the lights are changing back, I do.

On Kenworthy Lane I stop outside the little house where I had picked her up at the start of the evening. She gets out without a word, then bends down to look back in before closing the door. I turn towards her, but her eyes are hard to make out, the wrap top and its contents lost in shadow.

‘Goodnight,’ I offer, my eye drawn by the amber pendant, which swings clear.

‘Goodnight,’ she says non-committally and then she is gone.

I drive on to the end of the road, which runs straight for a couple of hundred yards before meeting a confluence of cycle paths and pedestrian routes that extend under the interchange of the M60 and Princess Parkway. After a bend to the right, the road continues in a straight line beyond a row of four concrete bollards. I think about the electronically controlled bollards in town that rise and fall allowing buses to pass over them. At least once a week a car is written off in a collision with one of these. It seems there is an unending supply of motorists who think that if they follow the bus and put their foot down, they will get through in time, and on every occasion they are disabused of this notion by the swift and inexorable rise of the bollards, which strike the bumper or enter the engine compartment and jack the car up off the ground.

With my engine still running, I consider flooring the accelerator and driving at the concrete bollards in the hope that they might sink into the earth.

I remember Moss Nook and the sparkly glimmer of the landing lights. I think that if I return there now and drive slowly along Ringway Road I will see a tall, ponytailed figure walking slowly, tiredly, along the pavement between the restaurant and the runway.

I look again at the line of bollards.

Either I go for it or I don’t.

I depress the clutch and select first gear.

I have tried to get an office of my own, since one was as good as promised to me when I joined, but other promises that were made at that time have not been kept and I don’t suppose this one will be either. Actually, that is not true. What is true is that I was not discouraged from thinking that I might one day get an office to myself. As the months passed, it became clear that there was less and less chance of this happening until I finally accepted, within myself if not outwardly, that it would never happen. When I think about it, there were no promises made at all, but there were certain things that were not said.

I was told I would have contact with undergraduates as well as MA students, but it was not explained that this contact would take the form of teaching on a unit devised and run by another lecturer whose vision of creative-writing teaching was somewhat at odds with my own.

Nor was I told that there would be endless meetings about administrative matters that I would be expected to attend, in spite of my having nothing useful to contribute.