July 2012
MacTavish awoke late in the morning, his neck aching and his head throbbing, reeking of stale alcohol, grease and old, dried-up vomit. Distant, hazy recollections floated up through the fog in his head: he remembered stopping for chips, and picking up the cheapest bottle of wine the corner shop could offer him, but after that it was a blur of increasingly obscured memories until he could remember nothing. He fell asleep on the couch during the evening, and to his appalled horror, been sick at some point later, but beyond the third glass of wine, his memory was a black hole.
When David sat up, wiped his eyes, and said he wanted his Mum, MacTavish let him go. After that, he hadn't the stamina to face the rest of the party, and jumped the crumbling brickwork of the wall into the thicket of trees beyond. Even at the time, he knew it was cowardly, and in the cold, hard light of the morning, he despised himself even more.
He had expected the confession to David to be cathartic, that it would make both of them feel better but even when he pushed aside the physical agony of the hangover, he didn't feel better, just angry. Look at the state of this fucking place! At the nick of you! He raged.
Disgusted with himself, he peeled his aching flesh from the worn velvet cushions and stood up, his vision spinning painfully. In the kitchen he looked at the week's worth of washing up as if seeing it for the first time. The bin overflowed, and even in the cool morning, it still stank. He found the least filthy glass and for lack of dish soap, rinsed it under the tap before filling it up with cold water and chugging it down. He repeated this process twice more, he rummaged in the kitchen drawers until he found a battered pack of aspirin.
When the worst of the hangover abated, he went out for breakfast and returned armed with supplies. It took most of the rest of the day to clear out the detritus of his six week hiatus from normality, but he got it done, hating himself even more with every passing minute. He couldn't believe the state that he'd sunk to, but the evidence irrefutably filled ten bin bags and most of the glass recycling. As time went on, the inner fury rose higher and higher until it was an overwhelming self-centred rage.
For the next week, he was perpetually grumpy, but the force of the anger drove him, stoked a fire inside him. Price was impressed by his sudden passion to get back to work, but warned him that his mouthing off about the glacial slowness of his case might backfire in the long run, so MacTavish bit his tongue and submitted: oscillating between the physical and mental prodding of the medicals and working himself to exhaustion in pursuit of the stamina and physique he'd taken for granted six months before. Still, he kept his neck wound in, and let nature take its course.
As the time wore on, his emotions began to balance out, the peaks and troughs of his swinging moods evening into his more usual, prosaic affect, but a kernel of doubt about the party had begun to sprout in the back of his mind, penetrating his quiet moments with feelings of guilt. Had he done the right thing? How much of David's best interests did he have at heart really, and how much of his motivation had been purely selfish? He'd heard nothing about the incident from Price, and frankly, he suspected that he just hadn't realised that anything was amiss.
Fate, it transpired, resolved the situation. He'd been running for a few weeks now, steadily building up his pace and distance through the town at first, and then out into the countryside, aiming to take the car out into the bleak expanse of the Brecon Beacons by the end of the week and attempt to replicate the forced march that made up the final test of physical selection. He was on his way back, going at a hard sprint over the playing field, when he heard a voice shout his name.
There were a few dozen kids and their families on the grass, and as he approached, he began to understand the pattern behind the milling bodies. There were several teams, and most of the parens wore the colours of the offspring they supported as they laughed and chatted on the sidelines. Vivianne, in a black vest and matching loose linen trousers, stood out on the edge, tossing a rugby ball to David so badly that MacTavish mentally winced. She waved at him, so he peeled away from the path across the grass and pulled up short beside her, breathing hard with the effort of his full-tilt run.
He caught his breath as she returned the ball awkwardly back to David, holding it above her head with both hands and sending it sailing through the air in an unnatural arc. The boy snatched the ball out of the air and looked back at them both, eyes narrowed. MacTavish caught his eye they nodded to each other, a distant gesture of mutual respect that bore no grudges, and for all its minuteness, the absence of hate in David's eyes washed him with relief.
"Did they not teach you rugby at school?" he asked. He wanted to steer the conversation as far away from the party as possible.
She laughed. "Not in my day."
David lobbed the ball back at her, and she caught it but before she could sent it back, he stopped her.
"Look." he said, and gestured for her to hand it over. He threw it back to David properly, like he was passing it in game. The boy fumbled the catch, but he smiled, obviously glad for a the input of someone who knew what they were doing.
MacTavish caught the return, and demonstrated. "Throw it from the hip." he said. She tried to copy him and sent the ball flying off to the left, and skewing past her son at a distance. He took off after it.
MacTavish heard a whistle blow, and then David was off and running off into the direction of a coalescing mob of children without a backwards glance.
"Well, practice makes perfect." he said.
Vivianne sighed. "I'm not really much good at this sort of thing."
He understood suddenly: she wasn't meant to be here, and she knew full well how bad a job she was doing trying to fill in for the man who should be. The shame of his arrogance punched him hard in the chest.
"No, I'm sorry. I-" He stopped. He felt ashamed at his gross insensitivity. "I shouldn't have said anything."
She shrugged. "Frankly any advice would be a bonus. If it's not on a horse or powder, my family don't get involved."
He grabbed at this lifeline, picked up a discarded ball from a few paces away and demonstrated again, talking her through the movements, and they slung the ball back and forth for the next twenty minutes until she gave up, shaking her arms.
"Definitely an improvement!" He said, encouragingly. "
She laughed, and the rummaged in a cooler beside her bags. She passed him a bottle of water and then flopped down in the shade, her back against the trunk of a tree. He slouched against it and slid down to sit beside her, wincing as his hip hit a root.
"How are things?" asked MacTavish, tentatively.
"Better" she sighed. "I mean, worse initially, but then better. You were right. I think." She pushed her fringe from her damp forehead.
He shrugged, trying not to stare. "I get it, you want to keep him safe, he's your boy. It's only natural."
She gazed off into distance. David was warming up with the other kids, and appeared to be enjoying himself in the thick of it.
"How's life been treating you?" She asked.
"Still waiting to be passed fit." He replied. "Panel's meeting in a fortnight though, so not long."
A long whistle blew behind them. "Game's starting." She said, standing up, brushing off her trousers.
"I'll be off then." He said, jerking his head in the direction of the town.
"Seriously, Iain." She said. "Thanks for everything. Drop by the shop, if you're passing. Company's always welcome."
"Sure." He replied and they looked at each other for long moment, until he turned and jogged away.
He remembered about her request a few weeks down the line, when he looked at the date and saw the looming reminder about Maria's birthday he'd pencilled in several months before. He sighed, knowing that he couldn't even make any plans to visit the family until the final decision about his future had been rubber stamped. He didn't want to think about the angry silence at the end of the phone when she asked, innocently, if would make it out to dinner with them this year, what with him actually being in the same country as the rest of the family for the first time in… he frowned, and counted: three years?
Three years… He'd had the time, but he'd let it slip through his fingers like sand, kicking back and enjoying himself like all the other young lads, letting the weekends slip away until he counted them up and realised he'd not been home in months. Suddenly, he was deployed, and the chance disappeared. Three years. He pressed his lips together, and considered his options.
His options lead him around the town, and then, almost without him thinking about, to the gallery: a mock Georgian shop-front in a part of town that ten years ago would have been terminally unfashionable, and cheap, but now boasted all the trappings of urban gentrification. He raised his eyebrows at a line of potted ornamental bay trees with three-figure price tags and an Aga showroom that now flanked The Saltyard.
The sign on the door read "closed" but the door itself was propped open with a box clearly lifted from a pallet lying on the pavement outside. He grabbed the first one, and brought it inside. The shop was clearly between exhibitors, as the half devoted to whatever had caught Vivianne's eye was bare of wall and full of unopened, flat boxes and the shop itself lay empty. He dropped the box down on the counter and called her name.
He felt a sudden shiver as he remembered the last time he'd been kicked out of the waiting car in the drizzle to fetch the posters for whatever charitable nonsense had been dreamed up by some bored officer's wife. She'd looked up at him with a smile that had hit him like a punch in the chest. She was older than her picture, her hair tidier and she had more clothes on but she was beautiful, and when she turned the full force of her personality onto him he shrank in its radiant glow, became a stuttering wreck.
She just wants a friend. He thought. Nothing more. But when she jogged down the steps and appeared, breathless in the doorway, his heart leapt like it always had and pounded so hard that he could feel the force of it against his ribs.
"Iain!" she cried, her face lighting up. For a moment she started forward and he thought, terrified, that she would hug him, but she stopped herself and sank back. She saw the box his hand rested on. "Oh! You didn't have to do that."
"It's no problem." He said. "I'll get the rest." He turned away, grateful not to have to make eye contact. "So, big changes afoot then?"
"Yes." she answered. "New exhibition opens tonight."
"Oh? Anything I've heard of?"
"Local girl. Went off to Cardiff a few years ago for college. Came back last summer and started painting." She pulled the wrapping from one of the smaller frames and held it up. Bold, bright colours radiated out from the canvas: a summer scene with vibrant yellow fields just before the harvest, and feathery dandelions in fine grass dominating the foreground.
"It's lovely." he said and then asked, looking around. "What about your own work?"
Her smile dissolved. "I've not been… painting." she explained.
"Of course." MacTavish said, looking away and mentally cursing himself for putting his foot in his mouth, yet again.
"I didn't say making art didn't help, just… some things are personal."
She hefted the painting around, shifting her grip around the heavy white frame and stared at it. "It is lovely though." She smiled again. "This is the first showing I've actually arranged myself since…" she trailed off, and left the obvious unsaid. "Nothing really felt right, and what I was drawn to… not very commercially viable, I'm afraid."
She held the picture up to the wall, and bit her lip whilst she considered it for a moment. After a few seconds she put it down and stared at the various unwrapped rectangles leaning against the wall.
"I'll get the rest of these," MacTavish said, nodding to the box he'd placed on the counter.
"Oh, you don't have to." she said.
"It's no trouble." He replied. The depth of the conversation made him uncomfortable, and he was glad for the distraction.
Vivianne attacked the packaged paintings with alarming ferocity, stripping away the protective covers with what MacTavish recognised as a standard issue bayonet, until they were all exposed. He watched her shuffle them about for a few minutes, before he offered a suggestion.
"Look." He held out his hands and she passed over the frame, awkwardly as they stood a respectable distance from each other, side-by-side. For a moment, as she struggled with the weight their arms crossed and they touched, his hand accidentally gripping her fingers and the frame together.
"Sorry." she said, with a little laugh and he had to look away as blood rose to his face.
"Over here." he said, walking quickly to the end of the room, talking over his embarrassment. "See, the colours are wrong with the others, too jarring and it's the only one that's got a lot of red in it. It's got to be by itself."
He stood back when it was hung. She was looking at him quizzically, her hands on her hips and her head inclined.
"You're right." she said, smiling. "You've got a good eye." She held his gaze for a second too long, biting the edge of her lip before she turned away.