‘Yeah. What’s not to like?’ she says, her eyes glittering in the reflected light from the disco ball.
‘I like it. I like it very much. I applaud the ambition. I’m just not sure the impact of the plane would sever the head.’
‘Isn’t that a little pedantic?’ she sneers.
‘Isn’t it my job to be pedantic?’
‘With punctuation?’
‘Luckily you don’t need that level of hand-holding. Wouldn’t whatever part of the plane strikes the head just deal it a terrible blow, take a chunk out of it?’
‘Well, I don’t know. I can’t very well set up a controlled experiment.’
‘Mmm. A blind experiment.’
‘Is that a joke?’
‘I probably am being a little pedantic,’ I say. ‘You take a leap of the imagination and the momentum of the story, the boldness of the conceit, should take the reader with you.’
‘Yeah, but if that doesn’t happen, it undermines the whole story. That’s what you’re saying.’
‘But that’s the beauty of the form. Of the short story. You can take risks that you wouldn’t in a novel. How much time have you lost writing it? How much time has the reader lost reading it? And if we get it, if our suspension of disbelief is unbroken, it’s all worth it.’
‘Hmm.’ She looks agitated.
It is my job to encourage the talented students, not discourage them. Grace is clearly talented, but there is something about her that makes me uncomfortable.
‘How’s your novel coming along anyway?’ I ask her.
‘The story is part of it,’ she says, her jaws snapping shut like an insect’s.
‘Great. That’ll work.’
‘How?’
‘I don’t know; you tell me.’
She laughs a rustling, almost metallic laugh. ‘We’ll see,’ she says, placing one large hand over the other on the tabletop.
I drain my glass.
‘I’m going to head off,’ I say, getting to my feet.
‘Don’t forget to check out Fight Club,’ she says, a slight jeering tone reminding me either of what she thought of my passivity in dealing with the drunk novelist, or of what she herself thought of the drunk novelist.
Following Flynn’s death on Uroa beach, Ray struggled to carry out his full range of RAF duties. He gave it six weeks and then applied for medical discharge, which was granted. He wondered if it was granted in the hope that it would buy his silence. He had answered all questions put to him in the internal RAF inquiry that took place immediately after the ‘accident’ and he assumed that the two nurses who had been present in the Hercules had answered just as truthfully. He had no idea what Dunstan himself had told the inquiry and he didn’t ask. But he suspected that the outcome of the internal investigation would be either hushed up or massaged into ambiguity if it wasn’t the desired outcome and he knew that normal procedure dictated a full and open inquiry would have to be held at some future point according to the laws of the United Kingdom. He preferred to return to the UK as soon as possible to be ready for that, whatever he might choose to say when the time came.
Ray flew into RAF Northolt and caught the Tube to London and then a train to Manchester. He took a bus from Piccadilly Gardens to Hyde and felt mildly alienated — although he wouldn’t have used that actual word to describe the feeling — to find himself walking down the streets of his childhood after three years spent living thirty miles off the coast of East Africa.
‘It’s our Raymond,’ his father said when he opened the door to him, offering a slightly awkward handshake.
Ray’s mother appeared and hugged him, not without warmth, then led him into the morning room, which had been transformed. It had been repapered and a new carpet had been put down. A playpen formed a square enclosure on the floor and in it sat a three-year-old boy playing with a wooden train set.
‘Is this…?’ Ray asked.
‘This is Nicholas,’ Ray’s mother confirmed.
‘Hello Nicholas,’ said Ray, bending down beside the playpen.
‘Nicholas,’ Ray’s mother said, folding her arms under her bosom, ‘this is… this is your father.’
Nicholas looked up briefly, turning startlingly big blue eyes on the newcomer, then returned to his train set.
‘Nicholas…’ said Ray’s mother.
‘It’s all right, Mam,’ said Ray. ‘He’s not set eyes on me for three years.’
‘And he may not for another three either,’ grunted Ray’s father from the doorway.
‘Me dad’s right, Mam. Looks to me like you’re doing right by the little feller.’
‘Aye, well,’ said Ray’s mother, moving some knitting off a chair so she could sit down.
‘You’ll not be stopping long,’ Ray’s father said.
It wasn’t clear to anybody, possibly even to Ray’s father himself, whether this was a statement or a question.
‘I’ve got to go to Newcastle,’ Ray said.
Nobody asked why.
He took a train from Victoria. Three hours later he stepped on to the platform in Newcastle. He caught a bus to Whitley Bay. North of the white dome of Spanish City, the seafront was windswept and bleak. He walked a little way on the links, then turned inland under the shadow of a tall block of flats. He checked the name of the building — Beacon House. He was going the right way. Leaving Beacon House to his left, he entered a new estate comprised of two or three long, looping roads and numerous dead ends. Modern, boxy, flat-roofed houses constructed out of brick, tile and wooden boards. When he reached Granada Place, he turned in. It was a short cul-de-sac, houses on either side, a white wooden fence at the end. On the right, a man with a bald head and tufts of curly grey hair above his ears was cleaning a red Beetle. The door to his house was standing open and from within could be heard the sound of scales being played on a piano. The man smiled at Ray, who smiled back once he had spotted the number on the house, an even number.
Number 7 was at the end on the left. A grey Morris Minor stood on the short concrete drive in front of a yellow garage door. Ray took a deep breath, held it and let it out. He looked towards the white wooden fence that marked the edge of the property. Beyond it lay a green space bounded at the far side by a wooded gulley.
Ray stepped up to the front door and rang the bell. A two-note tone could be heard from inside the house. Ray took a step back and swallowed. He heard footsteps within and then the door was opened by a thin woman of about forty in a simple nylon dress with a pattern of blue and green pebble-like shapes. Her face looked tense under carefully applied make-up, large grey-green eyes wary beneath blue-shadowed lids.
‘Raymond Cross,’ he announced.
‘Hello, Mr Cross. June Flynn. Please come in.’
June Flynn led Ray into an open-plan lounge/dining room that ran from the front of the house to the back. A wide wooden cabinet stood in the middle, two pot plants trailing upwards into a trellis-like structure that formed a subtle division between two distinct areas.
‘Please have a seat, Mr Cross,’ said June Flynn.
‘Thank you, Mrs Flynn. Please call me Ray.’
June Flynn offered a weak smile. ‘Then you must call me June. My husband will be down in a moment. You have had a long journey. Would you like some tea?’
‘Tea would be lovely. Thank you.’
June Flynn left the room. Ray could hear her heels crossing the tiled floor in the hall and entering the kitchen. He heard the opening of cupboards and a fridge, the boiling of a kettle. Otherwise the house was silent. Eventually, June Flynn returned carrying a tray. She put it down on the coffee table in the centre of the lounge area. There was a pot of tea, a small jug of milk and three cups and saucers.