Hamish and Kate Read online

  Helen had visions of being another Brian Epstein, fortuitously given the next big thing in music. She desperately wanted success as a result of her efforts. As she slept at night, she dreamed of being useful and indispensable.

  Her reservations about Michael’s music excluded Clare’s song, of course. That music presaged greater success. That is one song, she thought, that I really like. She wondered who Clare was for two months before she asked Michael.

  ‘You’ll have to ask Euan,’ he said. ‘He’ll be here next month.’

  Helen was surprised that the man responsible for their most successful music had not arrived in London with the rest of the band. She decided that Euan had to be aloof, or too important to do the menial work playing smaller venues, or he was involved in many interesting ventures. Helen was fascinated by Euan, even before she met him.

  She diffidently asked Michael which of those three types of person Euan might be. He shocked her by smiling. He never smiled. She could have been attracted to Michael, she thought, except that he confused her. She never knew when he was being serious, humorous or naive. Although she doubted he was ever naive. She could not understand his conversation and was often embarrassed as she lagged behind, wondering how to respond to dead-pan sentences that may or may not have been intended to be humorous.

  ‘You’ll have to ask him yourself,’ Michael answered her. ‘But, he might just be all three, of course. Depends when you speak to him and who’s asking.’

  Chapter 5

  ‘This is Helen,’ Michael said. ‘This is Euan.’ Michael finished his introductions. ‘Helen,’ he said to Euan, ‘is responsible for our lives. She’s now responsible for yours. Enjoy.’

  Michael left Euan and Helen together.

  ‘He’s a smart guy,’ Helen said to Euan after an embarrassing silence.

  ‘He knows what happening, that’s for sure,’ Euan said and laughed. It was a normal laugh that reassured her that he was not another Michael-type. Her self-confidence would have suffered if another person needed decoding.

  She laughed with Euan. ‘How do you understand him?’

  ‘I have a PhD in Physics. That helps,’ Euan said, intending to be humorous.

  Helen’s heart sank. Another super-intelligent guy, she thought. How can I keep up, she wondered?

  Euan saw her face sink. He understood why. He smiled and rested his hand, reassuringly, like a brother, on her shoulder.

  ‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘I’m normal. Well, as normal as can be expected, I guess. Normal compared to Michael anyway.’ Euan withdrew his hand quickly. He had been surprised how touching Helen had felt. It was a gesture of friendship, an action he made with both sexes, but he had sensed an attraction when his hand lingered on her shoulder. It had not been his intention and his physical reaction concerned him. He remembered how easily Clare had rejected him after a short absence and he worried that Kate’s memory would be swamped by the proximity of another. He did not want that.

  Helen’s face lit up after Euan’s reassurance. He felt the intoxicating power of making someone happy.

  ‘So who’s Clare then?’

  ‘Clare?’ Euan was surprised, wondering how she had made that connection when he touched her shoulder like she had read his mind.

  ‘Clare’s song. You know,’ she said.

  ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘A girlfriend. An ex-girlfriend.’

  ‘It’s a wonderful song,’ she said.

  Euan was embarrassed. ‘I don’t know about that. But it certainly is everywhere. I even heard it on the plane over here.’

  ‘It’s paying all our salaries at the moment. You must be very proud,’ Helen said.

  Euan did not know how to respond to praise. He frowned.

  ‘Thanks,’ he said quietly.

  Chapter 6

  It was Christmas time. There had been one snowfall in London and slushy, dissatisfying snow had remained in some streets for a few days. Euan was disappointed with that kind of snow, it was nothing like the stuff he had enjoyed on the mountains in New Zealand. He wondered if that was the kind of thing Clare had meant when she said it sometimes got in the way. Although, he did not understand how a few piles of dirty ice hindered anyone.

  Helen took her job seriously. So she invited Michael’s band to spend Christmas day with her own family. She worried about acceptance, for her parents’ sake, and was relieved when only Euan and Michael accepted her invitation. Michael cancelled after Euan agreed. He had believed no other band member would want to go, which was almost true.

  Helen drove Euan to her parents home in Norfolk, close to the North Sea, on Christmas Eve. It had begun snowing as they had left London and the trip had been slowed and extended. They did not arrive at Helen’s parents home until nearly midnight. It was snowing heavily as they pulled into the driveway.

  ‘We hardly ever get snow here,’ she laughed as they unloaded the car and ran to the porch, leaving indentations in the snow that marked their footsteps. It was already quite deep.

  ‘I’m not complaining,’ Euan said brightly. The white stuff on his shoes was more like the snow he remembered and loved, not that London mess.

  He had, surprisingly, enjoyed Helen’s company on the long, slow drive. He had not expected to. She had a mildly infuriating conversational habit of beginning a response then pausing, for too long, while she considered a conclusion. Even her humour was well considered and bordered on being too late to be funny. Her nervous habit was exacerbated around Michael. She had been embarrassed a number of times laughing at his serious suggestions and, vice versa, constructing considered responses to jokes.

  Michael and Euan had formed the disrespectful habit of answering for Helen as she considered her reply. When what was said was her opinion, she shrugged and said nothing but she strongly interrupted when she disagreed. And each time she intervened, her manner surprised the two men since they had meant no insult.

  Everyone in the band liked Helen, knew she worked hard and did a good job for them. All the same, they felt a little sorry for her.

  Euan felt that mild sorrow as he and Helen waited on the porch for the door to open. It was as if he was disappointed that Helen enjoyed being with him, as if she had lowered her standards and should have done better.

  ‘You’re very late,’ Helen’s mother said after she had shut the front door behind them. She was angry with relief, her daughter was safe and sound.

  ‘Where’s Dad?’ she asked.

  ‘You father went to bed ages ago. You didn’t expect him to wait up did you?’ her mother said.

  Helen laughed and then introduced Euan. Helen’s mother had been warned and she was restrained in her enthusiasm and praise of ‘Clare’s song’. It was the only piece of music she liked that her daughter had been professionally associated with.

  Euan was shown to a bedroom at the front of the house, adjacent to the front door. He did not want to sleep immediately and stood by his bedroom window looking out at the falling snow, illuminated by the porch light that had been left on. There was no wind and the flakes appeared from the darkness above the light’s reach, floated through the luminescence to settle and deepen the white on the ground. Euan heard some muffled sounds that could have been voices in a far part of the house, probably Helen and her mother talking, he thought, but those were the only noises. The snow accumulated silently outside in the yard.

  He was quite excited at the prospect of a white Christmas and pulled the covers tightly around him like he was a child snug and safe in his first real bed.

  He woke early, before dawn, and like he was expecting presents that Christmas morning he rushed over to the window, wondering about the snow. The yard and as far as he could see was well covered. He had half expected, with the rate of fall when he went to bed, for the snow to be above the level of the window and for Helen and her family to be trapped for Christmas.

  He dressed quickly, put on a jacket and went outside. The sky was a steady grey that diffused light making it impossible t
o know if the sun had yet risen. He ploughed out into the yard, the snow, in parts, waist high. It was starkly beautiful like a black and white photograph. It was still and deathly silent. There as no traffic on the road nearby, there was no life in the trees or elsewhere that Euan could see. He fought his way out to the street and stood in the middle of the roadway peering one way and then the other.

  He struggled back and then ploughed the whole way around the house simply for the pleasure of sullying the virgin snow. He travelled like he was a ship that cuts through water. He leant forward to push his way through, sometimes even making a small bow wave, until he again stood on the porch. The outside light was still on so he opened the front door and turned it off.

  He noticed a large bladed shovel inside, against the wall. It had been left there by Helen’s father the night before, after he had heard the weather forecast.

  Euan began to vigorously clear a path through the snow to the street. It amazed him, as he shovelled, the surprising amounts he was able to move with the large blade. He imagined he was like a super-man, with great strength, shovelling vast quantities of something that was not mostly air.

  He had nearly reached the street when he saw two women, in dressing gowns, peering through a window from Helen’s parents house. It was Helen and her mother, looking concerned as if he might return with the shovel and attack them.

  He saw Helen’s mother turn to her daughter and say something. He imagined she said something like, ‘Are you sure he’s all right? Is he quite sane?’

  Euan laughed at his thought. He raised both his arms, including the shovel, as if he had been crowned champion of something. He turned away from the women and back to his energetic shovelling.

  As Helen watched Euan, the supposedly grown man, composer of marvellous music, enjoying the snow unselfconsciously like he was a young child, she instantly fell in love with him.

  Chapter 7

  On Boxing Day Helen drove Euan out to the beach to walk on the mud-flats. It was a summery thing to do in winter. They drove to a parking area that faced the ocean. They were the only ones there.

  Hard-pan mud-flats extended for a long way, out to the edge of the ocean proper. Highways of sand divided by silver avenues of shallow water ran parallel to the beach. Rays of angled sunshine searched across the water, sand and mud, coming and going as the clouds first divided and then merged. The warmth in the car enveloped the frigid winter scene in a blanket of summer. Euan knew it would be uncomfortable outside and sat in the passenger seat thinking of the summer it would be at home in New Zealand. He forced the heat from the car over the water, scrubby foreshore and flat dunes.

  A few piles of snow, the reminders of the dump on Christmas Eve, remained in the car-park.

  ‘Are we going for a walk?’ Helen asked. ‘Or are we just going to sit here? I mean, it is nice. I guess.’

  Euan smiled his agreement and opened his door. The cold struck him but he didn’t notice greatly, he was preoccupied, thinking of Helen. He knew where all this was going with her. She had changed on Christmas morning, he knew she was attracted to him but it concerned him. He wanted her to be happy, he liked her and without Kate’s memory he could have liked her even more. But he was determined to leave the UK as soon as it was possible. He had told no-one of his ultimate plan.

  If Helen liked him then a relationship for a few months was not a bad thing, he thought. He would not be taking advantage of her. It was not the ancient days, she was not assuming a marriage contract. Most relationships were short and, in the meantime, she would enjoy herself. And a little withholding of information was normal in all relationships, he justified.

  They wandered over the tidal mud-flats heading, in a round-about way, towards the distant expanse of ocean water. They skipped and jumped over the shallow streams and traces of water. They chased each other like children but when caught did not prolong physical contact. Helen squealed when Euan got too close, and he yelled with fright and ducked out of her way to avoid capture. They could have been fifteen years younger, with their parents still unpacking the car for a day at the beach.

  There was a stiff wind that made the temperature unbearable. Euan thought it too cold for weather.

  ‘I love Winter. I love the beach,’ Helen said as she held her arms out and spun around. It made Euan a little giddy to look at her but he laughed all the same.

  ‘We would come here when I was a child, ‘she said as her twirling slowed but did not stop. ‘Hot days and swimming.’ She laughed diffidently as if embarrassed by confession. ‘And sandcastles.’

  They were a long way out from the sand at the high tide mark.

  ‘You can feel the aloneness, if that’s a word,’ she laughed again. ‘The cold makes you alive, like we could go on forever.’

  She stopped spinning. She held her left hand over her eyes, to shut out vision, and extended her right arm and index finger.

  ‘Spin me,’ she ordered Euan.

  ‘What?’ he asked.

  ‘Spin me around.’

  Euan smiled at her childish game although she could not have seen that. He held her by the shoulders and gently twisted her back and forth.

  ‘On three,’ he said. ‘One, two, three.’

  He gently spun her and ducked out of the way of her rotating arm before stepping back. She continued to revolve, under her own steam of course. She came to a halt and peered through her fingers as her suspended arm pointed at Euan’s chest. He laughed at the joke he did not understand as he followed the pointed direction from the finger, to his chest and then behind him. When he turned back to her, her arm was still pointing and she had a more serious look on her face as if she understood something new.

  She dropped her arm, and scooped Euan up by threading her arm through his and pulled him further away from the beach.

  ‘Let’s go as far as we can,’ she said as they marched.

  They jumped over more small rivulets, many were swift flowing. Some were too wide to jump cleanly and their shoes got wet as they splashed short on the far side. Euan’s feet became numb with the cold.

  They halted at the open water’s edge. There was a visible, strong sideways flow of water and a steady encroaching movement towards them. They had to take regular steps back as they watched distant shipping out in the North Sea.

  ‘We should go,’ Helen said eventually. ‘Even I’m getting cold.’ She turned around.

  Between them and the shore there was more silver than before.

  ‘Shit,’ Helen said and roughly grabbed Euan’s arm. She was panicking. ‘We’ve got to run.’

  Euan laughed as he ran beside Helen. She was serious as she yelled, trying to make him understand, ‘We could die you know.’

  ‘No we won’t,’ he said. ‘Not yet.’ He held his arms wide like he was an aeroplane, able to fly over the water between them and safety.

  They came to the first river of sea water and Euan hesitated. He was thinking of the inconvenience, not danger. He saw wider rivers of ocean to cross ahead of him. He thought, for a second, of staying where he was as if that moment of comparative comfort and safety could be preserved. Helen was already thigh deep in water and she yelled and beckoned for Euan to follow.

  There was no-one on the distant beach, and it was getting darker too. He had a fleeting thought, as if it was summer and in New Zealand, that there may be someone close by with a boat. Even, perhaps, he could raise his arm and the lifeguards could come to their rescue. He turned back to the open ocean and imagined the North Sea slowly chasing him and decided to plunge in and wade after Helen. His numb feet, from only splashing, heralded what was to come. He knew full well the consequences if they had to swim.

  The cold on the first crossing was painful but bearable. After a second cold crossing Euan decided that Helen’s panic had been reasonable after all. He peered further ahead and saw there was worse to come.

  The next expanse was the widest and deepest. It was so swift flowing that Euan had to brace himself against the
sideways flow so he was not carried away. He was no longer shivering as he splashed over the last, shallow streams of incoming sea water. He ran with uncoordinated legs he could not feel, like they were not his own.

  ‘Take your jeans off,’ Helen ordered as she unlocked the car.

  ‘Here? In the car-park?’

  Helen had already dropped her pants to her ankles and was struggling with the tight and soggy mess, trying to get her feet through them.

  ‘Just do it, Euan!’ she said angrily.

  He decided to not argue. His jeans eventually came off and he could feel nothing below his thighs. He stood in the cold, holding his jeans as if he was looking for a peg on which to place them. He dropped them and jumped, stiff-legged, into the car.

  Helen started the engine and turned the heater on. It roared it’s infusion of life. Euan had a vague memory that it might not be such a good thing to heat up so quickly but did not argue, Helen seemed to know what to do. Stabbing pains of life returned to his legs and feet.