Just Left of Leaving

'What are we arguing about?'
Sam turned off the radio for the third time and left his hand on the black plastic dial. He glanced over to the passenger seat, and his son's expression. The mouth was a straight red line, the chin poking out, breaking the fluid curve of his neck to his Adam's Apple.
'Look at the road,' Liam said.
'I mean, what are we really arguing about here?'
'You should have both hands on the wheel.'
'Promise me you won't put the radio back on, Liam.'
There was no reply. The rear bumper of the car ahead was drawing near. Sam took his hand from the radio dial and flicked the indicator up. He steered the car into the outside lane of the dual carriageway.
He loved this road in summertime ' not this stretch, but five miles or so further on, where the two lanes shrank back into one and nature pressed close to its edges, the wild garlic smell seeping into the car and the trees converging overhead to make a private tunnel, a kaleidoscope of bright green speckles peppered with sunlight. This road led to his weekend cottage in Devon: the rows of vegetables he had planted, the thick oak door he had hung, his place. But not his place any longer. Now it belonged to his ex-wife.
'Speeding,' Liam said, in a sing-song voice that came from his mother's repertoire, and Sam snapped back automatically:
'Can't you think of something else to moan about?'
Liam reached for the dial of the radio, and Sam slapped his hand away; there was a crack of sound as he connected with his son's fingers, and then a stinging sensation in his palm. He had hit him hard.
There was silence.
Sam snatched glimpses of Liam, blowing on his hand and sticking it in the fold of his armpit, his pinched lips turning from red to white. Six months ago, before the divorce, perhaps he would have cried.
'It'll be fun,' Sam said. 'It's just for a fortnight. And your Mum will be so pleased to have you.'
'I'm not staying,' Liam said in a high voice.
'I know. She knows that.' Sam swallowed. 'But if you liked it, there's no reason why you couldn't stay a bit ''
'I'm not staying!'
'I know that ''
'Not with her. Take me home!' His voice was insistent.
'But we're nearly there now.'
'She's a cow.'
'She's your mother!'
'She left us,' Liam said, and suddenly Sam saw the five year old again, hiding behind the sofa because he'd sat on the remote control and thought he'd broken it. The expression was just the same, for a moment, and then it was replaced by something older and harder, and Sam felt his own emotions hardening along with his son's face.
He snapped down the indicator and pulled into a small lay-by that looked out over a field of budding rapeseed, the yellow heads straggling through the uneven wooden fence. The peppery smell was overpowering through the open sunroof.
Sam turned off the engine and took deep breaths.
'What's happening?' Liam said.
'I'm taking a break.'
'Are we turning around?'
'Your mum didn't leave us,' Sam said. 'She left me. She wanted you to go with her.'
'Well I didn't want to.'
'Can't you think about somebody else for once?' And Sam realised he wasn't talking about his ex-wife's feelings, but his own. He wanted to have this fortnight to himself so he could get over things, could think about picking up the life of a single man once more. Getting a flat. Buying a convertible. Going out drinking, and not coming home.
He wanted to be without his son.
Liam got out of the car, slammed the door and walked around the bonnet, not looking up from the path of his feet. He stepped up on the fence, his silver trainers on the lowest slat, and put his hands and chin on top of the post so that his back was a long curve, his Arsenal T-shirt riding up to show Sam the waistband of his blue boxer shorts, peeking over the lip of his Levis.
Sam felt his hand reach for the ignition key.
He turned it.
The actions of driving came easily ' the clutch, the accelerator, steering wheel, the glances in the rear view mirror showing his son, who had not turned around, getting smaller. Then the road swung to the left and he was out of sight.
The sound of the engine was soothing. It hummed to him, and the noise stopped his mind from filling up with thoughts. It was easy to concentrate on the road, and so he did, for how long he wasn't sure; then the quality of the light changed, and Sam glanced upwards through the sunroof to find himself on his favourite part of the road, in his green tunnel of leaves with the odour of wild garlic creeping in, and the speckles of sunlight playing over his face.
He slowed the car and pulled up on the grass verge. After a time, he switched off the engine.
There was silence. Then, gradually, the emergence of noise from the trees and hedges: echoing rustles, the wind brushing the leaves against each other.
Sam got out of the car and looked up and the archway of green and white. He dropped his gaze to the moss covered trunks, mottled greys and browns, damp and twisting, darkness scored through with tantalising glimpses of what lay beyond, and before he could remember reality, he slid between the trees and followed those shards of light until they coalesced and widened.
He stepped out into a field. Wild grasses were growing around him, reaching up to his knees, blobs of poppies and pinpricks of cornflowers scattered among them. It was a perfect meadow, the kind he thought had been lost forever to arable crops and grazing rights, and on the far side of it was a small stone farmhouse, not unlike his own cottage, with small shadowed windows and a heavy wooden door.
His first thought was to wade across the field and look through those windows.
'Can I help?'
He turned his head to the right and saw a woman, slim, in blue jeans and a red shirt, her hair blonde, glittering in the sunshine. The grass reached her thighs. She returned his stare.
'Sorry?' he said. The blonde hair gave the impression of youth, but her direct gaze made him think it was deceptive: maybe she was as old as him, in her forties.
She jerked her head towards the trees behind him. 'Have you broken down?'
'Is that your house over there?'
She frowned at his question. 'Do you need any help?'
'I just¦it looks empty from here.'
'It is empty, I think.'
'I thought maybe you owned it.'
She brushed her hands through the grass. 'I haven't lived there in years.'
'It's a nice spot,' Sam said, cringing at the banality. He tried again. 'It's beautiful.'
'Yes,' she said, 'but I don't want to come back, I don't think. How about you? You running away too?' She laughed; he supposed at the confusion he could feel showing on his face. 'You've got that look about you.'
'Really? What look?'
'Denial.' She walked towards him, graceful in her lunges through the grass, and stuck out her hand. 'I'm Rachel.'
'Sam,' he said. Her palm was warm. He was sure his was clammy with sweat. She broke the handshake and wiped her fingers against her jeans.
'I wanted to see if the piano was still in the hall. It had an iron frame ' we couldn't move it. I wondered if anyone else had managed it.' She faced the house once more, her elbow brushing his.
'You could go down and look,' he suggested, and some impulse prompted him to add,'I could go with you.'
She shook her head. 'I shouldn't even be here.'
'Then why are you?' He wondered what had prompted him to ask such a direct question ' maybe it was the idea that she had come back for a look at her past, a past she had left. It was an intriguing thought.
'Not sure ' maybe it is just the piano, after all¦ I used to play it with my mother. She was a music teacher.'
'You lived there as a little girl?'
She nodded and smiled, but her lips soon dropped as she tucked her chin into her chest. 'Until I was twenty.'
'And then where did you go?'
'Somewhere. I'm not sure, actually. Abroad, I think.'
'You travelled?'
She sat down among the grasses and rested her elbows on her knees. 'Sometimes I think no place is real but the place you're trying to escape from. Do you know what I mean?'
Sam sat down next to her, imitating her pose. 'Not really.'
The long wild grass reached up to his shoulders; it blended into Rachel's blonde hair. She snapped off a stalk and offered it to him.
'So where next?' he said.
'Don't know.' She squinted in the direction of the house. 'Do you want to come with me?'
He tried to laugh, but it didn't feel right. 'Are you serious?'
'Give me your hand.' She held out her own hand and he took it, with no embarrassment this time. 'I don't know you, Sam, but there has to be a reason why I came back here, and I think maybe you're it. So let's make a promise.'
'That sounds ominous.' But it didn't. It sounded as good as her hand felt in his.
'We swap stories. We tell each other what it is we're running away from. Then we leave, and we go wherever, and we never mention this again. We don't come back. That's the most important thing. We never come back again.'
'Do we leave¦together?'
Her hand was still in his. 'Let's see how we feel?'
'After I've told you¦?'
'And I've told you.'
He swallowed. 'Okay.'
'You first,' Rachel said. She dropped his hand and smoothed her hair back from her flushed face.
Sam looked at the quiet house, with its dark windows and heavy door. 'I don't want to look after my son.' That wasn't quite right. 'I mean¦I don't want to live with him. I don't want to see him.'
'Ever again?'
'I don't know. Right now, I think, maybe. Maybe it would all be better that way.' He looked into Rachel's face. There was no disgust there, and no sympathy. 'He hates his mother. He blames her for leaving, but it wasn't her fault. I had a girlfriend. We broke up just before his mother found out about the affair, and I never thought of it as a serious relationship, but I wanted to feel some freedom. I thought the divorce would make it easier for us all to move on¦instead I have Liam to worry about. And he won't let me go. Not even for a few weeks, when all I want to do is go out and¦'
'¦play the field?' Rachel finished.
'¦start over,' Sam said, and he caught the briefest glimpse of what a real relationship with Rachel might be like ' questions, dry asides. It felt familiar.
She nodded, a half smile on her lips. 'So where's your son now?'
'I drove off,' Sam said, and for the first time he pictured Liam alone, crying, waiting for him, not sure if he was coming back. 'God. I drove off and left him.'
To his surprise, Rachel laughed, throwing back her head so her hair splayed across her back. 'That sounds familiar,' she said.
'I have to go and get him,' Sam said, but there was no urgency. He had done something unexpected, and was in a new place.
'Don't you want to hear what I did?' She pointed at the farmhouse. 'I left someone behind too. In that house. I left my mother. I tiptoed out of the house in the middle of the night, when she was upstairs, lying in her bed. She might have heard me go. I don't know.'
'But she doesn't live there now?'
She dropped her arm. 'You don't understand. It was a brain tumour. In the final stages. Maybe days left, maybe weeks. I couldn't watch any more, so I left. I don't know what happened. Whether she managed to contact anybody, or she just lay there until¦ Perhaps I killed her. Murder. As good as murder.'
'Where was your father?'
Rachel met his gaze. 'Gone. He walked out when I was little, before her illness. He left in the night too. These things must run in the family.'
Strangely, he didn't feel appalled. Instead, Sam had to resist the urge to apologise to her. 'Did you never think about trying to find him? When your mother became ill? Or¦afterwards¦?'
'I haven't felt anything for him for years. Not even curiosity. Don't you get it? It's only the ones you leave behind that you never stop loving. The ones who leave you ' that's the ones you learn to feel nothing for. At first you hate them. Then, one day, you stop.'
'That's not true,' Sam said.
She shrugged. 'Believe what you want. Whatever makes it easier. If you don't go back to your son, what difference does it make what you believe anyway?'
She stood up and he followed suit, feeling how the wind had picked up and the sunshine waned. He felt as if hours had passed. His thigh muscles ached and the seat of his trousers was damp.
'So,' Rachel said. 'What do you want to do?'
He thought for a moment. Then he asked,' So you've never really escaped that house down there?'
She didn't answer him.
'It's a no,' Sam said. 'I'm not coming with you. But the offer was tempting.'
'It's just possible that together we could forget all this.'
'Maybe.' But he could tell he didn't sound convincing.
'Well, goodbye,' Rachel said, and she stepped towards him, her lips pursed. Maybe she was aiming for his cheek, but he turned his head and felt the shock of her lips on his, dry and firm. She didn't pull away when he deepened the kiss, and when they broke apart, if felt like a natural thing to Sam, like the last notes of a bird's song.
'Where will you go?' he asked.
She inclined her head in the direction of the house. 'I think I do want to see if that piano is still there.'
'Goodbye,' he said. As he watched her wade across the meadow, he thought about the pact they had made never to speak of these things again. Then he turned and pushed his way back through the twisted tree trunks to emerge at the roadside once more, the green tunnel overhead now slowly losing the light.
Liam was standing by the car, breathing hard as if he had run there, his face damp. 'I didn't know what had happened,' he said, his voice uncontrolled. 'Where did you go?'
Sam walked up to him and patted him on the arm. 'I'm sorry,' he said. 'I'm really sorry. Do you think you can forgive me?'
There was no reply. Sam couldn't blame him.
'Come on,' he said. 'Let's get in the car and get going.'
'To Mum's?'
'I tell you what ' you decide. Where do you want to go?'
Liam put his hand on the handle of the passenger door. 'Let's go to Mum's,' he said. Sam heard distrust in his voice, and for the first time realised how fragile his son's love for him was.
'That's fine.' He unlocked the car. 'And on the way, I've got something I have to tell you. Something about why your mum and I broke up.'
He was about to break another promise, but at least this time, he was sure he was doing it for the right reason.