Gritstone

Gritstone House

13th May 2019

We were driving to Gritstone House in Hugh's yellow Scimitar, barrelling along past Rochdale on the final leg of the journey. The sky so dark the night seemed to have arrived hours too early-blackened clouds edged with deep purple. There had been heavy showers but the occasional sickening skid didn't deter Hugh.

I was still in the same crumpled corduroy jacket I'd been wearing three days ago when I walked out of my home and put the key through the letter box. I'd sent a final text to Siobhan, 'Going away. No plans to be back, Mike,' before dropping my mobile into a neighbour's bin.

I had some written directions to Gritstone on my lap. Hugh didn't believe in satnavs. His fine dark grey hair was blowing back in the wind, as he drove with the window down to stay awake. We had left late and now knew we wouldn't arrive at Al's estate much before evening.

'Did you ever go to see that band Al managed?' Hugh spoke out of the side of his mouth as he veered round a plodding Morris Oxford. Neither of us had seen Al for years. Remembering his past again was mining an endless seam.

'The Savage Boys. Once. Seems like half a lifetime since we saw them.' I could remember that former cinema, grime ingrained into the stucco, sticky tables and tacky floors. We were submerged into a crowd of mostly guys in sagging jeans and enormous t-shirts. Siobhan and I were easily ten years older than anyone else. Apart from Al, who wore a beautifully cut black Nehru jacket. He introduced us afterwards to the bemused group staring out from under their New York Yankees baseball hats.

'He'd latched onto hip hop before it really came over the pond. The band were from Kent, weren't they?'

'Yeah.' Hugh was sliding through the gears. 'Not exactly from the 'hood .but Al was able to coach them. give them that edge. Always seemed he could turn straw into gold.'

'Rather like the Stones really.'

'Nah, they were nothing like.'

'I mean they came from Kent. well Jagger and Richards did.'

'Remember when we were young, you could only listen to either the Stones or the Beatles? Like supporting football teams. And I loved the Stones. They did some great stuff.' Hugh's blues singing of 'Lil Red Rooster' echoed past a cyclist who pulled his bike onto the hard shoulder to avoid the slipstream from the Scimitar.

'Hugh, are you at all familiar with the word caution?'

Hugh didn't appear to hear. 'We saw Al's group at the Corn Exchange. Lily kept asking where the drums were .I didn't know either.' The mention of Hugh's ex-wife put ten miles onto the speedometer. Hugh's car was pretty well all he had left from a former life. He'd found the Scimitar in a scrapyard. It was a time when he knew people who could save it. He still had a little money then. But when Lily finished with him, he went quiet and moved into his cabin cruiser. This was going to be the Scimitar's last ride for a while. The MOT was running out tomorrow. Hugh seemed unconcerned. He only said, 'We'll tow it to a garage when we have to.' I had a familiar sinking feeling-that Hugh expected me to come up with the money to bail him out yet again. But I was carrying hardly any cash and not sure how I'd get more.

'Al dumped them very suddenly. Always the first to end anything.' Hugh moved the conversation on from the future of the Scimitar. And I remembered seeing a large picture of the shocked faces of the boyband in a pseudo showbiz gossip-column in the Guardian.

'He wanted you to go to Nicaragua with him, didn't he-to fight alongside the Sandinistas?' It still rankled Al had never asked me, even though I would never have dreamed of going.

'Well, Mike, I didn't feel.' Hugh went awkward. The car slowed.

'And you didn't go.'

'I was with Lily then. She didn't want to go to a war zone.'

'No.' Lily and I never got on. She always looked drawn and tense when I was around. As if I was a bad influence on Hugh.

'I think Al looked down on me a bit after that.'

'He called you a poser if I remember.' I took a guilty pleasure reminding Hugh.

'Was that it? I didn't know about that.' Hugh grimaced at the road. He had somehow managed to forget Al's verdict on him.

'Al expecting to go there and fight .well it was kind of an ask though.' I'd had a call at the time from Al to say he'd started training on a rifle range, 'I'm ready man!'

'Asking him to stick around to pick coffee for them wasn't going to happen either.' Hugh slowed as he noticed the sign for five miles to Hebden Bridge.

'He can't have been used to rejection. In fact, I think it's the only time when he was rejected. Actually said 'No' to.'

'But you know, Mike, Al was a sort of hero to me.'

'I know he was. But that's a long time ago.'

'Well.' There were roadworks and Hugh juddered to a halt at the temporary red light. The engine idled. 'He probably still is. you know. a hero.'

Hugh put his foot down as the light went green. 'Automatics are so tame. Without gears it's not real driving. Anyway-yeah-when he came back and decided he needed to make money, somebody like him didn't need too long to get rich.'

'It was hedge funds, wasn't it? Not that I know what a hedge fund is. But whatever, I reckon he could always smell the blood on the water.'

'That house by the sea. Did you ever go there? I only went once or twice.' Hugh tended to invite himself and then take time leaving. Al told me that persuading Hugh he'd outstayed his welcome could be like prising a limpet from a rock. I didn't tell Hugh that.

'I went once,' I said. That gleaming sheet of reinforced mirropane glass stretching along the front of the house looking over the beach, reflecting the incoming tide. Watching Al at work, doing all his dealing from home. An enormous screen on the living room wall, with grids and shifting figures, numbers turning from red to green. Al seemed relaxed about it all, sipping a glass of red wine. Not like those pictures you'd see of guys in the City, all strained faces holding two phones. He'd just say that in the end, it's other people's money.

'Siobhan would take Maddie there for a week in the half-term hols.' The sound of those cosy diminutives made me realise how these everyday phrases were now part of a past I had no place in. How could I explain myself to Maddie? What was Siobhan thinking of me right now? I momentarily embraced my vengeful feelings for Siobhan, in all their grubbiness. 'I want her worried. I want her to be scared shitless.' and then felt awkward and guilty.

Hugh was unaware of my introspection. He pressed down the accelerator on the empty stretch of road. 'Anyway, he hasn't told us much about his fiancée.'

'You keep on calling her that.'

'Well she is, isn't she? It's just the word fiancée and Al don't seem to inhabit the same universe. I'm slowly getting used to this alien idea. But I just imagine she'll be like all of Al's other women.'

I had a vision of an unvarying series of tall statuesque women processing past like Banquo's female descendants.

'I don't know Hugh. I mean they're both living in this community. I can't really see those other women putting up with communal living. And he's never even mentioned the possibility of marriage before. I think she'll be a bit different.'

'Founding a community. Getting married.' Hugh shook his head. 'It's weird. I can't connect any of it to Al.'

'It doesn't feel like him.' I had the nervous itch that Al might have become some unrecognisable born-again mystic. Anything seemed possible with him.

I reminded Hugh we would keep the wedding presents in the boot. We had bought two large copper-bottomed saucepans at some retail park in the Midlands. I didn't have too much cash after that. Naturally I paid for both pans.

We were nearing Hebden Bridge and I was looking for signs to Heptonstall. Once we got there, Al had said everyone knew where Gritstone House was-but he'd said it wasn't on a satnav-and the post went to a PO box. His email hadn't said much. 'They've got some funny ideas about us, but I don't care. We're doing okay and I'm making amends for my past.'

The Scimitar laboured up the steep road from Hebden Bridge and ground to a halt in a car park in the village. We wandered down the main street, past the stone-wall cottages, limestone blocks bounded by thick layers of cement. We found a small pub. It was the only place open where we could ask the way. The rain had made it a quiet night. Faced with just five regulars leaning on the bar, we looked like the interlopers we were. I felt self-conscious about my lived-in clothes. I used to be told, if people were in a kind mood, I had the build of a medieval miller. I'm thick-faced and stocky. Since that time at Gritstone I have lost weight. I'm big boned, and now I can look imposing. But that night, my belly sagged nonchalantly over the edge of my trouser belt. The tongue from my shirt dangled down my back. Hugh still looked youthful despite the lines stretching down his thin face and invading his cheeks. His squarish steel framed spectacles magnified his eyes, staring out in vague surprise as if permanently trapped in a goldfish bowl. A thick fisherman's sweater sagged over his lanky frame and skinny jeans.

We were going to need their help so I bought a round of drinks for...