The Things I Know(39)

Finally they walked on the stone-strewn path to the edge of the lower paddock, out of earshot of the farmhouse.

‘That’s some sky, huh?’ She looked up at the large full moon which striped the grass and surrounding woodland with its silver glare, the clear indigo, starry cape of the heavens providing a dazzling backdrop to this, their last adventure. She breathed in the cool night air and felt the ball of tension that had appeared in the pub ease in her gut.

‘It is.’ He nodded. ‘When I was little, if I looked up with one eye closed out of a certain part of the window behind my bed, I could see a slice of the moon, and I liked the fact it was the same moon that my dad could see wherever he was.’

Her heart shredded at the image of Grayson as a small boy, so thoroughly abandoned. ‘I used to look at the moon and try to understand how it was the same moon that people all over the world could see. People in places I wanted to go to – America, Norway, India.’ Places I still want to go to. One day, maybe . . .

‘Well, I used to wonder if my dad was looking at it too, thinking about me.’

‘I’m sure he was.’ She offered the salve. ‘Don’t you think?’ It was hard for her to imagine adults parenting differently to her mum and dad, who loved her, loved her unequivocally.

‘I’m not so sure,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘I think, if he thought about me at all, then he would have contacted me or come to see me. Don’t you?’

She hated the note of desperation in his question. ‘Not necessarily. I don’t know – maybe it was hard for him. I obviously don’t know much about it, but by the sounds of it you only have a little bit of the story. You only know what you saw and heard, but you were just a little kid, so there were probably lots of things going on that you didn’t know about, adult stuff. And maybe that made it hard for him to come back or keep in touch.’ She put forward the thin rationale in an effort to ease his pain.

‘I guess.’ Grayson walked by her side and she heard his deep, slow intake of breath, as if what came next might require courage. ‘I haven’t said this out loud before, but I understand why he went.’

‘You do?’ It was a startling insight and one she felt flattered to be the recipient of.

He nodded. ‘My mum, she’s’ – he paused – ‘she’s hard work.’

‘In what way?’

‘I meant what I said before, about her being needy – she doesn’t shut up, ever, she just goes on and on and on, spouting the same nonsense on repeat, and I always feel she’s having a go at me, digging away. And so I don’t talk any more.’

‘What do you mean, you don’t talk?’ Hitch gave a small laugh at the very concept.

‘I mean, when I’m at home, she goes on so much that I can’t get my words out. I’m quiet. I think a lot more than I say and it’s a habit that’s hard to get out of. It’s been a long time since I spoke properly, like I do with you.’

‘How long?’ She stopped walking and turned to face him.

‘About twenty-four years, since my dad left. I used to be able to talk to him.’

‘And he left you.’ She regretted her earlier laugh. There was nothing funny about this, nothing at all.

‘Yes, he left me, and then there was no one to listen, and no one around with anything to say that I really wanted to hear. My mum got louder and louder. It’s a strange thing; my home became deafening and silent at the same time.’

She blinked at him. ‘And yet you can talk to me?’

‘Yes,’ he said, shrugging as if this required no further explanation, ‘but I don’t talk to anyone else.’

‘What, not even at work?’ In her imagination, working in an office or a shop was the way she saw it in any film – it meant an instant social life, where chatting between buddies only halted when you had to get on with the job in hand. It was one of the things she thought she missed out on most in farm life.

Grayson shook his head. ‘Not really. I have the odd chat with Liz, who sits next to me – she’s nice – but I don’t speak to anyone else about anything significant, and never about what matters to me . . .’

‘Why not?’

As he began to speak, she heard the hesitant air of embarrassment in his tone and concentrated on listening hard, sensing that whatever revelation might follow represented a risky moment of openness on his part.

‘I’ve always felt a bit different. Always. I don’t know why and I don’t know how, but somehow, when I was a kid, I knew that all the things that made the other boys “normal” seemed to have passed me by.’ He paused, and she sensed that this was no easy admission. ‘I mean, even now, in my early thirties, I know I’m not like other men. It’s not only the big detail and small detail stuff I told you about, it’s more than that . . . It’s like, when the things were being handed out to make a successful life, I got barged out of the line.’ He snorted briefly with laughter, an act she recognised as one she deployed herself in moments of embarrassment.

‘What kind of things?’ She turned her head towards his outline in the darkness.

‘Confidence. Awareness. Conversation. Humour. Drive. Muscles. And a basic understanding of the offside rule.’

I know you . . . I’m the same . . . I know what this feels like . . .