DANCING LEDGE

If you'd asked me, I'd have said they were my oldest friends. Of course, I hadn't seen them for years, except for Jack, the barrister. I'd spotted him lunching a stunning woman half his age in one of the poshest restaurants in town. Don't worry - I was being taken out myself, by a drug-company fixer. I'm a sub-editor on a medical magazine, and he was expressing his gratitude in advance. Jack didn't notice me, but we ran into each other in the loos, said we'd have to get in touch again, and by the time I came out he and his guest had gone.

I don't think it was his voice on the answerphone. Hard to tell - a lot of crackle - one of those dodgy cordless phones, or maybe a mobile - I could only make out a few words: "Dancing Ledge...Twenty-five years on...what about a reunion?" I don't live in the past, so it took me a while to remember.

Twenty-five years ago, I'd just left university (don't ask about the degree) and still thought I was going to be the Great Writer. Having no money, no job and no prospects, I was spending the summer at home in Dorset with my mother. (My father had died the previous autumn - don't ask about that either.) She was still trying desperately to sell the house, which I could understand. She'd lived there all her married life. Despite that, I wasn't really a country child. On the one hand, my father's intellectual attitudes and connections prevented it (he was a writer, too - but not a Great One, either). On the other hand, the local kids of my age weren't country either. It was a small village, and there were only four apart from me: Jack, from the Big House, that nobody ever called Whatsit Manor; Elizabeth and Simon from the Rectory; and Ben, the farmer's son.

I always reckoned Ben was the cleverest, as well as the most practical. He had a mechanic's gift and kept all his father's farm machinery in order. At thirteen he fixed up an old Norton that the Army had left for dead in an outhouse and rode it like a madman through his father's fields. He went to technical college, got all the right qualifications, and opened his own garage, on his father's land but up on the main road, where he bought, sold, and mended cars, cash in hand, no questions asked.

Maybe I was prejudiced in Ben's favour, because he always read my stories. I'd started writing young, things that I thought I would later call my "apprentice work", detective stories, ghost stories and so on. My father was too busy. My mother said, "Very nice, dear." Ben said, "The writing's good. The plot's neatly organised. But I don't think you understand people very well."

Elizabeth liked my early poetry. It was all in praise of her. I can't recall her face with any accuracy, but I can remember that awful breathlessness I felt whenever I so much as glimpsed her. That's how beautiful she was. Gauche and naive, I never stood a chance and I knew it. Perhaps that's why she was so tolerant of me. Elizabeth could have had anything she wanted. Jack, on the other hand, actually got it. No one could resist him. He knew it and pressed home his advantage. I always felt Simon, Elizabeth's brother, was half in love with him.

The three of us went to the same local minor public school, but they were boarders for the week, because it was character-building, while I was fortunately a day-boy - among other reasons, because it was cheaper. They used to tell me stories about pranks in the dorm, and about illegal smoking. Jack stole his father's cigars when he could, but mostly he and Simon would smuggle in tobacco and cigarette papers that they'd got from Ben, whose father had let him smoke openly from an early age. "Safer that way," Ben explained, "then I won't set fire to one of his barns by accident."

When I was young, we all played together. As we grew older, we used to go for walks, in pairs, in trios, depending on who was getting on with whom at the time. I flattered myself they confided in me, but they didn't really. They used me for company when they didn't want to mix with the others. Then I went to university, Jack went off to study law, and Simon went to theological college. Since her mother had nervous trouble, Elizabeth was needed by the parish, whatever she may have wanted to do herself. And by that time Ben was already making a fair amount of money, though he still preferred to dress scruffily and roll his own. "Persuades the punters you're not trying to swindle 'em," he said to me once, when I asked him why he didn't seem to make any visible use of the sums he earned.

That summer, twenty-five years ago, we were all back together in the village: I'd fixed up a place for teacher training, because it gave me a grant for one more year, Simon was waiting for a curacy, Jack was waiting for the start of the Law Term, Ben, who employed three mechanics, was waiting for planning permission for a tea-room beside the garage, and Elizabeth was just waiting. Somebody - I can't remember who - suggested we should all walk the Dorset Coastal Path together.

It seemed a good idea. It got me away from my mother. It got Jack out of a house where his father was dying slowly and painfully from cancer. It got Simon away from a spiritual examination, though Elizabeth was still required by the parish. And Ben took it as a chance to escape from his business, and see how well his staff could survive without him.

After years of discipline, we decided to do without it. We would set off from home, taking a tent with us, and ring up to be brought back when we'd had enough. We were sufficiently adult to dismiss our parents and exploit them at the same time. I volunteered the tent, but found that time and moth had invalidated my offer, so I went round to the Rectory to borrow the miniature marquee that was used for the annual fête. It was a Saturday afternoon, and Elizabeth was so slow to answer the door that her father had actually emerged from the study where he wrote his sermons and was halfway down the stairs before she got there. He nodded vaguely in my direction, but only spoke to her.

"I hope you haven't started smoking, Elizabeth! You know how afraid your mother is of fire, and whatever it is, I can smell it all the way up here."

Now he mentioned it, I, too, noticed a tang in the air. But, as Elizabeth said, it was probably just the match she'd used to light the gas, since the pilot-light was giving trouble. We got out the marquee, which wasn't too big or too heavy, and broke it down into four packs, though when it came to it the following morning Simon and I had to carry it between us. Jack and Ben pleaded urgent business and said they would join us later.

Which they did. Though we hadn't got very far. It wasn't just laziness. There was a mist, a fine, swirling sea-mist, which would sometimes clear to a gossamer veil, and then become thick and damp as a dish-cloth. The Dorset coast isn't like other coasts, where there's a clear division between land and sea. You know what I mean: elsewhere, you either have huge cliffs with massive drops and big fences, or you have the fields flattening out and turning into sandy beaches or mud-flats. The Dorset coast goes up and down like a switch-back, with false crests and false edges all over the place. You walk down a nice green valley, across the end of which you see the ships sailing, so near you could reach out and touch them, and suddenly the ground goes away from under your feet. Or you think there's a sheer drop, and there is - but only for five feet, before there's a tumbled mass of heather that sprawls quite gently though fairly impenetrably to the waves below, only you couldn't see it from where you were. With going like that, you take it slowly in a mist, even a midsummer one.

Jack found us first, and took his share of the weight, but we still didn't get on very far or fast, so it wasn't really a surprise when Ben came towards us out of the mist, walking back to meet us because he thought we'd be further on. It was only six o'clock, but we decided to pitch the tent, which we did with efficiency, and have a meal and a drink. No sooner had we filled our glasses than Jack took advantage of the occasion to make an announcement.

"I'm happy to be able to tell you," he said, "that Elizabeth has agreed to be my wife."

We all applauded and toasted the happy couple. And then we drank a bit more, courtesy of Jack, who'd brought along a couple of bottles of malt. Simon and I were sleepiest, because we'd done the most carrying, so we soon turned in, but Jack and Ben slipped out of the tent, so they could talk without disturbing us. When Jack came back in alone, and I stirred, he told me that Ben had wanted to smoke another cigarette, but would be back in shortly.

He wasn't. I never saw him again, because I wasn't asked to identify the body that washed up a fortnight later a long way away. In the meantime, the wedding had taken place. The hurry behind it had been Jack's father's state of health, though in fact he lasted another six months. Elizabeth looked pale but radiant. I was so outnumbered at the reception by Jack's rich relations and Elizabeth's clerical cousins that I got very drunk, and in terror at what I might have done and not remembered I went off to my PGCE place a month early, and persuaded the local newspaper to take me on as a part-time reporter, which led, eventually to my present job, the terraced house in Streatham, the wife and two kiddies.

Unable to sell the house for the time being, my mother compromised by letting it, which meant that although she lived elsewhere she still had enough contact with the village to hear about Elizabeth's miscarriage a few months after the wedding, and a marriage which was as unsuccessful as Jack's public life was successful. The mistress of the manor, it seemed, was often left in sole possession, while the master worked in town, as his career doubtless required. I consoled myself with the thought that she was doubtless attached to the countryside where, after all, she had spent her formative years. Then I reflected that I had done the same, and wondered. My mother dropped dark hints about Elizabeth's state of mind and the force of heredity.

And then? And then, twenty-five years went by. And then, I had a phone-call. And then I persuaded my mother to acquire Jack's London number, while I looked up Simon in Crockford's Clerical Directory. I left the same message on their answerphones that had been left on mine. After all, I had no way of knowing which one had rung me.

We met at Waterloo. Simon had brought a pasty-faced young man called Julian with him. I raised an eyebrow, but Jack said, "We need a fourth man to carry the tent and put it up, and he doesn't smoke, so that's all right." And it was settled. In the train, we talked about life.

After twenty-five years, the act of comparison is less crude. After five or ten, maybe even fifteen, envy and covetousness are still present, because the common starting-point is still relatively near. But after twenty-five, you can see where you are and how you got there. It seems more like destiny and less like accident. And you can see where other people have arrived at, often better than they can themselves. You no longer run the risk of confusing their path with yours.

The station had been boarded up and reduced to an unstaffed halt. There were no longer any flowers in hanging baskets or brimming tubs, though summer bindweed trumpeted through the fence. A taxi was waiting for us in the empty forecourt. It was an estate-car, and the folded tent in the boot barely left room for our rucksacks.

As we drove through the village, Jack said, "I'm sorry, but I won't be able to invite you to the Manor. Things between Elizabeth and me aren't - well, you'll be able to read about the divorce in the papers." I noticed as we drove by that some of the graves in the village churchyard were decorated with fresh flowers, and as we went by the Manor, I had the fleeting impression of a pale face at one of the upper windows, but it was probably my imagination and the reflection of one of the high, fluffy clouds.

It was a Friday evening. We'd given ourselves a long weekend. My wife had taken the kids to her mother's. Simon was going to preach the sermon here at evensong on the Sunday - fifty years since his father (retired, and living elsewhere, his mother dead) had taken over the living. The taxi dropped us at the end of Spyway, a long, easy, green lane that would give us a distant sight of the sea in about a mile and a half.

Jack and I strode out, Simon and Julian lagged behind. Perhaps we both wanted to show the youngster that we weren't finished yet. Perhaps being together again meant that time hadn't passed after all, and that we were still as young as we had been the last time we walked down the lane together. Maybe that was why we had all agreed to this reunion.

We didn't talk. We didn't feel we needed to. We just smiled at each other, and I thought again how irresistibly handsome Jack was. I also wondered what Simon was telling Julian, and whether he believed it.

When we reached the brow of the hill, we had a clear view of the sea for about ten minutes before the mist started rolling in. We waited for Simon and Julian to catch us up, and then walked more cautiously together to where the lane ended in a broad pasture. We could still see clearly enough to avoid cow-pats as we set up the tent. Halfway through the process, I had to go for a pee, but it didn't seem to cause any problems. Looking back over my shoulder through the slowly thickening mist, I almost thought there were four figures at work.

Inside, the tent was snug. The gaz-lights hissed comfortingly. The instant food mixed up palatably with the boiling water. Jack's own taste in malt was even better than his father's, and I'd had twenty-five years to learn how to drink it. We all lay around in our sleeping-bags, with the last gaz-light at hand, passing the bottle between us. It was Jack who actually turned the light out. Julian was too young for this sort of game, and Simon had never had a head for the stuff. It was only when the light was out that I thought I saw the shadow of someone standing outside the tent. I lay very still and very quiet and fancied for a moment that I could smell smoke.

The next I knew, it was morning. Jack's sleeping bag was empty. The other two were still fast asleep. I woke them. We didn't have far to look. There was no mist to hamper us. The slope down to where he lay was not impossible, but I wasn't feeling energetic, and I didn't want to get my clothes dirty, and anyway, from where we stood, it was obvious he couldn't be alive with his head at that angle, so we sent Julian scampering off up Spyway to find a telephone and fetch the police.

"Why didn't he finish up in the sea?" asked Simon, still staring down.

"Because there was no need to delay the finding of the body," I said, turning away. I didn't tell Simon about the shadow, or the smoke, either then or later. Nor did I tell the police.

I told my wife, and she just said the kind of thing Ben had said to me in the long distant past: "You always spoil it by making it too clear. You need to leave a little mystery."

"All right," I said, "but the smoke was really there. Perhaps if I change the title, and simply call it Dancing Ledge?"

25.x.97

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