Red Shift

He put his head on her shoulder. “I couldn’t stand it if you went now,” he said. They walked from the motorway fence along a spit of sand between the lakes.

“‘Grotty’ is excessively ugly,” said Tom. “A corruption of ‘grotesque’. It won’t last.”

“I love you.”

“I’m not sure about the mean galactic velocity. We’re with M31, M32, M33 and a couple of dozen other galaxies. They’re the nearest. What did you say?”

“I love you.”

“Yes.” He stopped walking. “That’s all we can be sure of. We are, at this moment, somewhere between the M6 going to Birmingham and M33 going nowhere. Don’t leave me.”

“Hush,” said Jan. “It’s all right.”

“It’s not. How did we meet? How could we? Between the M6 and M33. Think of the odds. In all space and time. I’m scared.”

“Don’t be.”

“Scared of losing—”

“You’re not—”

“I always win.”

She pressed the back of her hand against his cheek.

“Tell me,” he said. “I’ve been waiting all afternoon.”

The motorway roared silently. Birds skittered the water in flight to more distant reeds, and the iron water lay again, flat light reflecting no sky. The caravans and the birches. Tom.

“Next week,” said Jan. “Right?” Her knuckles were comfortless between his. “Next week. I go next week.” She tried to reach the pain, but his eyes would not let her in.

“London?”

“Yes.” Teeth showing through lips drawn: lines from sides of nostrils: frown and pain lines. “And my parents—”

“It’s a pretty mean galaxy.”

She pulled him to her. “You’re just a baby.”

“Yes.”

“Upset.”

“I’m not upset. I’m panicking. Love me.”

“I do. I do love you.”

“For ever.”

“How—”

“Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds.”

“Quote.”

“More know Tom Fool than Tom Fool knows. And that’s another.” He stood back from her and bent down to skim a stone across the lake. “On one side lay the M6, and on one lay a great water, and the site was full. Seven bounces! Bet you can’t do more than three!”

“Which of you am I supposed to believe?” said Jan.

“Both.”

“When will you grow up?”

“We were born grown up.”

“I love you: you idiots.”

They went round the caravan site by the sand washer. It was a tower, with chutes that fed sand into a piled cone. There was a catwalk to the top, over the chutes. The top was a very small steel plate.

Tom ran up and climbed to the plate. He stood slowly, feeling for his balance. The sand pile was a perfect gradient, one in one. Tom spread his arms, thirty feet above the ground.

“If you drop,” he called to Jan, “it doesn’t half rattle your teeth. But if you jump out as far as you can, it’s flying, and you hit the sand at the same angle right at the bottom, no trouble. It’s the first time that grips. You have to trust.”

He leapt through the air clear of everything and ploughed the sand with his heels.

“Coming?” He looked up at her.

“No, thanks.”

“It’s not what it seems. Or aren’t you good on heights?”

“I don’t like being gritty.”

They crossed the road to the estate where Jan lived.

“That was fairly stupid,” said Tom.

“I was impressed.”

“Not the jump. That was stupid, but the other was worse.”

“It’s happened before.”

“And it’ll happen again.”

“I know.”

“Stupid and infantile.”