A Most Desirable Marriage (4 page)

‘But to grind it ourselves might not work,’ Matt went on, ignoring her outburst. ‘Coffee already ground is processed on an industrial scale. Not great, but probably better than hundreds of individual machines. It’s hard to get accurate stats.’

‘Oh, for Christ’s sake, Matt. Is a ten-second burst once a day really going to bring the planet to its knees?’

Her son-in-law shook his head in patient exasperation.

‘Maybe not. But if you apply that to everything . . . You have to understand, it’s cumulative.’

‘OK for you to say, you don’t even drink coffee. But Cassie does.’ Jo stubbornly persisted, although she knew she was being ungracious.

‘Mum, please. Can you stop? This isn’t your home. We don’t tell you how to live.’

‘I know, I know. But I look at you both, two highly intelligent people, and all you ever do these days is bang on about the energy consumption of a light bulb or a coffee grinder. Don’t you get bored?’

Matt didn’t reply. Although it was late and dark by now, he walked slowly over to the pegs, put on his anorak, dug his hat out of the pocket and opened the door. His back was rigid with umbrage.

‘Thanks, Mum. Thanks for ruining a lovely evening.’ Cassie got up and took her glass to the sink then turned to face her mother, her beautiful face bewildered. ‘I know you’re upset about Dad. But it’s not fair to take it out on us.’

‘This has nothing to do with Dad. I just think you’re wasting your life.’

Cassie, normally so feisty and argumentative, had merely raised her eyebrows and started to wash her glass.

Now it had begun to drizzle. Jo shivered, drew her cardigan closer round her body. She realized she didn’t feel very well, sort of headachy, her throat scratchy when she swallowed. She had another two nights with her daughter and she didn’t know how she would get through them. She should never have come. Obviously she would apologize to them both this morning, but she despaired of finding a neutral subject they could all talk about. Topics fell between the devil and the deep blue sea: the destruction of the planet or Lawrence. She walked back towards the house, anxious to get warm and fend off what she thought might be an impending cold.

She and Cassie took the bikes to the local Pick-Your-Own farm after breakfast, to get some sweet corn, green beans and strawberries for supper. The rain had stopped, but it was muggy and Jo was sweating by the time they got there.

‘Need to do more exercise, Mum,’ Cassie teased, her own face bright and glowing with youthful vigour. ‘It’s only two miles.’

‘I do lots I’ll have you know. I do a Pilates class, walk, garden . . .’ She got off the bike and felt her legs threaten to buckle beneath her. Clinging to the handlebars, she waited for it to pass.

‘Mum? What’s the matter?’

‘It’s OK . . . just felt a bit wobbly. Not used to the biking I suppose.’

‘Do you want to sit down or something?’

‘No, I’m fine.’

They walked the rows of strawberries, each with a cardboard trug that Cassie had carried suspended from the handlebars of her bike, bending to catch the best of the crop. Her daughter was eating as many as she put in the box.

‘You always did that as a child, when we went to stay with Etty.’ Jo’s mother had refused to be called Granny or anything similar, so Cassie, and subsequently Nicky, just picked up and adapted her real name, Betty.

‘I remember. But they were her strawberries, weren’t they? We didn’t go to a Pick-Your-Own.’

For a moment they stopped picking. ‘That overgrown fruit cage was a nightmare. You always came out scratched from head to toe.’

Cassie laughed. ‘And Etty took no notice.’

‘Nothing new there, then.’ Staying with her mother was always an ordeal for Jo. But oddly, since Betty had been such a useless mother, she’d taken great pains to be attentive to Cassie and Nicky. Unreliably, of course – she couldn’t be left alone with them – but full of wild ideas which the children adored, such as playing what Betty called
cache cache dix
– a game that involved hauling furniture from the house into a circle on the lawn, draping it with towels, then getting the children to run around, hiding behind a table or a chair, without being seen by the person standing in the middle. Or teaching them, aged five and three, how to pluck a pheasant. Or taking armfuls of clothes out of the wardrobe and dressing up along with the children.

‘She was fun,’ Cassie said. Betty had died from a stroke following a fall when Cassie was fifteen. ‘Do you still miss her?’

‘Not really.’ But in truth Jo did miss the fact of her mother. And without the constant reminder of her inconsistencies, the edges of Jo’s historical anger at the appalling way she’d behaved when she was growing up had faded somewhat.

‘She probably wouldn’t have turned a hair if you’d told her about Dad.’

Jo gave a short laugh. ‘No . . . I expect not. I wonder if he’s let Granny know.’

‘Hope not. She’d die of embarrassment.’

Lawrence’s mother was the exact opposite of her own. Conservative and particular, she and his father – two teachers – had led a constrained life in a suffocating close in a small Suffolk town, fretting constantly about their hedge, the neighbours putting rubbish out on the wrong day or playing loud music or building extensions or parking in someone else’s space or letting their children shout or their dogs bark . . . or just breathing. Lawrence and his elder brother, Rick, had catapulted themselves out of there on the day they each turned eighteen and had barely gone back since. His father was now dead, his mother in a home in Ipswich, about which she never stopped complaining, mostly racist comments about the long-suffering nurses.

‘I don’t suppose I have to visit her now,’ Jo said, experiencing an odd moment of relief.

*

By lunchtime, Jo knew she would have to lie down. She felt exhausted, light-headed.

‘I think I’m fighting something off. A good snooze will sort me out.’

But she didn’t wake till after five, and she was shivering, feverish, her body heavy and lethargic so that she wasn’t sure she could stand upright.

‘I’m going to call the doctor,’ Cassie said, hovering anxiously over her mother.

‘No! Please . . . it’s just a bug. I’ll be fine. I don’t want a fuss. Anyway, there’s nothing they can do.’

That was the last thing she remembered clearly. It was as if she’d retreated behind a barrier to the outside world. She could still hear what people were saying, see the worried faces that loomed close then receded, but she felt no ability, or indeed any obligation, to respond. There was something inordinately restful in this absence.

When she finally woke, all she could remember was a dream about Lawrence. The dream was based in a real event – Cassie’s tenth birthday party when they’d taken three of her friends to a go-kart track in Kent for the day. Lawrence had been on fire to have a turn himself. In the end he’d sneaked off to the adult track where the girls and Jo eventually found him. They’d cheered him on: he was impressive – fearless and exuberant, and had been on a high all the way home in the car. But in the dream version Jo was alone – no Cassie or friends – and was terrified as she watched Lawrence ride the kart. He was going faster and faster, seemingly out of control, no regulation helmet on, and didn’t hear her when she screamed her heart out for him to stop. She knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that he was about to die and that she was powerless to prevent it. The dream-fear haunted her as she woke, her heart fluttering anxiously in her chest, although she pushed the images away, not caring to examine the significance.

‘God, Mum . . . you really scared us,’ was the first sentence Jo properly understood, her daughter’s words pulling her back to the normal world. ‘It’s nearly two days. Are you feeling better?’

Cassie perched beside her on the bed, holding her hand. Her face was pale and pinched with worry. Jo struggled to speak, clutching her daughter.

‘I’m so sorry, darling.’

‘Don’t be sorry. You were ill. The doctor said you probably had a virus and just to keep an eye on you. But you seemed so far gone, Matt was on the verge of calling an ambulance last night.’

Jo attempted sitting up, but her body seemed to have lost substance, her limbs floppy and recalcitrant when she tried to instruct them. Eventually, with Cassie’s help, she heaved herself into a sitting position, her head against the wall. Cassie grabbed another pillow from the chair and propped it behind her.

‘Would you like some tea?’

Jo nodded. While Cassie was making it, Jo tried to make sense of what had happened, but her thoughts blurred. All she was aware of was a powerful desire to slide back into that other world where nothing touched her, nothing was expected of her.

The mug of chamomile tea was warm and present between her palms. She took a sip and the liquid seemed to blaze a path through her lethargy, bringing her cells to life.

‘I’ve never experienced anything like that before,’ she murmured.

‘Mum . . . the doctor thought . . . she said it might be a virus, but it also might be the result of . . . well, a sort of delayed shock—’

‘Shock?’

‘I told her about Dad.’

Jo just stared at her daughter. The first she was aware of the tears was Cassie moving to embrace her, holding her close. Jo usually found crying hard, the tears squeezed reluctantly from her with effort, her face contorted. But now they flowed copiously and without help, reaching inwards in their stream to touch the hard, dry stone of grief she had shut away and barely acknowledged since the night Lawrence left.

‘Oh, Mum,’ Cassie muttered into her hair. ‘You mustn’t keep things bottled up. You always say Dad is bad at expressing himself, but you’re just as crap.’

Jo pulled away, wiping away the tears as best she could. ‘I didn’t know what else to do. I mean what are the rules for dealing with these things?’

Cassie shook her head. ‘None, I suppose. I’m not criticizing you. It’s just, I think it’s better to talk about it than not.’

‘But then you only burden everyone else, and they don’t know what to say.’

‘It’s not what
they
say, it’s what you say . . . just getting it out in the open is the trick.’

Jo wasn’t so sure, but she didn’t have the will to debate the point.

*

It was another five days before Joanna sensed some vitality beginning to return. In the interim she felt like an old lady for the first time: weak and fractious, alarmed by her inability to take charge of her life.

‘I don’t know how to thank you both,’ she told Cassie and her son-in-law the night before she was due to go home. They had all found a sort of peace together since she’d been ill, tacitly avoiding contentious issues, instead talking about books, politics, health, anything that wasn’t too close to someone’s heart. ‘What a nightmare. Your mother comes for a three-day visit and stays ten, raving and incapacitated. You’ll never ask me again.’

Matt chuckled. ‘Just glad it wasn’t permanent . . .’ then obviously realizing his remark could be taken the wrong way, he quickly added, ‘You being ill, I mean . . . not the staying here bit.’

‘Well, either would have been grim,’ Jo conceded with a smile.

‘Are you sure you’re OK to go home?’ Cassie asked. ‘You can stay as long as you like, you know that.’

‘Thanks, but I’m quite sure. I don’t feel a hundred per cent, but that’ll take a while I think. I need to get home, get on with my life.’

14 August 2013

‘OK, I’ve got this gorgeous man who’s dying to meet you.’ Donna’s grin was deliberately bright and fixed, no doubt fully aware of the reception she’d receive.

‘Very funny.’

They were walking along Shepherd’s Bush Road towards the green, heading for Waitrose in Westfield. It was an indulgence, Tesco was much closer and cheaper, but Donna was bored with it and wanted something different. Max trotted along on his lead between them.

‘No, seriously, darling. He’s Swedish and in publishing . . . totally unattached. You’ll love him.’

‘And when exactly did you meet a Swedish publisher?’

Donna chuckled. ‘Oh, you know. Out and about.’

Jo had lost track of her friend’s social life since Walter had been given his marching orders. But Donna was eclectic; she seemed to know everybody from ambassadors to sculptors to property developers to film directors and journalists, having a particular penchant for older, successful males. She was discreet about her dalliances with these (frequently married) men, even with Jo, who had voted early on not to be too involved in the detail, knowing the liaisons were always fleeting and that at the first whiff of commitment, Donna would be running hard in the opposite direction.

‘Just a drink, perhaps dinner. He’s such a sweetie. It’d do you good to hang out with a man again. He’s not after sex.’

‘You asked him, did you?’

‘Well . . . not exactly. And of course, never say never. But I meant he’s a gentleman. He wouldn’t leap on you if you didn’t want it.’

Joanna sighed. ‘I can’t.’ She hadn’t been out since getting back from Cassie’s. She cried a lot – seemed like the more she practised the more proficient she became – but it felt soothing, not despairing and she didn’t hold back. And the outside world seemed to be a threatening place. She had no idea how she fitted in now she was on her own.

Lawrence had been to the house while she was away, and taken more of his things. His wardrobe was almost bare now, only a very old pair of trainers on the floor, a jacket he never liked and a couple of summer shirts swinging on the empty rail. One, a baggy, viciously bright aquamarine cotton, they had bought when Lawrence’s case failed to materialize on what was supposed to be a romantic weekend in Barcelona. Jo remembered how excited she’d been to get away alone with Lawrence, the children left with his parents in Suffolk. But losing the case had cast a bit of a pall over their time together, Lawrence – cheapskate that he was – loath to spend money on a decent shirt he didn’t need, but also hating people thinking he wore cheap ones from Carrefour. In the end, though, the shirt had made her laugh so much that his good mood had been restored.

Not knowing that he’d been back, the sight of the empty wardrobe had made Jo gasp. It felt like burglary, as if she’d been robbed. Which I have, she’d thought, gazing at the space where her husband’s clothes had hung for more than thirty years – the scent of him, so comforting and familiar, gone too. She had wanted to ring him right then, the phone poised in her hand. Wanted to scream at him until her throat closed up. But she hadn’t.

Donna stopped in the middle of the street and turned to face her.

‘Look, darling, I’m not asking you to fall in love or even bonk the man. I’ll be there too, so it won’t seem like a date. I just think it’d be fun for you both, get you out of that house for a change. Go on, give it a try. He’s only over here till Monday, so if it’s a total disaster you never have to see him again.’ She was peering up into Jo’s face, her light eyes full of amused entreaty.

‘Why is he on his own?’ Jo asked, giving herself time to think about her friend’s request.

‘Divorced. Everyone in Sweden is divorced . . . well, slight exaggeration, but over fifty per cent according to Brian.’

‘Brian? Who’s Brian?’

‘This Swedish guy I’m telling you about? Do keep up.’

‘He can’t be called
Brian
.’

‘It’s a perfectly normal Swedish name. They’re not all called Lars or Sven you know.’ Donna’s tone was huffy in the face of Jo’s mockery, and to appease her friend she bit the bullet and agreed to go. She could always change her mind.

‘But only if you promise to come too,’ Jo added.

Donna beamed. ‘Good girl. We’ll have a laugh, a few drinks, it’ll be fun.’

‘Tell me you don’t fancy him yourself.’

‘God no!’

‘Why not? Is he awful?’

‘No, he’s gorgeous . . . just not my type.’

As they wandered round the supermarket, Jo tried to imagine being with another man, lying beside him, smelling him, touching his skin, kissing his mouth. It was impossible. She’d met Lawrence when she was twenty-one, in her last term at college. He was working a summer job at the graduate recruitment fair they had at her campus, a large blue-and-white banner tied across his body advertising the sponsors. She’d made a joke about sandwich men – of which there were many in the seventies, wandering up and down streets clamped between wooden boards displaying anything from marketing messages to dotty religious tracts – and they’d struck up a conversation. Before Lawrence there had been two fellow-students, just awkward drunk sex which Jo had taken more as a necessary rite of passage than something significant. Lawrence, as far as she was concerned, was her first. And, indeed, her last. But sex with him had been great from the start, fun and inventive. An image – one she fought off on a minute-by-minute basis these days – of her husband in a naked embrace with Arkadius, flashed behind her eyes.

‘Is it just sex?’ she asked Donna, when they were seated in an open café area upstairs in the stuffy shopping centre, two tall glass mugs of coffee in front of them on the table.

Donna looked at her blankly.

‘With Lawrence. Is that what’s driving him?’

‘You said he claimed to be in love.’

‘But what does that mean? Is he in love with Arkadius in the same way he was with me?’

‘I suppose. There’s only one way isn’t there . . . where you feel sick and mad and delightful and can’t bear to be away from each other for a second.’ Her friend’s face took on a wistful air.

Jo winced. ‘So he looks at Arkadius and feels exactly what he felt for me?’ she repeated.

‘The details will be a tad different, obviously. But basically, yes.’

‘I just can’t imagine it.’

‘You’d be able to if Arkadius was a woman though, wouldn’t you? You’d just hate the bitch!’

‘Hate them both.’ Jo dragged some foam from the edges of her cup and stirred it into her coffee. ‘Why don’t I hate Arkadius?’

‘Because you don’t really believe it,’ her friend replied gently. ‘Have you spoken to Lawrence recently?’

‘He leaves messages sometimes. “Are you all right?” “Just checking to see how you are”, that sort of thing. But I don’t see any point in telling him I’m not. He’s hardly going to do anything about it, is he?’

‘Probably not.’

‘I just wish I could get the image of them in bed together out of my mind. How can I do that?’

‘Not easy. When Julian ran off with the trollop, that’s all I could see: them naked and all over each other. Torture. Only way is to get on with your own life.’

Jo sighed. ‘Swedish Brian you mean.’

‘Not necessarily Brian. Or any man. Just doing stuff that totally involves you.’

For a moment there was silence between them.

‘How’s the writing going?’

‘Nowhere. Frances at Century says I’ve got to come up with something really strong if I want another commission from them. The whole family saga thing just isn’t grabbing the YA market.’

‘Great sense of loyalty these people have. You’ve been with them for what, ten years? And then they just dump you.’

‘It’s not about loyalty, it’s about cash. And she hasn’t dumped me yet. But I can’t write about vampires, they don’t mean anything to me.’

‘So write about something that does . . . like bisexuality. That’s strong, and spot on for hormonal teenagers who don’t know which way is up.’

Jo considered this. ‘Hmm . . . not such a bad idea.’ Then she threw her hands in the air. ‘But that’s the point. I don’t understand it either!’

‘Well, research it. Find out. You must admit it’s a great idea.’ Donna looked pleased with herself.

‘Yeah . . . OK. I might look into it. I’ve got to do something to earn money, now that . . .’ she tailed off, suddenly bored by her one-track mind always coming back to bloody Lawrence Meadows.

*

‘You didn’t tell me he was a
child
,’ Jo hissed, when Swedish Brian left the table for the men’s room.

They were in a Vietnamese restaurant off Holland Park, white table cloths, bamboo screens, flickering tea lights. Donna scrubbed up well, a far cry from her clay-splattered, apron-wrapped pottery persona. She had on a crimson embroidered silk jacket and black trousers, her short dark hair sculpted and shiny – unlike its usual spiky mess. Jo felt positively dowdy in her plain white T-shirt and jeans.

‘He’s not. He can’t be a day under forty-eight.’ Donna cocked her eyebrow. ‘About Arkadius’s age I’d say.’

‘Yeah, OK. But that
is
a child, Donna. You can’t seriously have thought that he’d fancy me, especially dressed like
this
.’

The Swede was charming, good company, gently flirtatious . . . and young. Jo did think he was attractive, in an objective sort of way, but she was almost embarrassed that she did. It seemed sad and undignified.

‘Don’t be ridiculous, darling. Anyway, you look chic, not like me, the proverbial mutton dressed as lamb. But hey, I’m not quite ready to resort to a paper bag over my head.’

Jo smacked her friend’s hand across the table and they both began to laugh.

‘Have I missed something?’ Brian spoke impeccable English with a slight awkwardness of inflection which made him sound more ponderous than he was.

Both women tried to control themselves, Donna unsuccessfully.

‘Sorry . . . sorry, Brian,’ she spluttered. ‘Jo was just complaining that you were a bit on the young side for her.’

‘Donna!’ Jo blushed, unable to meet his eye. ‘I didn’t mean—’

‘There is no such thing as too young or too old, I think, Joanna.’ He was smiling as he reached for her hand and brought it up to his lips to kiss, which sent Donna into further paroxysms of mirth.

By the time they wheeled out on to the street, they were all drunk.

‘Come back to mine,’ Donna insisted, hailing a passing taxi with authority and bundling Brian into the back before he had a chance to resist.

*

Donna’s sitting room was Bohemian in style, with rust-coloured velvet sofas, button-backed armchairs, Turkish rugs, battered leather poufs from Morocco, and glass-globe standard lamps throwing a soft yellow light. But the art was modern and expensive. It was a comfortable, elegant room.

‘Sit, sit! What’ll it be? I’ve got almost everything. Whisky, gin, Armagnac, Cointreau, Grey Goose in the freezer, wine, both sorts . . . champagne even, although that’ll be warm.’ Donna hovered by the door that led to the kitchen. She had what Lawrence described as a ‘refugee’ attitude to alcohol. Her father, a doctor and a committed Quaker, never drank, so nobody else in the family was expected to either. ‘I admit I stockpile the stuff,’ she told anyone who saw the extensive drinks cupboard. The Meadows, by comparison, had a cupboard that contained the occasional bottle of wine and, pushed to the back of the shelf, an array of dusty bottles containing liqueurs in lurid, sickly colours, mistakenly collected on foreign holidays by an enthusiastic Lawrence, then never touched.

The Grey Goose, ice delicately clinking in the cut-glass tumbler, was delicious. Jo was drunk already, but she didn’t care. She was cosy and safe, sunk into the cushions on her friend’s soft velvet sofa, shoes off. Brian was next to her, the talk between the three of them fast and funny and totally inconsequential. Life could be good. Fuck Lawrence, she thought and held her glass out for another vodka.

‘OK, you have to go now. I’ve hit a wall,’ Donna announced suddenly, slumped in the armchair, her eyes fluttering closed.

Brian chuckled. ‘We are all lucky we haven’t hit walls.’

Jo wasn’t sure what he meant, but she laughed anyway. Donna just batted her arm towards the hall. ‘Go, go. Shut the door on the way out.’

‘Don’t go to sleep in the chair,’ Jo cautioned, as she bent to kiss her friend’s cheek.

‘See her home!’ Donna shouted to Brian as they both weaved through the furniture, and Brian raised his hand in acknowledgement.

‘I live next door,’ Jo giggled as they shut the front door and began to walk down the path to the gate. The night air was cool and refreshing on her hot cheeks and it was beginning to spit with rain.

‘I know, you told me.’

‘Did I?’ She felt his hand steadying her arm as they reached the pavement.

‘Which way?’

Jo indicated the house on the left. Brian followed her up the path.

‘You don’t have to come all the way.’

‘I said I would see you home.’ Brian’s diction had become more precise the drunker he became, as if he were holding on to his English with great care.

Jo put her key in the lock and pushed the dark blue door open. For a moment they hovered on the doorstep.

‘Well, that was really fun. Thank you.’

‘I enjoyed it too. I’m very happy to have met you,’ the Swede said, then lurched drunkenly towards her and gave her a kiss, full on her lips, which seemed to last for ever. Jo was surprised – no one had kissed her on her mouth for years, except Lawrence of course – but she made no move to push him off. She found herself welcoming his kiss, testing it as you might the appropriate firmness of a new mattress.

Brian pulled away, seemingly unaware that he had done anything unusual. ‘I hope I will see you soon?’

‘That would be good.’

She watched him to the road, then gently shut the door.

*

The next thing she was aware of was the persistent ringing of her landline beside the bed. She automatically reached for it.

‘Hello?’

‘Jo, it’s me.’ Lawrence’s voice shocked her upright in bed. The room looked chaotic, her clothes, which she’d obviously stepped out of as she staggered to bed, were strewn all over the oatmeal carpet, her bra still inside her T-shirt, the patchwork quilt lying in a twisted lump by the door. She was naked, the effort of putting on her nightclothes clearly a step too far. She didn’t reply to Lawrence. Her head pounded and her mouth was sticky and dry, prompting the inevitable and immediate regret about the last two shots of vodka.