All the Hopeful Lovers (19 page)

‘Look, Roddy, I have to say something to Diana. I’ll keep it as vague as I can. But she’ll want the full version from you.’

‘Yes, I know.’

All his excitement now drains away. He senses that his brief bid for freedom will soon be over.

‘And really, Henry and I have to go.’ She looks at the time. ‘We’ll miss our last train.’

‘Thank you for listening, Laura.’

‘Thank you for speaking, Roddy.’

It’s all rather touching in its way.

She goes to the kitchen door. She’s hardly turned the handle when Henry comes bursting out, looking a little crazed, as he always does when left alone with Diana for too long.

‘We’re going to miss our bloody train,’ he says, reaching for his coat.

Diana follows, her eyes on Roddy. She sees at once that some kind of meaningful exchange has taken place.

‘You’re better off getting a cab,’ she says. ‘The Northern line can take for ever this late in the evening.’

‘What if there aren’t any cabs?’

Henry is panicking.

‘There’ll be cabs on Upper Street. Come on, I’ll come with you.’

Out into the London night, walking fast up Duncan Street, Laura gives Diana her edited version of Roddy’s state.

‘He’s having a sort of philosophical crisis,’ she says. ‘He’s questioning a lot of very basic stuff.’

‘But he’s not having an affair?’

‘No. Definitely not.’

‘Well, that’s something.’

Only then, hearing Diana’s soft expulsion of breath, does Laura realize how much her sister has feared this.

‘He’s still working out what he thinks about things. That’s why he doesn’t feel like talking.’

‘Well, he’s bloody well going to have to feel like it. It sounds like some sort of a breakdown to me, Laura. Did he seem odd to you?’

‘A bit, yes. But Roddy’s always been odd.’

‘Did he say anything about things at the bank?’

‘No. Nothing at all.’

‘Well, if he’s not having an affair and he’s not been sacked, then I expect we’ll manage.’

As they reach the glow of Upper Street a cab sails into view, its amber light shining. Diana gives Laura a quick hug.

‘Thanks,’ she says. ‘Big help.’

In the cab Laura tells Henry about Roddy’s turn towards religion. Henry is fascinated.

‘What on earth will Diana say?’

‘She’ll die of shame,’ says Laura.

‘Christ, it was cold in that bloody house.’

‘How did you get on in the kitchen?’

‘I dried up. I mean, with a tea towel. Diana scrubbed away in the sink and I rubbed away beside her like we were cleansing the sins of the world.’

‘What’s wrong with the dishwasher?’

‘Not green, apparently.’

‘Oh, Henry. What are we going to do?’ She recalls Roddy’s outburst. ‘It’s all vanity, isn’t it? Vanity and hypocrisy.’

‘Probably,’ says Henry.

He doesn’t sound at all troubled. Tired now, Laura leans her head on his shoulder and closes her eyes. Am I wrong to want a quiet life? she thinks. To love my family and my home and not to think all that much of others? Yes, I’m wrong. I mustn’t let myself become so narrow that I only really care for Henry and Jack and Carrie. But caring for all the world is so difficult. Once you start, where do you stop?

Should I not be using the dishwasher, then?

The strange power of the passing of time. Some forty hours ago Jack met Chloe in the Half Moon and they had a drink together, talked about this and that. Nothing happened, no intimacies took place. Since then they have had no contact. And yet, like a seed planted in warm soil, that short half-hour they spent together has sent down branching roots, and pushed up eager shoots, and assumed a vigorous life all of its own. Shortly Jack will drive into Lewes to meet Chloe again, and it feels to him that this will be a reunion of lovers. Apart so long, the emotions so overwhelming, they’ll fly into each other’s arms, he’ll cry with joy, she’ll—

It’s embarrassing. Jack knows very well that he’s made it all up, but he can’t help himself. Somehow the hours he’s spent thinking about Chloe have played the part of an actual relationship with her, as if she’s been party to his secret roller-coaster of hopes and fears. Impossible to meet again as common friends. And anyway, what about all the resolutions he’s been making? This time, he tells himself, he’ll behave differently. No more passivity. This time he takes control.

He comes down to a late Sunday breakfast to find his father still at the kitchen table, reading about the collapse of sterling.

‘More horror with the toast,’ his father says.

‘What now?’

‘Oh, just the financial crisis getting worse.’

‘Serves them right,’ says Jack.

His father has no means of knowing this, but Jack’s stern moral stance has more to do with his new non-passivity than with any clear grasp of what’s going on.

‘Serves who right?’

‘The bankers. They deserve everything they get.’

‘What about the rest of us? We’re suffering too. Do we deserve it?’

‘It’s our greed that’s screwing up the planet.’

Jack hadn’t quite meant to follow this line but he has to defend himself somehow. He can’t just say, Oh, sorry, I was talking without thinking. So now he’s got himself into an argument that actually doesn’t interest him at all.

‘That’s a bit of a sweeping statement, Jack.’

‘I don’t see why. If we go on the way we’re going, Planet Earth will be uninhabitable in fifty years.’

‘You don’t seriously believe that.’

Actually Jack doesn’t seriously believe it, but he can’t back down now.

‘Why wouldn’t I believe it? All the scientists say the same thing. Just because it’s scary, or inconvenient, doesn’t mean it isn’t true.’

And only a couple of weeks ago in his college room he’d argued with passion that feeling guilty about something doesn’t mean you’re doing something wrong. Look at all the Victorians who were racked with guilt over masturbation, and really they needn’t have bothered.

‘Jack,’ says his father. ‘I’m a historian. History tells me that every generation thinks they’re living in the end time. When I was young we all believed we’d be wiped out by a nuclear war. It’s a kind of mass vanity. Every generation convinces itself it’s facing the apocalypse.’

‘So history says don’t bother? History says it’ll all come out fine in the end?’

‘Pretty much.’

‘Then history’s part of the problem. You’re using history as a comfort blanket, Dad.’

Jack is bemused to hear himself. Why is he being so aggressive to his father? Somehow a chain of cause and effect has led him from shame at his passivity with girls to contempt for his father’s use of history. And this even though he knows very well it’s a sensitive area. His father’s job is making television programmes about history. He once said, ‘Watch out for those last two syllables, Jack. History is mostly story. Heavily simplified accounts of the past give people the illusion that everything works out in the end.’

Now over the breakfast table Henry Broad breaks the unintended deadlock with his disarming lopsided grin.

‘Oh, it’s far worse than that,’ he says. ‘I’m using history as a way to make a living. At least until the commissions dry up.’

For two years now he and his partner Aidan Massey have been at work on a major series tracing forms of social organization, from the hunter-gatherer tribes of the Stone Age to the multinational corporations of today. It’s called
The Power of Society
.

‘You’ve always got work,’ Jack says. ‘More than you want.’

‘ITV’s stopped commissioning. Channel 4’s broke. That leaves the BBC as the only act in town.’ Again that rueful grin. ‘People are scared. I’ve never known it like this.’

‘Is Aidan scared?’

‘He doesn’t show it, but he is. He doesn’t fancy living on his academic salary alone. But at least he’s got that.’

‘So how bad could it get, Dad?’

Both on the same side now, the way it should be.

‘Oh, we won’t starve. We’ve got Laura’s money. Though that’s not what it was, of course. And if I don’t pick up another job when this one ends, I’ll be able to get on with my own work, won’t I?’

The history book he’s always wanted to write, but never had the time. Jack feels a pang of love.

‘The new series will be a huge hit, Dad. They won’t let you go yet.’

His mother comes into the kitchen.

‘Are you in for lunch, Jack?’

‘No, I’m going out. Can I borrow your car?’

He picks a table in the saloon bar at Harvey’s that looks towards the door so that he can see when Chloe comes in. He gets himself a drink but leaves the food until she comes. The fantasy is back and now out of control. It broke out of its cage as he left home, and is become a monster. He has wild notions of Chloe greeting him with a kiss, holding his hand in hers, whispering words of love. Then more: half-glimpsed images of her naked body, half-felt impressions of her embrace. His reason is powerless in the face of this onslaught of longing. He mocks himself, he predicts humiliation, all in vain. It’s not that he seriously expects any of his dreams to come true; but on the other hand this is no longer pure fantasy. Chloe is real and near and about to walk through the door.

Only of course it’s Alice Dickinson who shows up first.

She looks round, finds him, gives an awkward little wave. She’s taller than he remembers, probably taller than him. A long thin face that reminds him of someone. Her eyes wear that tentative look he knows so well, because it’s his own default mode, the expression that says: Do you want my company? If not I’ll go away again.

‘Hi,’ she says.

He jumps up to greet her. A boy with manners.

‘What do you want to drink?’

‘Oh, anything,’ she says. ‘White wine.’

He goes to the bar and gets her a drink, glancing all the time towards the door. When he returns to the table Alice has got her coat off and is sitting there smiling at him.

‘Thanks,’ she says.

‘So how’s things?’

‘Oh, not too bad. How about you?’

‘Good. Yes, good.’

He looks towards the door, and sees Alice catch his look. No point in hiding it.

‘So you still keep up with Chloe,’ he says.

‘Not really,’ says Alice. ‘I met her on the train on Friday, coming home. We got talking. Before that … well, I don’t know that I’ve seen her since Underhill.’

‘Do you see any of the others from Underhill?’

‘No. Not really. Do you?’

‘I meet up with Angus Critchell now and then. He lives in our village.’

‘I remember Angus. His hair always stuck up.’

‘Still does.’

‘The funny thing is when I think of Underhill I go all nostalgic, but actually I was miserable there.’

‘Were you?’ says Jack. ‘Why?’

‘I didn’t fit in, somehow. I think I didn’t have much in the way of social skills as a child.’ She gives a quick shy smile. ‘Still don’t.’

‘I was just an idiot,’ says Jack. ‘It embarrasses me to think about it. Do you remember Toby Clore?’

‘Of course.’

‘I was obsessed with Toby Clore. I wanted to be Toby Clore. I wonder what’s happened to him? He’ll be doing something glamorous but dodgy.’

‘And you wanted to be like him? Glamorous but dodgy?’

‘God, yes. Instead I’m decent but dull. I’m learning to live with it.’

She laughs, not nervously this time.

‘I know that one,’ she says. ‘That’s a pre-emptive defence.’

‘A what?’

‘You name the thing you don’t want to be, to make it not happen. Like when you get asked about some exam and you say, I’ll probably make a mess of it. You’re not planning on making a mess of it, but you think if you say it aloud you’ll earn the pity of the gods or something.’

‘That’s so exactly what I do.’

Another glance at the door. He checks his watch.

‘I don’t know what’s happened to Chloe.’

‘I don’t think she’s coming,’ says Alice.

‘Why not? She’s the one fixed this up.’

‘I know,’ says Alice. She looks away. ‘But she can’t make
it.’

‘Did she tell you?’

‘Yes.’

‘She never called me.’

Even as he says it Jack knows he’s being stupid. Of course Chloe was never going to come. Miracles don’t happen. It’s all just been a game.

Suddenly the situation has turned embarrassing. There’s a silence he can’t break.

‘Okay,’ says Alice. ‘This is all a really bad idea. I should never have let Chloe talk me into it.’ She’s pushing a beer mat round the shiny tabletop with one finger. ‘She thought she was doing me a favour.’

Jack can’t speak. He feels angry with himself for letting himself hope so much. And beyond the anger, the sinking feeling, the start of school term feeling. The long empty hallway waiting to take him back, the cheap light of a low-powered bulb, the walls a faded institutional grey: the place where you pass the long days before your real life begins.

Alice says, ‘How about we just cut our losses and go?’

Her game effort at being bright and easy penetrates Jack’s self-pity. What can this be costing her? He can’t just get up and walk away. And anyway, where’s he going to go where it’ll be any better?

‘What about lunch?’ he says.

‘I’m not sure I want any lunch.’

‘Aren’t you hungry?’

Of course she isn’t hungry, any more than he is. But you always revert to the conventions in times of stress. Never underestimate the usefulness of the superficial.

‘It’s not that,’ she says. ‘But you came here to be with Chloe, and I’m not Chloe.’

A simple statement of truth. To his own surprise Jack is released by this.

‘What the hell,’ he says. ‘We might as well eat.’

So they order food from the bar. Alice has a cheese toastie, Jack has a hamburger, and everything changes. Their lunch ceases to be a date, whether intended or not, and because Jack has failed to get anywhere with Chloe, and Alice has failed to get anywhere with Jack, they fall into a rueful mode of mutual sympathy.

Alice tells Jack about how she met Chloe on the train.

‘It was like she had too many boys after her and I had too few, so she more or less offered to donate one of hers.’

She’s half-laughing as she speaks but she’s also dying of embarrassment.

‘God, what a loser I am,’ she says.

‘Try being me,’ says Jack. ‘I thought just because she asked me to have lunch with her that she was interested in me.’

‘Why wouldn’t you? I think you’ve been cheated. If I were you I’d ask for my money back.’

‘Still, no harm done.’

‘Really?’

‘How about you?’

‘Harm done,’ she says.

Their eyes meet. A moment of silence. Alice smiles, then shrugs.

‘Oh, God,’ says Jack. ‘Why does it have to be so hard?’

‘My stepfather says the big mistake we make is expecting things to work out. Once you get it that the natural order is for things not to work out, everything makes much more sense.’

‘But it’s not exactly cheering, is it?’

‘It is in a way. I mean, take Chloe. She’s so pretty, I could easily think everything works out for her, but it doesn’t. So I don’t need to envy her. Except I do.’ She pulls a comical face at her own absurdity. ‘That’s how stupid I am.’

‘But you wouldn’t rather be Chloe than you.’

‘Yes, I would. Any day. Like you wanting to be Toby Clore.’

‘I don’t want to be Toby Clore. I just want his confidence. Actually what I want is his selfishness. He just does what he wants. Or he did.’

‘And you’re all sensitive to the needs of others.’

‘Yes,’ says Jack. ‘Unfortunately.’

‘What’s unfortunate about that?’

‘Well, it doesn’t get me what I want, for a start.’

His eyes on her as she listens. He catches a sudden glimpse of how you can see a person in a face. Nothing to do with how good-looking they are.

‘Actually it’s not me being unselfish at all. It’s me being timid. The thing about Toby is he was fearless.’

‘And Chloe.’

‘Or here’s another possibility. Maybe they’re both just thick.’