All the Hopeful Lovers (9 page)

He clutches at his hair with his free hand and groans aloud. Then he comes to a stop and shoots Christina a sharp interrogative look.

‘Is there money in it?’

‘We can’t exactly pay you to smash Joe’s installation.’

‘How about expenses? Travel, hammer, etc.’

‘Yes, we’d pay your expenses.’

He glowers at her.

‘I’m not greedy. I’m broke. Look at this place. I’m not living here for the view. The roof leaks and there’s no electricity. This crap lamp isn’t for period detail. I’m penniless. Skint. Not funny when you’re eighty, let me tell you.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘I don’t want pity. I want cash.’

Christina reaches into her bag.

‘How about an advance on expenses?’

She holds out five twenty-pound notes. He takes them.

‘This doesn’t mean you’ve bought me.’

‘I know. You cost more than that.’

He grunts in approval.

‘Monday, then,’ she says. ‘I’ll send a car to pick you up at ten.’

‘Too early.’

‘No, it isn’t. You’re on the payroll now. Office hours.’

He smiles at her, a wistful smile.

‘Why didn’t you come knocking on my door fifty years ago?’ he says. ‘I was beautiful as a god then, and I had the world at my feet. The man you see before you now is no more than a ghost. I have nothing left to offer the world.’

‘You have your truth,’ says Christina. ‘And you have your anger.’

By the time Meg Strachan gets home it’s almost six in the evening, and most of the residents’ parking bays are occupied. A man is unloading his car, bag after bag bulging with groceries from Sainsbury’s. He straightens under his load, gives Meg a friendly nod. He’s called Malcolm, and he occupies the flat below. Meg nods back. She’s still in her office clothes, charcoal grey skirt and jacket from M&S, white blouse, black tights, comfortable black shoes. You’d think it was a uniform, but she chose it all herself, aiming to project an air of quiet competence. There are other signals here too: that she understands her modest place in the ranks of professionals, that her behaviour will be predictable, that she neither asks nor expects to be noticed as an individual.

Malcolm goes ahead of her to the side door. He makes a brief show of holding the door for her, burdened as he is.

‘Don’t bother,’ Meg calls. ‘I’ll be fine.’

Ridiculous, but she feels responsible for the weight of the shopping bags on his arms. Meg’s day-to-day life is driven by a battery of minor fears. She hates to be thought of as being in the way; she’s fearful of doing the wrong thing, of not being wanted. Given the option she would like best to be invisible, and if she is noticed, if she does enter the consciousness of a fellow human being, she wants above all to be helpful.

The side door has closed after Malcolm and locked itself. Meg has her key ready. Inside, the light on the stairwell, set to switch off automatically after just less time than it takes to climb the stairs, illuminates what was once the servants’ entrance. There are no windows onto this narrow stairway. When you emerge onto the second floor, where her flat is, there’s a tall window at the far end of the passage through which, in day- time, you can see past mature beeches to the East Sussex National Golf Club beyond the main road. There was a similar view from the landing window of the house she grew up in, and sometimes she thinks she bought the flat for this momentary echo of home.

Not that I was ever really happy there, she reflects. But familiarity isn’t the same thing as happiness.

The flat has lost value since she bought it at the height of the property bubble. But at the same time interest rates have come down, cutting almost one third off her monthly mortgage repayments, so she’s better off, really, given that she has no plans to move. The flat is a conversion, two bedrooms, kitchen-living room and a bathroom, squeezed into what was originally the nursery suite. The conversion looked very smart when she bought the flat, with its granite-topped kitchen units and its sea-grass carpets and its down-lighters. She has discovered since that the work was poorly done. The doors stick, there are far too few power points, and the shower has never worked. Despite all this, Meg loves her flat. This is where her most intense life is lived. Here, at this kitchen table. On this sofa. On this bed.

Just time for a bath if she’s quick. While the bath runs she turns on the television to people the room.
The Weakest Link
is coming to an end, not a programme she likes, but the news will follow shortly. She pours herself half a glass of wine and thinks as she drinks it how surprised her mother would be to see her, her mother who never touched alcohol, who never smiled, who never said she loved her.

I’ve got a lover now, Mum. Bet you never expected that.

Naked in the bath she relaxes, not looking but sensing the outlines of her own body. The not-looking is habitual, like the clothes she wears that are designed to deflect attention. Meg is no beauty, her mother used to say, but she’s such a help. Her reputation in the family as the one who can do anything. Not, of course, the grand achievements like writing plays, that’s for her brother Alan. Meg’s skills lie in fixing domestic appliances, finding lost spectacles, ordering tickets on the Internet. Now, because she has a lover, she finds she has a body. Not the approved brand of the day, her breasts too small, her hips too wide, but still a body that inspires desire. This is the wonder of her life: that he desires her. And desired, she becomes beautiful.

Out of the bath, she dries herself and puts on clean new underwear. Special pretty underwear, for which she undertook a special shopping trip to Brighton, where she would not be recognized. This is her love offering. The first time she wore the skimpy lacy garments she undressed quickly, turning away from him, dreading being ridiculous. But he saw and approved. He made her lie down beside him with her underclothes still on. He wanted to look at her.

She shivers as she remembers. The feeling is so strong. It frightens her sometimes, the enormity of her debt. This gift of desire which he makes her with every visit has changed her life. There is literally nothing she would not do for him.

She puts on a bathrobe on top of her underwear, and goes through to the bedroom. She folds the bed cover back, smoothes the pillows.

This is where I’ll lie with him in my arms.

Already her body, tingling and alive, is anticipating the caresses to come. The moment when he pulls her towards him. The touch of his lips on her nipples. The weight of his body on her body.

She lights the candle on the bedside table and waits for the flame to steady. Then she turns out the lamps. Candlelight is so gentle, so sexy. He loves to look at her naked by candlelight.

No talk of love, no talk of the future. Only now, and the life-changing discovery of sexual desire. His desire creates hers. Oh yes, she wants him all right. She wants him in her arms and in her body.

The phone rings. Her brother Alan wanting to know about the plumber.

‘He’s coming tomorrow. He’s going to take a look at the shower tomorrow.’

‘He’ll fix it. There’s nothing Matt can’t fix.’

‘How was the meeting?’

He was in London today for one of his glamorous film meetings.

‘No grimmer than usual.’

Meg admires Alan: four years older, the family favourite, the one who bears the full weight of their parents’ hopes. His life has become unimaginable to her. He meets film stars. He flies to Hollywood.

For a few short perfect years she and Alan shared a bedroom. Then when he was nine years old he announced he wanted a bedroom of his own. Meg, aged five, remained in the room they had shared, weeping herself to sleep every night. She never blamed Alan. How could she? He was so much more worthy than her. Why should he be burdened by her love? But from that day on she had known she was alone in the world.

‘Let me know how it works out,’ he says on the phone. ‘Everything else okay? Job still okay?’

‘Yes. I’m just about staying on top of it.’

He still feels responsible for her, at least far enough to want to be told there’s nothing he need do for her. So the short phone call ends and Meg is released to her waiting.

She hasn’t told her brother about her lover. What happens between them is outside place and time, it has nothing to do with the rest of her life. Nor with his marriage, his home, his family. It’s a secret and a dream. A few short hours that give meaning to her entire existence.

The television has moved on to the news. The pound has dropped to a new record low against the euro. Four Marines have been killed in Afghanistan. Carol Vorderman has left
Countdown
after twenty-six years.

Odd how comforting the news is. For all its tales of death and despair it manages to be reassuring. Maybe it’s because most of the misery is inflicted on others. Or because for all the changes of name and location, essentially the same things keep on happening, and the world doesn’t come to an end. As if every news item functions as a talismanic prayer that wards off the unnamed evil and keeps us safe from harm.

Parisians are flocking to London to spend their euros in Marks & Spencer and Top Shop. Meg finds this mildly offensive. What has Paris to do with supermarket bargains? Paris is where she and Tom have talked of going for the weekend, if ever his professional and family commitments allow. At least, he said it once, asked her if she would like that, and she said yes she would.

Actually anywhere would do. The magic would be that they could go about as a couple. Stroll down a shopping street. Eat in a café. Go to a film. All the things couples do together that become meaningful because they are shared. Once you’re in a couple the film can be bad and the evening is still memorable. As for walking down the street side by side: the gaze of every passer-by is as binding as the voice of a priest in a wedding church. The sacrament of the boulevard.

Did he mean it? He’s never spoken about it since.

Carol Vorderman wept as she left the show.

A car driving up outside. Meg goes to the kitchen window which overlooks the residents’ car park and sees him pulling up, getting out of his car, glancing back as he presses the remote lock to see the answering flash of orange lights.

She turns off the television, checks herself in the mirror in the living room, pulls the belt of her bathrobe tight around her waist, runs a hand through her hair. Not what you’d call a beauty, but she’ll do.

Hyper-receptive to every detail of his coming, she hears the outer door open and close two floors below. He uses the key she had cut for him, the key that he keeps openly, unquestioned, on his key ring, the way into her private space that lies warm in his pocket.

Now his footsteps up the stairs: utterly recognizable, though impossible to say what it is that singles him out. His soft confident tap on the door. He knows she’s there, waiting, listening.

And all at once she’s in his arms.

‘Oh, Meg.’

His sigh of happiness. He kisses her. She whispers in his ear the words he has taught her, the words he longs to hear.

‘I want you to fuck me, Tom. I want to be fucked.’

Afterwards, lying in bed by candlelight, they slip into a half-sleep. Only five minutes or so, but Meg treasures the sweet shared moments of peace.

Then he stirs, and sits up.

‘Is the shower fixed yet?’

‘No, not yet.’

‘No time for a bath. Never mind.’

He must go home to his wife. Meg feels no guilt. This is nothing to do with his marriage. She has no claim on him, does not presume to regard herself as a rival. He has a wife, family, home, job, and from the fullness of his full life he shares with her this infinitesimally small part of himself. It’s the part that only exists with her, and so it rightfully belongs to her. Small for him; for her, all the world.

‘I expect I’ll be playing a round of golf tomorrow.’

This is code. He comes to her after golf.

‘What sort of time?’

‘Twelvish?’

‘Yes, okay. Oh, no. I’ve got the plumber coming round then. I’ll call him and put him off.’

‘Don’t do that. The shower needs fixing.’

She can’t say: I’d rather see you once, for half an hour between a game of golf and family lunch, than ever have a shower again in all the rest of my life. So instead, compliant as ever, she says, ‘Maybe later tomorrow?’

‘Maybe. I’ll call.’

And I’ll be waiting, says Meg silently. Not aloud, because she doesn’t want him to know how much he means to her.

‘But you live in London,’ says Caspar, puzzled, twisting his fingers through Alice’s hair. ‘And Guy lives in London.’

‘London’s huge, Cas. Absolutely huge.’

‘I’m going to London to see Guy.’

‘All right. But he’s a very busy man. He may be out.’

‘Out where?’

‘At a meeting. Or a lunch. Or seeing someone.’

Caspar wrinkles his brow, trying to imagine this faraway life.

‘Dad doesn’t go out,’ he says. Then remembering his father went to London today he adds: ‘Mostly.’

‘Alan works from home.’

‘Doesn’t Guy work from home?’

‘No. He has an office.’

Alice smiles as she watches Caspar’s thoughts come and go on his open face. Six years old and he’s as precious to her as the day he was born. Her little half-brother.

‘What’s all this about Guy anyway? Why do you want to see him?’

Guy, her own father, hasn’t so much as called her the entire term, her first term in London, even though she’s been living in a hall on Maple Street, five minutes from his office.

‘I just do.’

‘Well, then, I’ll tell you what. Why don’t you phone him?’

A big smile lights up Caspar’s face.

‘Yes! I could phone him!’

Alice gets out Guy’s number and Caspar presses the phone buttons for himself. To her amusement, Guy evidently answers in person.

‘Hello? Are you Guy? I’m Caspar. I want to see you.’

She watches him as he listens intently, nodding.

‘Yes,’ he says. ‘She came home today.’ Then, after listening some more, ‘All right.’

He puts down the phone.

‘He’s coming to see me.’

‘What! Here?’

‘Yes. Tomorrow afternoon.’

‘Blimey.’

‘What does blimey mean?’

‘It means I’m surprised.’

Alan now emerges from his study where he retreated to deal with his emails as soon as he got home. It turns out he travelled on the same train from London as Alice, which is a bit spooky.

‘Dad,’ says Caspar, ‘have you stopped using your computer?’

‘For now.’

‘Can I go on it?’

‘Okay. But just for half an hour.’

Caspar hurtles away to Alan’s study.

‘Bloody computer games,’ sighs Alan.

‘How was the meeting?’ says Alice.

‘Oh, you know. The usual. Pretty damnable, actually. I have to start again from scratch, more or less.’

‘Oh, Alan.’ She’s had this conversation with him so many times before. ‘You shouldn’t be doing film work. You should go back to writing plays.’

He smiles and shrugs. He looks so defeated she wants to hug him.

‘How was your term?’

‘Okay,’ she says. ‘I’m glad it’s over.’

‘No better than that?’

‘I like my course. I’ve made some friends.’

‘But no one special.’

‘Not yet.’

‘You will. There aren’t many out there like you, but there are some.’

He takes her in his arms and they have a hug.

‘You’re my special friend,’ says Alice. ‘You and Mum.’

‘I’m your stepfather. You’re supposed to hate me.’

‘I don’t hate you. I love you.’

So easy in his arms. Why aren’t there boys her age like Alan?

‘Guess who I met on the train?’

‘Who?’

‘Chloe Redknapp.’

‘Chloe Redknapp!’ Alan was their teacher, all those years ago. ‘The blonde bombshell.’

‘She’s exactly the same, only now she plays her games on boys.’

‘She was a monster. She used to bully you.’

‘The funny thing is she seems to have no memory of all that. She was really quite friendly.’

‘I’m all in favour of Chloe Redknapp. You and I bonded over her. That’s why you fixed me up with your mother. For which I’ll be eternally grateful.’

‘Oh, Alan. I just wish you were doing the writing you like. You look so miserable.’

‘What have I got to be miserable about? I’m lucky to be in work.’

‘Does Mum know?’

‘Oh, I’m always moaning to her.’

She takes his hands, looks solemnly into his eyes.

‘You’re to say to her, I’m packing in the films, I’m going to write a new play. We’ll have less money, but we’ll be fine, and I’ll be so much happier.’

He says nothing for a long moment.

‘Like I said,’ he says at last. ‘There aren’t many out there like you.’

Alice goes to her room and unpacks her suitcase, slowly re-establishing her presence in the familiar space. She hasn’t said so to Alan, and she won’t say so to her mother, but she hates her hall of residence in London. Her room there is small and anonymous, and London makes her feel lonely. It came as a shock to find in her first few days that she was homesick, just at the time she was supposed to be having the most exciting week of her life. She forced herself to go to the freshers’ events, but every night that week, alone in her narrow and unfamiliar bed, she cried herself to sleep.

This is not something to share with anyone. Alice is ashamed of her own social failure. She’s ashamed that she’s never had a real boyfriend. The hurt of it goes so deep and has been in her for so long that it’s got out of proportion with reality. So as well as confiding in no one, she does not confide in herself. When she catches herself brooding on her failure she reprimands herself sharply, often aloud, saying, ‘That’s enough of that! Snap out of it!’ She has learned to cope by expecting nothing to change, by shutting the doors on that part of her imaginings, and walking away. But all the time it’s there, waiting, the unvisited house with its empty rooms where she had once dreamed of finding love.

She pulls out her laptop and plugs it in to charge.

Her phone beeps. A text from Chloe.

Operation Jack under way
.

Alice sits down on her bed and closes her eyes. Why is Chloe doing this? Her first instinct is to text her back and tell her to leave her alone, get out of her life. But she does not text Chloe back.

Do I really want this to happen?

She tries to understand her own chaos of intense feelings. There’s longing there, a heartbreaking cry that says, ‘Oh, if only it could work out.’ There’s gratitude, even to Chloe Redknapp, for taking action, for compelling her to leave her lonely room. And there’s fear, because surely nothing will come of it but failure and humiliation.

Of course she knows Jack Broad. She hasn’t kept up with him, but they’ve met from time to time. She saw him only last summer in Bill’s Café, they talked for a few minutes. He was clutching a book by W. G. Sebald, which he recommended to her, but she hasn’t read it. He was friendly and rather thoughtful. His hair was long, she remembered, not in a cool way, more in a way that showed he didn’t really know what to do with it. She liked him for that.

She opens up her laptop and logs onto Facebook. She goes to Jack’s page. There are several pictures of him at Cambridge: on a bicycle by the river; with two friends, both male, at a party; in his room, surrounded by books, holding an imaginary gun to his head. No evidence of a girlfriend.

He has a sweet face, still boyish. He seems to be always wearing the same clothes, jeans, check shirt, black jacket. Sometimes a stripy scarf wound round his neck. His Facebook status reads:
Jack is working too hard and his brain hurts
.

She can feel it starting, growing unbidden within her, the secret hope that looks so plausible but is really no more than a fantasy. Why do I do this to myself? When will I learn? But this time it’s different, because there’s a third party. Chloe’s intervention gives the absurd little dream some dressing of reality.

I’m not just making this up. Chloe is doing it too.

How ridiculous to invest so much authority in a person she barely knows, and neither likes nor respects. Alice wants to say that Chloe is an empty-headed fool. That she’d be ashamed to be like her, chasing boys and jumping from bed to bed. And it’s true, she doesn’t want Chloe’s life. But for all this, she bows down before Chloe and acknowledges her superiority: because she’s pretty, because boys want her, because all other pursuits and achievements in life seem worthless without this one elusive essential, love.

Why should I care so much? Why do I mind so much about not being pretty? Why can’t I see that having a boyfriend is only one among many ways of leading a rich and fulfilled life?

Her mother says to her, ‘Why do you say you’re not pretty? You’re beautiful.’ But when Alice looks in a mirror and sees that sad long face peering uncertainly back at her she knows her mother is lying. ‘Don’t lie to me,’ she says. ‘I look like a donkey.’ Then her mother gets annoyed and says she’s not lying, it’s true, she is beautiful. So apparently it’s true for her. That’s how it goes. To your mother you’re beautiful, to everyone else, not. So what does that tell you about beauty?

Her mother enlists Alan on her side.

‘Of course she’s beautiful,’ he says. ‘She’s worth more than the lot of them put together.’

Alice knows that she’s clever, and hard-working, and maybe more: maybe she’s original, maybe she’s creative. Secretly she’s begun to do some serious writing of her own, just a short story, just dipping a toe in the water. With a mother a journalist and a stepfather a playwright it would be odd if she didn’t try out her own abilities. But she would rather die than show either Liz or Alan her work in progress.

Her story has no title as yet, and it certainly isn’t autobiographical. People say, ‘Write what you know.’ Alice chooses to do the opposite. She is writing about someone as unlike herself as it’s possible to be. Her central character is a boy, quite a young boy, who doesn’t yet know that it’s impolite to speak openly of the unhappiness of others. He can see quite clearly how miserable everyone is, but he doesn’t understand why they’re so miserable. He asks them awkward and insightful questions, which make everyone embarrassed. In a way he’s like one of Dostoevsky’s holy fools, only he’s young, still a child. Then one day something happens that hurts him terribly, and after that he understands, and the questions stop. So it’s a story of first unhappiness. The inverse of all the stories of first love.

Alice finds writing her story both very difficult and very exciting. In her head it’s all real and true, but as it emerges onto the laptop screen it reads as false and unconvincing. But still she persists. If only the words would start to come out right, there’s something there, just ahead, almost within reach, that is more intense and satisfying than anything in existence. That something gives worth and meaning to her life even if she has nothing else. It shines on her like the sun, it seduces her like a dream of paradise. What to call it? Pure consciousness, perhaps. Enlightenment. Or the simplest strongest name of all: truth.

So what price love? Truth trumps love every time.

But love is so insidious. It slithers into so many of the corners of life. Love is company, and conversation, and someone to go to see a film with and talk about the plot with afterwards. Love is not eating alone. Love is touch and kiss and hold tight. Love is joy in nakedness. Love is sex. Love is babies, and family, and a shared home, and not growing old alone.

And all this mighty lifelong edifice begins with the stupid frightening unmanageable game of getting a boyfriend. So easy for Chloe Redknapp, so hard for Alice.

Operation Jack under way
.

She hears the slam of the front door two floors below. Her mother is home. She leaps up and bounds down the stairs.

‘Mum!’

Liz Dickinson wraps Alice in her arms, kisses her warm face with her cold face.

‘Darling. I got home as soon as I could.’

They look at each other, smiling, hunting out the little changes. Alice knows her mother almost as well as she knows herself.

‘You’ve had a bad day.’

‘Yes.’ Liz sighs, unbuttons her coat. ‘Not one of my best.’

‘You need a drink.’

‘Coming up.’ This is Alan from the kitchen, bottle in hand. ‘One unit of alcohol for the lady.’

They join him in the kitchen. Liz keeps hold of Alice’s hand.

‘I’ve missed you so much, darling. You have no idea.’

‘Oh, Mum. You’ve got Alan, and Cas.’

‘But you’re my little girl. There’ll never be anyone like you for me.’

Alice bursts into tears. She smiles as she cries, feeling foolish, but both Liz and Alan are looking at her as if they understand. Liz takes her in her arms again, and whispers their secret.

‘Love you, Addle.’

‘Love you, Mum. Love you the most and the longest.’

‘The most and the longest.’

After that she dries her eyes and they all have a drink to celebrate Alice’s homecoming. Alice talks about her term, making herself be light and cheerful, turning it into a joke, because she can see how tired Liz is. Caspar appears to ask for more time, just five minutes, maybe ten, so he can make it to the next level of his game, and Liz says yes. Alice sees the way her mother’s eyes avoid Alan’s as she grants this permission.