Bachelor Boys (20 page)

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Authors: Kate Saunders

BOOK: Bachelor Boys
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“Cassie, before we say anything else, I'm so desperately sorry. I've behaved like an idiot. I despise myself. I—I don't know what got into me. I've treated you appallingly, and you're the last person in the world—I I mean, I have such fondness—we've been so much to each other.”
I couldn't let him go on. For one thing, I couldn't stand the clichés. For another, he looked so genuinely miserable that I was softened. Suddenly, a scene was the last thing I wanted. What would be the point? The gulf between us had widened to a chasm. Matthew and I were already history.
“I owe you an apology,” I said. “I shouldn't have burst in on you like that. I'd gladly give back your keys, but I'm afraid I threw them out of a taxi window.”
He gave a dismal laugh. “That's okay. I don't blame you for being furious. God, I've never been so embarrassed in my life. I suppose—er—I suppose you've told everyone about it?”
“Don't be silly, Matthew. Of course I have.”
“Well, of course.” He was silent for a moment. “I meant to tell you. I certainly didn't intend you to find out like that. I hate myself.”
“Stop hating yourself,” I said. “Let's have dinner. I made goulash.”
“Oh. Delicious.”
We sat down. I served my goulash, oozing scarlet juices, onto plates that did not match. I poured more wine into glasses that had not been buffed with dry linen.
“I do—I did—I mean, I do love you,” Matthew said. “I thought I'd made a life with you. I think I loved you because you seemed so right for me. But it was all too—does any of this make sense? I lost my head.”
“With Honor Chappell,” I said. “And I introduced you.”
The sound of her name made him twitch. “Yes. It started that night, when we went out with Phoebe. Part of me thought she looked a mess. And part of me wanted to—to—”
“Jump on her bones,” I prompted helpfully.
He made his bad-smell face. “It was extraordinary. You talked about her as if she were some old spinster—and I saw this incredible beauty. I couldn't stop staring at her. I was sure you'd notice.”
“How did you get together?” (I figured I might as well satisfy my curiosity.) “Did you exchange numbers then and there?”
Matthew was shocked. “No! Look, do you think I wanted to get myself into this mess?”
“So it happened by accident?”
“Well, no. Not exactly. I tried to forget her, and it was no use. I couldn't get her out of my mind. She haunted me. I had to see her again—just see her. She'd mentioned that she was working at the British Library. So I went there.”
“What—you went all the way to King's Cross and got yourself a reader's ticket?”
“No. I waited in the coffee shop. I told the office I was visiting a client.”
I began to be sorry I'd asked for details. Now I had to hear all about it—how Matthew and Honor had been helpless in the grip of a mighty urge; how they had fought and struggled against it, hating themselves for their disloyalty to me; how in between bouts of penitence they had been at it like a pair of stoats. The melancholy fact was that Matthew had discovered passion—but not with me.
I read somewhere recently that emotional wounds have been shown to cause actual physical pain. The pain of rejection is, apparently, the equivalent of a broken leg. Maybe this was why I ached in every limb, as if I'd been attacked with a mallet. I was an invalid. I needed rest. I certainly didn't need to hear how Honor and Matthew had wept through a concert at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, because their love could never be. Whether or not one is emotionally involved, there is something basically irritating about other's people's grand passions.
I wasn't angry or vengeful. I didn't care enough. A great wash of sadness
lay over my life. I had worked out by now that I wouldn't miss Matthew. Honor was welcome to him. I could even see that they went together rather well.
“You're being great about this,” Matthew said.
“Am I? Well, thanks.”
“I know everyone says this—but can we stay friends?”
“Oh, of course.” Whatever.
“Honor's terrifically fond of you. She feels awful about making you unhappy.”
“Tell her not to feel awful, will you?”
“Cassie, you're—”
“Wonderful,” I finished for him.
We parted politely. I was left alone, to contemplate my loneliness and admit that I had only wanted Matthew as protection against change and decay. The sad reality was that an army of Matthews couldn't keep those two at bay.
 
“I've lost a skin,” Hazel said. “I feel so small and shivery. I can't stand the loneliness.” She hovered at the zebra crossing. “I can't even cope with traffic any more.”
She was back in London, reeling from her father's funeral, unable to return to work. I had found her cowering in her small garden flat, in a road leading off Parliament Hill Fields. If emotional injuries really were the same as the physical kind, Hazel was recovering from the equivalent of a gunshot wound. My emotional broken leg was nothing to this. Her face was tallow with the shock of grief. She wore battered trainers and a bulky, unflattering cardigan. I had to hold her arm when we crossed the road.
I had taken the afternoon off work to see her, and decided I had to get her out into the fresh air. The smooth green mound of Parliament Hill was before us, with the usual pair of kites fluttering at its summit. I didn't think Hazel was strong enough to climb it. I led her gently along the path beside the ponds. We walked very slowly. Joggers pounded past us. Mothers fed the ducks with their preschool children, on the muddy banks under the tasselled willows. I had often come here with the boys and Phoebe. Nothing had changed. The innocent mothers at the water's edge did not know they were mortal, or that their
stout toddlers would grow into sad adults. It made me sad to think that I was observing the happiest times of their lives, and they were too busy to know it.
“Let's sit down for a minute,” Hazel said.
There was a bench nearby. It had an inscription carved into it, in memory of Clive and his dog Zipper, who loved this spot. We couldn't get away from death, wherever we looked. It was even in Arcadia.
“You're doing very well.” I tugged Hazel over to the bench. We sat down.
Hazel folded her hands in her lap, gazing out across the pond. “I don't understand it. I can't be tired. I do nothing but sleep.”
“We'll rest here as long as you like,” I said. “There's no hurry.”
“You shouldn't have taken time off work.”
“Hazel, kindly shut up about work—yours or mine. Or anyone's.”
“Sorry. Can't help it.”
I knew what Phoebe would have said to her. “I wish you'd eat something,” I heard myself saying. “You didn't touch your lunch.”
“Oh, I'm sorry, Cassie. It was sweet of you to bring me lunch. But I've forgotten how to eat since it happened.”
“You're still in shock.”
“Mum rang me at work,” Hazel said. “I took the call in the middle of a conference. He—he just keeled over in the garden, while he was looking at the currant bushes. And I couldn't make myself believe it. We'd been talking on the phone two nights before. He sounded fine then.”
“What did you talk about?”
“It was all right. It was nice, even. We were having a good laugh about my Uncle Mark.”
“I'm glad you parted friends,” I said. “That must help a bit?”
“But the argument wasn't over,” Hazel said. “We hadn't
finished.
” She wrung her hands. I'd never seen anyone doing this outside a novel, but recognized it now as an authentic gesture of despair. “I want to be angry with him,” she said. “Then I suddenly remember riding on his shoulders when I was little. Or when he used to dress up as Father Christmas.”
Her face contracted painfully. She began to cry, with an air of returning to her full-time job. Great racking, wheezy sobs shook her. What could I say? There is no comfort you can give to the inconsolable.
But I heard Phoebe's voice again, telling me how she had felt when Jimmy died—“It's not comfort you want, it's patience. You need someone to just hold you and be sorry, no matter how long it takes.”
I pushed a tissue into the wringing hands, and put my arm around Hazel.
She wept, and I looked out across the pond, listening to the cries of the children and the honking of the ducks. People walked past us. Some glanced at us curiously, or sympathetically. A breeze whipped at us.
A park-keeper drove past, in one of those white electric carts that trundle across the 900-odd acres of the Heath, their open backs laden with leaves and branches. It halted in front of us. The parkie jumped down, and said, “Cassie? I thought it was you.”
I looked under the terrible brown felt hat they make the parkies wear, and recognized the thin face and straggling beard of Betsy's Jonah.
“Is your friend okay? Can I do anything?”
He was so gentle and friendly that I was, suddenly, very happy to see him. “Hi, Jonah,” I said. “This is my friend Hazel. Her father died last week.”
Tender sympathy suffused his (somewhat rabitty) features. “That's heavy.” He crouched down toward Hazel. “Hi, I'm Jonah Salmon. Cassie was at school with my sisters. I think you need a cup of tea.”
Hazel had stopped sobbing. Dazedly, she blew her raw nose. “I—no, I'm fine,” she mumbled.
“You shouldn't be out in this wind. My hut's just over there.” He pointed to the farther of two wooden huts, perched on the green bank of the pond. “Come on in, and let me make you both a cup of tea. I've got enough mugs.”
“Oh, yes please,” I said. It was growing chilly, and I had wanted to see the inside of one of those huts all my life.
Jonah and I helped Hazel to her feet. The fit of crying had passed like a storm. She and I walked slowly to the hut. Jonah went ahead, to park his cart. By the time we arrived, the door to the hut stood open.
It was furnished with a small table, a shelf of books, a very old squashy armchair, a noticeboard and several hundred stacked chairs. The remaining floor space was cramped. Jonah sat Hazel down in the armchair, and
unstacked two chairs for us. The kettle that Betsy had given him hissed on the table. He made three mugs of delicious, russet-tinged tea, and opened a packet of chocolate digestives.
“This is cozy,” I said.
Jonah grinned. “Fabulous, isn't it? Admit you've always wanted to see inside.” He held out the plate of biscuits. “Go on, Hazel. You haven't had one.”
To my surprise, Hazel took one and started eating it. She managed a watery smile. “Thanks,” she said with her mouth full. “You're ever so kind.”
“I can see you're having a really hard time. You can talk about it, if you like. I'm not one of those spooky types who thinks you don't die if you eat enough spinach.”
This looks a bit tactless written down—but Jonah said it with such genuine warmth that Hazel laughed. “Oh, don't! You can't imagine how many people have interrogated me about Dad's lifestyle—did he smoke? Did he drink? They want it to be his fault, so they don't have to think it might happen to them.”
“It's fear, that's all,” Jonah said. “But you've moved on. Your eyes have looked at death.”
Hazel nodded. “And now I have, I see it everywhere. People don't realize. Life is so fragile.” Dipping her biscuit mechanically into her tea, she told Jonah the story of her father's death. Jonah listened seriously, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees.
“The worst thing,” Hazel said, “is waking up in the morning, and finding—emptiness. He's slipping away from me, as if he'd never been alive.”
“But you'll hear his voice,” Jonah said. “You'll hear it when you least expect it. It's a question of knowing how to listen.”
“Listen to what? Where? How will I know?”
Very softly, almost conversationally, Jonah began to recite:
Thy voice is on the rolling air;
I hear thee where the waters run;
Thou standest in the rising sun,
And in the setting thou art fair.
 
What art thou then? I cannot guess;
But though I seem in star and flower
To feel thee some diffusive power,
I do not therefore love thee less:
 
My love involves the love before;
My love is vaster passion now;
Though mixed with God and Nature thou,
I seem to love thee more and more.
 
Far off thou art, but ever nigh;
I have thee still, and I rejoice;
I prosper, circled with thy voice;
I shall not lose thee though I die.

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