Bachelor Boys (29 page)

Authors: Kate Saunders

BOOK: Bachelor Boys

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“What are you doing?” I tried to snatch it back. “It's nearly three in the morningâyou can't phone anyone nowâ”

He was strong, and held me off as if I'd been a mosquito. I heard the phone ringing at the other end. Fritz suddenly pulled me close to him and placed the receiver between our two heads.

A voice on the other end of the line, fresh and sweet as the dew on a rose, said, “Helloâis this really on?âoh yes. Hello. You've reached the residence of Phoebe Darling. I'm obviously not available at the moment, but please leave a message after the beep, and I promise I'll get back to you as soon as possible.”

Hearing her voice, so full of warmth and life, hurt like knives. When the beep went, I wanted to blurt out, “Come backâI want you!”

Instead I took the phone out of Fritz's hand and put my arms around him. Inside his chest, I felt the force of his exploding sobs. He cried as I had never seen him cry. I was crying too, but Fritz's grief blew mine away like a leaf in a gale. I held him as hard as I could, as if I could press him into my body and my heart.

I was in love with him. I ached for him. I could not untangle a desire to comfort from plain desire. And Fritz needed love with his body as well
as his heart. I'm saying this to make the inevitable consequences sound more elevatedâbecause what we did was more than sex. I can't pinpoint exactly when it started, but we were suddenly kissing as if gulping at life. We made love with breathless urgency, in silence. Fritz was hard and savage, and out of control. I heard, with amazement, my own voice crying out as I came. Dear God, it was wonderful.

We were both crying, all the way through. Afterward, Fritz plummeted heavily into sleep. We lay on my bed in a tangle of duvet. I stayed awake for a long time after he had fallen asleep, clutching his hot, heavy head against my chest. I didn't realize I was also asleep until the doorbell woke me again.

Crumpled and reeling, I stumbled downstairs. I registered that it was gray daylight, and raining, but had no idea of the time.

Ben was at the door. “Hi, Cass. He's here, isn't he?”

“Yes.”

“Oh God, sorry if I woke you.”

“That's okay.”

“I thought I should fetch him. We should never have left him alone.”

I hadn't expected Ben to take care of Fritz. It was usually the other way round. But this was a new Ben, made strong by his love for his brother. I took him upstairs. He went into my bedroom, and I heard him waking Fritz with the gentleness of Phoebe herself. He was also very kind to me, folding me in a long embrace, and making us all tea. With very uncharacteristic tact, he made no mention of the obvious fact that Fritz and I had had sex.

Fritz had a terrible hangover. He drank his tea in silence, and in silence he kissed me good-bye.

“Thanks,” Ben said, kissing me with special tenderness as Fritz stumbled away from me into the wet street. He lowered his voice. “Cass, you're not going to mind about this, are you? I meanâthe fact that he's actingâyou know â¦”

I assured him that I understood, which was true.

Ben nodded. “It's like I told youâhe's not as tough as people think. He says he wants to be left alone, but you mustn't listen to him. Keep in touch, won't you? With Fritz, I mean, as well as us. Don't stay away from us now the work's finished. It's not so bad for me. I've got Annabel.”

I hugged him. “Give her my love.”

In the street, Fritz suddenly turned and looked at me. He strode back up the path, nudging Ben aside, and kissed me on the mouth. Then he charged away to the car, without looking back again.

I was on the doorstep in my dressing gown, and it was raining stairrods. I shut the door on the Darlings, and trudged back to my flat to begin the dreary business of living without Phoebe.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

T
hat glorious October faded into a cold, pale November, and I faded into a listless drone. Fritz did not call me. I saw him a few times, when visiting Ben and Annabel, and tried not to mind too much that he never mentioned the sex. Here was a man engaged in a hand-to-hand struggle with grief. I sensed that it took every ounce of Fritz's strength to ride the worst of it. I loved him too much to spoil it by striking a wrong note.

And though I had not lost a mother, I had an idea of what he was enduring. Living without Phoebe was very dull, and all the sadder because she seemed so far out of reach. I longed to hear her voice in my head. I had counted on hearing it. And still I was met with that endless, fathomless silence. This made me cynical and depressed. I carried on getting up in the mornings, dressing myself in reasonably decent clothes and going to work. But I stopped caring what I looked like, because what was the point?

The next few weeks were the most purely miserable of my entire life. I was endlessly tired. A gray wash of inertia lay over everything. I forgot that I ever had a sense of humor. I was nipped and pinched with cold, and sat bundled in cardigans and shawls like a Victorian invalid. At intervals (and I still don't understand this) I darted out of my self-imposed isolation long enough to buy completely useless thingsâfor example, a quilted jacket in buttercup yellow, a complicated machine for frothing milk and a radio that could withstand extreme temperatures. I took no
pleasure from these purchases. I didn't even like them while I was buying them. What was I thinking?

“But this is grief,” Ruth said. “This is what it's like. You have to think of it as a physical illness.”

I never phoned anyone, but Ruth had got into the habit of phoning me at least twice every week. At first I didn't know what to say to her, and could only breathe at her down the line. She rode my silences with mild patience, never discomposed. And then I began to test her by letting out little snatches of my shell-shocked emotions.

“I assumed I'd be distraught. But it's not like that. I don't howl and sob. I just sit, staring into space or reading the same page over and over again. I can't concentrate. This whole thing sort of squats on me, like a great weight.” Good grief, I could hardly form a sentence.

Ruth, however, seemed able to penetrate my gibberish. “It shouldn't last long,” she said. “But you won't stop the worst of the mourning until you force yourself back into normal life. I'll say it again, Cassieâyou should get out more.”

“I like being at home.”

“You've never liked being at home. I spent years talking to your back while you bolted out of the door. This really isn't natural, if you want to know.”

She was not laying down the law; simply observing. I had a vivid memory of my teenage self, just as she remembered, constantly escaping. Unfortunately, at the moment, I had nowhere to escape to. But they were all on at me to go out.

Betsy said, “You need to be with
people,”
as if I'd been hanging out with some other species. She said it when she saw me putting on a third cardigan and lunching on a Toblerone. She had raised four daughters, and could read female eating-patterns like a wise old gypsy reading tea leaves. “Seeing more people will take you out of yourself.”

I said, “I can't be bothered. I'm too tired. After a day in this office, all I'm fit for is tinned spaghetti and Inspector Morse.”

Betsy handed me a slice of the latest cake. “You'd soon perk up if you had something to do. I'll have a word with Jonah and Hazel.” Dear Betsy, how she grabbed at any opportunity to say “Jonah-and-Hazel” in that casual
wayâshe was so delighted that Jonah was out of her attic at last. “I know they'd love to have you round to dinner.”

I felt that mean little stab of jealousy when I contemplated Hazel's happy coupledom. Losing Phoebe had not made me nicer. I had inherited none of her kindness. I didn't even try to emulate it. I could only feel small and hard-done-by and overlooked. The same worm of jealousy kept me away from Annabel, with her adoring husband and imminent twins. Annabel was fortunate, and had nothing to do with a loser like me. The monumental unfairness of life was a continual amazement to me. I'd brought Ben 'n' Annabel and Hazel 'n' Jonah together. I'd brought several couples together during my matchmaking careerâand I'd forgotten to find anyone for myself. I felt scaly and hideous with self-pity.

“Hazel can't cook,” I said.

Betsy picked up her knitting. “Jonah does most of the cooking, actually. He's only part-time on the Heath at the moment, and Hazel's hours are ridiculous. He makes a wonderful lentil stew.”

“Yum,” I said crossly.

“Well, it would do you good to eat something healthy. How long is it since you've had a cooked meal?”

“Betsy, your concern touches me deeply, but please don't worryâI'm not living on Pot Noodles.”

“I don't like to think of you spending so much time on your own. Why aren't you seeing more of the Darling boys?”

“They're busy.” I was defensive, because my heart leaped every time the phone rang, and it was never Fritz. “They have to get the house into a decent state, so they can sell it.”

“Poor things,” Betsy said, instantly sympathetic. “That must be very hard.”

The chill fog around me lifted, just enough to make me ashamed of myself. I saw that one symptom of my grieving had been selfishness. I'd been so sorry for myself that I hadn't stopped to think how nasty all this must be for Fritz and Ben. I was staying away from the old house because I couldn't bear it without Phoebe, but they did not have a choice.

And hadn't I promised to keep in touch with Fritz? I waited until Betsy had gone downstairs with the day's post, then I rang his number.
He had replaced Phoebe's phone message with a terse one of his own. I stammered out a few lame words, hoping he was okay and rather grudgingly offering help with the house.

He called back about ten minutes later, while Betsy was making us a pot of tea. The kettle was roaring on the filing cabinet beside me, and I had to ask him to speak up.

He sounded amused. “I said, do you want to come over sometime?”

“Yes. That'd be lovely.” He wanted me. My spirits rose a couple of points above zero.

“There's some stuff I want to give you.”

“Stuff?”

“I'm not explaining now Get over here.”

Betsy called, “She's free tonight!” (What hypersensitive ears this woman hadâI had learned long ago that there was no such thing as a private phone conversation around her.)

“Excellent, so am I,” Fritz said briskly. “Come round after work.”

It had been decided for me. Grief makes you incapable of deciding anything for yourself. I was deathly tired, I knew I looked awful and I didn't feel like seeing another living soul, but I didn't have the energy to argue. I was yearning, in any case, to see Fritz. I took the tube up to Hampstead. The night was blustery and uncomfortable. I bought a bottle of wine, thinking sadly of all the times I had stopped at this very off-license to buy wine for Phoebe. It hurt so much to approach the old house that I had a physical pain over my heart. I steeled myself to face a dead house; a house whose soul had fled.

The reality, however, was both better and worse. There was no great change. I don't know what I'd expected, but here were the same window boxes, lovingly tended by Phoebe until only weeks ago. Here were the familiar lamps in the window, throwing circles of light against the white blinds. It was easy to imagine I could run up the front steps, hammer on the door and fall into Phoebe's arms.

Fritz opened the door, and gave me a brisk kiss on the cheek. “Hi, Grimble.”

I followed him into Phoebe's drawing room, and gasped aloud when I saw the state of it. “Oh God! What's going on?”

The Persian runners and rugs were tightly rolled up and stacked in a corner like sausages. Every other inch of floor was covered with boxesâold and new, all overflowing with stuff. The sofa was heaped with historical linen, right back to some guest towels that had been among Phoebe's wedding gifts. There were piles of old
Lancets
and
British Medical Journals
crowded on top of the grand piano. Two of Fritz's surfboards were propped against the bureau beside the fireplace.

“Thirty years of accumulated rubbish,” Fritz said. “Take what you want before I chuck it all out.”

“All of it?” A box of mismatched crockery had already caught my attention. I picked up a nice little blue jug. “Won't you want it for your next house?”

“Nope. There's enough here for three houses. Mum never threw anything away, and I refuse to be sentimental about my old finger paintings.”

“Wellâmaybe I will rescue a couple of things â¦” I picked up a small cushion, with the same rose pattern as the bedroom curtains. It smelled a little musty, but beyond the mustiness was the ghost of Phoebe in her bedroom, a jewel in a velvet setting. I would only have to look at it to summon her into my mind's eye.

“Let's open the wine.” Fritz took the bottle from me.

Belatedly, I remembered that I had toiled up to Hampstead to be supportive. It seemed odd to be supporting Fritz, and I wasn't sure how to go about it. “How are you, anyway? This must be awful for you. Dismantling your home.”

“Not particularly.” He was dismissive. “It's not a shrine.”

“No, I suppose not.” Now that I was here, the dismantling of the home no longer seemed fearsome. The gods of the household, the Lares and Penates in the shapes of Jimmy and Phoebe, had departed. Without them it was just a house.

“Tell me what I can do,” I said.

He looked at me narrowly, taking me in for the first time. “If you're really up for it, you can help me with the sorting.”

“All right. Just give me your orders.” I spoke as briskly as possible, to mask my slight dismay. I'd come here to make sympathetic noisesâI wasn't prepared for physical labor.

He gave me a glass of wine. “The heap by the window is everything that'll burnâwe're going to have a vast bonfire when Ben gets back from Glossop.”

“Where?”

“Glossop, darling. Gateway to the Peaks. He's got a gig up there. Don't we play some smart places? All the stuff on or around the sofas is for the vicar's next jumble sale. The stuff on the table is for keeping or selling. Start sorting.”

I found that I was not as exhausted as I had thought. There was something enjoyably practical about sorting through the fallout of the past. In a remarkably short time I was on my third glass of wine, stripped to only one cardigan, energetically sifting through box after box of tatting. I remembered nearly everything that I disinterredâa wobbly plate Ben had made at pottery class, a bundle of Cash's labels with “C. Shaw” in red copperplate, the program from Fritz's dire college production of
Othello.
I couldn't stop smiling over each treasure. Phoebe could never bear to throw stuff away. Jimmy was constantly shouting about “drowning in crap” and threatening to burn it all. I found one or two things he had absolutely hated (a lamp fashioned from a Mateus Rose bottle; a set of mildly pornographic Roman coasters), and was amused that Phoebe had stubbornly squirreled them away, sure he would change his mind one day. I decided to keep the coastersâI remembered how they had made us giggle.

Fritz laughed at the collection of objects I was putting in my pile to take home. “You don't want this!”

“Yes I do. Put it back.”

“Grimble, no man will ever sleep with you if you own a draft excluder in the shape of a snake.”

“Piss off. I like it.” I snatched back the terrible thing (brown and orange felt, stuffed with beans, made by Phoebe from a kit). “And Ben will kill you if anything happens to Norman.”

“Norman? God, you two are so wet.”

“You're cold and hard-hearted,” I told him. “You're throwing away far too much.”

“Fineâtake all the shit you like, but if it doesn't leave this house before midnight, you'll never see it again. Why are you sniggering, Grimble? Do you not believe me?”

“You sound just like Jimmy.”

“Do I?” He smiled suddenly. “Thanks for coming. It's nice to have some help.”

I dropped a dented biscuit tin on top of the rubbish pile. “You should have asked me sooner. Or I should've called.”

“No,” Fritz said, “I should've called you.”

“We could argue about this for ages. What I'm trying to say is, I didn't mean to leave you alone.”

“Stop being nice, Cass. You're supposed to be demanding an apology.”

“Am I? What for?”

“Come on. I shagged you and then didn't call. I was a drunken lout.”