Bachelor Boys (34 page)

Authors: Kate Saunders

BOOK: Bachelor Boys

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“Where have you been? At the hospital?”

“No, I didn't stay there long. I went back to the theater, and my colleagues were kind enough to ply me with strong drink.”

“Quite right, you deserve it,” I said. “Ruth says you were brilliant.”

“No, Grimble, not brilliant. Better than brilliantâI was
there.
That's the main thing. It wasn't wasted. All that medical training did just what it said on the tin. I think I was sent here to be matched with this hour.”

“How's Len?”

“Fairly stable. But he won't be doing any more panto for a while.” He swept me up again, and danced me round the small room like a rag doll. “Hurrah, I'm unemployed! O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!”

I gasped, “Put me down!”

“Sorry” He dropped me.

“Would you like something to eat? You must be starving.”

“I believe I am, but don't disappear into the kitchen. I want to talk to you.”

“Talk to me in the kitchen.”

He followed me, and stood at my elbow while I made him a ham and tomato sandwich. He wolfed it down in a few bites, and took George's whiskey bottle into custody. I built up the fire, and we sat together on the hearthrug.

“I couldn't save Phoebe,” Fritz said. “And I can just about live with
that, because nothing could have saved her. But if I hadn't saved Len, I'd have been gutted. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“For one thing, I was the one who nearly killed him. I wouldn't have been so rough with him in the Slosh scene, but he had to behave as if he was indestructible. Poor old sod, he tried to say âAy-up Mother' for the guys in the ambulance.”

“And there's no chance of the show going on without him?”

“Nope. The notices were up by the time I got back to the theater. You can give me a lift home whenever you like.”

I said, “You're really happy about this, aren't you?”

Fritz wrapped his arms around me. He spoke into my neck. I felt his warm breath on my skin. “I'm happy that I didn't mess up in front of you. I know you think I'm a waste of food.”

I said, “I think you're wonderful.”

“What kind of wonderful? Boy Scout wonderful?”

“Better.”

“You approve of me, then.”

“Totally.”

“I don't know why, dear Grimble,” Fritz said, “but I've always wanted your approval. Even when you were plain.”

“Wow, thanks.”

“You were such an incredible smartarse when we were kidsâactually, until quite recently. When you were threatening to marry the moose I thought you were turning yourself into a culture bore with bad hair.”

“It's all true,” I said. “I'm too comfortable to argue.”

He brushed his lips against my neck, sending shooting stars through my veins. “But then you got rid of him and stopped trying to look elegant, and I discovered that I was starting to find you seriously sexy. I'd be thinking about youâjust in a normal sort of wayâand suddenly I'd have a huge erection. What's the matter?”

I was shaking with laughter. “How romantic.”

“But it was intensely romantic,” Fritz said. “Because at the same time I was liking you more and more, wanting to tell you things, wanting to spend all my time with you. And I made a discovery.”

“What?”

“That I'd fallen in love with you. In fact, that I've probably been in love with you since the day we met. And I still feel just the same.” He put his mouth very close to my ear. “I like you, and I like your bottom.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

T
hat night, for the first and last time, I dreamed of Phoebe. In my dream, she was standing in her kitchen. The window was open. She was young and full of vitality, not any particular age, but all her ages. And she was stirring and singing, as I had seen her a thousand times. This was all, but it filled me with a strong sense of comfort and serenity. There was no sadness. I felt I had been allowed to glimpse something eternal, and took it (perhaps inevitably) as a Sign.

Next day, Fritz and I drove back to London. To put it mildly, I was happy. Ruth and I had got ourselves to a place in which we could talk without reserve. She could never replace Phoebe, but the sense of her love for me was extremely sustaining. And I was rapturously in love, which had turned the whole world inside out. I was utterly pierced and kebabbed with love. His smile could bring tears to my eyes. One breath of his could make me come.

Fritz, however, was moody. Though perfectly cordial to me, he was distant, wrapped in thought.

I stopped the car outside the Hampstead house. “Here we are. Do you want me to come in?”

“I don't think so.”

“Oh.”

He smiled and said, “Don't panic, darlingâI'm not having second thoughts. Actually, they're more like first thoughts. You may have gathered that I'm going through a small mental crisis.”

“Can't I help?”

“Oh, Cassie, you've done far too much already.” He leaned over and kissed me on the mouth. “I'll call you, okay? I'm not going back on anything I've said. I just need to get my head sorted out.”

I said I never knew what that meant.

Fritz said, “It means I can't ask you to share a life that's a load of shit.”

To prove that he would ring me, he called me about five minutes after I'd got home. “There, you believe me now,” he said. “You don't have to tell all your girlfriends I shagged you and never called.”

I felt that I should have been insulted, but had already started laughing (you will have noticed this often happened in our relationship; perhaps I'm inclined to take myself too seriously).

I asked, “How many calls do I get?”

“One per shag.”

“And how many shags?”

I heard him laughing at the other end. “As many as you want.”

“Good,” I said. “Are you all right?

“Of course. Naturally. Why shouldn't I be all right?”

“Seriously, Fritzâwhat's the matter?”

“Nothing. I'll both call and shag you tomorrow.”

He was gone, and I had to be satisfied with this. But I knew something was the matter, and I was worried. Why was he so angry? What was eating him? I couldn't be entirely happy until he was.

Over the next couple of weeks, I saw Fritz nearly every day. Sometimes he met me after work. Most often, he let himself into my flat, with the key he had coolly filched from my bag after our second night together. Fritz had none of Matthew's caution about moving too fast. He behaved as if he meant to stay for the rest of his life. I used to come home to the smell of cooking, and my heart would lift with happiness to find him in my tiny kitchen. On one occasion I found him naked in my bed, with a magnificentâwell, we needn't go into it. Despite Fritz's occasional spells of black-browed silence, he made my life blissful.

“Dear me, you haven't stopped smiling for hours,” Betsy said, one afternoon at the end of January. “I wish you would. It's rather eerie. Like a shop mannequin.”

“Sorry,” I said. “I can't help it.”

“I'm surrounded by people in love. Everywhere I look there's someone canoodling. I blame you, Cassie.”

“Me?”

“Well, you started all this matchmaking business. Suddenly you're all in pairs. It's starting to get on my nerves.”

I said, “You're just miffed because you're not arranging Jonah's wedding.”

Betsy sighed. “It seems unfair, that's all. If only she'd listen to a few of my suggestions.” (“She” was Hazel's mother.) “To tell the truth, I'm used to being the mother of the bride, and it's a bit of a comedown. The groom's mother is
nobody
âat my girls' weddings, she was always stuck down at the very end of the top table, with Grandma and Auntie Rosemary. And it ought to be the other way round, because marrying off a son is far harder. I'm formally handing over the greatest responsibility of my life.”

I'd been hearing a lot of speeches like thisâBetsy was finding the cutting of the cord unexpectedly painful.

“Part of me thought he'd always be living with us. I know it's time he moved out, but I can't help missing him.”

I was glad when my phone rang. It was Fritz. He wanted to know if I could make myself free the following day. It was a special occasion, he said. Len Batty was out of hospital, and had invited us both down to his house in Oxfordshire.

On the way down, I found out why Fritz was tense. Len's wife had requested this visit because she wanted to meet him, so that she could thank him for saving her husband's life. Fritz dreaded being thanked.

“I knew what to do because I've had several years of expensive training,” he said. “If I hadn't done it, I'd just be a disgrace. I hope she's not going to go on about it.”

“Do be nice, though,” I said. “I mean, don't be tetchy if she wants to weep all over you.”

“I'm never tetchy.”

I felt bound to say, “Yes you are. You're extremely bad-tempered at the moment. You jump down my throat whenever I try to be complimentary.”

Fritz was driving. He glanced aside at me keenly. “Do I?”

“You did something good, Fritz. Take it like a man.”

He sighed. “I hate being thanked simply because I didn't behave like an arsehole.”

The Battys lived in a farmhouse on the outskirts of Banbury. With the map open on my knee, I navigated us through lanes and villages of fat prosperity. It was the extremely tame and genteel sort of countryside, all gleaming outbuildings and houses with namesâ“Scrote Farm,” “Four-ways,” “The Old Rectory.”

Len's house was called The Tithe Barn. It didn't look like a barn. It was a red-brick building of glaring newness, set behind a gate made of cartwheels. We parked on a stretch of immaculate gravel, a little awed by the extreme cleanliness of everything.

I whispered, “You wouldn't even need wellies if you lived round here. It's tidier than Hampstead Heath. Do I look okay?” I had dressed for the country, in jeans and a baggy jersey, but these didn't look right here.

“More than okay,” Fritz said. “How many more times? You actually look better when you're not trying.”

The front door (shining wood between a pair of brass coach lamps) opened. A slim blonde woman appeared, dressed in elegant trousers, a sweater with satin applique and abundant gold jewelry. This was Mrs. Batty. She came toward us, smiling, and I saw that she was older than she looked from a distance.

“You're Fred,” she said. “I'm afraid I have to give you a kiss.” She put her arms around Fritz and kissed him resoundingly. “Len says I mustn't embarrass you, but I don't careâI think you're fantastic.” She smiled at me. “And you're Cassie.” She released Fritz and kissed me, engulfing me in her perfume. “I bet you're proud of him. And isn't he handsome?”

As her husband had done, she took me for granted as Fritz's girlfriend. I wondered what Fritz had said about me.

Inside, the house smelt strongly of furniture polish. Its shining perfection made me feel a little shy. I had an impression of plump cushions, crowds of photographs in lacquered brass frames and dustless guest lavatories. The snob in me registered that there were no books except photograph albums, and no pictures. Evidently Mrs. Batty (Joyce, as we were instructed to call her) did not like clutter.

Len Batty was in the sitting room, in an armchair beside a large picture
window. I had last seen him in full pantomime makeup, and was startled to see how gray he looked now, and how diminished. His eyes were almost invisible behind folds of exhausted flesh. He greeted us in a voice that was a breathy shadow of itself.

“You found us all right, then.”

Fritz took both his hands eagerly. It touched me to see his affection for Len. “How are you?”

An elderly Alsatian dog lay on the carpet, resting his gray muzzle on his crossed paws. He rose when he saw strangers, and sniffed us both with distant courtesy.

I stroked his head. “Hi, Fritz.”

Len Batty chuckled wheezily. “Yes, that's Fritz. You'll have to start calling Wonderboy here by his real name.”

“Oh, nonsense, stop laying down the law,” Joyce said. She dived for the cushion at Len's back and smacked it into a more comfortable shape. “You'd be pushing up daisies if not for him. As far as I'm concerned, he can call himself anything he likes.”

She had cooked us an amazing lunchâroast beef with all the trimmings and a real, old-fashioned sherry trifle to follow. Len hobbled through to the dining room clutching Fritz's arm. Though he sat with us, he only ate a small bowl of porridge and a few leaves of salad. I noticed that Joyce, busily serving us and bombarding us with questions, watched him beadily.

After lunch, Fritz helped Len back to his invalid's chair. I carried plates and dishes into the kitchen.

“Wow,” I exclaimed, stopping short on the threshold. “This is palatial! This is like something out of a magazine!”

Joyceâbusily stacking one of two dishwashersâlaughed. “I won't deny it. As I said to Len when we put it in, I reckon I deserve a fabulous kitchen. When we first met, we could barely afford a secondhand stove.”

I passed her a pile of plates. “How long have you been married?”

“Forty-five years. Can you imagine being married to your Fred that long?”

“No.”

“Well, I won't say it's been a picnic. We've had our fair share of ups and downs. When our girls were small, I hardly saw Len from one week
to the next. There was still a big club circuit in those days, and he had to work all hours, up and down the country, just to scrape a living. I always say that's what wore his heart out.” She shut the dishwasher, shaking her head. “He's a real workaholic. Won't say no to anythingâeven though he can these days.”

“He'll take it easy after this, surely.”

She laughed shortly. “I bloody hope so. I've told him, if he's not around for our fiftieth anniversary, I'm never speaking to him again.”

I said, “He's had the warning now.”

“Oh, we've had plenty of warnings. I've lost count of the doctors who've told him to stop working before he drops dead.” She wiped away an invisible speck, and snapped on a brand-new electric kettle. “I wish you'd ask your Fred to have a word. If your Fred told him he had to slow down, he might listen.”

I found myself thinking how likeable she was, and how famously she would have got on with Phoebe. “Len thinks a lot of him, doesn't he?”

She laughed, and I could see how pretty she had been when she was young. She was still pretty, despite stripes of glittery mauve blusher. “I've been hearing about Fred since the first day of rehearsals. Len came back to our hotel in a right mood. Said they'd recast Wishee-Washee and he was some useless posh bastard.” She broke off to giggle. “After that, there was something new about him every day. First it was the dog's name. Then he comes back and says, Joyce, that boy with the dog's name can speak perfect French!” (TrueâFritz seduced my French exchange student, and spent the rest of that summer on her farm in Gascony.)

Joyce began to take cups and saucers out of a cupboard. “When he found out Fred was a doctor, he couldn't get over it.” She smiled. “Couldn't believe it. He kept saying, why, Joyce? Why is a qualified doctor working in a seaside panto? We know what hard work it is, you see. Our eldest is a doctor.”

She broke off to wheel out a tea trolley. I watched her putting out the tea things, not daring to help in case I broke something. She wheeled it across smooth acres of floor to the sitting room.

Len said, “Cassie, we've been talking about you. I bought a copy of that magazine of yours. Very interesting stuff.”

“He read it from cover to cover,” Joyce put in. “Even the ads at the back.”

“I like reading about writers.”

I told him truthfully that my colleagues would be thrilled. Len said he would sign a picture for them (he did, before we left).

He said, “You must have been quite a swot at school, Cassie.”

“I'm afraid so.”