Barefoot in the Dark (20 page)

Chapter 21

‘Marvellous,’ Jack said. ‘That’s really good news, mate.’

It had been touch and go, and a trifle overcrowded in the bathroom, but good sense had prevailed and the lovely Julie had relented by the Thursday. Not, she’d been at pains to point out, because she’d completely forgiven Danny his misdemeanours, but simply because christening slots were hard to come by and it wouldn’t sit well with the vicar if she had to cancel at such short notice.

Danny had been uncharacteristically quiet and thoughtful about it.

‘You think?’ he answered, while packing his few things into his holdall. ‘I’m not so sure, mate. I can still see me here.’

Jack, just home from work and swigging on a Becks, and still in thoughtful mode about his excuse for a life, scanned the shabby room and raised his eyebrows.

‘You can?’

‘I was thinking about something you said to me once. Way back. When Lydia first said she wanted to divorce you. You said something about feeling you’d lived half your life feeling not quite up to scratch. Like something she’d just had to tolerate, like eczema. It’s a bit of word, isn’t it?’

‘What, eczema?’

‘No. Tolerate.’

Jack shrugged. ‘I guess.’

‘I mean, that’s what it’s really all about, isn’t it? With men and women. That women just ‘tolerate’ men these days. Don’t much need them. Don’t particularly want them. Just tolerate them because they have to.’

‘But that’s it. They don’t have to any more. Not if they don’t want to. Lydia didn’t, did she?’

He looked searchingly at Jack. ‘Yes, but doesn’t that bother you?’

Jack shrugged. He was way past analysing all the reasons why his marriage had ended. And wearier still of attributing so much of it to his deficiencies as a husband. He’d had more than enough of that before it had ended, despite Lydia prefacing every lecture she gave him with the words ‘Jack this isn’t about
you
, you know. It’s about
me
. You must understand that.’ Blah blah blah. She had a special face for that one and it wasn’t dissimilar to the one a priest might adopt for speaking to a condemned felon. Besides, the football would be coming on soon.

And at least Danny had a wife to go home to. She was probably whipping up a moussaka even now. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Not unduly. It’s not all women. It’s just some women.’

‘Yeah, like Jules. I mean, you know what she said? That she could just about tolerate my ‘wandering eye’, but that she really couldn’t tolerate any more of that computer stuff. Well, I’m not sure I want to be tolerated. I feel like I’m on bloody probation. Is that right? Is it?’

Jack passed him a pair of balled socks that had rolled away across the carpet.

‘She loves you, mate. You know she does. She’s just, I don’t know, a bit twitchy about sex. She’ll come round. What time’s she expecting you?’

On the Friday, a whole week since the Allegra debacle, Jack still felt he hadn’t moved on. What he needed, he decided, was to get himself out of the rut he was slipping into. He needed to find a new place in the world. More pressingly, he needed to find himself a new place in which to live. To which end he’d popped into an estate agent’s on his way home from work. The girl in there, a pleasant twenty-something with a dip-dyed scarlet ponytail, had been friendly, effusive even, when he’d told her his name. She’d printed off several colour copies of property details for him and told him her mother listened to his show every day and thought he was really, really lovely.

Jack, for whom this particular endorsement was beginning to feel more than ever like a hail of Sanatogen bottles raining on his unprotected head, was reminded (via trying hard to remind himself that he was not old and worn out but young and fit and virile) of Allegra. She hadn’t called him, and he wasn’t sure whether this was a good thing, a bad thing, or something to which he should ascribe no particular importance. (There was no reason to hear about the TV show yet – they’d already written to tell him they’d be getting in touch again next week.) And he wasn’t sure whether to call her. If he did he’d feel obliged to have a big grown-up talk with her, either attempting a further assignation, which was pointless, or explaining that while he found her immensely attractive, that he wasn’t ready for – well,
that
– right now. While this option had the benefit of being honest and less scary, it might not augur well for his TV career. A woman scorned and all that. What to do?

And now it was Saturday and he was about to become a godfather. Almost eleven. He’d better get a move on. Better think himself into the role.

Jack had been to only one christening in his life – Ollie’s – and wasn’t sure what to expect. He’d spent some time in town the preceding week, trying, and largely failing, to decide what sort of gift would be appropriate for him to give this new charge. His gut instinct was for a seriously good football – Danny would appreciate that – but logic told him this would not go down half so well with Julie, so, in the end, with the help of a kindly lady in the jewellers, he’d plumped for a little silver musical money box, which tinkled
Finlandia
when you wound it up, and had an assortment of silver forest animals gathered around a tree stump on the top. No chipmunks. He so wished he could stop thinking about Hope. It was doing him no good at all.

The local church – less than a mile from his flat – was a Norman affair, with towering cedars in a rank around the graveyard and a daffodil-filled garden at the side. A big banner affixed to the low wall outside exhorted him to come and find out what life was really all about, but as this involved telephoning someone called Peggy for a friendly chat and/or joining their informal group for tea and discussion on a Tuesday (or so the permanent marker squiggles written below told him) he felt he probably wouldn’t find useful answers there.

He wasn’t sure he wanted to know, anyway. He had been doing too much thinking lately as it was. Jack wasn’t given to bouts of despondency and depression. But, right now, in this little cache of existence in which he had found himself, he felt he could, should he allow himself to try one on for size, very easily find himself doing so.

There was a small knot of people in suits and pastel clothing gathered at the entrance. Dan and Julie’s relatives, he supposed. He knew none of them, which made him feel like an impostor, turning up here all on his own. A shady character who had shuffled up in the hopes of a free cup of tea and a little light redemption.

‘Jack!’ said one of them now – a woman about his own age. She waved and approached him. He smiled automatically, even though he didn’t have a clue who she was.

‘Caryl Phelps,’ she told him obligingly. ‘Julie’s sister? We met at their Christmas party a couple of years back. How are you? I’m so sorry to hear your news. It’s always a shock when these things happen.’

Shock for who, precisely? It certainly hadn’t been a shock for him. Indisputably hadn’t been one for Lydia – she’d written the script. For Caryl then. For everyone who hadn’t broached the veneer of their marriage. Jack tried, and failed, to place her. The only thing he could recall about Dan and Julie’s Christmas party a couple of years back was that, in keeping with just about every social event in the last two or three years of their marriage, Lydia had spent most of the evening sitting on other men’s laps and/or shimmying around the kitchen clutching wine bottles with her shoes off and an expression of studied abandon on her face. And that he had been far from sober and rather sad.

‘Yes.’ He shrugged. ‘Well, that’s life.’

‘Yes.’ She shrugged too. ‘Well. These things are usually for the best, aren’t they? Nice to see you again, anyway.’ She smiled at him sympathetically, having presumably run out of polite conversation and/or interest in attempting more. ‘Well,’ she said. ‘I’d better go and round up my brood, I suppose. Looks like rain.’

Yes, thought Jack. Heavy storms expected. Lydia was approaching from behind.

She was wearing a particularly unattractive outfit. A stiff turquoise skirt suit that he didn’t recognise. It pleased him. For several months after the separation he had found himself gripped with a frustrating sense of bitterness nearly every time he saw her. She looked so damn thrilled to be no longer with him. So groomed. So confident. So altogether like a woman who had blossomed. Jack tried hard not to read anything relating to the subject of divorce, but even he knew – it was so generally well documented – that post-divorce women so often found happiness, while post-divorce men often lost their way, like old limb-challenged lions in the veldt. And killed themselves sometimes.

He knew he was only feeling sorry for himself, but he couldn’t help it. She’d put on a little weight which, he had to concede, suited her. And emanated self-assurance. Like a diamond might emanate sparkle, perhaps. Or an overfilled burger bun might emanate ketchup, this metaphor pleased him more.

Lydia also looked at him sympathetically. Which was what she always did these days. Always had done, perhaps. As if he’d been an orphan puppy she’d taken in once but in whose future she no longer had any faith.

‘You’re looking well,’ she said. Which, likewise, was what she always said. ‘How’s Dad?’

He wished she wouldn’t call him Dad. She shouldn’t be allowed to. Not any more. There should be legislation, thought Jack, to stop it. He knew he was being childish, but, right now, a child was what he very much wished he could be.

‘Ollie and I popped in to see him last week. Did he tell you?’ she was saying. ‘He’s not looking too good, is he?’

Jack shook his head. ‘He’s much the same.’

‘The nurse was saying they didn’t think it would be too long before they’d have to see about getting him a hospice place. It’s terrible, isn’t it? Seems like only yesterday that he was fit as a flea and chasing Ollie round the garden. Such a shame. Poor Dad.’

Jack stood and studied his newly polished shoes. He really, really, didn’t want to talk to Lydia about his father. He felt her hand on his arm before seeing its approach.

‘If there’s anything… if you want to… well, you know you only have to ask, don’t you?’

Or have her pat him either. She was looking sympathetic again. What the hell did she think she could do for him? Effect a cure? Invent immortality? Mop his fucking brow when it all got too much? He looked at her pointedly and she took her arm back.

He really, really, wished she wouldn’t call him Dad.

* * *

Jack hadn’t known quite what to expect, but one thing he definitely hadn’t expected was that he would have to sit through an entire church service before the christening proper began. He had assumed, clearly wrongly, that, as it was a Saturday, it would be a quick in-and-out affair.

There was also talk of some sort of lunch party to follow, at Dan and Julie’s. Which wouldn’t ordinarily have been of any consequence, except that it was almost lunchtime and he was supposed to be getting in the junior league scores. He’d missed his own match, of course, but he’d still promised to have his copy in for early evening. So he’d persuaded Ollie to stay home to deal with the calls, and that, he’d thought, would be that.

Except it hadn’t been. The sun, appropriately, was breaking through a wash of violet clouds as they emerged once again into the light with the newly blessed child, inspiring many a happy whoop and coo. But Lydia, who was bearing down on him now, had left her sympathetic voice back in the vestry with the cherubs and the cassocks and the communion wine.

‘Honestly,’ she barked at him. ‘What the hell did you think you were doing taking telephone calls? This is a christening, for God’s sake!’

Jack wondered quite how God would feel about the question of his sake being discussed in a church vestibule, and thought he might find it amusing. Less amusing was that Lydia had taken it upon herself to seek him out and chastise him, as if she were in some way still responsible for him. As if he had made
her
look bad.

It had only been the one call. Half way through ‘All Things Bright and Beautiful’. And with the church full of caterwauling women his few mumbled words were almost entirely drowned out. When the second came in he had checked the number, ignored it, and switched the phone to vibrate instead. Which it had. Several times. Like a bluebottle in his trouserleg. More scores. So Oliver must have gone out. Or, it occurred to him, was sitting at the computer, entirely oblivious of the phone.

He nodded. ‘I’m well aware of that,’ he said levelly. ‘It was work.’

She rolled her eyes. ‘Oh, and of course that’s so much more important than good manners, isn’t it? Why didn’t you just switch the thing off?’

He met her eye, annoyed but all at once also rather pleased. ‘I never switch my phone off. You know that,’ he answered.

‘Well, you should,’ she said haughtily. ‘Your precious football scores, I take it? Hardly life and death. The world won’t end if you miss a couple, you know. ’

Jack smiled a mirthless smile.

‘Probably not,’ he said smoothly. ‘But I never switch my phone off. My father’s dying, or did you forget?’

It was ten to four. And no more than half a mile from where Jack, frowning, was climbing into his car, Simon, smiling, was climbing out of his.

Hope, who had been watching for his arrival from the living room window, moved quickly into the hall and out of the front door. It was silly, she kept telling herself, but the whole thing with Simon was beginning to addle her. She felt that the minute she let him into the house again, a very tangible threshold would have been crossed, and their running, right now just an exercise in mutual training, would take on the cadence and timbre of an assignation. That she would, having invited him in, have to offer him a glass of water. Or a cup of tea, even biscuits, and heaven knew what would happen then. She knew she wouldn’t
really
have to, but if she let him into her house and didn’t do any of those perfectly normal-in-any-other-circumstance, perfectly polite and sociable things, it would be tantamount to accepting that there was another agenda where Simon was concerned. Which there was. And though she knew there was little she could do about it bar grow a great deal of facial hair or not wash for a week, she also knew that tea and biscuit gestures could so easily be construed as invitations. She was half way down the front path when he got to her.