Frozen Music (18 page)

I went to my mother's for lunch before setting off to north London for the interview with Tammy Jones. Audrey was sorry to hear that I had broken off with Holden.

‘You want grandchildren, I know,' I said sympathetically.

‘No, no, I don't particularly,' Audrey said. ‘I just thought he was rather a nice young man. Not much imagination, but let's face it, neither have you.'

‘But I wasn't in love with him.'

‘Who was it who said that as you never end up in love with the man you choose to share your life with, you might as well not be in love to start with?'

I shrugged. ‘Me?'

My mother nodded. ‘Now.' She passed me a plate of asparagus quiche. ‘Have some of this. It's delicious. Janet made it this morning.'

I took the plate. ‘I would just like to see for myself what I'll eventually be missing, rather than take other people's word for it. I don't want other people's second-hand disillusions, I want my own brand-new ones. I want to know what that particular folly is all about. Is that so unreasonable?'

Audrey sighed. Then she smiled and shook her head. ‘No, no, I don't suppose it is. But you know, even if you did find it, love that is, you wouldn't like it. Love is everything you don't want. Love is the enemy of rules and logic. It's the Antichrist of order and reason. No, it's not your thing at all.'

I sat on the boudoir chair by the foot of the bed, the plate on my lap. I felt like a five-year-old who knew the white pointy shoes with heels would damage her feet, but who really really really wanted them anyway.

Audrey, as usual, was reclining against a hillock of white lace pillows. She was getting plumper by the day, but she was looking well.
That morning she was wearing an oyster-coloured silk bed jacket and her nails were varnished to match. If it weren't for the bulge extending beneath the bedclothes I might have suspected that she'd done away with legs altogether, like newscasters, but then she wiggled the end of the bulge as well, so I deduced they were still there. ‘Ten perfect little fingers,' I muttered, ‘and ten rosy little toes.' Then I asked, ‘You do get up to go to the loo still, don't you?'

Audrey frowned at me. ‘Don't be disgusting. Of course I do. Anyway, how is poor Holden?'

‘I don't know. I haven't spoken to him since it happened. You know, men seem to take a pride in reserving talking, proper talking I mean, until there's a crisis. I just wish they'd realise that if they had got into the habit of speaking little and often, there probably wouldn't be a crisis in the first place. It's like having a house and refusing to do any maintenance, then acting all hurt and confused when the roof collapses and they're faced with doing some major work. I ask you, where is the man who likes nothing better than settling down with a bottle of wine in front of a fire for a really good talk?'

‘Nowhere, unless he's gay. Now dear Robbie, you remember Robbie Spink?' I shook my head. ‘Of course you do. Anyway, he was a wonderful chatter. He would ring up and say, “Audrey, darling, let's chat.” And did we chat…'

‘Why?' Lotten asked again. She sounded tired. Not angry, just very tired and rather sad. ‘I need to know why?'

Linus had been sitting with his head in his hands. Now he looked up, his eyes aching as if they had had to be squeezed into their sockets. It was four o'clock in the morning and they had been talking since before midnight. He couldn't think what to say any more. Or rather, there was too much to say, words that would shatter what was left of his marriage. Feebly he shrugged his shoulders, hating himself for not at least being able to give her the comfort of a reason.

‘Did you ever stop to think about the effect of what you were doing on the rest of us?' Lotten's voice had recovered its hard edge. Linus
just looked at her with his aching eyes. ‘God, you're pathetic!' Lotten slammed down her fist on the kitchen table.

‘I'm sorry.'

‘I'm sorry,' she mimicked. ‘Well not half as sorry as I am, and not half as sorry as you're going to be either.'

They had been past this post before. Several times. Tears, threats, resignation, anger, round and round. Linus knew he had to listen, it was the least he owed her. A friend of Lotten who also knew Katja had told her about the affair.

‘How could you?' Lotten said again. What was he supposed to answer? The truth? They would never survive the truth.

‘What were you thinking of? Not of your family, that's for sure.'

‘It only happened once,' he said for the tenth time.

‘You creep, as if that makes it all right.' But her voice was resigned. She stood up. ‘D'you want some coffee?'

He nodded. ‘Please,' he said, as he watched her fill the kettle, get the mugs out, his ‘Genius at Work' one given to him by Lotten when they were first married, her ‘Wild Thing' one sold in aid of an animal charity. Small everyday rituals observed in the middle of a war.

‘I might consider forgiving you,' Lotten said, quite calmly, as she sat down again, pushing his mug towards him across the table. ‘But there will have to be some changes, and some promises.'

Linus listened to the list of changes required and to the charges against him. He was obsessed with his work. He was a weekend dad. He was inattentive to Lotten's needs. He took her for granted. He left everything at home to her. He didn't do his share of the housework. He was self-absorbed and, while he was about it, could he do something about that ridiculous laugh.

That, Linus thought, was some list. ‘You have to address all these things,' Lotten continued and Linus imagined doing so, taking the complaints one by one. The first one would be a brown envelope: Linus Stendal, The Office, Escape Route One. The next was a small white one with childish writing. To Dad, Weekend Street…

‘Linus, are you listening to me?'

Brought back to the present he said, ‘Yes, yes of course.'

‘And I will have to try to learn to trust you again and that won't be easy. Maybe I never will.'

Two things struck Linus. One was that Lotten had not once appeared to doubt that he wanted to remain married, the other that it seemed almost as if she must just have been waiting for an excuse to pour out her dissatisfaction with him. She must have worked out her catalogue of complaints a long time ago, then tucked it away for a rainy day.

Lotten went to the bathroom. Linus sat back and closed his eyes. It occurred to him that he might have a list of his own. Be interested in my work, it would read, not just its rewards. Allow me a chance to be the kind of father I
can
be, not the kind you think I
ought
to be.
Want
me, don't just
let
me. Don't talk everything to pieces. Allow me some space. Don't shut me out of the running of our home. Have some dreams of your own. Love me for who I am, not for who you think you can turn me into.

But he was the sinner; what business did he have making requests?

‘So what will it be?' Lotten had returned from the bathroom and stood before him, feet level, hip distance apart as if she were about to do a knee bend, her hands on her hips.

‘I'll try,' he said. ‘Really, I'll try.'

‘So you and your husband are back together?' I asked Tammy Jones. There was a moment's hesitation from the woman in the apricot-coloured armchair opposite me, a woman so well preserved that she might well survive two hundred years below the sea and still come up looking good. A manicured finger swept away an invisible strand of hair. I could have told her that it would have been easier to escape from Alcatraz than from her lacquered chignon, but instead I just waited, looking interested. That's a good tip, by the way, for any aspiring interviewer, just wait and look interested. Few people can face a silence and not yearn to fill it and even fewer can resist filling it with little titbits of themselves.

‘In a way, we are, yes,' Tammy Jones said at last. I waited and looked interested.

‘Oh, it probably all sounds pathetic to you. You're young, you've got a career, your life ahead of you.' Tammy Jones leant towards me. ‘But what have I got?' She looked at me intently. ‘You tell me. I gave up my career to look after him and our children, I was quite a successful model once, you know.' I nodded sympathetically and she continued, ‘I've given my life to being Mrs Barry Jones. So what choice do I have? Of course I've taken him back. It's either that, or having to admit to the world and myself that I've wasted my time on someone totally undeserving. I'd be like those wretched Russians who'd spent their lives sacrificing everything for the revolution, only to be told it was all a dreadful mistake in the first place.' She paused again, then she looked me straight in the eye. ‘And he's not a bad man, Barry.'

‘I'm sure he isn't,' I said. ‘And for what it's worth, I'm truly glad to hear you're back together.' I meant it. The Greek Chorus in the background of my life, announcing the progression of Barry Jones's
downfall, had been a constant reminder of my part in it. I wanted things to pick up for him and his family.

‘It's nice of you to care,' Tammy Jones said. ‘I'm afraid I always think of journalists, especially female ones, as completely ruthless and unfeeling.'

I wondered if this was the time to tell her that it was I who had started the ball rolling downhill? Instead I asked, ‘So you don't blame the
Chronicle
for exposing the affair?'

She shrugged. ‘It would have come out sooner or later. These things always do.'

‘And anyway,' I said, pushing my luck, ‘who wants to live a lie?'

‘Oh, lots of people.' She smiled a pale smile. ‘But with you lot around that's getting increasingly difficult.'

‘But you've decided to forgive him.'

She nodded sadly. ‘Forgive, yes, but not forget. Never forget.' Her expression changed to one of contempt and she lunged forward and reached for a cigarette from the silver box on the glass-topped coffee table. ‘Can you believe how plain that bloody woman is? None of our friends could. They'd look at me and at pictures of her, and they just thought the man had gone mad.' She lit the cigarette and inhaled deeply as her features rearranged themselves back into a sad but dignified mask. ‘Normally, in a man his age I would say it was sex, you know the thing?' I nodded, of course I did. ‘Middle-aged man wanting to prove to himself that he's still attractive, still got what it takes, that kind of thing. But with her… he would have had to put a sack over her head.' She laughed shrilly and stubbed out the cigarette, jabbing it down in the ashtray as if it were the much despised face of her rival.

‘And what about Barry's television career?' I asked. ‘Many commentators believe it will never recover.'

‘The public adores him,' she said in a flat voice. She gave a small smile and shrugged. ‘But who knows? If it's over it's over.'

I wondered if maybe she'd be quite happy if it was. ‘But you have forgiven him?'

Tammy Jones opened her wide eyes even wider. ‘Oh yes,' she said.

I drove off back south through the rush-hour traffic, thinking that Barry Jones's penance was just beginning. I arrived home exhausted and went straight to the fridge and brought out a bottle of white wine. The bang as I closed the fridge sent me reeling backwards into the kitchen table. Next I saw the debris flying through the air outside my window and I rushed out into the street, the bottle still in my hand. The air was so thick with dust that at first I couldn't see for more than a couple of inches ahead. Coughing, I bumped into Elsa. I grabbed her by the shoulder just as the second explosion erupted, diving behind the hedge for cover as a television aerial flew through the air, landing with a clank and a rattle just feet from where we were crouching. Seconds later it was followed by an arm.

‘An arm!' I shrieked. ‘Elsa, oh my God, an arm!' I hid my face on her shoulder and when I looked up again the dust had cleared a little and I could see that the arm, draped across the low hedge and looking eerily like one of Elsa's ‘pieces', was hairy and adorned with a tattoo of a leering mermaid. Last time I had seen that arm it had been attached to Mr Hamilton's shoulder. ‘Oh Elsa,' I whispered into the terrible silence. ‘Where is the rest of him?'

The street was full of noise once more. Someone sobbing, me. People shouting questions, dogs barking and, just as I got to my feet, the sound of sirens. The police car arrived first, followed by two fire engines and an ambulance. Elsa and I, together with everyone else on the street, were hustled away to safety in a nearby church hall as our road was cordoned off.

It was gas. Elsa nodded sagely over her cup of tea. We had been allowed back into our house and were in her kitchen. ‘It's as Jim always said, “Gas is a mixed blessing.” We were always electric. He insisted on it.'

I looked at the plush ear above the kitchen table and shuddered. Elsa followed my gaze. ‘My pieces giving you the heebie-jeebies?'

I nodded. ‘A bit.'

‘Don't look at them,' Elsa advised. I burst into tears and Elsa leant across the table and patted my hand. ‘It's only natural that you should have a cry,' she said. ‘I lived through the Blitz so nothing much shocks me, I'm afraid, but you young people, you're different.'

‘But you could do nothing about the Blitz,' I said, wiping my eyes with the back of my hand. ‘It wasn't your responsibility.'

Elsa straightened in her chair. ‘It certainly was not. No, the responsibility for that rests fair and square with Mr Hitler and don't anyone try to tell me differently.'

‘I smelt gas yesterday,' I mumbled. ‘Outside the Hamiltons'. I told them. I rang the doorbell and I told them. I suggested they call the gas board. I even offered to do it myself. He practically slammed the door in my face;
EastEnders
was about to start. I assumed they'd do something about it. Even when I smelt the gas this morning I assumed they'd called and that it was being looked into. I shouldn't have.'