Games People Play (37 page)

Rachel

We get to the jetty, and I’m quite surprised to see a big launch bobbing up and down in the murky water, and a coach load of Japanese tourists embarking along a precarious-looking gangplank. But when I limp over to inspect the timetable, I discover that the scheduled boat services only run between April and September.

‘We can’t get on this one,’ I call to Karl. ‘It must be a private party.’ I look around to see if there are any nearby benches where we can sit and eat our lunch; but Karl is not so easily deterred. He marches up to the Japanese tour guide – identifiable by the large, furled umbrella he points straight up towards the sky – and I watch with amusement as he bows politely. I don’t hear what he says, but the next minute, he turns to me and gives a big thumbs-up.

‘Have you just scrounged us a lift on someone else’s boat?’ I ask, laughing in disbelief, hopping towards the gangplank.

‘You don’t ask; you don’t get,’ he says philosophically, steering me carefully up. I nod thanks to the tour guide, and he nods back again.

‘Are you sure this boat is going to Hampton Court? I don’t want to end up at Westminster Pier. It’ll cost a fortune in a cab to get home again.’

‘I checked,’ he confirms, settling me on a wooden bench which runs around the open back of the boat.

‘Now, madam, please relax and enjoy the scenery. It seems there is a bar inside so perhaps it will be best if we drink our wine – what’s the word in English?- discreetly.’

Karl has thought of everything. He’s bought red wine in a screwtop bottle, serviettes, plastic cups, little trays of salad with plastic forks attached to the lid, fresh bread, crisps (‘I love your English crisps!’ he says, with enthusiasm), fruit, chocolate ...I didn’t realize I was so hungry until he starts getting it all out of the M&S bags.

He unscrews the wine and pours me some, handing it over with a flourish. I rest my crutches on the floor of the boat and touch cups with him. It’s cold out here, but not unpleasant with my big jacket done up and my fingerless gloves on.

‘Cheers!’ he beams. ‘This is very exciting for me, I must say.’

I toast him back, smiling at him in admiration. I’d never in a million years have the nerve to barge (no pun intended) on to someone else’s boat trip, but Karl makes it appear perfectly natural. He strikes me as someone who probably gets his own way most of the time, just through charm and chutzpah. And it really doesn’t seem to be a problem – the Japanese tour group is inside the main area of the boat, listening to a commentary. Nobody is paying us any attention.

The boat revs up its engines and begins to chug away downstream as Karl and I make inroads into our impromptu picnic.

‘This is delicious,’ I remark, tucking into my pasta salad.

The riverside developments slide past, block after block of architecturally complicated apartment complexes in shades of sand and rust, terracotta and cream. They have wavy balconies, big windows, private jetties.

‘I’d love to live in one of those flats,’ I say, pointing at one with the end of my fork. ‘They look so nice, don’t they?’

Karl inclines his head slowly, in contemplation.

‘
Ja-a
,’ he says doubtfully. ‘It is nice, but I think for me I prefer countryside. A house with fields around, and not too many other houses. Perhaps a horse to ride also.’

I think of my Fantasy Family. We’d live in a house like that. I always wanted a pony. Karl is so approachable that I almost tell him about this invented family of mine. Thankfully, I manage not to; partly because it might make him think it’s an inherent criticism of Mum, and partly because it makes me sound like a right sad sack.

‘Yes, wouldn’t that be great? I’m thinking about moving soon myself, actually. Can’t afford a flat like these, but hopefully I’ll be able to get a little one-bedroom place somewhere nearby. Even a studio. I don’t want to live with Dad anymore.’

I swallow a mouthful of wine, alongside a big gob of guilt that I’ll be leaving Dad too, so soon after Anthea, and when he’s at his lowest.

‘He seems ...I don’t wish to sound rude ...a little intense,’ Karl ventures, popping open a big bag of sea salt and vinegar crisps and extracting a large handful, which he holds out to me on his palm, as if offering sugar lumps to the pony we both wanted. ‘Is he always like that?’

I accept some crisps, transferring them from his palm to mine. Crumbs of salt and crisp stick to my woolly gloves, and their sharpness hits the back of my tongue. They taste so good with the wine. I can feel my shoulders beginning to relax, and my knee has stopped aching, even after the walk down to the jetty.

‘No. I’ve never seen him this bad.’ I hesitate, wondering if Mum’s told him about Dad’s charges. ‘He’s under a lot of stress at the moment. His girlfriend’s just left him – I think that’s why he was so mad at Mum. He thought she had something to do with it, but of course she didn’t. She’s so over Dad, by the way,’ I add hastily, not wanting Karl to think that Mum is still hung up on Dad in case it puts Karl off her.

I look at Karl again, through fresh eyes, as a potential stepfather, but I can’t quite see it somehow. He’s got to be a lot younger than Mum. And besides, the way he is gazing at me is far from fatherly ...For a brief moment I realize with embarrassment that we are looking into each other’s eyes, and I snap my head away, concentrating on the riverbanks slipping by. Something occurs to me, and I gasp with horror at my thoughtlessness. ‘Oh no – wasn’t Mum meant to come and join us? She thinks we’re in that restaurant near the tennis club ...She can’t join us on a boat!’ I feel mean and selfish, railroading her date like this. How awful. I’ve practically kidnapped her potential boyfriend.

Or rather, he’s practically kidnapped me...but Mum might not see it that way.

Karl is, as ever, unfazed. ‘Don’t worry. She said she will ring you when she is ready. This will not be a long boat ride, the guide told me. Susie has a car, doesn’t she? She could meet us at Hampton Court.’

I feel better again. He’s right: it’s hardly as if we’ve set off down the Limpopo on a six-month expedition.

Karl fills up my glass again, and I’m surprised that I got through the first one so quickly. The wine is warming me, mellowing my insides and making my fingers tingle. I don’t usually drink red wine, but this is delicious.

‘I never understood before what it means when people talk about the “notes” in the taste of a wine,’ I say. ‘But I can taste all sorts of things in this one. Blackberry, for example.’

Karl exaggeratedly swooshes wine around inside his mouth and pretends to think. ‘Let’s see now ...a hint of peppercorn.’

I laugh. ‘No way!’

‘Yes way. It doesn’t matter that you can’t taste pepper, because I am only describing what
I
can taste. It is funny that people often think wine tasting is so difficult and mysterious, when it is really just describing what you personally taste. Nobody would laugh if you said “that motorbike sounds like a chainsaw”, would they? It’s just your comparison of the sound to something else.’

I am impressed. There is something about Karl which is refreshingly sophisticated, at least to my impressionable eyes. For the first time, I am making a mental comparison between Mark and somebody else which reflects
un
favourably on Mark. Mark knew sod all about wine. He’d never have the brass neck to hitch a lift on someone else’s boat. He only ever ordered chicken in restaurants (and then only if they didn’t serve burgers). I get the feeling that Karl’s tastes are a lot more mature.

Suddenly, two things occur to me: the first, that perhaps at last I’m getting over Mark, and the second, that I would really like to go out to dinner with Karl some time. I wonder how serious Mum is about him...

‘Liquorice,’ says Karl thoughtfully.

My turn. Another big mouthful. ‘Um ...Tobacco!’

‘Interesting one. Plums.’

I can’t think of anything else, but my cup is empty again, and once more Karl fills it.

A young Japanese boy comes out on the rear deck of the boat. He is trendy, with thick-rimmed black oblong glasses, floppy black hair and baggy Evisu jeans. He has a Polaroid camera around his neck and another digital camera in his hands. He nods and smiles, and points towards the sky behind us. We look around to see a huge black cloud lowering over the horizon, but it’s lit up by the weak winter sun, and it makes the sky seem alive, almost fizzing with dark energy. A full rainbow is curving over the river, its colours clear and sharp against the darkness.

‘That’s a big storm,’ I say in awe. ‘Hope it doesn’t come this way.’

The boy leans on the rail next to us and raises his digital camera to his eye. There is a sudden flurry of movement from the trees on the riverbank to our left and a large flock of bright green birds flies across the river, their feathers almost fluorescent in the sun against the black cloud. They shriek joyously as they cross exactly beneath the rainbow.

‘It’s the green parrots!’ I exclaim with delight.

‘But I didn’t think England had wild parrots?’ Karl looks mystified. ‘Germany does not.’

‘No, we don’t, generally. But for some reason, there are loads of them in this area. Nobody knows where they came from originally; there are all sorts of theories, like they escaped off a film set in the seventies, and bred in the wild. They’re a bit of a nuisance in people’s gardens, but they look nice.’

The Japanese boy is overjoyed. He shows us the photo he’s just taken, on the screen of his camera. It’s beautiful: parrots, sunlight, cloud, rainbow.

‘That’s perfect,’ I say, smiling back at him. ‘What a lovely souvenir.’

On impulse, the boy lifts his Polaroid and gestures for Karl and me to move closer together. Karl puts his arm around me and for a moment my breath stops. We lift our cups and beam at the camera. A square of plastic shoots out of the boxy contraption, and the boy hands it to Karl.

‘Thank you very much,’ Karl says in that formal way of his. ‘Would you like to join us for a drink? You could perhaps get another glass from the bar.’

He gestures to the wine bottle. The boy clearly doesn’t speak any English, but he smiles and shakes his head and nods, all at the same time, before retreating back inside to join the rest of the group.

After that, we are undisturbed. People pop in and out to take photos, but they don’t approach us. We peel the plastic covering off the Polaroid and laugh at our grinning heads framed in the photograph. The first bottle of wine is finished, so Karl braves the bar inside to buy another. I surreptitiously examine the photograph while he’s queuing, and it makes me smile. I tuck it safely in my jacket pocket, feeling happier than I have for ages. I was a little concerned that the large amounts of lunchtime alcohol might render me over-emotional, possibly even tearful – which would be mortifying – but instead I feel a weird euphoric freedom, as if being on the river with Karl grants me a sort of diplomatic immunity to all the year’s worries. The parrots are still swooping back and forth across the water, wheeling and banking in perfect synchronicity. It’s magical to watch.

‘I don’t think this wine will be quite so nice,’ Karl says, coming back with an open bottle and two proper wine glasses, ‘but never mind.’

It doesn’t taste much different to the first one, to my untrained palate. We finish our picnic, and Karl packs away the empty salad containers and crisp packets. He looks up and smiles at me, and my belly does something strange. I am tempted to ask how long he’s over here for, but am worried that he might think I’m being too forward. I am also tempted to text my mother and tell her that I really like Karl ...I mean, she’s talking about going back to Lawrence soon, so surely she and Karl would be a non-starter? Mind you, he doesn’t even live in England, so the same might go for us ...and maybe he doesn’t even remotely fancy me. I’m not very good at picking up signals. Perhaps that’s because he hasn’t given me any? Aargh. I don’t know. I feel totally at sea.

‘So where do you stay when you’re in London?’ I ask him as the reddish brown chimney stacks of Hampton Court Palace appear in the distance, to the right-hand-side of the boat. The starboard side? I’m never sure.

‘I have good friends who live in Hammersmith. They are from my home town of Stuttgart – I went to school with Pieter. He married an English girl and moved over here ten years ago. They have a spare room which they call “Karl’s room”. I stay there often.’

‘That’s nice,’ I say drowsily. The wine has really gone to my head now. I am fighting an urge to sink down against Karl’s broad shoulder and have a snooze.

I wonder what on earth we’re going to do once we get to our destination. Get a cab back, I suppose. I realize that I’m really disappointed that the boat trip is about to end.

‘Thank you for this, Karl, I’ve really enjoyed it.’ I force myself to wake up a bit, and smile at him. ‘Everything’s been so grim lately, with...’ Again, I wonder how much he knows about our family, ‘...all the various traumas which’ve been going on. It’s so nice to get away from it all and not think about anything.’

‘I have enjoyed it too, very much. It’s a pity your knee is injured, otherwise perhaps we could go for a walk along the river now.’

‘Nice idea, but if my knee weren’t injured, I wouldn’t have time to walk anywhere. I’d be on court, or in the gym, training.’

‘How do you feel, since you cannot train or play for these past months?’

I consider the question for a minute. ‘Well. It’s awful being this immobile, obviously, and it’s a drag having to be doing physio all the time. But….’ I hesitate. This is something I haven’t been able to admit to anyone else, and I say it in a rush. ‘Actually, I’m not missing the tournaments. I’m not missing the airports, or the waiting around, or the being knocked out, and all the endless drills and matches and fitness regimes, Dad shouting at me, being knackered all the time ...I feel like I’m really having a rest. And I’ve done a lot of stuff I wouldn’t normally have done.’

‘Such as?’

‘Well ...er ...sketching, I suppose. And some watercolour things, nothing special, just little crappy pictures. But I really enjoy it.’ Why do I feel so defensive admitting it, as if it’s a vice?