It Had to Be You (14 page)

‘So what did Mrs Tomlinson from number forty-four say?’

‘Do you know, I’m not sure now if it was number forty-four. I think she might have been from number forty-two … Yes, I think she was, because number forty-four was right opposite the letter box and had those purple curtains, and I said to Mrs Tomlinson, “What sort of person chooses curtains that colour? Actually chooses them?”’

‘Mum, what did Mrs Tomlinson say?’

‘She said, “People who know no better.”’

‘No, no. Not about the curtains. What you were going to say before that?’

‘It’s gone. Don’t mock.’

‘I’m not mocking.’

‘You’ll get like it one day. You’ll see.’

‘I’m not mocking, Mum.’

‘Where was I? Prompt me.’

Oh, God. What had she been talking about?

‘You can’t remember. You weren’t listening.’

‘I was listening. You hadn’t got round to what you were talking about. You’d gone into a detour about Mrs Thingummy’s curtains.’

‘Tomlinson.’

‘Mrs Tomlinson’s curtains.’

The conversation was shaped like a maze. Would he ever escape from it?

‘They weren’t Mrs Tomlinson’s curtains. That was the whole point of it. They were the curtains of the woman next door. I was going to tell you something about Mrs Tomlinson. Something she said. It’s almost there. Oh, it
is
frustrating. I’ll remember the moment you’ve gone.’

Gone. Eventually he would be gone. Here was a cue to begin to depart. He opened the door, very slowly, as inconspicuously as possible. But he found that he just couldn’t walk through it. Not yet. Not till she’d remembered.

He tried harder, thought back over the start of the conversation, and inspiration struck.

‘It was following on from your saying that I’d been a good husband.’

‘That was it. Thank you. If you’d said that in the first place. Mrs Tomlinson said once, out of the blue, right out of the blue, she said, “Do you know, Kathleen, what is one of the most wonderful feelings in the whole wide world?” and I said, “No, Gladys, I do not. What is one of the most wonderful feelings in the whole wide world?” and she said, “One of the most wonderful feelings in the whole wide world, Kathleen, is when you wake up one morning and realise that you did nothing to be remotely ashamed of yesterday.”’

‘That’s very good, Mum.’

‘Isn’t it? And I think you can say that, can’t you? Every morning.’

Oh, Mum, Mum, how little of me you know. Or am I underestimating you? Are you being devious? Are you putting the knife in, as mothers do?

He gave her a quick kiss on the cheek, and walked through the door. He had made it. He was out.

There was still time to kill before he met Mike. He’d said seven o’clock. God, it was in danger of being a long evening. He dreaded all the drinking that he would have to do. Correction. He had the car. He dreaded all the drinking that he wouldn’t be able to do. Sitting watching Mike drinking. It would be about as exciting as watching synchronised swimming. He couldn’t face it without a drink.

He stopped in a cavernous pub with a car park big enough for a rugby club. The huge bar smelt of stale chips and disinfectant. There were five other customers, three sad men at the bar and a couple with just about a full set of teeth between them kissing and cuddling under the blackboard menu, on which was chalked ‘
Special of the Day – Burger and Chips
’.

He ordered a single gin and tonic, and poured the whole bottle of tonic in. He sat opposite the clock, and decided to ration himself to a sip every two minutes. It wasn’t long before he noticed that the clock had stopped. After a few moments he realised that this was actually a stroke of luck. He began to count the seconds to himself, and took a sip every time he reached a hundred and twenty. That way his mind was fully occupied. There was no room for useless anticipation of great moments with Helen or unwanted nostalgia for great moments with Deborah.

He savoured each sip, seeking out the sharp juniper taste of the gin under the sweet quinine of the tonic. God, how he longed to drink it faster.

The three men at the bar were hardly speaking, but he heard one of them say, ‘Fucking bastard immigrants, they’re going to destroy our whole way of life.’

He longed to shout, ‘What way of life?’ but managed not to.

A thought occurred to him. He would tell Mike about Ed’s disappearance. Mike had known Ed. It would take up a minute or two. Any topic of conversation was welcome, to help while away the long hours of struggle.

He needed to ring Jane first to check if Ed had been found.

He dialled her number. His phone told him that there was no network coverage.

‘No fucking reception in here,’ called out one of the sad men, ‘and that goes for that fucking cow behind the fucking bar too.’

‘Thank you very much,’ said James with exaggerated politeness, and the three men went, ‘Ooooh! Thank you very much!’ in posh unison, and the dentally challenged lovers looked up and cackled before resuming their exploration of the gaps in each other’s mouths.

James drained the rest of his gin and tonic in three long, luscious gulps, and walked defiantly to the bar to hand over his empty glass.

‘Thank you very much,’ he said again, but this time there was no response from the men.

‘Thanks,’ said the barmaid. ‘See you later.’

No chance.

He phoned Jane from the car park.

‘Hello, Jane, I’ve been thinking about you. I wondered if there’d been any developments.’

‘Thanks. No. Nothing.’

‘Oh, Jane. I’m sorry.’

‘Yeah, well, it is pretty terrible, James. The not knowing. It’s … indescribable actually.’

‘I can imagine.’

‘I’m all right. The family are doing shifts of Jane-sitting. I’m coping. But how about you?’

‘Bearing up. No alternative. But at least I have something to try to get over. You just don’t know.’

‘I know. Every time the phone rings my heart races. Will it be, “I’m afraid I have bad news, Mrs Winterburn”? or, “It’s me. Sorry about this, but can we arrange a time next week when I can come round and collect my things?”’

‘I’m really sorry, Jane. If there’s anything I can do …’

‘There isn’t really. Thanks for ringing. I’ll let you know if anything happens.’

‘Thanks. Jane?’

‘Yes?’

‘I … hope you’ll be all right.’

‘Thanks.’

He put the phone down, and breathed a sigh of deep relief. He had been in danger of saying something unwisely personal.

He drove slowly, so slowly, to Acton and Mike’s flat – well, bedsit, but people didn’t seem to use that term any more.

He was pleased to see that Mike was looking slightly less slovenly than the last time he’d seen him. The way he was dressed, he looked ready for combat in Afghanistan – in fact, James thought, maybe better prepared than the troops, if rumour was anything to go by, but at least he’d assembled a full range of gear on which no food had been dropped.

He invited James in, but the smell of stale fat, stale beer and urine discouraged him.

James drove to a pub in Ealing that he said was the best in the area, and compared to the Disinfectant Arms it was Raffles in Singapore. Horse brasses abounded though no member of staff would have dared to go near a horse. Sky Sports was on in one corner, with a loop of uninteresting facts coming round every seventy-eight seconds.

James took care to order the first round.

‘Bloody Wimbledon,’ said Mike aggressively as they took their pints to a corner of the beer garden. James wouldn’t have dared drink a gin and tonic in Mike’s presence. It would have precipitated a diatribe about going posh. ‘Oh, well, only forty-two days to the new football season.’

James suffered from a great handicap in male society. He knew nothing about football and cared less. But Mike, he knew, had very little left in his life besides football, now Melanie had left him. He even had two fantasy teams with the
Daily Telegraph
. Better get the football chat over.

‘How are the Arsenal going to do this year?’

Mike was contemptuous.

‘Tottenham. I’m a Spurs man. Can’t you see the suffering in my face?’

‘Sorry.’

There followed a cluster of football jokes. Tottenham have so many Jewish supporters they’re renaming it Tottenham Hutzpah. My brother knows so little about football he thinks Glenn Hoddle is a malt whisky. James laughed, but it wasn’t possible to laugh sufficiently to salve Mike’s insecurities. Arsenal are so dirty one of their players named his autobiography
Mein Bergkamp
. James couldn’t even pretend to laugh at this one. He had never heard of Dennis Bergkamp. The mood was uneasy. In this pub, with this man, it was James who felt the misfit. That was so unfair.

‘Same again?’ asked Mike, who was drinking faster than James.

‘I’ll get them. This evening’s on me.’

‘No.’

‘What?’

‘I don’t want your charity. I have money. I get benefits.’

‘Compromise. We share the rounds and then I’ll take you for a curry, on me. I long for a good curry. It was one of the few things Deborah and I didn’t agree about. Well, she said they put weight on. She was big framed. She had to be careful. We’ll have one more, and then I’ll treat you to a curry. Please. I want to.’

‘OK. Agreed.’

Mike bought another round.

‘Cheers.’

‘Cheers.’

‘I’m sorry I’m sometimes so stroppy with you,’ said Mike. ‘You’re the only one who ever comes to see me.’

This made James feel uneasy. He was so aware that he never invited Mike into his life. It came to him in a flash now that this wasn’t just because he was ashamed of how Mike was, but also because he was ashamed of how he was – his cosy life, his tasteful middle-class house, the safeness, the smugness.

‘Except Roger Dodds.’

‘What?’

Returning from his thoughts, James had no idea what Mike was talking about.

‘He invited me to a party the other day. Private room above some pub in Chelsea. Right out of the blue. I didn’t even know he still had my address. It was his fiftieth. He’s a bit older than the rest of us. He didn’t come to Cambridge straight from school. Some kind of health problem. Mind you, I think he’d invited anyone he could lay his hands on.’

‘He didn’t invite me.’

‘Oops.’

A particularly noisy plane roared throatily towards Heathrow, drowning for a moment the endless murmur of traffic on the still evening air.

‘So, I was invited to something and you weren’t.’

It would be mean to resent Mike’s little triumph, but James couldn’t help being miffed. Why hadn’t Roger invited him?

Then he remembered something Jane had said.

‘Did you see Ed there at all?’

‘Ed Winterburn?’

‘Yes.’

‘No.’ Mike had a rather strange expression. ‘Why?’

‘He’s disappeared.’

‘Ed?’

‘Yes.’

‘Disappeared?’

‘Yes.’

‘Good God. Good God. Ed!’

‘I know. Not exactly the disappearing type.’

‘More the reappearing type when you don’t want him. Still … disappeared! What’s Roger Dodds got to do with it?’

‘Jane said that he went up to Chelsea for Roger Dodds’s party, and hasn’t been seen since.’

‘Hell’s bells.’

‘He wasn’t there?’

‘Absolutely not. Well, I didn’t see him anyway. I suppose he could have been there. It
was
very crowded. But I put myself about quite a bit, you know, quite a lot of people I hadn’t seen for years, I’d have thought I would have seen him if he’d been there.’

In no time their glasses were empty and instead of going to the restaurant James found himself buying a third pint. A helicopter added to the evening’s varied traffic noises. There was just the faintest breeze, but it was still hot in the beer garden. Conversation was proving so much easier than it usually was with Mike. James told of his activities during the last few days. Mike talked proudly of his success with his fantasy football team at the pub last season, and described quite amusingly the torments Tottenham Hotspur had put him through over the years. But all the time James had the feeling that something was not quite right.

Memories of Roger Dodds led inevitably to Cambridge. People who have been to Cambridge never quite get over it, however hard they try.

Mike bought his second round. James didn’t want a fourth pint, but it would be patronising to refuse. Sometimes social considerations were more important than one’s own desires. He wondered how many extra drinks the rounds system caused in a year. It must have been invented by a landlord.

They found a safe subject to chat about. People with whom they had both lost contact.

‘Do you remember the weekend when your parents were away and you and me and Willy Tompkins and Derek Hammond cycled over from Cambridge to your house for the weekend?’

Mike smiled at the memory.

‘Yeah, it was fun.’

‘We all swam in the Ouse, which seems ridiculous now, but it was hot like it is this week. I didn’t know the Fens.’

‘Lucky you. They’re horrid. Flat and the soil’s almost black, and silly straight rivers everywhere, and ugly, stunted little houses.’

‘Well, what I remember is beautiful wide sunsets and distant church spires and space. And we caught all those perch in some unprepossessing little river that nobody knew was there, but it wasn’t called a river, it was the something drain, picturesque Dickensian name.’

Again, James had the feeling that something was wrong. Mike seemed wary somehow.

‘I don’t remember that. I don’t know where you mean.’

‘You must. It was your secret place, you said.’

‘So secret I’ve forgotten it. James, it’s all gone. I’ve been drinking myself to death. My mind’s shot. My memory’s buggered.’

‘We went to your pub, and chatted to the locals, and played dominoes and darts and shove halfpenny, and challenged the locals, and we walked, and we ate endless amounts of those perch that we’d caught, and it was wonderful. I mean, it all seems so terribly innocent now, but it was all we needed, all we wanted. We ended up drunk, but we didn’t go out to get drunk. Look at these people here. Don’t you sense a communal desperation? Look at that lot over there, knocking back their shots. The aim is to get pissed. We didn’t go out to get pissed. We got pissed because we were enjoying ourselves. With people we didn’t know. We chatted to locals, farmhands, anybody. All the people here are in self-contained groups. You couldn’t break in. They wouldn’t let you. And that’s not what pubs are about.’