It Had to Be You (16 page)

‘There’s a first time for everything,’ she said, trying but not quite succeeding to make a little joke of it.

He thought of saying, ‘I had a lot to drink last night,’ but that might have led her to think that he should have prepared for this great day less carelessly, so instead he said, ‘I’ve had a very demanding and exhausting week.’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said, telling the same lie that a million women had told before. Well, probably it wasn’t entirely a lie. It mattered and it didn’t matter. It might turn out to matter and it might not. ‘Perhaps we could try again later.’

He didn’t reply. He knew that they couldn’t. Not today, anyway. Besides, he shrank from that word – ‘try’. He had never had to try.

He had his third shower of the day. What a week it was also turning out to be for showers.

They were fully dressed again, standing in her coolly contemporary minimalist living room, with its stylish Scandinavian furniture and fittings. It was the first day of the rest of their lives. It was the first day in which he hadn’t got another woman to scurry home towards. It was twenty-seven minutes past three. He couldn’t leave early, now that he didn’t have to. Goddamn it, he almost wished he did have to.

‘What do you fancy doing?’ she asked.

Sad words. Sad words.

‘I don’t know.’

An even sadder reply.

‘Do you fancy a walk?’

‘I really don’t. It’s so hot.’

It wasn’t just the heat. It was the image. The Sunday afternoon stroll. The whole family, or just the happy couple, out on their post-prandial but not post-coital walk. On Christmas Day they’d be wearing their new scarves, but at any time of the year they’d look like the people in adverts for mortgages.

The afternoon hung before them as if this was a hospital visit. Neither could admit the desperation of this moment.

‘We could always …’ her words almost refused to come, she couldn’t look him in the eyes, ‘… play Scrabble.’

From sex to Scrabble in twenty agonising minutes. Well, why not? It would pass the time.

It would pass the time! Was that what their great day had come to?

‘OK.’

‘Red or white?’

‘Have you got white chilled?’

‘Do you really think you need to ask me that?’

They decided to play in the communal gardens. That was good, because the little expedition took some time to organise – folding table, folding chairs, bottle of New Zealand Sauvignon, wine chiller, glasses, parasol. The intrepid travellers braved the long stairs, dark and gloomy now that the sun had moved on – well, now that the apartment block had rotated somewhat. The narrow back door proved no great obstacle to these brave wanderers, and quite soon they had set up their base camp in an unexplored corner of the private gardens.

James felt about sixty-seven.

When one is playing a game of Scrabble one has to be competitive, or there really is no point. James decided to show this whippersnapper how the game should be played. But it was not his day. At one stage he had seven vowels. At another, seven consonants. He had the J, but in the course of the game Helen had the X, the Z, the Q (with a U), both blanks and three of the four Ss.

There came a delicate moment when James could make two very different words. Cunt or aunt. The word ‘cunt’ is a difficult one for the English middle classes, and this was a Sunday, and they were in the private garden of a very respectable apartment block, close to the spot where Kensington met Chelsea.

However, the word is in the dictionary, it is permissible and acceptable, and words in Scrabble have no meaning, no value beyond their score. And the C on a triple letter would score nine.

James decided to forgo the points and settle for ‘aunt’. A decision made in the interests of decency and respectability? No. An avoidance of a word that would lead back to thoughts of what hadn’t been and, today, couldn’t be.

By the time they had finished the game, and the wine, and had made the return expedition to the apartment, it was eleven minutes past six. It was still far too early to depart.

‘I saw a little pub round the corner,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t half fancy a pint. I’ve had enough wine.’

‘OK.’

They sat at the bar counter. Helen had a gin and tonic and made it last, James had two pints of bitter.

‘Shall I make you a bit of supper?’ she suggested.

‘That’d be great.’

They wandered back, arm in arm. He was ready for some more wine now. He really wanted to get roaring drunk, dangerous though that might be. She opened a bottle of red. Fleurie. Light wine for a heavy evening.

She rustled up a bit of supper. Couscous. He’d have bet on that.

‘How are you with beetroot?’ she asked. ‘Love it or hate it?’

‘No, I quite like it.’

Five years of seeing each other, and the beetroot question had never cropped up. He didn’t even know if she was for or against Marmite.

It was an interesting supper. A fiddly supper. A complicated supper. A delicate supper. It was as unlike Deborah’s succulent but straightforward ham and cheese and home-made pâté suppers as could be. It was none the worse for that.

And none the better.

Helen opened another bottle of Fleurie. James had the feeling that today he could have drunk the complete output of a medium-sized vineyard and still remained sober.

He saw Charlotte, saw her as he imagined she might look now, watching him with Helen. The image disturbed him.

It was time he went away, went home, stopped feeling maudlin.

But when Helen refilled his glass he didn’t protest. He just watched the red stream entering his glass, didn’t say a word.

They sat at the window and watched the light fade. They didn’t talk much now, they sat there like a couple who were already married, and he didn’t know whether that was good or bad. He began to want to see her naked again, but he knew that it would be no use. He’d had too much to drink. He didn’t want to hear her say, ‘It doesn’t matter’ again. He didn’t want to have to utter his fiftieth ‘sorry’ of the week.

When the bottle and both their glasses were empty, James pulled himself slowly to his feet.

‘Not putting pressure on,’ said Helen. ‘Honestly not.’

‘But?’

‘But … how long do you think I have to remain hidden away from the rest of your life?’

It was too early to mention his plan, the plan that he had worked out the other night when sleep wouldn’t come. But perhaps he was slightly drunk after all, and he found that he was telling her.

‘I thought we could go on a cruise, in a couple of months, say, because I don’t want to go in August, children and cruises don’t mix except on kid-friendly boats, which we’d both hate. September. Perhaps even a month’s cruise. To really nice places. On a good cruise line. Single-occupancy cabins, but we sleep together from the start. We go back home, and I say to people, “I’ve met someone,” and they say it’s too soon, I’m on the rebound, we shouldn’t flaunt ourselves out of respect, and I say, “But I love her. I’m not hiding her away. And I’m not on the rebound. This is the real thing, and I know Deborah would give it her blessing.” Admit it, darling. It’s not a bad plan.’

‘No, I admit it, it isn’t. But it’s
your
plan, not
our
plan.’

‘Come up with a better plan, then. I’ll listen.’

‘There is no better plan, and you know it. But it means that our new life will start with a lie.’

‘I’m afraid we both have to accept that that is inevitable.’

She came down the stairs with him, they held each other tight for almost a whole minute.

For the second day running, he had to leave his car and get a taxi home.

The alarm woke James at half past six. He awoke slowly, and from a long way away. His head was heavy. His sleep had been deep but troubled.

Why had the alarm gone off an hour early? That hour of missed sleep clung to his eyes.

Of course. He’d left his car near Helen’s apartment. He had to pick it up before parking charges became applicable. Eight-thirty, was it? Or eight? He couldn’t remember.

Helen’s apartment. Memories of yesterday flooded back. Sunday with Helen. It had been like sitting on a bouncy ball that had a very slow puncture.

He immersed himself in practicalities with some relief. Very calming, sometimes, practicalities. Shower. Dry. Dress. Breakfast. Coffee. Toast. Three-fruit marmalade on the first half-slice, honey on the second, then spreadable butter only, then medium-cut Seville orange marmalade. Pills. Quinapril, amlodipine and bisoprolol hemifumarate for the blood pressure. Simvastatin for the cholesterol. Cod liver oil with glucosamine for the joints. Nothing for the confusion in his soul, no cure known for that yet.

The soft plop of the newspaper onto the floor of the narrow hall.

Just time for a quick read over the last of the coffee. No point really, never anything worth … what??

James sighed deeply. It wasn’t a matter that really affected him, but it was one more source of tension, however slight.

He flung the newspaper into the waste bin, as if he blamed it for spoiling his coffee, and stepped out into the cool warmth of a perfect summer’s morning.

Deborah would never see, never feel, never smell another summer’s morning. He gasped at the wound this thought opened in his heart.

‘I don’t like burkas,’ said the taxi driver, as they saw a woman wearing one outside King’s Cross Station. ‘It’s not right, isn’t women covering their faces. It’s not British.’

James had a great respect for London taxi drivers, but he feared that this morning of all mornings he’d been unlucky. He hardly ever went on the underground, and never in heatwaves, when it stank. But now he wished that he had. A great weariness came over him. He felt that he was no longer capable of facing up to the world. If only the taxi driver was a radio, incapable of answering back. If only he could lean forward, grab his neck, and twist him to a music channel.

There was so much wrong in the world of immigration, yet it sounded awful to be against it. He didn’t really believe in multiculturalism, didn’t believe it was working, had serious doubts whether it ever could work, yet he believed passionately that all men (and women, oh, heavens, yes) were equal. He thought that in an ideal world the richer nations would help the people of every poorer country to become well-off-enough never to need to move from their homelands to the gloomy streets of places like Bradford and Peterborough. These issues were far too complicated to discuss with a taxi driver at twenty to eight in the morning. If he made the attempt there was a serious danger that he would sound like an ally. He was no ally. But if he argued against him he would be tied up in rings and get nowhere. He would never meet the taxi driver again. He would achieve nothing by arguing. And he didn’t much like burkas either, on security grounds, aesthetic grounds and sexist grounds. Sometimes the politically correct genes in his body ached when racism clashed with sexism.

No, there was no point. But he felt he had to say something. He decided to steer the driver into calmer waters.

‘Do you have much trouble with cyclists?’ he asked.

‘Do I have much trouble with cyclists? Them bastards. I hate ’em,’ said the taxi driver.

He felt that steering the driver into calmer waters had not been a success.

‘Don’t talk to me about cyclists. Go through red lights, they do. Cut across in front when you’ve got the right of way, they do. Slip through on the inside where you can’t see ’em.’

These weren’t calmer waters, but they were safer waters. James realised with a wry internal smile that while he would have hated to be thought of as racist or sexist, he wouldn’t much mind being thought of as cyclist. No, that would have to be cyclistist.

‘Think they’re above the law,’ he said.

‘Absolutely right,’ agreed the taxi driver. ‘
And
they don’t pay no sodding road tax neither. No, don’t talk to me about cyclists.’

There were a few seconds of blessed peace, while James didn’t talk to him about cyclists.

‘Half of them are women,’ resumed the taxi driver in a tone which suggested that this too was a criticism. ‘Half of them are bloody women. Have you seen ’em? Weather like this, what they’re wearing. Or rather what they’re not wearing. Flimsy little skirts riding up in the wind. Flimsy little tops sliding down to meet them. Long legs and arms like what they have these days, and if we takes so much as one peep it’s, “What are you looking at, you dirty old man?” Don’t tell me there’s a God.’

James hadn’t any intention of telling the driver that there was a God, but he did wonder what that had to do with it.

Keep quiet, James. You’ll find out.

‘I mean, I know God’s supposed to test us with temptation, but he wouldn’t be human if he gave us that much bleeding temptation, would he?
And
… one little lapse of concentration, and we lose our licence. It’s not fair. It is not fair.’

At this point James made a very serious tactical error, such as he would not have made if he hadn’t been in a state of considerable nervous tension as the taxi drew nearer to Helen’s corner of London.

‘You’re complaining about women showing too much flesh,’ he said. ‘A few minutes ago you were complaining that they were covering themselves up too much.’

‘Them burkas, oh, yes. You just wait till we go past Harrods. You’ll see hundreds of them. No, don’t talk to me about burkas.’

But I just have. Oh, God, I just have. And it’s set him off again.

‘I’ll tell you something else that’s wrong with this country.’

Please don’t. I’m so tired. So confused.

How wonderful it was to step out of that taxi. The air smelt of roses and motorbikes. James approached his Subaru and stopped, tempted to put an hour’s worth of coins into the parking meter and call on Helen. She’d still be coated in sleepiness. She looked pale and frail and other-worldly in the mornings, so unlike Deborah, who had jumped into each new day with vigour.

James willed his prick to respond to the thought of Helen in the early morning. But answer came there none. He shook his head. His shoulders sagged slightly. He couldn’t not phone her. He couldn’t leave yesterday’s failure just hanging there limply. As it were. She sounded sleepy. He felt a tinge of desire. He must see her, put things right. He consulted the mental diary in his head. ‘I could see you Tuesday evening,’ he said.

‘Tomorrow evening.’

Oh, God, so soon.

‘Oh, good. So soon.’

He pinged the key of his Subaru, watched the welcoming flash of the lights, stepped into the car, and switched on the engine and the radio.

He’d hardly set off towards Hammersmith when he received his first injection of irritation. A pompous male voice was in the middle of a blanket condemnation of the young people of Britain. It seemed that they were almost universally lazy and violent. This was music to James’s ears.

‘Come on,’ he shouted. ‘How can they be both couch potatoes and violent? Who ever heard of a violent potato? There are some splendid young people around.’ He thought of Max and what he was. He thought of Charlotte and what she might have been and – oh, God, the pain, the hope – might still be. The pain was like lava, always there but only occasionally erupting. Oh, God, how much longer could he stand the situation? Think of something else, James. Back to your rant. Oh, blessed rant.

‘Do you know what young people have to put up with? They have to put up with the prospect of our civilisation imploding before they reach the age of fifty because of the complacency and inactivity, the mental laziness and corruption of your generation, you ode to pomposity. They get exams and tests every thirty-five minutes, their school trips get cancelled due to Health and Safety in case they fall over, and if they do fall over the teacher doesn’t dare to pick them up because he or she …’ James was careful not to sound sexist even in the privacy of his Subaru, ‘… will end up on the sex offenders’ register and be charged by the European Court of Human Rights so they’re left there crying. There’s at least one paedophile on every double-decker bus because the human race is sick, sick, sick, there are drug pushers in every street, there’s cheap alcohol in every supermarket, they’re bombarded by adverts telling them to spend, spend, spend, and anyone who is clever enough and strong enough to avoid all these pitfalls and get decent A levels finds that the A levels have been made so easy that half of them can’t get a place at university and the other half come out with a debt of thirty thousand pounds before they start their first day’s work.’

Oh, how much better he felt. He just wished that the taxi driver could have heard him.

Marcia was ten minutes late, and very embarrassed by the fact.

‘It’s not deliberate,’ she said. ‘I’m not playing you up because of what’s happened.’

He had a sudden desire to bend down and kiss her rather large knees. He resisted it.

‘I’m sure you aren’t,’ he said.

The desire passed as quickly as it had arrived, and was succeeded by a spasm of pity. She was actually looking at her lumpiest this morning.

‘Maybe I don’t need to say this, Mr Hollinghurst, but I want to,’ she said. ‘I intend to work out my month as diligently as I can.’

‘Thank you. I wouldn’t have doubted it.’

‘Thank you.’ The beginning of a blush spread over her innocent face. ‘I think you’ve been a fantastic boss, actually, James. I think I’ve been very lucky.’

This was terrible. If only she’d not just stand there at the door of his office, blushing and shifting from one foot to the other. If only she’d go to her desk and start sorting his mail.

‘Also, I have to say this, maybe you’ll think I’m saying more than I should …’

Yes.

‘… but I really admire you coming to work like this after what’s happened.’

So much blood was rushing to Marcia’s face that James began to worry that there wouldn’t be enough left for the rest of her body.

‘I’m only in today,’ he said. ‘I’ve a very important meeting.’

‘I know. Eleven-thirty in the Small Conference Room.’

‘Well remembered, Marcia.’

She smiled with shy pride.

‘There are things I just have to set in motion. Then I’m taking the rest of the week off.’

‘I’ll keep the ship afloat.’

‘I’m sure you will.’

‘You aren’t anyway. You’ve got your speech on Wednesday.’

‘That’s not work. That’s showing off.’

‘I would love to hear you, but I’m not invited.’

‘I’m afraid I can’t help there.’

‘Oh, no, I wasn’t …’ She blushed at the thought. ‘Mr Hollinghurst? There’s something else I want to say.’

Please don’t say you long for my body. His hand snaked out and touched the Philippe Starck telephone on his large desk, as if willing it to ring.

‘Yes?’ he prompted cautiously.

‘You’ve done me a favour, forcing me to give up this job.’

‘How come?’

‘It’s woken me up. You know I told you I wanted to be a writer. I never would have been. I’d have drifted on here for ever. Well, I’ve started. I’ve written eight pages.’

‘Congratulations.’

‘Thank you.’

‘How did it go?’

‘I don’t know. Maybe authors …’ Her voice rose slightly on the word ‘authors’. She was an author already, in her mind. ‘… never do.’

He wanted her to go, but he didn’t know how to break the conversation off without hurting her feelings, and he heard himself asking a question he might deeply regret.

‘What’s it about?’

She didn’t reply for a moment, and he added, hopefully, ‘Or perhaps you don’t want to tell me.’

‘No, I don’t mind. I’m going to have to learn to pitch, if I’m to get anywhere. I’ve read all about that. It’s …’

He could see her courage beginning to fail her. He smiled encouragingly.

‘It’s about a wombat.’

‘A wombat?’

‘It’s a children’s book. That’s my ambition – children’s books.’

‘Oh, great. Good.’

‘I love children,’ she said wistfully. ‘It’s called
Willy Wombat
. Or possibly
Willy the Wombat
. I’m not sure yet. Titles are difficult.’

She spoke as if from long experience.

‘And what happens to …
Willy Wombat
? Or
Willy the Wombat
?’

‘I don’t know really. It’s a bit early to say yet.’