Junction X (11 page)

I shrugged him off. I had no intention of doing anything in his house.

“You’re a good friend, Eddie,” he said.

“Yes. I think we’ve established that.” I kept it light. He was drunk, and he tended to get maudlin on Scotch. “Are you going to tell me what’s wrong?”

“If you tell me why you were walking in the rain.”

“I will, if you do.” I now had no intention of telling him my concerns when he was this drunk, but it seemed a good enough lie to get him to open up.

“It’s Claire,” he said. “She’s left me.”

If I was expecting anything, it wasn’t that. I’d thought he might have been in trouble at the firm. Perhaps he’d made a bad deal; that fear was always there in our line of work. For a moment, I found myself lost for words. Then I had to ask the one question that immediately jumped into my head. “She hasn’t—she didn’t find out about…”

“Us?” He laughed then. “Good God, no. Do you think I’d still be in this house—in one piece—if she had?”

“Then…”

“She’s gone off with some boy. Years younger than her. Some artist she met at evening school.” He went to stand up and toppled slightly. “He’s twenty-two. He’s
talented
, she says. He
understands
her, she says. He
appreciates
her, she says.” His face twisted then and he looked like he was going to cry. It was horrible.

“You need coffee,” I said. But I didn’t sound very convincing, even to myself. I needed a drink, too. I went through to the hall and called Valerie.

“Phil’s…” I hesitated. “There’s a problem. I need to stay until he’s got it sorted out. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

There was a breathless silence, then she said, “Claire?”

“You knew?”

“Not as such. Just that there was something.”

“I’ll tell you when I get home.”

I hung up, feeling rotten. I’d been worrying about something stupid and hadn’t even been there for my best friend. I went back into the sitting-room. Phil was staring glumly at the garden.

“You’d better tell me all about it,” I said, pouring him another drink, along with a larger one for me.

Chapter 8

I’d not had an inkling of what Phil told me throughout that afternoon and evening. It seemed to me that they’d always had a pretty good relationship, but what did I know? Some people said that I had the perfect marriage, too. I’d seen Phil and Claire be mildly icy to each other, but I’d passed that off as nothing much; Valerie and I were icy to each other a lot. It was part of marriage, wasn’t it? But according to Phil, something had been wrong for a while, and it had got worse as the summer wore on.

“She started making excuses. You know what it’s like. ‘I’m tired, I’ve got an early class, do you mind if we don’t…’”

I didn’t, but I nodded anyway.

“I even got to the stage where I asked her if there was someone else. She swore to me there wasn’t.”

“So when did she tell you there was?”

“This morning. I came back from that meeting with Carhart this morning and found her bags in the hall. Evidently she’d planned to leave me a note. She wasn’t even going to bother to tell me to my face.”

“Have you ever seen this man?”

“Man? He’s hardly more than a boy,” he said bitterly. “No. I haven’t. She wouldn’t even give me the address she’s going to. She says she doesn’t want anything. She’ll be back, I know. When she’s fed up with living in squalor.”

I wondered if Phil had considered that this artist might not be poverty-stricken, but I didn’t say anything. He was maudlin enough as it was. So I sat, listened and poured more alcohol into him. Finally, when he passed out on the couch, I rang for a taxi and left.

 
I think what shook him more than anything was that Claire had told him she was pregnant.

“She swore she’d never wanted kids,” he’d slurred. “It never bothered me one way or another—they are all right, and yours are great—but, apart from your two, she’d never taken an interest. I used johnnies for her sake—and God knows, I hate them. I wouldn’t have minded.”

Now it seemed all that had changed, and Claire and this artist were thrilled to be expecting.

+ + +

The next day being Monday, I sought him out at work and wasn’t surprised to find him not in. I rang him when I got in that evening and he sounded sober, if a little hoarse.

“I’m all right. I suppose I behaved like an idiot last night? Or did I? Did we…?”

I wondered if he meant ‘Did we have an episode?’, and I was quick to reassure him. Another time I might have left him guessing, but he had enough on his plate. “No. You were fine. You talked a lot. Some of it made sense.” My attempt to lighten the mood fell flat. I could hear him breathing in the silence. “Do you want me to come round?” Say no
,
I thought treacherously.

“No, I’m all right.”

I felt ashamed at my relief. “If there’s anything either of us can do.”

“All right,” he repeated. The line went dead.

I gave a heavy sigh and went through to the dining room where Valerie was dishing up. “How is he?” she asked.

“He’s taking it hard.” I’d let her know what I’d gleaned from Phil when I’d got home the night before.

“Hardly surprising. He adores her.”

I went silent for a while, mulling that over in my mind. His reaction had surprised me, it was true. But he’d never displayed any adoration that I’d noticed. They’d seemed well-matched; they’d met at a Young Conservatives ball, I remembered. But did he adore Claire? If so, then he had a funny way of showing it. In a way, he was more affectionate with me, and that was saying something. Phil was a careless shark, seemingly unaware that his actions might cause ramifications. The casual charm, the hail-fellow-well-met charisma, the steady but impressive rise throughout the firm. Nothing had ever seemed to affect him, and that was why this collapse had surprised me.

My skin crawled for a moment. I suddenly wondered if Phil had used his occasional preference for male company to facilitate his rise. I could hardly believe it to be true, given the men he’d have to charm, but one never knew. To the outside world I doubted if I looked the type of man who was capable of crushing Phil against leather car seats, his tongue in my mouth and his cock hot and heavy in my hand.

How much do we know about other people? Did he adore his wife? Or was it just wounded pride that had caused such a paroxysm of depression? The more I thought about it, the more confused I felt and the more I realised I knew nothing of what really went on behind other people’s closed doors.

I didn’t see Phil at all for the next week or so; even though he was back at work, our paths simply didn’t cross. I didn’t see much of Alec either, and I tried to tell myself that it was good that I didn’t. I called Phil once or twice to see if he wanted to play golf, but he was rarely in—working his way through the separation, I assumed. My obsession with Alec remained, even though I only caught glimpses of him here and there, and I refrained from catching his attention when I did.

But sometimes fate—or one’s own sense of self-destruction—has other plans.

+ + +

One Tuesday I had an early meeting out of town, so I used the Bentley, though I didn’t enjoy driving the big car in and around London. By the time I came off the main road, my shoulders aching, I was glad to see the final roundabout at the end of the dual carriageway. As I turned into The Avenue, a leggy figure in a black blazer ran across the road in front of me, hurrying slightly as he heard the engine. It was Alec and, by the quick glance he gave the car as he scurried by, it was obvious that he’d seen me. I remember willing my foot onto the accelerator so I could drive by, but my feet were no longer under my control. Instead, I braked beside him and rolled down the window.

“Need a lift?”

He grinned, his teeth white in the dusk, and hurried around to the other side while I unlocked the door.

“Thanks.”

“I don’t make a habit of kerb crawling, you know.”

“I believe you.”

The ride was too short. In no time at all, we were pulling up outside our respective houses. “Thanks,” he said again, but he made no move to get out. His fingers moved restlessly over the handle of his briefcase, making a fist and then opening out to stroke the brown leather. Brown-white-brown went his knuckles and I couldn’t stop staring at them.

“You’ve got ink on your hand,” I said. “You’re late home.” I sounded like a schoolmaster.

“I’ve joined an evening club. Extra coaching.”

“Do you need it?”

“For Oxford I will.”

“Oh. I didn’t know. What subject?”

“Maths.”

I didn’t say ‘Oh,’ again, like some kind of idiot, but I was surprised. I’d known a lot of mathematicians and they didn’t have faces like Alec’s. Mostly they looked like ferrets in corduroy.

“Where did you go?” he asked, twisting on the seat.

I tried to will myself not to look at him, but I had my first lesson in the effects of Alec on my will power that evening. I learned that I didn’t have any. I turned and looked him full in the face and my stomach did that flipping thing again, leaping straight up and kicking me hard in the diaphragm. His new haircut had snipped away those recalcitrant white curls but the shortness around his ears suited him, brought his cheekbones into relief and accentuated the slenderness of his neck. His shirt was undone, his tie stuffed casually into his jacket pocket. I could see a glimpse of collarbone that made my breath burn. He wasn’t wearing anything beneath the thin white shirt that I could see. I knew I should feel uncomfortable even noticing that, but I didn’t, and I felt rebellion surge through me.

“Me? Uni?” He nodded, and his lips parted, which caused my groin to stir. I coughed and shifted uncomfortably. “I did Engineering at Queens.” I braced both hands against the steering wheel and pushed back against the seat.

“Not very useful, in your job.”

“That’s an understatement.” I shrugged. “But then I wasn’t expecting to be a wage slave. I was going to build things. Bridges. Airports.”

“You had different dreams.” His voice had changed, and when I looked at him again, he’d turned away and was looking out of the off-side window.

“Oh, I don’t know,” I lied. “I shouldn’t have been surprised that life included a wife and family. Life generally does. It’s not as if I thought I was going to be Isembard Kingdom Brunel.”

The words were out of my mouth before the old dream hit me hard. I had. I
had
wanted to be Isembard Kingdom Brunel. I realised that I hadn’t admitted that to myself for a long time. I wondered where my life had gone.

“Or anyone like that,” I ended, lamely, wishing I hadn’t said Brunel’s name, wishing I hadn’t tainted Alec with my failed ambition.

He was silent for a while and then said, “Yeah—you’re right. Thanks for the lift.” He opened the door, dropped a leg into the road and waited for a car to pass.

My chest got that tight feeling again and I caught hold of his right arm. “Alec,” I said. He turned to me with an expression that looked like the children on Christmas morning, and I was still too stupid to read it. “I’ve been thinking. There’s the toy fair in Aliston on Sunday the fourteenth.”

He pulled his leg back in and shut the door. “Yeah, I know. Dad can’t go. He has to work.”

“The twins might want to.” I couldn’t help but smile. It seemed conspiratorial. Secret plans being made in a Bentley. It was worthy of Bond.

He grinned a little, the corner of his mouth quirking up. “Would they?”

“Probably.”

“No golf?”

“Of course not. Not if they wanted to go somewhere else.” I made myself sound like Super-Dad, and with that, Alec and I were back to that easy banter. It seemed natural, and I enjoyed talking to him so much, that I hardly cared anymore that he was half my age. It was addictive; I’d not had this with anyone else, not with Valerie, not even with Phil. I wanted more of it.

“I’d like that.” He got out, then stuck his head back into the car and said, “Thanks.”

I think that was the first time that we weren’t awkward with each other. From then on—apart from a few rare notable exceptions—the way we spoke was almost intuitive, sometimes not even needing to finish sentences, or questions.