My Policeman (30 page)

It arrived days after you returned, and I burned it immediately.

The two of you left on a Friday morning in mid-August. Tom had borrowed one of your suitcases, which he’d been packing all week, taking items out, putting them back in. He packed his wedding suit, although he must have done this secretly, at the last minute, because I didn’t notice it was gone from
our
wardrobe until he’d left and I touched the empty wooden hanger on which it had hung since March. He’d also borrowed a guidebook to Italy from the library. I told him this would be pointless, as you’d been there many times before and you would, I knew, act as Tom’s guidebook. Hadn’t you already told us both, many times, about the wonders of the vaporetti and the must-sees in the Galleria Accademia?

However, I did look through the section on Venice in that book. Tom had told me that he didn’t know where you were staying, or what you would do when you got there. That, of course, was up to you. He smiled and said, ‘I expect I’ll just wander around on my own a bit. Patrick will have to work.’ But I knew you would never let this happen. Skimming through the guidebook, I guessed you would make it your business to show Tom the major sights on the first day, perhaps queuing to go up the Campanile for the views, which the book said were worth the wait; you’d have coffee in Florian’s, and you’d know – without consulting the book – not to order cappuccino after eleven in the morning; you’d take a photograph of Tom on the Rialto Bridge; you might even end your day with a gondola ride, the two of you floating side by side along what the book called the ‘glorious waterways of the city’. ‘No trip,’ the guide went on, ‘is complete without a gondola ride, especially for honeymooning couples.’

I’ve since been to Venice myself. I went this September, in fact, whilst on an organised opera trip to Verona with a coachload of strangers, who were mostly my age, and mostly travelling alone, like me. For many years now, Tom and I have taken holidays apart, and I’m always careful to laugh off enquiries about my husband’s whereabouts whilst travelling. Oh, I say, he detests opera. Or gardens. Or historic houses. Whichever it happens to be at the time.

I’ve never mentioned to Tom that the Verona visit included a day trip to Venice.
Venice
is one of the many words we do not utter to one another since you took him there. I’d imagined it many times before, but nothing could have prepared me for the
detail
of the place, the way that everything is beautiful, even the drainpipes and the back alleys and the water buses. Everything. Wandering around the city, alone, my head was filled with images of the two of you. I saw you arriving at Santa Lucia station, stepping from the train into the sunlight like film stars. I saw you slipping across bridges together, your reflections shimmering queasily in the water below. I saw the way you’d stand close to one another at the quay, waiting for the vaporetto. In every
calle
and
sotoportego
I imagined the pair of you, backs turned to me, heads inclined towards one another. You would have looked at Tom with a new intensity in this strange and magnificent city, loving the way his blond hair and large limbs made him stand out from the dark, nimble Venetian crowd. At one moment, I found myself wanting to cry as I sat on the cool steps of the Santa Maria della Salute, watching a couple of real young men read a guidebook together, each tenderly holding the edge of a page, sharing the information. I wondered, for the hundredth time, where you were and what had happened to you. I even sought out the Carpaccios in the Accademia and stared for a long time at the two men in the English Ambassadors painting. I could almost hear your voice as you told Tom all about it; I could picture the serious look on his face as he drank it down. As I walked around, footsore and sweating, I wondered what, exactly, I was doing. Here I was, a lone woman in her early sixties, trying to retrace the steps of her husband and his male lover in an unknown city. Was it some kind of pilgrimage? Or perhaps a purgative act, a way of seeing off the ghosts of 1958 for ever?

It turned out to be neither of those things. It was, instead, a catalyst. Long overdue, perhaps too late, but a catalyst nonetheless. Soon after, I took the action I’d been meaning to for years: I sought you out. I brought you back.

On the Saturday the two of you were gone, I spent most of the day between the sheets after a sleepless night, phrases and images from the guidebook running through my head.
The tranquillity of a city built entirely on water has to be experienced to be believed
. In my fitful sleep, I dreamed I was on a gondola, going far out to sea whilst the two of you waved to me from the shore. There was no way of reaching you, because in the dream I was back where I started: I couldn’t swim, and was afraid to go in the water.

At about six o’clock, I forced myself to rise and dress. I tried not to look at the empty space in the wardrobe where Tom’s suit had been, or the spot by the door where his shoes usually were. By some enormous effort of willpower – or perhaps it was merely fatigue – I thought only of the port and lemon that awaited me. The sickly first mouthful, the burning after-taste. I’d arranged to meet Julia for a drink in the Queen’s Park Tavern, and had invited Sylvie to join us. She’d looked excited when I asked her; this would be the first time she’d left her baby girl, Kathleen, who was only a few weeks old, alone with her mother-in-law for the evening. Kathleen had Roy’s black hair and slightly bulging eyes, and when I’d visited it had struck me that Sylvie was already disappointed in her daughter. She had a way of talking about the baby as if she were a fully formed personality, capable of consciously defying her mother’s intentions. ‘Oh,’ Sylvie had said, when I’d held Kathleen and the girl started to cry, ‘she’s a little attention-seeker.’ From the start, it was a battle of wills between Sylvie and her daughter.

I arrived at the pub deliberately early in order to have a drink before facing Sylvie’s questions about Tom’s whereabouts, even though it meant I had to sit alone, enduring the stares of the regulars. Choosing the booth where Julia and I had sat together that evening after school, I slotted myself into a corner. Once I’d taken my first sip, I allowed myself to think again of the two of you, who, I imagined, would be eating spaghetti on some sun-drenched terrace. I’d let Tom go, I told myself. I’d let him. And now I’d have to live with it.

Sylvie came in. She’d had her hair set, I could see, especially for the occasion – not a strand was out of place – and she was wearing a lot of make-up: bright blue metallic streaks across her eyelids, a pearly peach colour on her lips. I guessed this was an attempt to hide her tiredness. She was sporting a white belted mac, despite the warmth of the evening, and a tight lemon-coloured sweater. Watching her walking over, I was newly aware of how different she was from Julia, and I experienced a small stab of anxiety that the two of them would not get on at all.

‘What are you drinking?’ asked Sylvie, eyeing my glass with suspicion. She laughed when I told her. ‘I think my Aunt Gert’s very partial to a port and lemon. But what the hell? I’ll try one.’

She sat opposite me and clinked her glass against mine. ‘Here’s to … escape.’

‘Escape,’ I agreed. ‘How’s Kathleen?’

‘Getting all the attention she wants from Roy’s mother. Who is actually quite keen on me since the baby was born. The only thing I could’ve done better is to have had a boy. But since Kath looks so much like Roy, it’s not much of a problem.’ She lifted her glass again. ‘And to the girls, eh?’

‘To the girls.’

We both drank. Then Sylvie said, ‘This Julia. What’s she
like
? Only I’m not used to meeting teachers. Except for you, that is.’

‘You’ll be fine, Sylvie,’ I said, ignoring her question and finishing off my drink. ‘Want another?’

‘I’ve hardly finished this one. Gruesome it is, too. I’ll have a stout next.’

As I stood up to go to the bar, Sylvie grabbed my wrist. ‘You all right? I heard Tom’s gone away with that – with Patrick.’

I stared at her.

‘Dad mentioned it.’

‘What of it?’

‘I’m only asking. Seems a bit rich, that’s all. Leaving you on your own, I mean.’

‘Can’t a bloke go away with a friend for a few days?’

‘I didn’t say anything, did I? It’s just you look – out of sorts.’

At that moment, Julia arrived. I let out a long breath as I saw her striding towards us, swinging her arms lightly, grinning. She touched me on the arm and held a hand out to Sylvie. ‘You must be Sylvie,’ she said. ‘Lovely to meet you.’

Sylvie looked at Julia’s hand for a second before taking it limply. ‘All right?’ she said.

Julia turned to me. ‘Shall we get the drinks in, then?’

‘I’ll have half a stout,’ said Sylvie. ‘This stuff’s horrible.’

When we were all sitting with our drinks, Julia asked Sylvie about Kathleen, and Sylvie seemed to enjoy telling her what a pain in the backside her daughter was. ‘Mind you,’ she added when she’d finished, ‘she’s nothing compared to my husband …’ and off she went again, listing Roy’s shortcomings, the details of which she’d rehearsed with me many times over. He
was
lazy. He drank too much. He didn’t help with the baby. He refused to push himself forward at work. He knew nothing about anything except cars. He was too attached to his mother. As was always the case when Sylvie attacked Roy, though, she said these things with so much animation, and such a big smile on her face, that I knew she loved him for these very faults.

Julia listened to all this, nodding occasionally in encouragement. When Sylvie had finished, Julia asked, in a voice I guessed wasn’t nearly as innocent as she made it sound, ‘So why did you marry him, Sylvie?’

Sylvie stared at Julia, her face blank. Then she finished her drink, tugged at a lock of hair that curled up on her neck and said, in a low voice, ‘Do you want to know the truth?’

Julia said that she did, and we both leant forward as Sylvie beckoned us closer with one finger. ‘He’s very, very considerate,’ she said, ‘in the bedroom department.’

At first Julia looked a bit flummoxed, but when I began to giggle and Sylvie covered her mouth to stifle her mirth, Julia laughed so loudly that several people in the pub turned to look at us.

‘He’s irresistible, isn’t he, Marion?’ said Sylvie, gazing rather sadly into her glass. ‘You know how it is. Once they’ve got hold of you, there’s no going back.’

Julia sat up straight. ‘You don’t think? Even if you realise it’s no good?’

‘I’m telling you. There’s no going back,’ Sylvie said, looking directly at me.

Not long before closing time, Roy appeared in the doorway of the snug. I noticed him before Sylvie did, and saw his face
cloud
over as he took in the scene: three tipsy women in a booth, sniggering, empty glasses piled up around them.

‘Looks like a proper party over here,’ he said, letting his hand fall on Sylvie’s shoulder.

Sylvie gave a start.

‘Sylvie. Marion.’ Roy nodded to me. ‘And who’s this?’ He was looking at Julia with curiosity. When she held a hand out to him, I noticed it was slightly unsteady. Her voice was absolutely even, though, as she said, ‘Julia Harcourt. Pleased to meet you. And you are …?’

‘Sylvie’s husband.’

‘Oh!’ said Julia in mock surprise. ‘She’s been telling us all about you.’

Roy ignored this comment and turned to Sylvie. ‘Come on. I’m walking you home.’

‘Don’t you want a drink?’ asked Sylvie, her words slightly slurred. ‘You usually do.’

‘How are you, Roy?’ I asked, attempting to make light of the situation.

‘Sensational, thanks, Marion,’ said Roy, still looking at his wife.

‘And Kathleen?’

‘She’s a little treasure. Isn’t she, Sylvie?’

Sylvie took a long drink and said, ‘It’s not even bloody closing time.’

Roy spread his hands wide in an apparently helpless gesture. ‘But here I am anyway. Come on, get your coat on. Your daughter’s waiting for you.’

Now Sylvie’s face turned bright pink.

‘Why don’t you have a drink with us, Roy?’ I tried again. ‘We’ll all go after this one.’

‘I’ll get them in,’ said Julia, standing up. ‘What are you having, Roy?’

Roy made a sideways move, blocking Julia’s way. ‘That’s all right, love. Thanks anyway.’

Julia and Roy looked at each other. She looked so much taller than him that I had to suppress a giggle. Just you try getting in her way, I thought. I’d like to see that.

Sylvie slammed down her glass. ‘Sorry, girls,’ she mumbled, and began putting on her coat. It took her a few attempts to find the sleeve, and no one helped her. When she looked at me, her eyes were so bleary that I wondered if she was about to cry.

As Roy took hold of his wife’s arm, he turned to me and said, ‘I hear your Tom’s in Venice. Must be nice, having a friend like that. Someone to take you places.’

Sylvie gave Roy a shove on the shoulder. ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘If we’re going, let’s move it.’ From the door, she offered Julia and me a resigned wave.

After they’d gone, Julia looked into her glass and gave a rueful laugh. ‘He’s a bit … heavy-handed, isn’t he?’

‘He knows nothing about her,’ I said, surprised at the venom in my own voice. I was suddenly outraged by Roy’s behaviour. I wanted to run after the pair of them and yell at him:
She trapped you! She wasn’t even pregnant when you married her! How can you have been so stupid?

But Julia put a hand on my elbow and said, ‘I don’t know. They seem pretty well matched. And he is
irresistible
, after all.’

I tried to laugh, but found I was close to tears and couldn’t raise a smile. Julia must have seen my distress, because she said, ‘Come for a drink at my place? We can walk through the park.’

Outside, the night was warm and quiet. My legs seemed to carry me down the hill with very little effort after all that port, and as we walked through the elaborate portico, Julia slipped her bare arm through mine. The seagulls cried occasionally from the rooftops as we wandered along the dark pathways of Queen’s Park. I could smell the impossible sweetness of honeysuckle and orange blossom, mixed together with stale food and beer from the park’s bins. We walked in silence across the parched summer grass, stopping at the rose garden. The low glow of one of the park’s few lamps lit the flowers the deepest crimson, and it struck me that the colour was like someone’s insides. Like my own insides, perhaps. Mysterious and changing. Julia brought a bloom to her face and inhaled; I watched the petals touch her pale skin, her lips almost meeting the flower.