Olivia’s Luck (2000) (43 page)

My mother’s subdued reaction – “Well, darling, I’m pleased for you, of course I’m pleased, it’s what you wanted, isn’t it?” – together with a promise, when pressed, to come over soon with Howard, was, in light of her new incarnation as a born-again romantic, a no-longer-passed-over, shat-upon woman, I suppose somewhat predictable. But Molly surprised me.

“And you’ve taken him back?” she demanded from her hospital bed, newly delivered of a nine-pound baby girl named Flora, after the cottage garden she was very nearly born into, and who, her mother declared, was even more stunning than Helen of Troy, fed beautifully, didn’t crack her nipples, and had yet to be sick all over her.

“Well – yes. I have.”

“No questions asked?”

“Of course, Molly, many.”

“Good. Well, I just hope he’s got some answers.” A pause. “Sorry, Liwy, I’m delighted for you, of course I’m delighted. God, ignore me, I’m just hormone soup at the moment. This morning I was in floods of tears because I was convinced Flora was going to grow up to be a lesbian. One of the nurses missed her pink wrist tag and called her a great big bruiser of a boy, and I could suddenly see her in dungarees, with a number-one haircut and a lover called Brenda. I cried for half an hour. Added to which I feel like my undercarriage has been sown up by some malicious, sharp-eyed seamstress from the WI, while at the back I’ve got a bag fully of jelly beans swinging jauntily out of my bottom. Just ignore me, I’m a mess. Hugh’s here and he’s thrilled for you, aren’t you, Hugh?” She held the phone out to Hugh for confirmation.

“Ami?”

There was some muffled confusion as her hand clamped over the mouthpiece, a fair amount of hissing, then – “Thrilled!” came back a chipper male voice. “But tell her I thought she was doing pretty well under her own steam, too.”

Angie cried on the phone, so relieved was she, and promised to come round soon, wondering also if Claudia would like to come and stay a while and give us some space? I turned, the receiver at my ear, to ask Johnny and we both instinctively shook our heads and said – no! Then we stared, anxiously at each other. Why didn’t we want space? Why didn’t we want to be alone? Because we wanted to be a unit, a family, I decided firmly.

Imogen, though, surprised me most. I left a message on her answer machine at work – she was out at Sotheby’s – and that evening she appeared on my doorstep, loaded with flowers, hugging us through her tears and her orchids, hugely overcome and emotional.

“Oh God, guys,” she gasped, “this is so much what I’d hoped for! It’s just the answer to everyone’s prayers! I just can’t believe it – I’m so, so happy for you!”

“Imo,” I said, touched as she hugged me tight, “you’re so sweet to come.”

She sat in the garden with us a while, shared a bottle of wine with us, but when she left, I closed the front door thoughtfully and went, biting my thumbnail, back to Johnny on the terrace. He was hidden now, behind the
Telegraph
.

“I can’t believe she came all that way just to give us some flowers,” I said in astonishment. “And she’s so busy. She’s got a private view to organise tonight.”

Johnny didn’t answer, immersed as he was in his broadsheet, and suddenly I felt a bit guilty. I adored Imo, always had done, but always from a slightly respectful distance, always from afar, and yet here she was, on my doorstep the moment she’d heard, brimming over with tears for me. I had no idea she’d felt my loss so keenly.

Claudia was skippy and happy most of the time, but cautious too, I noticed. Johnny would pull her on to his lap, maybe after Sunday lunch, and she’d laugh, fool about with him a bit, but be quick to slip away, too. If he noticed, he didn’t say.

Once, when she and I were picking strawberries together in the vegetable patch, she suddenly paused, face down in the fragrant, star-shaped leaves. Crouched on her haunches, she said abruptly, “Is Daddy back for good, then?”

I straightened up. “Yes, of course, darling. This is for ever. We’re a family again!”

She didn’t reply.

I frowned. “Claudes?”

“It’s just…well, Granny says, ‘Never say never, and you can’t say forever’.”

“Oh, Granny and her little homilies!” I said, exasperated. “When did she say that?”

She shrugged. “The other day.”

“You saw her?”

“No, I rang her.”

“Oh!” Again, panic. She rang her? Why couldn’t she talk to me? “But – but you wanted Daddy to come back, surely?”

“Of course. I’m just asking, that’s all. I can ask, can’t I?” She straightened up and stared defiantly at me in her blue shorts and ancient Mickey Mouse T-shirt, her cheeks glowing. Yes, of course she could ask, I thought slowly as she threw down her basket, brushed past me and stomped off. Why not? Children have every right to assume their parents will be together for ever, so if one disappears, then comes back to the fold, surely they have every right to question that reappearance, too?

And then of course there was Sebastian. Initially I’d almost gone down on my knees and thanked God that I hadn’t seduced Sebastian that night. Thanked God that I hadn’t forced him, protesting, back to his towering town house, drugged his wine before dragging him by the hair up all those zillions of stone steps to his bedroom, slammed the door shut, refused to take no for an answer, cracked my whip, thrown him on the bed and given him a damn good seeing to, because look what I’d have been missing in my own back yard? Look who was waiting for me, under the stars, on my very own terrace?

Then again, I thought, running the tap over a lettuce I’d just picked for lunch and gazing out at Johnny through the kitchen window, snoozing in a deck chair with a Panama hat over his eyes, then again, as every how-to-get-your-man manual would tell you, that probably couldn’t have been better. What – to have the errant husband sitting waiting on the matrimonial doorstep until two in the morning, wondering where the hell the abandoned wife was, and then for me to arrive back, panting and dishevelled, knickers in my handbag, very definitely post-coital, very definitely deflowered? Oh perfect, the revengeful would breathe ecstatically, perfect! But I knew better. Johnny, with his code of honour, would have been horrified. He wouldn’t have spoken to me, let alone touched me; would have brushed straight past me, stony-faced, got back in his car and roared off, because whilst it was OK for him to be promiscuous, for his
wife
– oh, heavens no. Hadn’t he already quizzed me – gently but searchingly – about the possibility of my having seen some action these past few months? Eyes trawling my face for lies?

Suddenly I flung down the lettuce and threw open the window in rage.

“Double standards!” I shrieked. “DOUBLE FUCKING STANDARDS!”

Johnny awoke from his deck chair with a jolt and swung round, astonished, his Panama dropping on to the grass. In the bathroom above, Mac and the boys laid down their tools. It wasn’t the first time they’d halted their hammering to listen to the ‘domestic’ below. By the time Johnny had run in and reached me in the kitchen I was hanging on to the sink, sobbing uncontrollably into the lettuce water. As he rushed up I seized the wet lettuce and slapped it in his face, hitting him again and again with it. He stood there, taking it, soaking wet, eyes shut, bits of green slime all over him, until finally I dropped it and sank down into a chair. Johnny crouched, took me in his arms and held me as I sobbed. You see, this was nothing new. Our days were full of interesting little episodes like this. He never argued his corner – well, let’s face it, he didn’t exactly have one – just let me get it all out of my system, and then when it was over, went slowly back to his deck chair, his garage, his toolshed, or whatever it was he’d been doing before. Occasionally, though, after one of these outbursts, I’d catch him later in an unguarded moment, and see his eyes, full of sorrow and regret, so profound it shocked me. I hoped it was for me, for what he’d done to me, for the time we’d lost together, but I couldn’t be sure. And, feeling my eyes on him, he’d quickly respond with a bright smile and then we’d be back on track again, but often, they were tracks I didn’t recognise – polite, dissembling tracks. Where the hell were they going?

And so, as I said, Sebastian had to be dealt with. Had to be visited. Well yes, of course he did, didn’t he? I mean, we’d never been lovers, but I was pretty sure we’d been more than friends, and I couldn’t exactly have him popping round wondering if I fancied dinner; couldn’t just leave it hanging in the air like that, could I? And so I went one afternoon without warning, simply because I saw his car outside and I knew he’d be in. Maureen opened the door.

“He’s in the study,” she said with a brisk jerk of her head upstairs. “Will I tell him you’re here?”

“Could I just go up?” I asked tentatively. “I’ll knock, I won’t just barge in.”

She gave a hint of a smile. “Since it’s you.”

And so I crept up the millions of stone stairs, knocked gently on the study door, and on hearing a curt “Come!”, entered.

Sebastian was standing at the tall, floor-to-ceiling Georgian window, facing the street, fingertips pressed to temples, eyes shut.

“You old poser,” I muttered brightly as I went in. He opened his eyes and swung round, and for a moment, my heart stopped. I instantly wished I hadn’t said it. His eyes were distant and preoccupied, about to be annoyed, but then remarkably, his face cleared, in the way I remembered, but had recently forgotten.

“Olivia!” He was across the room in seconds. “How extraordinary, sixteen more bars of this wretched piece and I was coming over to see you! Did you get my postcard?”

I nodded and sat down quickly on a button-backed chair, eschewing the sofa on the grounds that I didn’t want him too close. “From Paris, I did. How did it go?”

“Marvellous,” he beamed, dragging up a chair, eyes shining. “To my utter relief they absolutely loved it, thank goodness, and let me tell you those Parisians are harsh taskmasters. Not so much the audience, who adore anything so long as it lets them get dressed up in their Chanel and pearls and go swanking about town, but the music critics. God, they’re sharks. And there they all were, in the front row – where stupidly I’d parked myself too – and I kept glancing along the row, watching their impassive poker faces. My heart was sinking fast, I can tell you, and then at the end there was this horrible hush, and then – thunderous applause! They even got to their feet, for God’s sake, and old Claude Pastiche from the
Figaro
doesn’t stand up for his grandmother!”

I laughed. “Oh, Sebastian, I’m so pleased. You were so nervous about Paris. And Hugo conducted?”

“Quite magnificently. Best yet, actually.”

I smiled. “Missing Imo, no doubt. Her memory must have stirred him to passion.”

“Oh no, not the memory, no, no, she came out.”

“To Paris? Did she!”

“Oh yes, for four or five days. God, we had some fun, though, the three of us – lots of laughs, lots of gastronomic delights and a huge amount of drinking – too much, actually, bearing in mind that at least two of us were supposed to be working.” He glanced down. “Oh Christ, Olivia, excuse my clothes. I’m in the old working pyjamas again, my nutter outfit.”

“But how odd,” I mused, gazing past him, ignoring this. “I mean – I saw Imogen the other day, and she never said. Never even mentioned it.” I glanced back and felt his dark eyes upon me. Abruptly I remembered why I was here. I took a deep breath. “Look, Sebastian, the reason I’ve come – ”

“If it’s about the other night,” he interrupted anxiously, “after Molly and Hugh’s, maybe I should explain – ”

“No, no,” I stopped him hurriedly. “No, it’s not about the other night. No, what I came to tell you was – ” I went on in a rush – “well, Johnny’s home.”

“Johnny?” He frowned.

“My husband.”

“Oh – oh yes, of course.” There was just a flicker of surprise, as if he’d momentarily forgotten who Johnny was, then his eyes widened in recognition. Slowly, a lovely, warm smile spread across his face.

“But this is wonderful news, Olivia, and just exactly what you’d been hoping for, isn’t it?”

“Yes, yes it is.”

“How amazing! And a complete surprise? I mean, did he give you any warning or – ”

“Complete,” I breathed, relieved he was taking it like this. “So unexpected, Sebastian, totally out of the blue. And you know, if I’d known he was coming back, well, I would never have – well, you know, in the car the other night. I hope you don’t think…” I panicked. What? What was I trying to say? I hope you don’t think I was stringing you along? But no, I hadn’t been stringing him along. I’d liked him, and, anyway, why was I sitting here explaining myself? Surely he’d rejected me? God, he was probably
genuinely
delighted.

“I’m delighted,” he beamed. “You’re back together again, a family, and it’s how it should be. Claudia must be thrilled!”

“She…is,” I said, confused. Confused about how I felt, as much as how he felt. I studied his face, lean and elegant with those high cheekbones and dark brown eyes, which gave no clues, but which regarded me kindly now, rather as one would a small child.

“D’you know,” he said thoughtfully. “I thought I saw her cavorting rather skittishly yesterday.”

“Who?” I said, muddled.

“Claudia. She pogo-sticked down practically the entire length of the road!”

The phone rang and he got up and went to the piano to pick it up. His back was to me. I gazed. I’d forgotten how tall he was. How dark his hair was. He half turned and his face clouded as he listened.

“Yes, yes, I know,” he said, scratching his forehead, “but, God, Louis, their timing is absolutely lousy. I can’t just churn these things out at a drop of a hat. I know they think I can but…Yes, yes I know…Yes, I said I would so I will, of course I will, but…OK, OK, keep your hair on. Yes, they’ll get it. Relax…You too…Bye.”

He replaced the received and grimaced. “My agent, Louis. Apparently some film director is screaming for this score I’m supposed to be writing, although why I ever agreed to do it in the first place I’ll never know.” He rubbed his forehead sheepishly. “Well, yes, I do know actually, money, together with the promise of popular recognition, but remind me, Olivia,” he wagged a finger, “never again. There’s a joke in the music world that goes – when someone asks you to write a film score you reply, “D’you want it good, or d’you want it on Thursday?” Couldn’t be more apposite in this case.”