Other People's Husbands (7 page)

‘It'll just be a couple of days a week till the end of the uni year – so it's only till June, really . . . though I suppose then I'll need some kind of job.'

Cassandra looked so much happier this morning than she had the evening before, when she'd seemed defeated by the pressures of boyfriend, babycare and life. It was a strange meal, the girls being so careful about what they said, and Conrad with all this new mad stuff about not wanting to travel any more, and looking as if he had a secret that he was desperate for someone to ask about. Sometimes, Sara thought, it was a toss-up which, out of Charlie and Conrad, was actually the baby. Maybe this attention-seeking was what people meant by second childhood.

‘Gotta dash – said I'd pick up Miranda on the way. Bye-bye my lovely baby.'

Cassandra dropped a kiss on Charlie's fuzzy head, grabbed her bag of books and car keys and opened the back door. For a moment, she hesitated in the doorway, the sunlight shining through breeze-blown blonde hair. She looked back at her mother and Charlie, eyes glittery.

‘Thanks so much, Mum. I really couldn't . . .'

‘Cass – just go!' Sara was close to getting up and shooing the girl out of the door. She would be late for her lecture if she didn't leave now, but it seemed important not to return to chivvying her as if she was still a schoolgirl putting off the dread moment of a maths test. ‘It's all right, honestly. He'll be fine with me. Now quick, Cass, slide out before he notices.'

And Cassandra was gone.

‘So. Looks like it's just you and me for the day, Charlie,' Sara said to him as she carried him to the sink and ran cool water over his sticky hands. He grabbed for the stream of water, trying to catch it. She clasped him firmly as she tried at the same time to reach for a towel to dry him. He seemed to have got water all over him, even in his hair. There was quite a lot down her, too.

‘Here – let me.' Conrad came in through the back door and took Charlie from her. Charlie wriggled and swiped at Conrad's face with his wet hands.

‘Thanks, darling. I'd forgotten how squirmy babies can be. Here, let me dry him.'

Conrad held Charlie up in front of him and looked into his face. Charlie stared back, mesmerized, then broke into a broad toothless smile, his blue eyes wide and sparkling.

‘He's beautiful, isn't he?' Conrad said quietly. ‘Remember Cass at that age? She was still about half the size of the other babies.'

‘I know.' Sara slid her arm round Conrad, remembering. ‘So tiny. I thought she'd never grow. When she was born, all the other babies in the hospital were so huge by comparison. I know the midwife said the tiny ones catch up fast but it was hard to believe she ever would.'

It had been a terrifying time; Cassandra had been born six weeks early, labour having got under way for Sara during a private view in a Cork Street gallery full of what were described as ‘political landscapes'. Conrad had been deep into conversation with Peter Blake about the Everly Brothers, and she had tuned out from their chat and into the depths of excruciating backache, assuming she needed no more than a glass of water and a comfortable chair. An hour later, Cassandra had whizzed into the world in an ambulance on the King's Road as if she simply couldn't wait to get her life started. She'd weighed four pounds – well within an easy-survival range, but her lungs weren't ready to function, she was sleepy and jaundiced and seemed to have used up all her energy getting herself born. Conrad had said, as he watched her breathing unevenly in her incubator, ‘It's as if she's taken one look at the world and wondered why she bothered.' Terrified that by saying this he'd jinxed their baby's survival, he and Sara had gone to the hospital chapel and lit candles for her. Neither was religious. If asked, they'd fill in the ‘agnostic' box, but sometimes, they agreed, you just had to go for all the help that might be out there.

‘Shame I won't see him grow up,' Conrad said now, looking as if he'd only just calculated the age gap between himself and his grandson.

Sara put her arms round him, hugging him and the baby together. ‘Oh of course you will! You're well and fit and you could go on for years and years! You'll probably see
his
children!' she laughed, letting go of them and making a start on cleaning the sticky table.

‘No, Sara, I won't.' Conrad sat on one of the twisted-selm chairs, still holding Charlie close to him. ‘I really want you to know this and not to laugh it off. I don't want to get older than this. I can feel it creeping on and I intend to sidestep it. Outwit the Reaper, play him at his own game.'

‘Conrad? Are you crazy? Don't say that – it's that be careful what you wish for thing! And anyway, what do you mean, exactly? How can you possibly just . . .' Sara stopped wiping the table and crossed her fingers, because the awful word was surely one you shouldn't say casually. ‘Just . . .
die
?'

Was he going to tell her something terrible? She knew he was, just knew it. He must be ill. Terminally. How could she not know? How had he hidden the kind of symptoms that could kill? Ridiculously, she didn't want to remember this moment as one where she was covered in crumbs and dried baby food, hearing life's worst possible news with a soggy J-cloth in her hand. She went to the sink and bought herself some time, washing her hands, smoothing anti-ageing hand cream all over them, very, very slowly.

‘You're so young,' Conrad was saying. She turned round and realized he wasn't speaking to Charlie but to her.

‘No I'm not!' She laughed, but it was the nervous kind. ‘Not any more! I'm a classic midlifer, surely, heading for trouble?' The man from the pub slid in and out of her thoughts, just quickly, like a single, half-caught, subliminal frame accidentally slotted into a movie.
Get out
, she told the image.
Not now
.

‘You're still young enough to start again with someone else, Sara. Young enough to make a whole new life, even have another child if you wanted to. There are plenty of men out there who'd snap you up.'

‘Now I
know
you're crazy! Men who are looking for women aren't looking for the forty-something ones,' she said, feeling more scared than she would allow him to know. ‘And anyway, why would I want one? I've been happy with you since day one. You know that. And even if I could, I don't want any more children. That's what I did with you – I'd never want them with someone else.'

‘All the same . . .' He smiled, but looked sad. ‘I don't want you to waste the rest of your youth taking care of an old man who is going into swift decline. I don't want to be seventy.'

She put her arms round him and kissed him gently. ‘I know you don't, darling. I don't suppose I'll want to either, if and when the time comes.'

‘We've had a good time, haven't we?' Conrad asked her.

‘Yes. The best. But we'll go on having a good time.'

‘When I've gone, just remember it was good. And that I'll be OK about going. Don't be sad, will you?' He took her hand, stroked her palm softly with his thumb.

‘Conrad, of course I'll be sad! I'll wear deepest black, get Philip Treacy to make me wonderful hats and I'll lie in a darkened room playing early Dylan to remind me of you.'

‘Sara, please, you're saying this as if it's a joke. I'm just trying to be realistic here. I'm so much older than you . . .'

And suddenly he looked it. Sara felt scared for him, for her, for the unsaid something that was in the air.

‘Hey, hush. We always agreed age would
never
be an issue. Nothing's changed.'

‘It has, though. I'm old. I wasn't old then, just old
er
. Now I'm heading for
seriously
old.'

‘You're frightening me, Conrad. Just tell me one thing, honestly.'

‘Maybe – ask away.'

‘Are you ill? Do you secretly know there's something seriously wrong with you? Because I couldn't bear not to know. If there's something, please don't keep it from me; don't try and go through it all alone.'

Conrad didn't hesitate. At least here, he could be honest. ‘No. I'm not ill. I'm actually fine. Physically. As far as I know. As far as anyone can know.'

‘All right. That's all I wanted to know. Now please, can you stop thinking about the dying thing? You've still got loads of living to get on with.'

He sighed and stroked Charlie's suedey head. ‘Sara – I. . . OK, let's leave it for now. I know – shall we go out somewhere? Take this little boy out and show him some of the world?'

‘What, just you and me? Yes, that would be good. I'm not working today; my only plan is to go out to see a film with Will tonight. Any ideas where to go?'

Conrad thought for a moment. ‘Let's go to the London Aquarium,' he said. ‘We can show him the fish. He'll like that, all calm and swimmy and wafting weed and so on. It'll lull him into a nice sleepy mood and then maybe poor Cass will get a good night's sleep for once. Fancy it?'

‘Definitely, as long as I'm back by six so I've got time to get ready for seeing Will.'

‘Ah – you see, one of your other men. They're like wasps round jam, with you. Like I said, you'll be OK after I've gone! And that Stuart bloke from the college will keep you in allotment produce and logs for the fire. You'll always be warm and fed at the very least!'

Sara laughed. ‘I can't live entirely off Stuart's obscene-shaped carrots and I don't think Will's going to be in hot pursuit, somehow, unless he's got a vacancy for a full-time fag hag. Listen, I'll get Charlie's kit together. It'll take a while though. From what I remember, babies don't travel light.'

The weekly box of Stuart's vegetables was in the usual place just outside the front door. Sara, having once tripped over it, now knew always to look when she opened the door on Tuesday mornings. Why Stuart didn't either give them to her at the college or knock on the door when he brought them, she'd never know. In the coldest months of winter when there wasn't a lot growing, he would turn up now and again in a truck before daylight on Sunday mornings and quietly, stealthily, top up the log pile by the front wall, stacking them with precise expertise. Conrad teased Sara about her admirer, said she was cruel for taking his offerings and giving him no reward.

‘It's only the surplus crops,' Sara told him. ‘Sometimes it just adds up to a wormy cabbage and a dozen apples. I think it's sweet!'

‘He
lerves
you!' Cassandra and Pandora crowed when the vegetable deliveries had first begun. ‘Mum's got a pash!'

‘You should give him a flash of your knickers,' Conrad had once suggested. ‘That'll see him off. He's a fantasy rather than reality sort, you can always tell.'

Sara didn't want to see him off and she knew all about his fantasies. They didn't involve her knickers – more the fast removal of same so he could wallop her bum with whatever implement of choice he'd dreamed up as suitable for that day. Was this something he couldn't get at home? Or something he'd got at home so much that his wife had decided enough was enough, she'd be quite glad not to have to take painkillers before she dared to sit down, thank you, and had called a halt. Sara liked Stuart and his slightly pervy devotion. He was several years younger than Conrad, yet shuffled round like somebody seriously ancient. He wore a random job lot of corduroy in all weathers, muddy-coloured and shiny, and he trailed pieces of grubby string from his pocket like an elderly Just William. His hands were ingrained with a mixture of earth from the allotment and car oil from years of endlessly teaching how to change a cylinder-head gasket to women who still believed that Car Maintenance classes were a pretty good bet for meeting a dream man.

Cass and Pandora called him Scary Stuart and laughed about his attachment to their mother, but how much harm could it do that he liked to supply her with boxes of his allotment-grown vegetables and have her company for a quick drink during the odd lunchtime while he told her about his fantasy plans? He wouldn't take any payment for his crops, which, she said, was ridiculous, as a similar delivery from any of the many organic companies would have cost a bomb. A year ago, when he'd started this but wouldn't take any cash, she'd offered him a signed print of Conrad's. He'd refused and said apologetically, ‘Actually, I'm not much of a picture man,' which had, Conrad glee-fully decided, been the clincher in working out whether it was Conrad or Sara he was keen on. Perhaps Mrs Scary Stuart gave him a hard time. Maybe she preferred her vegetables pre-scrubbed, pre-packaged and microwave-ready.

Sara carried the box into the house and had a look through the contents. Purple sprouting broccoli, carrots, early-season potatoes, a bag of rocket, a posy of violets. She quickly arranged the flowers in a small jug and put it on the kitchen worktop. When the glazier had been, and after she got back later that afternoon, she'd put the jug on the ledge where much of the broken glass had landed when she'd thrown the mustard jar. That should keep the glass safe from further damage. After all, it would be deeply dis-respectful and heartless to throw heavy missiles in the direction of an offering from an admirer.

Cassandra drove more slowly than usual, feeling reluctant to get to the college and possibly find that Paul was leaning on the door of the lecture hall, looking for an instant explanation of what, exactly, she thought she was playing at. In a lay-by, switching her phone on for the first time since leaving the flat the afternoon before, she found – as she'd expected – that her inbox was completely filled with increasingly grumpy messages from Paul. She could track his thought processes through the tone of his words as they gradually changed with his realization that she wasn't merely out, she had actually gone. She'd done the unthinkable and abandoned him. Girls didn't do that to Paul Millington. He was one of those prize boys, the ultimate trophy date. When she'd first met him and he'd got her to admit she liked him, he'd joked, ‘And hey, what's not to like? I'm rich, pretty and the shag from heaven.' Except, of course, he hadn't been joking.